Mental Illness, Work

The More Things Change…

I should probably go back a few of months (or a half-dozen posts), and verify this before I say it, but I hate what this industry does to me, and I’m not talking about writing. It’s not job-specific, as I would have to be a complete moron to speak ill of my current place of employment in anything other than plausibly deniable code, but rather my indictment of the restaurant industry. In many ways, it’s like a drug, something that I desperately want to give up, but seem inexorably drawn back towards. I know that it’s not good for me to work in a place like that, as the constant shifting between dead and slammed is a microcosm of the swirling madness within me. But, again, this isn’t what I’m actually getting at. I could probably find studies to back me up on my belief that this industry tends to draw the intelligent dropouts, drug addicts, and the mentally unstable, but, at the risk of repetition, not really what I’m getting at. I guess what makes this so hard for me is just how much of a damn I give. I’m always stressing out about things I need to do, and the little voice inside my head that’s freakishly insistent upon screaming out my flaws within the echo chamber of my skull spends every bus ride out to work making me feel like today will be the day that I will be let go. It’s not that I am negligent, or that I actually believe that I will be let go for anything approaching a valid reason. Of course, I’m still in my first 90 days, and employed in a “right-to-work” state, so there doesn’t have to be a reason. Maybe Bad Leon is right: perhaps I am a bad person.

Or it could be that I simply need to start back up on my medication. I keep saying that as long as I am not doing anything that requires creativity or inspiration, I might as well get my noggin back under control. Of course, my ability to think on my feet, and troubleshoot the worst catastrophes is a direct result of the way I’m drawn to harming myself psychologically. Anyone who’s capable of spending hours a day thinking up all the ways that he could irrevocably screw things up, is also capable of seeing the early warning signs of something which is about to hit the fan, and take action to prevent it, or at least ride the tsunami of excrement and minimize the damage along the way. Now that we’re a month into full operations, the plethora of variables have been winnowed away, and I’m starting to get a better handle on preventative worrying. I’ve seen how shifts run, and I’ve begun to identify the [I cannot use this word, for fear of its misinterpretation] in our armor. It’s a process. And of course, all this last paragraph has done has undermine the point I’d been trying to make about the benefits of being healthy.

I suppose that I could probably be fine if I took measures to ensure my health. I mean, it’s not like other people haven’t taken care of themselves before. And now we’re back to the major point, the reason why those suffering from mental illness almost pathologically refuse to take their medication: the feeling that, for all the reasonable benefits of getting one’s head on straight, the nagging doubt about that action’s worth. I know that I could probably do the normal stuff in my life much, much better if I got back on the Lithium. Hell, I’d probably even start to be a better dad: calmer, less likely to fly off the handle, more… stable. They say that kids need… crave… stability, right? I’d probably even be a better husband, without random days and weeks of inspiration sending me off to battle windmills instead of just buckling down and dedicating myself to the team that my wife and I have legally signed off upon. I mean, there are literally so many reasons to do it, and there are only two reasons not to. The first, and most practical, is that there seem to be ridiculously difficult-to-navigate hoops between myself and my medication. I could understand if there was a possibility that I might get high, or something similar, but I’m only looking to get back on Lithium, which is a damned element. Maybe I should just start sucking on a battery.

The second has no bearing on reality, and seems unbelievably petty and selfish: It makes me so damned boring that I cannot, even now, bear to contemplate it. Sure, I might not be a barrel of laughs, but at least I’m interesting. I’d like to imagine that whether they love or hate me, that people will at least remember me. Maybe that’s why I write. I know that my time drawing breath is, by necessity, limited (though it does tend to drag on a bit), but my words have the potential to preserve the most perfect aspects of myself for as long as they can be read. They will not feel pain, nor the weight of weariness, but will stand in steady testament to those times when I was able to surpass myself, and contribute something of beauty to the world. And then there’s the ego, which insists that I am worth remembering. And the hole in the shape of my self-esteem which assures me that I’m not. I should probably talk to a professional. I think that I am finally ready to seek a professional opinion without harboring the fear (or desire) to rip that person down over a perceived slight, or to simply show off how much more clever I am than the person who I am paying to wade through my issues. It almost feels that I am gradually approaching adulthood, but I know better. I know the steps I need to take, but I refuse to do anything about it because I don’t want to. As bad as it may ever get, I am terrified of losing who I am, and what that means for the tale I’ve told myself regarding the meaning of my life.

Work

Has It Really Been So Long?

So it’s been well over a month, with nary a word sent out. I want thank those of you who have kept checking back in the hope that I might have had something to say, or an opportunity to say it. As it turns out, opening up a restaurant is a time-consuming venture. That, and we just got connected back up to the internet a few days ago. I suppose I could have brought my laptop with me to work, and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi, but I really didn’t want to have to wake up any earlier, and by the end of my day, I really didn’t want to stick around, and postpone my pilgrimage back home. We’ll see how well I can stick to a regular writing schedule moving forward, but it will probably be a while more before I can set aside some regular time for me to start writing every day. For now, it’s my goal to write on my days off (which happen to be today (kind of- more later on that) and tomorrow), and I suppose that two days a week are better than one day every six weeks. I’m also hoping to get back to working on that story I’d started around when I got hired for my current job, as there’s still a chance that I might be able to break $50 in sales for 2015. All of this unimportant, however. The future will bring what it will bring, and only time will tell if I will see success. The past, however, is ripe for repetition, so let’s go back a couple of months and see what brought me to this place.

I’d been working at Big Lots, destroying my body and whittling away my sanity, only to fall further into debt, looking toward an imminent promotion as the only light, however dim, at the end of my tunnel of penitence. Then, out of the blue, someone I’d known when I was working at Blondie’s Pizza got a hold of me, and informed me of an employment opportunity. Of course, I wound up having my interview for this new job on the same day as I had my final interview for my promotion at Big Lots. I knew going into the first interview, that I would take the new job in a heartbeat, assuming the money was okay, but decided to go through the motions anyway, as I have learned to hedge my bets, and that I am not the best person to be involved in interviews, either asking or answering the questions. As it turned out, I needn’t have been so worried. It was the single most painless interview I have ever had. The gentleman with whom I sat seemed eager to hire to me from the moment I sat I down, and based upon his sales pitch (and mostly that he offered me twenty percent more than I had been seeking (only two dollars less than I’d been making at Blondie’s, but with a significantly shorter and cheaper commute), and a benefits package that was better than I’d had before), I was just as eager to accept his offer. I filled out paperwork, and made plans to attend the company’s leadership retreat in just a couple days.

At that point, I was still planning on giving nearly two weeks’ notice to Big Lots, but by the end of the retreat, which featured a layout of the coming game plan, and conversations about just how much we had left to accomplish, I made my decision to to resign immediately. I feel somewhat bad that I left them in the lurch, but on the other hand, it’s simply not too realistic to expect loyalty when you aren’t willing to pay more than the minimum wage and refuse to have more than one full-time employee per department. Combine that with their anti-union rhetoric, and subversively anti-employee culture (something which I’ve noticed has become the norm over the past decade), and I came to regard to the entire situation as something more akin to a prison break. I’m not sure why, exactly, that so many employers have decided to regard their employees as some sort of necessary evil, like interchangeable equipment that should be tossed away instead of even minimally maintained. I’ve written about this before, so I’m not going to go into it again, but it just disappoints me to see people treated this way, and feeling like it’s the best thing they can get (whether or not it’s true).

Since the middle of August, I have been working toward the reopening of a Berkeley institution. We’ve gone through some personnel changes, and faced some common hiccups that all new restaurants must face, but with the added pressure of both retaining the link with our namesake from before, while trying to establish an entirely new identity. We opened our doors on the eighth of September, surrounded by construction, and it’s taken a little longer than to find our footing, than if we had opened free and clear. I don’t mind going on about the past, but it’s good to keep in mind that there’s nothing you can do to change it. Should I ever be in the position to open another restaurant, I have learned some valuable lessons which will hopefully spare me from some of the growing pains I’ve been feeling this time around.

I was talking to one of my employees last night, commenting on the fact that it felt like I was finally starting to get a handle on how it was to work at this place. To my surprise, she echoed the sentiment.

I’ve just looked down at the time, and realized that I have to take off and pick up David, and then run off to Berkeley for a management meeting (I’m the only one of us who’s off today) at 4. I’ll keep on with this when I get home, and then try to think of something interesting to share with all of you tomorrow.

-Tex

Work

Back (Somewhat) From The Wilderness

We’re in the process of finding a worthy successor to Comcast for our home internet service, so I’ve pretty much been stuck on my phone when I’ve been online this past while, and I’m not going to attempt to write anything sizable on tiny screen without physical keys. A lot has happened since I last posted something, and even as I’m typing these words, I’m trying to sort it all out in my head, so that I don’t tell a rambling, disjointed anecdote (not that that has stopped me before!). For the handful of you that have been checking back daily to see if I’ve actually written anything: thank you. I’m hoping that, by the end of today’s column, you will have reason to look forward to the coming months. Well, that is, if I can get the interwebz at home again. As much fun as it is trying to write at Cafe Milano in Berkeley, I believe that I’ll most likely want to mosey on home when my days are done, and the fact is that there are sometimes bloodsports involved in gaining access to an outlet (which I need because my laptop is a 4-year-old Acer, and hates being without a source of energy).

So, big news first: I am no longer working at Big Lots, which I do not believe I actually mentioned by name during my time there. It was an… interesting experience, and the tens of dollars that I made while working there enlightened me further to the plight of the working poor. What surprised me the most (viscerally, as I’d known it intellectually), was just how hard the job was, and just how little we were valued. Even as I was pushing for a promotion (because dozens of dollars are better than tens), I could almost not believe just how little they were willing to pay us. In the department where I’d been working, there was only one employee allowed to have Full Time (not me), and everyone else had to try to live off of minimum wage rates at less than thirty hours per week. Now, it wasn’t as bad as that winter I had to work for Labor Ready in Seattle, excavating frozen earth, but it was a close second. And to add insult to injury, after the good manager left (I wrote a piece about him), not a single other manager really wanted to take his place. They were pushing for me to advance to a supervisory position (a position which lay vacant long before I’d been hired- one of the sticking points of my former boss), not as way of recognizing my skill set, but as a means of avoiding physical labor, and the warehouse entirely.

So,when I got an email, out of the blue, from someone with whom I’d worked during my time at the Kenpire, informing me of an opportunity, I responded immediately. As it turns out, it couldn’t have come a moment too soon. The morning of my interview for this new job, I had another interview at Big Lots, this time with someone higher up the food chain. It was a good conversation, and perhaps if I had been dealing with him instead of the GM I was under, things may have been different. But no matter how well it went, they weren’t going to offer me more than $12/hr, and considering all that they wanted me to do, I kept my fingers crossed that the afternoon offer would be better. I have not always had the best of luck with interviews, and knew better than to throw away a pittance, if I pittance was all I’d got. It turns out that my fears were unfounded. The interview went swimmingly, and I was offered $3 more per hour than the level at which I’d set my minimum. Taking into account the fact that I no longer have to commute to San Francisco, and was also offered real benefits, I’m actually making more now than I was when I was GM of Blondie’s in San Francisco.

Of course, I’m terrified with every passing day that I will screw everything up, and come face to face with indisputable proof that I should never have quit Big Lots, but I also know that this is normal (for me) and that I do actually know how to ride upon the sword’s edge of despair, sliding along the sharpened blade in cut-resistant slippers, down to the sweet spot of my neuroses, where I am invincible. Part of it is that we’re still in that time before the restaurant is even open (it’s still under construction), and there are too many variables for me to properly calculate the outcome using my superhuman pessimistic powers. It is coming together, though.

I’d planned on giving nearly two final weeks to Big Lots, but when faced with the enormity of the task, and the time frame in which it needed to be accomplished, I cut my losses, and dedicated myself to the job which paid me twice the rate of the other (with more hours, to boot). I felt bad as I was penning my letter of resignation, especially as I could do no more than say say, “So long, and thanks for all the fish!” I’m glad I had the opportunity to see just how bad people have it, so that I can do my best to make sure that no one working for me ever feels that way again. And I’m grateful that I got so see the inner workings of a corporation that couldn’t give less than rabbit turd about its employees. I’ve spoken out against them, but now I know just how bad they are (and I’m sure I didn’t even come close to working for the worst). It isn’t done with terror, at least not overtly. They get you by whispering lies into your ear, and pretending that they’re looking out for you. And then when they finally crank the heat up, they remind you that there are people out there who somehow make even less than you, and that they’ll replace you if you get out of line.

I’m in a better place now. I’m also out of time, as I have to start getting ready for my workday. I’ll do my best to stay in touch.

Thanks again,

Tex

Writing

Terror

I just started writing again last night, which is good, but now I’ve found that the story that I’ve started has wrapped me up tightly in a blanket of sheer terror. I’m going to continue with it, because I am determined to actually someday make money with my words, but it will be a real test to see if I can actually make it through the writing process. I’m going to be starting up again this evening, and plugging away at it tomorrow, with the hope of trying to have it ready for sale on Amazon either at the end of this weekend, or sometime next week. To be clear, for those of you who may choose to buy it, it is fiction, though parts of it are inspired from things which I have experienced. In some ways, I suppose that you could say that it is “Based On A True Story”, if you take into account just how little most stories which advertise that bear any more than a passing resemblance to past events. But it is a good chance for me to practice digging into my various hurts and traumas to try to find something of value to write about.

It will also mark the first time that I have written anything which puts to use my decade-plus of time spent working in the restaurant industry. Seriously, despite the fact that I was in food service since 2001 (it could be argued that my time associated with kitchens began in 1996, when I was working as a “Food Removal Engineer” at a local nursing home back on The Rock, but as that job lasted only long enough for me to purchase Pink Floyd’s, “The Wall” and its necessary accessories, I think that I’ll keep the start date firmly set in the twenty-first century), I have never found a way to incorporate my experiences in restaurants, nor even truly felt inclined to try. Perhaps I was just too close to it, the stresses of the industry having blinded me to the forest while focusing my myopia upon the trees. And even now, the story really isn’t even about restaurants; maybe someday, I’ll think up a story where that industry is front and center, integral to the plot, but for now, the setting is merely incidental. Though I’m doing my best to keep it from feeling like it, the whole food service aspect is basically just there to frame the actual story which I want to write. So, in other words, it’s filler.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m working on it, and will be developing it so that it feels like needed to be written, but reason for the story is nestled deep within it. The thing I really wanted to write just won’t work in the original way that I envisioned it, as it would have required character interaction which I am, at least in this instance, uniquely ill-suited to provide. Once I knew that I couldn’t present it as the story itself, the rest just sort of came to me. I’ve got the first part of the really good part written, but I’m holding off on finishing it until I’ve got the framework done. As long as I can keep the carrot before me, I can keep working toward making the whole story worthy of its premise, as opposed to a hodgepodge, hastily assembled marriage of two ideas which truly don’t belong together. But now I can make sure that before I write the part which I am dying to get off my chest, that the rest of the story is good enough to risk including with it, because once I’ve put it out there, I can’t simply recycle the “good part” if the rest of it doesn’t really work. I know that it’s not technically plagiarism, if I’m stealing from myself, but I don’t really want to be that guy who only rewrites the same damn thing for the entirety of his career (“Semantics: they’re my favorite kind of antics” notwithstanding).

And unlike Terracrats, this is the first completely new fiction which I will have written in years. I mean, I’ve started some open-ended things, and been assembling my notes for {Untitled Project #4}, but I haven’t come up with anything truly original (and by that, I am referring to self-plagiarism) since that hastily assembled thing I threw together that night that Flor was late coming home from work, and I started to freak out. Terracrats was a chance for me to look back at one of my favorite stories and see if I could do something better with it, which I believe I did. But I’ve only got so many stories which I could rework, and some of them are good enough as is, or, on the other hand, aren’t nearly close enough to worthwhile for me to waste my time upon. No, if I’m actually going to do this, I have to trust enough in myself to value the stories which I want to tell, and though this one isn’t what has been consuming me for several years, it is near and dear to me, and a good a place to start as any.

So why am I afraid? It’s not of failing, as my royalties from Amazon have tempered my expectations. And it’s really not that I won’t be able to write the thing, or that it somehow won’t work enough to sell it. Ultimately, though I would like to be able to support myself like this, I just want to have my words out where other people can read, and maybe appreciate them. The story will be good enough: of that I’m fairly certain, and I have a small group of advance readers to help me make sure that it doesn’t completely suck, who I need to sign off what I’m putting out. No, in this case, what scares me the most is finally putting into words, feelings which I’ve not allowed to see the light of day. Bits and pieces of Tex Batmart that existed before and apart from my lovely wife. To reiterate, these words are fiction, and not some deep-seated desire for confession, except, perhaps, on an existential level. But I’ve always thought of writing as the smart man’s therapy, and by spending this session with me, you’ve helped me come to terms with what I’m feeling, and set me down upon the path to writing something awesome (I hope).

Current Events

A Cacophony of Wonderment

I often wonder how much longer it will take for the majority of us to stand together and demand what is rightfully ours. A push toward a livable wage is a beginning, but there has also got to be a call to reckoning of that multitudinous horde of corporate interests who are more concerned about the almighty dollar than the health and general well-being of their employees. I wish that I could say that this is a recent blight upon our nation, but the truth is that there has always been an aristocracy in these United States, and its members have only bestowed the bare minimums of liberty upon the rest of us to keep us docile, bedazzled by the illusion of self-determination. Everywhere I turn, it seems that it should already have been more than enough for us to have summoned ourselves to action, but it seems obvious that, despite foreknowledge of their plutocratic legerdemain, we have fallen into their trap, and turned upon ourselves instead of banding together and focusing upon the task of redressing tyranny. This is not to say that we do not have issues to settle between us, but it must be acknowledged that the tenor of the acrimony between each group and peoples has been conflated with a steady stream of malcontent-inspiring misinformation. If we are too focused upon the vulnerabilities of our brother’s throat, we are less likely to see the predators stalking us from just beyond the tall grass.

Our nation was founded as an excuse for the wealthy to establish their own base of power, beholden to no others, but in order to garner sufficient popular support, had to be framed in such a way as to appear to, by its very existence, afford protections and human rights to those who would otherwise have ever gone without. I don’t believe that it was the intention of those wealthy, white men to set down a culture of true democracy, but in their compromises made to rally the common folk to fight and die for their revolutionary cause, they inadvertently laid down the instruments of their own eventual dissolution, should we be smart enough to take the powers reluctantly granted to us, and throw their words back in their faces. The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is just as stirring today as it was centuries ago, and perhaps it is finally time to apply its passionate call to arms against the stagnation and incalcitrance of those wholly owned and subsidized mouthpieces for the interests of the ultra-rich. Of course, this will never, can never happen until we learn to set aside our differences and demand the justice which we’ve been promised since before we knew that Columbus was no hero.

I know, I’m going off the rails once more on one of my pinko commie rants. But, it seems to me that our institutionalized poverty, which is constantly attributed to the least among us, is nothing more than a tool by which those who have the most to lose by an equal redistribution of wealth are using to control us. The undocumented workers in fields who wither beneath the scorching sun are tangibly contributing to the benefit of a nation which tells them they are categorically unwanted, while the CEO’s with golden parachutes inflate their own importance and subsist upon the blood and sweat of the faceless masses forced into wage slavery because they’ve got no other option. I mean, which seems more likely: That it is a group of people living so far below the poverty line that even the notion of approaching is tantamount to achieving the American Dream are the ruination of this country, or that said designation belongs to a handful of wealthy, self-important figureheads who can hire high-priced loophole seekers to ensure that they pay the bare minimum of what they must, while demanding ever more compensation for such illusionary doublespeak as “synergy”? Meanwhile, we are set upon each other, fractured into tiny mobs lined up along the issues which weren’t all that divisive before we were told that they must be, too busy focusing on what we imagine (or are told) that our invented adversaries possess to ever make a concerted move against our true nemeses.

I would like to see one week where no one goes to work; where we the people shut down the entire country and demand a higher standard of living. Let the immigrants and citizens stand together, the blacks and whites united; straight, gay, transgender, bi, all gathered for the common purpose of demanding recompense from the broken system which we’ve tacitly empowered through disaffection and ennui. Let us join with the Native Americans in calling out the government on its history of mendacity, and the men shout loudly with their chromosomal other halves that no one should be paid less than one hundred cents on the dollar. We have been fed the tale that the United States is the Greatest Country in the World, so let’s throw their hyperbole back into their faces, and demand to see this country which we have been told we occupy. As it stands right now, Americans are truly only exceptional in our ability to look the other way, and think only about ourselves. We allow ourselves to get caught up in whichever manufactured scandal that we’re supposed to give a shit about today, unable or unwilling to think past the talking points and do anything other than impotently rage that there is nothing we can do to change anything, because what difference can one person truly make?

Eventually this revolution will arrive: it’s only a matter of time. There are only so many distractions and misdirections which we will endure before we are left no other option but to shout loudly that we will tolerate this no longer. So why start now, you might rightly ask, if this change appears to be inevitable? To that, I would only respond, How many children must die, either in body or soul, before we are willing to do something, anything about it? How many must continue to suffer before we’ve finally had enough? And so I sit, deafened by the Cacophony of Wonderment which screams it futility into my ear, and wonder what it will take for me to start to make a better world for my son and grandchildren to inherit when I’m gone.

Family

Mother’s Day (Part Two)

Before anyone starts in about me beating a dead horse, or, conversely, showing my hypocritical nature by now saying something nice about someone whom I had previously excoriated, let me say this: The previous post with the same (well, similar) title was in reference to the office of Mother, not the actual person. I am not such a monster as to believe that said person did not do her best or that she didn’t love me. That being said, I did (and do) have issues about the execution of said office, and for those, I air my grievances to the world. While it may not seem fair to publicly call someone out for an ostensibly private occupation, the fact is that I am entitled to my memories and experiences, and my interpretations of them. But, enough about the negative and intentionally provocative: I am writing this (albeit, a smidgen belatedly) in celebration of my mother’s birth (and indeed, her life). Just a note: as with the first Mother’s Day post, I am basing my words upon my experiences, as my knowledge of my mother as a human being is more lacking than I would normally prefer. But everybody has a story, and I would like to tell you hers.

From an inauspicious beginning as a somewhat sickly child, someone who might normally have been naturally selected to burn twice as bright for half the time, had it not been for the advances in modern medicine, my mother not only survived into adulthood, but thrived despite the innumerable challenges which seemed to pile on top of her, not the least of which was yours truly. Looking back at the broad strokes, it seems almost comical the sheer volume of misfortune which she was forced to endure (which I draw attention to not out of malice, but out of a desire to highlight the ridiculous amount of hurdles which she had to clear just so that she could achieve the next set of challenges which lay ahead). She has had to remain more than slightly medicated just so that she could continue to breathe, she fell in love and married, thinking of the family which she could begin to build, only to have the marriage end in acrimony and be forced into single motherhood. While she managed to get a job which allowed her make almost enough to survive upon, while also giving her enough time to spend with her son, eventually even that turned sour (though not for a couple of decades- and, I cannot say this enough, it was not my fault).

Her son was irritatingly intelligent, constantly testing the boundaries of both acceptable behavior and her patience, that is, when he wasn’t trying to set her up with doctors, or really, anyone who might have been able to fill the role of father figure (whether or not they wanted that role). When she saw that her son was coming apart at the seams, she did what seemed best, fell back upon those things with which she was familiar, and tried to help him through religion, and, when that didn’t work, counseling. As the years progressed, and her son, the one for whom she had wished with all of her heart to have, became withdrawn and impervious to compromise or reason (in her eyes). He seemed determined to destroy every opportunity which she had set up for him, obsessing over trivialities which would never be enough to actually enable him to survive. Perhaps his lashing out and self-destructive behavior reminded her of her ordeals with her ex-husband. Perhaps she drank the Kool-Aid and blamed everything on drugs. I will say that I am more prepared for this sort of thing, should it come to pass with my son, than she could ever have been.

Despite her best intentions, I did indulge in self-medication, though that was more of an attempt to manage the pain of living as opposed to the cause of said pain. But that was not her fault. As a mother, I may have found her skill set lacking, but as a human being, she did her very best. I have firsthand experience with mental illness, with drug use, with… dubious… career choices. The only thing to throw a monkey wrench into my parenting ability would be if the Minkey turned out to be a normal, well-adjusted kid. Everything she did, she did to try to spare me from the pain of learning things the hard way, as she had been forced to do. Of course, as should be painfully obvious by now, I am the type of person who would rather fail by my own choices than succeed by blindly following the advice (or orders) of others. In short, she and I had drastically different worldviews, and there was never really any chance that her careful preparations would do me any good.

But, one time in my life, I did manage to get something right on the first try. It was the middle of July, 2006. Somehow I had managed to keep secret her surprise, and, despite the very nature of who I am, I actually gave her a decent birthday present that year. You see, that was the year of her half-century mark, and I wanted to surprise her by showing up and wishing her a happy birthday in person. I caught a flight up, met her roommate, and was chauffeured out to her church, where she was doing something or other. I walked in the door, and, as casually as I could, walked up and past her, saying, “Hey mom,” like it was any other day (from a decade past). I had seen double-takes on television, in movies, and cartoons, but up until that moment, I had never actually witnessed one in real life. Of course, then came the water works, and the incessant hugging, but I had braced myself for this on the flight up (with the help of a number of Bloody Marys). What she’d wanted more than anything was to have me home, as for some reason she had missed me. Hey, even I can get it right, once in a while.

Anyway, I just wanted to wish her a happy birthday this year, and tell her that, as a person, I love her.

Happy Birthday, Mom.

No one in this picture is EVER happy with me...
No one in this picture is EVER happy with me…
Family, Work, Writing

Sighs of Regret

It’s a good thing that I’ve pretty much given up on trying to meet my goal of 365,000 words this year, or I’d be feeling fairly down on myself for having fallen so far behind. And it’s a good thing that I haven’t been spending a lot of time pondering my decision to leave a job which (though I was being underpaid) covered my expenses so that I could get myself into debt and wind up working a $9/hr job with less than 30 hours a week, because I might start to get really worried about how I was going to make it this time around. But the fact is that I needed the break which I allowed myself to take, and it was nice to get back to doing something that I actually wanted to do, for a change. I knew that it would be nearly impossible to try to write while working a full-time gig, but it turns out that even trying to steal away a few moments throughout the week is proving hard enough. I’d been thinking that at least I’ll have a little more time to be by myself when David goes back to school, but by then, I’ll either have a different job (one which will most likely not afford me the opportunity to work in the wee hours), or have been promoted (which means a switch to full-time in addition to a raise in my hourly wage), which means that the time I have right now, when David would otherwise have been at school, will still be unavailable to me.

As for my source of employment, there’s not a whole lot to report upon right now. I am still being groomed for that promotion, which basically involves throwing more work and responsibility at me without any change in my rate of pay or the number of hours for which I am scheduled on a weekly basis. I’m convinced that the guy in charge is completely useless, and that it probably wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world for me to try to find something else sooner rather than later. My department is slowly flying apart, as more and more people are growing increasingly frustrated with the current state of management, which includes an increased workload as more and more people leave, and the general manager refuses to get hands-on as would normally be recommended. I’ve even had some of my coworkers ask me to remember them if I manage to land a restaurant management gig somewhere nearby. Even if it weren’t turning into a complete shit show, the very fact that everyone is nurturing escape plans makes me unwilling to face the possibility of having to do the work of at least twelve people (of which we currently have seven) all by my very lonesome. I’ve even started romanticizing the last place where I worked, but luckily, my son-in-law still works there, and it is through his stories that I am able to remind myself of all the reasons why I left.

On the Minkey Front, it turns out that, in addition to his nose, he has also inherited his mother’s eyes, both in form and function. I mean, I’m not saying that my eyesight is perfect, but it turns out that my son is, for all intents and purposes, blind as a bat. I think Flor said that his glasses should be ready in a couple of weeks, at which point it is my sincere hope that he actually will begin to want to read. Well, that and that he might not need to drape himself over my desk so that he can watch his cartoons. It is also my hope that clarity of vision will lead to better penmanship. At least if he can see, his vacation will not have been for nothing. I know that he is bored out of his mind this summer, but I wish he knew (in a way that wouldn’t scar him for life) just how trying his constant presence is for the rest of us. It’s not that we don’t love him, it’s just that he’s a very… intense person, and should only be taken in small doses. In that regard, as well as normally wearing his heart upon his sleeve, he is very much my son. I know it’s wrong to say, but I feel rather  like Ford Prefect in the company of Arthur Dent when spending time with David. And you better believe that I know where my towel is!

As for the writing, well, I’m trying to figure out how to budget some time for myself more that once a week so that I can, at the very least, keep up with the blog. It’s hard because my normal solution would be to go to bed an hour earlier, and make with the clickety-clackety before I go to work. But it’s hard enough to get a proper amount of sleep anyway, and if I tried to put David to bed that early, I’m pretty sure that I’d be facing a full revolt before the end of summer. But the real news is that I’ve been running bits and pieces of {Book #4} around in my head while trying to figure it out (Books #1 and #2 are “Parade”, which I know I have to start before I have forgotten everything, but whose events are so traumatic as to make me nervous about reliving them again, no matter how “noble” the cause may be; Book #3 is The Wild West Fantasy, which I’ve been playing with for a while, but haven’t really decided what I want to do with it). But I think that I finally figured out {Book 4}. It was going to be a fictional account (based on true stories) and told from a female point of view, but I then decided that I could structure it more like a series of interviews. Now, of course, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll probably just write out each interview, and then integrate those all together into an overarching narrative. Or not. It’s still early.

And it’s not like I’m suffering from an overwhelming sense of regret.

Work

A Big Goodbye From Lots Of Us

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must choose the more difficult path of change for the sake of his own well-being. I made this choice last November, and though there have been consequences, I am satisfied that I made the right decision. There are times when the work is no longer as appealing as it once may have been, or perhaps the people at the top have changed (or haven’t, depending on how well one is able to tolerate one’s superiors). Whatever the reason, there comes a day when enough is finally enough, and, for the sake of health or sanity (or both), one must walk away from place of employment to seek out his fortune somewhere else. And for those people who are left behind, it is rarely easy to say goodbye. It seems that the people who would gladly be missed by their coworkers and subordinates never seem to leave, and the friends and inspirational managers we work for are always on the move, half burned out, and looking for vistas which won’t scar and maim them anymore. I’m not going to pretend that I am truly missed at my last job: The stress was eating me alive, and though I did my best to keep the best of my employees happy, I learned long ago that most of them were only nice to me as a form of self-defense. And so it goes…

Before I go any further, let me just say that I have not quit my latest job (though I have begun the search for something else). Despite its drawbacks (excruciating physicality on my artist’s form, pittance of compensation combined with less than full-time hours, and a sense of malaise which has recently fallen upon the merry lot of us), it is a paying gig, and right now, that’s more important than ethics. God, my younger self will never let me live this down. I know, I know, times like these are precisely when one needs to abide by his ethics, but then, is it ethical to make my son discover the joys of outside living and dumpster diving. No child of mine will become Freegan! But the fact is that if I am to leave this place, I have to have something else lined up to fall immediately into. I’ve played with the notion of putting out feelers toward the end of returning to the last place I worked (but with some firm conditions), though that may have more to do with it being the devil I know. For right now, I will just say that I’m staying put, though I’m now looking forward to it far less than I was when I was getting ready for my first day at four a.m.

You see, the entire point of this was to say goodbye to a manager of mine. You may remember him from previous entries where I was describing the battles for the fundamental paradigm of how the store was to be run. Yesterday was his last day with us. As I looked into the warehouse today, and counted the days down until the next truck would be arriving, I realized just how integral to that place he truly had been. He’d been stuck running with less than half of the staff he needed, based upon volume, and it was finally catching up. He told me that he still liked the job, but it came down to not being able to work for the Man Who Would Not Leave. In that way, it reminded me of when I left McDonald’s for the last time: They were just about to roll out the new drinks (which meant expensive new equipment that would lock in the owner for more years than he was willing), and so the owner decided to retire and sell his stores. The new owner we wound up working for was a real piece of work, valuing lapdog loyalty and a ruthless lack of humanity. I could have survived that, I think, were it not for the fact that, despite assurances from both the former and current owners that my compensation would not change, it did. I lost my health insurance and my scheduled overtime. One or the other would have been manageable, but together, they were the straws which broke Tex Batmart’s back.

It seems that I have drifted off-topic once again.

I only knew Joe (not his real name, obviously) for about a month, and though I though highly of him, I don’t know that I knew him well enough to call him my friend. Given time (and a possible promotion on my part, so that he wouldn’t have had to deal with the awkward nature of befriending a lowly part-timer), I think that I would have liked to have known him as one. Like all good managers, he led by example, setting the tone for his entire crew. He understood the necessity of levity to break up what would otherwise have been mind-numbing and back-breaking labor. He never asked us to do something that he himself was incapable of doing, and was always willing to spend a little extra time to make sure that we understood what he was asking of us. He had standards, and wasn’t afraid to cut someone loose who wasn’t willing to work, but he also believed in building people up, and giving them the chances and the tools they needed to succeed. You see, it wasn’t just a job to him. He actually drank the Kool-Aid (and I mean that in the nicest possible way). He understood the job, the store,  and the industry on a fundamental level. Watching him work, even short-handed and harried upon all sides, it was like watching master at his craft (like that time I got to see Robby Krieger play at the Ballard Firehouse), a blur of intentional motion, fluid and with purpose, almost hypnotic in its grace. It was both inspiring and a source of shame, in that one could only hope to achieve that competence someday, and no matter how good we were, we still didn’t measure up to him.

So now the store feels empty (though the warehouse is quite full). The mutters of discontent among the workers are growing, much like a restaurant transitioning from early afternoon to dinnertime. I don’t know what will become of us, here at this place we work, but I do know that it will not be the same. So it is with a heavy heart, filled almost entirely with trepidation toward my future, that I say goodbye. Thank you for spending the time with me to help me understand it. Thank you for the connection. Thank you for making what would otherwise have been unbearable, something approaching tolerable. I will miss our talks during breaks, and those conversations we had about everything and nothing, and the subtle art of management. I wish you nothing but the best (well, maybe a minor inconvenience for leaving us- leaving me- in the lurch), and just want you to know that you will be missed, and that, to at least some of us, you mattered here.

And remember: “You know that’s bad for you, right?”

Uncategorized, Work

Work: Lots of Politics, Big Drama

Despite trying to remain as low on the food chain as financially possible, I seem to have been drawn smack into the center of a roiling drama between two of the managers at work. The GM, who it turns out isn’t leaving after all, is quite put out with the manager of my department. My manager, on the other hand, is at the end of his fuse with the GM, who seems, according to my manager, incapable of understanding the need to make the store attractive, and of hiring enough people so that the rest of us can actually accomplish what is expected of us. One of them runs by the numbers, and seems the type to view a drop in sales not as the fact that the store is all higgledy-piggledy, but as a simple trend in sales, and therefore cuts down on staffing accordingly. That, and the fact that corporate seems to know better than those of us doing the actual work just how long everything should take. Never mind that our lovely customer base rips through the store like a natural disaster, and the employees who are supposed to pick up after them know even less where things should go than our customers.

My manager seems caught between shifting targets. First, he got tagged because he was following the directives of the GM, and suddenly we saw a shift in how we were doing things. Corporate wanted things to look nicer, and my boss seemed almost happy to oblige them. But, because we are facing a dearth of employees, this means that the warehouse is generally packed, especially if we have to spend the man hours to rearrange the store (as we had to yesterday), which apparently is also unacceptable. The fact is that we need more people, but it’s really hard to find anyone halfway decent who is willing to bust their ass in high gear for a part-time gig, making minimum wage. Of course, my opinions tend towards those of my direct boss, as he actually seems to give a damn about his work, whereas, though I may, in fact, be incorrect, the GM seems jarringly removed from the day-to-day operations of the business, more content to monitor everything from safe within the office, pouring over the labor and sales reports while glancing at the security camera monitors to make sure that everyone is, at least, appearing to be busy. Not that I’ve slacked off, but the key to surviving this, should someone not actually want to work, yet unwilling to inadvertently summon him, is to merely look busy. Walk with purpose. Carry boxes. That sort of thing. Ah, the lessons learned while ditching class in junior high!

I mention all of this because today the whole damn thing came (mostly) to a head. The Back-of-House manager called in sick (for Truck Day), and we got the GM instead. Personally, I believe that this may have been some passive aggression on the part of the BoH boss, as he’s also been getting frustrated by the lack of space remaining in the warehouse, yet also increasingly irritated by the “Do this! No, wait! Do the opposite! Sorry, do the first thing! Why are you doing it like that?! Do it the way I told you!” style of leadership that he has been forced to endure. Were I to speculate, I would suggest that he actually wanted the GM to see how unrealistic his goals were with the number of people we have. Of course, this sailed right over the GM’s head, and instead he voiced his frustrations that the store wasn’t as he wanted it. Wisely, I kept my mouth shut, as I well and truly to not want to get involved in this power struggle. I suppose that I could have thrown my boss under the bus, seeing as how it would have curried favor with the man with whom I worked today, but I just have too much respect for my boss. And I completely agree with him.

In addition, this was also a minor stumbling block on my way to livable wages. I know for a fact that I can do the job as my boss explained it to me. And I know that I could most likely do the job as described to me today by the General Manager. But honestly, while both jobs are similar in many regards, the fact is that, at their core, they are fundamentally opposed. I don’t know that I really want to do the work that the GM is envisioning. Too much cracking the whip, with little to no regard for the needs of the lowest-paid employees. Of course, it’s not like I have a lot of options at this point. I mean, as bad as I would feel about abandoning my boss, if a decent restaurant called me up and offered me Manager Money, I would probably drop everything and jump ship, especially if the commute was reasonable. As it stands right now, I have no idea what’s going through the GM’s head in regard to my promotion. He was full of piss and vinegar while we were unloading the truck, and for about an hour afterward. To his credit, he stopped short of blowing his top at the lot of us for all of the things he felt we were doing to sabotage ourselves. And he even (at least in front of everyone, as opposed to just myself) refrained from laying the blame directly at my boss’ feet. Well, kind of. I’ve been in management too long to fail to understand what “Ultimately it’s my fault for not communicating better” means. In manager-speak, he straight-up called my boss out and ripped him a new one, in absentia.

The rest of the week will be dedicated to clearing out the warehouse, and I’m grateful that my two long days for the week are done and gone. I imagine that there will be a confrontation when my two bosses meet again (think Cox and Kelso in that episode of Scrubs (actually, that metaphor works frighteningly well)). Somewhere in the balance lays my future.

My fingers are crossed.

Current Events

The American Dream

What exactly is the American Dream, anyway? The answer changes with every person you ask, but the general feeling is that, if you just work hard enough, sacrifice enough of the best years of your life, you will be rewarded with a modicum of prosperity. It used to be home ownership, but that now seems out of reach for the majority of us. It used to be a family, but many among us fear that they do not have the resources to provide for said offspring, so they are abstaining. It used to be the notion that you could work one job and provide for yourself, and for those who depended upon you, but that hasn’t been achievable for decades. Maybe it’s that your voice will be counted in this representative democracy of ours, that is, if the politicians haven’t managed to redistrict you into obscurity, or allowed themselves to be purchased wholesale by corporate interests, more concerned about short-term profitability than long-term sustainability. And besides, at this country’s founding, the only people allowed to vote were land-owning white males, so the idea that your vote actually counts is a recent notion, and delusional, at best. The American Dream, whatever it may actually be, seems more like a fever-induced nightmare for so many of us at this point, that maybe it’s finally time that we wake up.

Do I love my country? A silly thing to ask, especially on her birthday, but a question without an easy answer. In regard to the ideals for which this nation stands, at least to me, then yes, I would have to say that I do. But in practice, I cannot even bring myself to acknowledge it as we pass one another in the frozen foods aisle of the discount supermarket. Maybe I am only so disappointed in the land of my birth because I see just how far we apart we stand from those ideals, and how we’ve let ourselves be led into civic impotence by the flow of money and retention of elected officials who have only their pocketbooks and status in mind as they consistently fail to enact any legislation which might actually benefit a larger swath of people than the super-rich. I understand that one might feel beholden to the money which got him elected, and which he’ll need if he wants to get elected again, but the disparity is glaring, and the only reason that no one can do anything about it is that we are constantly pitted against one another, squeezed forcefully into arbitrary boxes and told that anyone who disagrees hates America, and that it’s up to us to save it, while also being reminded of just how little our voice matters, in the grand scheme of things, so why even bother?

George Washington was unabashedly against the division of our representatives into political parties, saying of the political party:

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

He saw what the parties of the day (Federalist and Whig) were beginning to represent, and he tried to speak out against it, much as Eisenhower tried to warn America about the looming threat of the military industrial complex. And, much as it was with Eisenhower, the warning was generally ignored. Both the Whig and Federalist parties managed to implode, giving rise to the Republican and Democratic parties with which we are currently burdened today. Never mind that the stances of the parties at their inception more resemble that of their opposition, these two juggernauts have been on the national stage for so long, it seems unlikely we will ever rid ourselves of them. And while it continues to require obscene quantities of cash to even entertain the notion of running for office, national or otherwise, I don’t believe that we will ever be free of them. They are large, unwieldy beasts, the both of them, able to direct gushing rivers of capital toward the candidates of their choosing. There are very few examples of independents (outside of very local markets) who have ever hoped to compete against these two storied institutions. And so third-party candidates are most often relegated to the role of the “vote-splitter”, should they even make it to prominence on the ballot.

Here’s the thing: we are not the sum of the issues which our political party has decided for us. I know Democrats who like guns, and Republicans who don’t hate gays. I know Democrats who believe in a god, and Republicans who don’t much care for war. No one whom I’ve spoken to thinks that our representatives are doing even close to a decent job, and I can’t think of a single person who likes the fact that abortions exist. To be clear on that last point, abortions are never anyone’s first choice. They are invasive procedures that can (and have) scarred the mother, emotionally and physically. And yet, sometimes they may be necessary. It is up to the woman to decide. But no one, I believe, would prefer to use abortion as their preferred method of birth control. The point is that we do not always toe our party line, and often are forced to vote for people who are the lesser of two evils, sometimes just to prevent a political majority in one or more houses of Congress. It shouldn’t be this way.

My solution is to abolish political parties, get corporate (and yes, union) money out of elections, publicly fund candidates equally, so that we can vote our consciences instead of checking a line of boxes based upon whether they are preceded by an “R” or “D”. I also think that representatives in Congress should make no more than the minimum wage in their district, and have access to only the benefits which are available to the worst-off of their constituents. This, of course, will never happen. There’s too much money to be made in the purchase and ownership of congresspeople. But I don’t think that we will accomplish anything close to resembling an American Dream for everybody until we do something. 

Happy Birthday, America.

Exploring the Universe through Snark

Translate »