Friday, August 15, 2008
It has been a hell of a challenging week, and I'm really at a loss to describe it in words. My job is hell, and I hate every minute of it. The change has been devastating for me--it's just been demoralizing, humiliating and just plain boring. I don't want a job making french fries and serving ham sandwiches, but that's what I've got. And the scattered bits of information and misinformation about who-said-what and what's going on where, etc. just make it worse. My bosses have proven to not be forthright with their intentions or ability to fulfill their promises and I've lost all faith in them and their abilty to give a damn about my best interests. I finally decided I need to look for another job--a completely daunting task, given the fact that I was looking for another job the entire 3 YEARS I was working at my retail job. I updated my resume and found relatively nothing. I came to the decision that I needed to seriously consider moving.
Moving is a big deal to anyone, but even more complicated for me: moving north to a bigger city puts me further away from the kids' dad and Rusty further away from his daughter. The added traveling expense would dramatically increase the income we would require to justify the move. Moving south to a bigger city would put me closer to the kids' dad, which they would love, but further from Rusty's daughter, which is a tough choice for him, too. And add to that that Rusty and I have been arguing like a couple of minks in a potato sack. I've been emotionally needy and unsocial and he's been a roller coaster of support and rejection. My stress has increased his already high stress, and we're horribly broken. I have to consider, if for no other reason than to rule it out, that it's time to move out. I don't want that. He doesn't want that. But I'm in that state where I have no faith in my ability to make good decisions and recognize what's best for me and so I'm second guessing every instictive reaction I have. Our lease to this craphole is up in a couple of months and it's time to find another one, so now's the time to make that decision. The pressure makes it even harder to trust my instincts.
So then yesterday Jim and Patty come and ask me to sit down and talk with them again. Rusty had been pressuring me to give them a piece of my mind but I just couldn't figure out how to do that without making a huge scene. I had been sick all day and covering a missing staff member's shift and was anxious to just go the fuck home, but I'd also resigned myself to the fact that I could not continue working there and I had to get out to save my sanity. In that state of mind I just sort of sat down and thought, "Whatever, say your shit, let's get it overwith." It was more of the same old shit, but for some reason it was easier to hear and made a little more sense. I suppose it helped that they wanted the opportunity to say that I wasn't being punished, I wasn't demoted, and I hadn't screwed up anything--the problem was in their failure to train me properly. What it comes down to is they think employees respond best to a manager who works beside them all day, and you "win their respect" that way. It doesn't seem to matter that I actually DO that work on a regular basis, and I believed (and still do) that as a manager, my own duties are more important that coddling infantile behavior like that, and I shouldn't need to spend that amount of time "proving" I know how to slice tomatoes. They insist on it, though. Fine, it's what I'm doing already anyway. But sucking ass like that leaves me no time for mangerial duties, even the crap-assed lame ones they've given me, and I think it's backward and fucked up that they actually expect me to play "kitchen help" all day and wait til everyone's gone to do paperwork and such, like it's some big secret they shouldn't ever see. I resent having to explain to THEM that paperwork takes time and just because I'm not standing at the stove or the sink doesn't mean I'm not working. They said that they got complaints that I never did any work. Totally unfounded--their real complaint is that I didn't do enough of THEIR work. So they moved me to see if it happened again. Which it did, of course. "What did you do today?" they wanted to know.
"Well, I served breakfast, and while I was doing that, I diced a case of tomatoes. Then I broke down the breakfast service, cleaned up and did all the resulting dishes, took 20 minutes at the computer to make tomorrow's prep list [one of my required "duties", which only the day before he had instructed me to finish before 1pm, and since I had to serve lunch, that meant I had to actually have it done before 10:30am], then I put away our mid-week food shipment, after which I restocked the deli, and cooked the food for the grill [hamburgers, grilled chicken, frying breaded chicken, fish, tenderloins and french fries], then I served lunch. Immediately after lunch I got a plateful of food and sat down to eat, at which point I was asked to meet with you, so while I waited for you to finish your other meeting, I started the payroll paperwork. So no, they're right, I haven't done a lick of work all day and all I do is sit around all day."
And in mid-conversation they admitted that they BOTH had the same experience with these particular employees and knew they were full of shit. So why give them this much power? It just feeds into the whole atmosphere of back-biting and finger-pointing. But what do I know? Still, they were actually sympathetic. At least they acted like they believed me. Still, they say, they need me to get in and get my hands dirty to try to turn their attitudes around, while at the same time, they want me to be up their butts every minute of the day with, "What are you doing? When will you be done? Why do you do it that way? Show me how you usually do that. Have you finished xyz? Where is it now? When will you do the next thing?"
Fine. I already don't give a shit if these people like me or not, I don't care if I'm "accepted" or not. I can be an "up your butt bitch of a manger" if that's what they want me to be, at least til I move on.
There's sort of a little bit of peace that came with that acceptance. I will never be the kind of manager they want me to be. However, I suppose that I can learn something from the experience of trying it on to see how it works.
Moving is a big deal to anyone, but even more complicated for me: moving north to a bigger city puts me further away from the kids' dad and Rusty further away from his daughter. The added traveling expense would dramatically increase the income we would require to justify the move. Moving south to a bigger city would put me closer to the kids' dad, which they would love, but further from Rusty's daughter, which is a tough choice for him, too. And add to that that Rusty and I have been arguing like a couple of minks in a potato sack. I've been emotionally needy and unsocial and he's been a roller coaster of support and rejection. My stress has increased his already high stress, and we're horribly broken. I have to consider, if for no other reason than to rule it out, that it's time to move out. I don't want that. He doesn't want that. But I'm in that state where I have no faith in my ability to make good decisions and recognize what's best for me and so I'm second guessing every instictive reaction I have. Our lease to this craphole is up in a couple of months and it's time to find another one, so now's the time to make that decision. The pressure makes it even harder to trust my instincts.
So then yesterday Jim and Patty come and ask me to sit down and talk with them again. Rusty had been pressuring me to give them a piece of my mind but I just couldn't figure out how to do that without making a huge scene. I had been sick all day and covering a missing staff member's shift and was anxious to just go the fuck home, but I'd also resigned myself to the fact that I could not continue working there and I had to get out to save my sanity. In that state of mind I just sort of sat down and thought, "Whatever, say your shit, let's get it overwith." It was more of the same old shit, but for some reason it was easier to hear and made a little more sense. I suppose it helped that they wanted the opportunity to say that I wasn't being punished, I wasn't demoted, and I hadn't screwed up anything--the problem was in their failure to train me properly. What it comes down to is they think employees respond best to a manager who works beside them all day, and you "win their respect" that way. It doesn't seem to matter that I actually DO that work on a regular basis, and I believed (and still do) that as a manager, my own duties are more important that coddling infantile behavior like that, and I shouldn't need to spend that amount of time "proving" I know how to slice tomatoes. They insist on it, though. Fine, it's what I'm doing already anyway. But sucking ass like that leaves me no time for mangerial duties, even the crap-assed lame ones they've given me, and I think it's backward and fucked up that they actually expect me to play "kitchen help" all day and wait til everyone's gone to do paperwork and such, like it's some big secret they shouldn't ever see. I resent having to explain to THEM that paperwork takes time and just because I'm not standing at the stove or the sink doesn't mean I'm not working. They said that they got complaints that I never did any work. Totally unfounded--their real complaint is that I didn't do enough of THEIR work. So they moved me to see if it happened again. Which it did, of course. "What did you do today?" they wanted to know.
"Well, I served breakfast, and while I was doing that, I diced a case of tomatoes. Then I broke down the breakfast service, cleaned up and did all the resulting dishes, took 20 minutes at the computer to make tomorrow's prep list [one of my required "duties", which only the day before he had instructed me to finish before 1pm, and since I had to serve lunch, that meant I had to actually have it done before 10:30am], then I put away our mid-week food shipment, after which I restocked the deli, and cooked the food for the grill [hamburgers, grilled chicken, frying breaded chicken, fish, tenderloins and french fries], then I served lunch. Immediately after lunch I got a plateful of food and sat down to eat, at which point I was asked to meet with you, so while I waited for you to finish your other meeting, I started the payroll paperwork. So no, they're right, I haven't done a lick of work all day and all I do is sit around all day."
And in mid-conversation they admitted that they BOTH had the same experience with these particular employees and knew they were full of shit. So why give them this much power? It just feeds into the whole atmosphere of back-biting and finger-pointing. But what do I know? Still, they were actually sympathetic. At least they acted like they believed me. Still, they say, they need me to get in and get my hands dirty to try to turn their attitudes around, while at the same time, they want me to be up their butts every minute of the day with, "What are you doing? When will you be done? Why do you do it that way? Show me how you usually do that. Have you finished xyz? Where is it now? When will you do the next thing?"
Fine. I already don't give a shit if these people like me or not, I don't care if I'm "accepted" or not. I can be an "up your butt bitch of a manger" if that's what they want me to be, at least til I move on.
There's sort of a little bit of peace that came with that acceptance. I will never be the kind of manager they want me to be. However, I suppose that I can learn something from the experience of trying it on to see how it works.
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