The Worm Has Turned

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Lord Mango

*-TOO MUCH INFORMATION

This will be really, really long. Really. Huge. Please pardon the numerous grammatical errors...I'm way to tired to do my usual obsessive editing and reposting. If you make it through this...emotional purge...you may need a glass of water. That didn't come out right. What did I mean?

Today I applied via e-mail for a Shift Manager job for a new swank european style bistro and tea shop. I won't link to them. I have read a few things about internet searches used for checking backgrounds on perspective hirees. It probably shouldn't worry me, as I'm somewhat (though not totally) anonymous, but just in case...don't need anything extra to worry about.

In my plan to do something...I'm having a very hard time typing right now...I'm trapped in a bit of a circle. Due to my increased teeth grinding/jaw clenching I can't eat much solid food (I did manage a bowl of pasta after work today). I'm getting a dizzy and nauseous from lack of solid food. It's wrecking (what's left of) my focus. Lack of focus means it takes much longer to do everything for which I'm responsible, tasks are being poorly completed or not at all....which causes me to worry about the things not getting done...which makes me clench my jaw and grind my teeth.

The tea company had actually called the shop a few months ago, looking for managers and assitants for the their new store. Sort of headhunting, I think. I took down all the information but I didn't pursue it because I felt I owed my loyalty to the coffeehouse and I was in line for the manager's job there, was I not? I was certainly led to believe that. But remember, I'm fed up. Therein lies a long, fustrating, thirst-inducing tale.

Monday, May 2: When I arrive for my 9 a.m. shift BigRed tells me the week-end drawer is short over $40 (she opens during the week and counts the drawer from the day before). I forget the exact amount. She says TheOwner went through the roof and wanted to start having BigRed or I change out the drawers each shift to find out "who's screwing up." I asked BigRed did she add back the cash payout I made for the lunchboxes delivery.

"You paid that out of the drawer?" she asks.

"Wasn't the receipt in there? I thought I put it in the drawer!"--me, panicking because did I lose the receipt?

"Yeah, it was in there, but you didn't mark it paid so I didn't know you'd done it!"

Okay. Let me see if I have this straight. You find the drawer is short a fair amount. You see there is a receipt from a delivery in the drawer (proper procedure) but hey...it's not marked paid. Do you go down to the cash register and check the GODDAMN CASH PAYOUT SHEET which you bloody well know about and which was placed in the drawer for the very purpose of recording cash payouts? No, you're too fucking lazy to walk back downstairs. Do you wait until the assistant manager comes in to consult, because she worked the Sunday close... or at least call her before assuming some big mistake giving back change was made or we have a thief? No. Because you're too goddamn arrogant to consider your first response might be incorrect. No, you immediately report it to TheOwner, who goes through the roof (thank god I wasn't there for that). TheOwner is already pissed off about:

• the lack of handsoap in the ladies room (a huge refill bottle was right there in the mop closet on the shelf but apparently neither she nor anyone else saw it when they looked in it...so she was mad that it didn't get filled and that there was nothing to fill it with which was my fault of course, forgetting to pick it up on the Sam's run)


• the lost games sign-up sheet (it was there when I left on Thursday afternoon...I was off for two days...When I came in Sunday morning it had disappeared).

Tuesday, May 3: I come in for my shift and BigRed tells me the drawer was short AGAIN. Over $30 dollars and no cash payouts this time. Also the book sale record sheet had gone missing the night before so the NightGirl couldn't find it to record the sale of two books so she wrote it on a piece of paper and left a note. The clipboard had been sitting right on the coffee table about six feet away from the counter but it had the newspaper crossword puzzle (yes, this indeed was my fault) folded on it. NightGirl either

• didn't have the sense to even casually look around for it, much less put some effort into it


• looked around but didn't have the sense to recognize the ONE clipboard in the shop that has that clamp (knowing that's the board we use for the books)


• recognized the clipboard but didn't have the sense to see the large border of white paper behind the folded newspaper and lift it up to look underneath it
.

Ya'll still with me? Feel free to ask questions about anything I haven't recounted in nauseating minute detail.

Wednesday, May 4: An Edict from TheOwner through BigRed was pronounced...no one was to use the clipboard for anything other then it's intended purpose, it had been mislaid and oh my lord, the books had to be written on a piece of paper and even though it was found it had been a travesty of improper use of materials and it was not to happen again!

I'm not exaggerating for effect. BigRed was that adamant. TheOwner had pissed, moaned and raged about it and declared the ban on misuse and abuse of clipboards. BigRed also said TheOwner had demanded the game sign up sheet be found immediately, apparently I was supposed to pull it out of my ass, because I was not there when it was lost.

One of manager-responsibilities-I-won't-be-getting-paid-manager's-pay-for is record keeping. Apparently I'm the only one who can look at a piece of paper and type the correct number into the spreadsheet (there really needs to be a sarcasm font style)and the only one who can properly gather the month-end reports and receipts. I usually do the past seven days receipts on Thursday but I pulled a double shift Wednesday and needed something to do, our street had been closed and evening business had fallen way off. So as I'm recording the figures on the spreadsheets I decide to go over Monday and Tuesday and re-check everything, just to make sure. Couldn't hurt.

Neither drawer was short. Monday's drawer was +.10 and Tuesday's drawer was +.06. I triple-checked every written line, triple-checked my adding, wrote everything out in detail and left a note for TheOwner, because I usually don't see her in the morning, she leaves before I arrive. But she came in that very evening, so I showed her the checking I'd done.

Was she pleased? Did she express relief? Was she grateful? Did she at least utter a distracted "thank you?"

No. She bitched at me for failing to write paid on the lunchbox receipt, because she had written a check for it the Monday morning. Even though it the receipt was initialed. Even though it was recorded on the cash payout sheet no one bothered to check.

BigRed didn't check her own addition. She added once and got an incorrect figure but didn't add again. TheOwner didn't bother to check the figures herself when she was shown the errant drawer tally's (tallies?). They didn't bother to stop and consider that maybe there was a different course, a different explanation, like maybe the decrepit thirty-year old adding machine was adding incorrectly. Just leapt to vitriol.

That night I also:

• Fixed the slideout keyboard tray by finding and replacing the screw that had fallen on the floor...directly under the hole it fell from... which both TheOwner and BigRed had complained about for several days because the the tray kept jumping it's track when pulled out too quickly.



• Found the AA batteries to replace the one's in the wireless mouse because we kept getting a crictically low battery message and the pointer kept getting stuck on the screen. They looked in the desk and in the cabinet upstairs and since that's the only possible places batteries could kept we obviously didn't have any. I found them in the downstairs closet, the one we keep the lightbulbs and vacuum in, right at the front of the shelf at eye level.



• Found the games sign-up sheet. It was under the counter where it was supposed to be but had slipped behind some boxes and couldn't be seen. But no one had gotten down on the floor and moved things around to look, just pushed around the papers at the front.



• Swept the floor (it looked like it hadn't been done for over a week, it's supposed to be done every night) and found yes we did have ants, little ants LIKE I HAD WARNED we needed to lay traps for...not the carpenter ants BigRed said we didn't have to bother about...because I swept a bunch of them up, still sqirming.
]

So. Thursday morning. I arrive at work. TheOwner has been there and left for her day job. Does BigRed say anything? About ANYTHING that had been found/done/cleaned? No. No thank you from BigRed though I was very tactful in suggesting that she check her adding more than once.

And then Thursday afternoon came the debate over initials and what I could and couldn't use on the logs that I had designed.

And last week was just a variation on a theme. I'm rather worried about my friendship with BigRed. We've been very close for over a year, helping each other out of many tight spots and disasters. But more and more I feel like she is trying her best to push me out of my job, make me look bad so she can have it. Now, paranoia is common in bipolar people so I have been trying very, very hard to be objective and consider that she's just the bossy type and and since she knows I'm not happy here anyway she is unconsciously pushing me towards quitting.

And that is why I'm applying to the tea shop. Now that I've sent the application I'm worried. Worried there was a typo that got through the numerous checks. Worried I am vastly underqualified for the position for which I am applying. Worried that instead of literate, intelligent, and compotent I was trying too hard, used too many big words and came off as a uneducated, inexperienced hick pretending she knows what she's doing looking foolish. Worried because in the cover letter I said I was seeking a shift manager position when the job listing was for Sales and Service associates (there was a single mention, further down in the job description, of shift managers). Worried that they won't offer the salary I have to have--$12.00 an hour to start or it won't make any sense to move, given that I'll have to drive to work (expensive gas!) and installing a land phone line so the boys can call my cell and leave a message they're home from school.

And I tell you something else. BigRed and StarWarsGuy and I went in together on a large storage unit (of course...I was the one paying the deposit...but I had intended to get one anyway). BigRed and her boyfriend took a load of boxes over there and put it in the unit right away. She said she had a good lock with several keys.

But when I saw her the next day she said she could only find one key and she'd have to look for the other. Sorry. I could come get her key when I needed it.

Okay. When I'm ready to take some things over to the unit I will have my own damn key made. If I can't for some reason I'll buy my own lock, get her key and replace her lock. If she "forgets" to bring the damn key more than once I will buy a goddamn hacksaw or bolt cutters if need be and cut that damn thing off and put my own lock on. Because my name only is on that rental agreement (I knew she'd probably never have her third of the payment) and I'll be damned if I'm going to let her control my access to my own fucking storage unit.

There. It only took three hours to write it all out. Fortunately the boys had Scouts tonight.