February 17, 2011
Yesterday I decided to leave work early in order to pick out a new pair of frames to replace the presciption glasses I lost in the fire. I'm legally blind without a prescription and while I normally wear contact lenses, it is good to have a back up. That and when I hear banging on my door in the middle of the night, I'd like to be able to throw on a pair of goggles rather than scramble to fit a pair of miniature lenses into my face while my heart is pumping at seventeen beats per second in the absolute darkness after I've been asleep for four hours.Need I justify it further?
So I told my co-worker, sent down from the other store to fill the gap of absence left by my previous co-workers who bailed ship, that "I either have to leave early today or tomorrow to get this done."
"Well," he said, "it's really not up to me if you leave or not. Perhaps you should ask Dale."
The service manager? What does he have to do with it? What does he care?
Whatever.
I went to go find the service manager who was nowhere to be found.
I made two laps round the store only to end up at Steve, the other store's GM. I told him what was going on and gave Jorge the final word that I was leaving.
"Say, can you do me a favor Laura and get a doctor's note while you're there?"
I laughed.
But he wasn't kidding.
"What. You're serious? Come on."
"Can you just do that one thing for me, Laura?"
"Yeah, George. Yeah. Whatever you say."
FUCK THAT!
Who got fired and made you King Fucking Kong?
The answer to article one is Zac, Billy, Danny, Jericho and Jarrett...
But the answer to article two is NO ONE.
No one made you my manager, Jorge, so quit trying to manage everything. Or, shall I rephrase this, stop trying to manage me.
I completely get it that you're somehow convinced this industry is your 'calling.' This industry is your 'career.' This is it for you. All you've got. The big picture, the whole bowl of Cheerios, your last stand. But, unless I'm getting paid ten dollars an hour more, it's certainly not mine. We are at odds on that point, my dear. I can barely survive on what I've been dealt and therefore I'm grasping onto it with about as much alacrity as I did my first job at 15 pumping boat gas out on the lake for Illinois vacationers on the weekend.
I think I was paid about the same hourly rate.
And I don't know what you're getting paid but that part pisses me off as well. Anyone working in our department who doesn't end every other sentence with, "I don't get paid enough to worrry about this," makes me suspicious. That kind of enthusiasm is only begot as a result of being 15, not knowing any better because there is no such thing as rent and working for beans on the weekend or because you're making enough to afford all your bills.
You, sir, are suspiciously content.
Content to micro-manage my ass in order to brown-nose the boss.
Fuck that static.
Charles, who helped me two years ago to pick out frames, remembered me at the eye doctor's.
"You're the motorcycle girl, aren't you?"
We picked out a bomb pair of goggles for my face and then I related the circumstances behind my frazzled demeanor.
"He wants a note, does he? Well, I'll give him a note."
He took a copy of my reciept and wrote,
"To whom it may concern: The elegant Miss Laura was in my presence at Medical Eye Associates on February 16, 2011!"
"Are you even going to bother giving that to him, Laura?" Charles asked on my way out.
"Probably not, Charles. In ten years working in the industry, I've never required a note to go to the doctor. Not gonna start now."
You can tell me all day long that you value me as an employee but I won't be convinced of that until the words take on the form of cha ching.
And you can take your high volume 26-year-old balding boy from the other store and make him someone else's manager, thank you.
I can manage on my own.