Work: It's a Study on Megalomania

Hello, blogosphere, I realize it's been a while, totally my fault. This new job of mine has sucked so much energy out of me it's embarrassing. I've been working on the same comic I need to post for more than a month and I'm still only half done with it. It's three boxes. Of bad doodles. And it's taken me a month to get that. You can only imagine the novel's state of neglect.

So, as an exercise, I'm going to write a story in free form right here, for you, its contents may entirely be false (but probably aren't). The story I'm about to tell should clear up my mental state and give a vivid image of what a lot of people deal with, but would rather not. Here goes.

I've been working for (redacted) Bros Furniture in the R(redacted)g department. When I was "interviewed" for this position, I actually offered more information about myself than was asked of me by, we'll call her "Theresa." She talked at me, about how much potential this job had, and how family oriented the store is, and how relaxed she was with the schedule.

As I started to work, it quickly became apparent that this was shaping up to be a terrible month earnings-wise. I had a housecall, where I take product to a customer's house and the aim is that they love it in their house so much, they buy it on the spot and you don't take anything back to the store with you. This lady didn't. We brought everything back. This happened on my day off. As a result of a scheduling conflict, I ended up having to trade a day off and with the housecall on my day off, I worked six days in a row. Not so bad, I can handle that. My next housecall a few weeks later was a bust and by the end of the month, I had learned that the schedule was more tedious than flexible and that the earnings potential was sorely lacking. Naturally, I am not so excited.

Theresa in the meantime is proving herself to be a gossip, two-faced, and frustratingly contradictory. After witnessing her treat a (admittedly) lousy employee like a retarded step-child, I began to have reservations. You can tell a lot about a person by how they treat their subordinates, and she was treating this dude like dirt. Absolutely no respect, calling him out and berating him in front of customers. I don't care how bad a guy is at his job, you don't cut him down in front of the clientele. Despite her bereavement, she wouldn't fire the guy. Go fig. Then there's the time the same dude forgot to take some paperwork with him while giving a customer product at the front door. Theresa was on a personal cell-phone call. Instead of doing the proper, normal human-being thing, of saying "hang on" to the call and asking me to take the forgotten paper to the front of the store, she continues her conversation and shakes the paper at me like I were a cat, motioning for me to take it to the front. This bitch be crazy.

After a particularly nasty chewing out of the dude he needed to be fired weeks ago, she apologized to me profusely. She also chewed out another guy for asking for a day off that he was scheduled, and apologized to me fore that outburst as well. I asked if she intended to apologize to them. I was getting the strong feeling that she wasn't wanting me to see her in a certain way, but that was the only way she seemed to be presenting. As in: bitch be crazy.

Then she turned the crazy onto me. A higher up who used to work at this location called and said she was coming to visit. My thoughts on the matter, oh, old employee wants to see old friends. Didn't think anything of it. She came on my day off. I come back to Theresa freaking out about how this other individual was sent to spy about how bad our numbers were. I said I didn't think she was here to spy, she was just visiting. Theresa flips when she learns I knew of the visit but didn't let her know. Why would I? What inclination would I have that such things need to be reported in earnest?

The original housecall customer came back, we had washed our hands of her, but she came back with a new attitude and we made a successful housecall with her this time around which boosted my sales. Now, despite this, that was just one customer, I'm hardly excited by ONE customer. Theresa wasn't happy with me that I wasn't more excited. What the fuck do you want from me? To do a fucking jig?

That visitor? She was coming back, this time on a day I was going to be in. Theresa confronts me, tells me I need to be positive and enthusiastic and "if they ask about your sales tell them 'oh I'm thrilled, things are great!'" Really? You're feeding me lines? You're wanting me to misrepresent my actual character and integrity? Fuck you, Theresa. You've now officially gotten on my bad side. So I told her, simply, matter-of-fact-ly, "no, I'm not blowing smoke up anyone's ass. I'll be polite, and myself, and if they don't like that, so what?"

Housecall lady wants another housecall but on my day off. This day off is followed by another day off. The first couple of days off I've had in more than three weeks. I have shit I need to do. Theresa wishes I could go, that I would sacrifice a little. "I've got things outside of work I need to do, I have two lawns that need to be mowed." She says "that's great, I need a haircut, and I need to get that done." Really? "I think my lawn is a little more important." She keeps on trying to guilt trip me. "Quit guilt-tripping me, (Theresa), I'm tired of it, I've already made my decision."

That set the tone for the rest of the day. Visitor shows up, Theresa won't stay out of her ass, I barely get a chance to speak with Visitor in person. But, I did get to speak with her at length later, divulging most of what has been said here already. So now, in the present, Theresa is in hot water and the screws are being put to her pretty hard apparently. I've been told by the higher-up Visitor to call her if anything else goes down. I've been told by the head honcho of the store-proper to let him know if Theresa tries to interrogate anyone about what had been said to get her in trouble.

One-up for the working man. We'll see what happens.

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