EPTMe and a *ahem* female friend decided to spend the weekend together at her place. I've been seriously jonesing for some Team Liquid and Starcraft. So, hilariously, I brought my laptop to play Starcraft while not otherwise engaged. She did not find this as funny as I did. But on the other hand, Starcraft! Swings and roundabouts.
And, since I've been away for a while; blog.
It's possible a few people would remember this blog. It detailed the culmination of months of hard graft, the phoenix like rising from the ashes of unemployment, depression, isolation and homelessness. I had been a shambling wreckage of a human being, truly, and for the first time in two years I felt so fucking alive. I was on fire with it.
I had worked like a machine to achieve a goal and I had achieved it.
Or so I thought.
My boss and I do not and have never seen eye to eye. The main problem I think is that I find it difficult to force myself to do work that I do not see the purpose in. I have to know why I'm doing it. What I see as simply querying to better my understanding, she sees as an attitude problem and a constant affront to her authority.
It had never been her decision to promote me. The Ops Consultant, the guy who was responsible every Mcdonalds' in a good 200 square miles, had taken a shine to me. But when he was moved I quickly found myself without supporters and very much at the mercy of a woman who apparently had nothing but contempt for me and also had the power to kick my hands off of the ladder I was climbing without so much as a second thought.
An oppurtunity that she took.
In the end it came down to a run of 6 quarter pounders. Busy hour. Front counter staff becoming impatient. No ketchup in the dispenser. Fuck. Run to the bulk ketchup dispenser on the wall. It's empty. Have a brief flashback to that morning, telling some kid to stock it up before he went home. Curse the little bastards name. Run back. Well it's still got ketchup in it. People are waiting for this crap.
Of course she chooses that moment to come into the kitchen and check the food quality. Not quite enough ketchup. Her exact words, they ring around my head. Not quite enough ketchup. Months of hard work. 6 burgers.
Later I'm in her office and she's telling me that due to my recent performance she has decided to remove me from the manager's course. I'd expected this and was prepared for it. She says that if I prove myself in the next two weeks, she will reconsider.
The week after there is a visit from one of the Vice Presidents of Mcdonalds' in the UK. I started at 4pm the day before the visit, at 7am I am still there detail cleaning every god damn thing in the store. I have work again at four. I say to my boss, hey I'm leaving now. To my very great surprise, she says no. No you can't leave. There is still a lot to do.
I considered just leaving anyway, she can't exactly stop me, my shift was meant to finish eight hours ago. But really, she has me by the short and curlies. If I leave now on the day of the biggest visit the store has ever had she can use it as an excuse to question my commitment and deny me what I want.
Another couple of hours go by.
Can I go home please.
No.
Another hour.
Boss I have work again in six hours I need to go home.
Finish what you're doing then.
What I was doing took me all the way to 3:30pm. I had been in that fucking place for 23 and a half hours and in half an hour my next shift started. I didn't have to stay.
In the end I did a 31 hour shift. Technically I wasn't forced to stay. I could have left at any time. To my mind though it was sort of implied blackmail. By the time I got out I was literally swaying. In a kitchen full of massive slabs of 200 degree metal, it's a dangerous thing to do. Boss, I said. I am going HOME. She looked me up and down and said
"Yeah go."
Not 'thank you for staying for so long'. "Yeah go."
I seem to remember literally crying with anger. And maybe shock that someone could be such an utter fucking cunt.
The Vice President never showed up anyway. She rescheduled for the next week, when I did another 24 hour shift. Once again no thanks. Once again no visit. Five hours later I was back for my next shift. I was 5 minutes late and got a warning for it. I developed some kind of fever and was bed ridden for a week.
I considered going to some authority about the whole thing but thought, fuck it, if I get this promotion then at least I got something out of it.
But the promotion never came. I watched as my peers were selected one by one. Fair enough, they deserved it too. I wasn't bitter, I just worked on improving every aspect of the job I did. Procedures to the fucking letter. Food quality so good that to get it to the so called Golden Standard I had to lower my fucking standards. I found out what was important to every manager and made sure it was done on their shifts before they asked. Before I had just worked hard, now I was working like fucking clockwork, meticulous and measured. Working smart instead of hard.
But then as I thought, surely she has to promote me now, it kept not happening. Every manager was calling for it to happen, but less and less likely candidates kept getting put up for the job. A kid on his final warning for attitude problems. A timid little girl who still has to get me to ask people to do jobs because she can't do it herself. A girl who doesn't know how to work the tills and has borderline panic attacks when you try to teach her. Most recently, a fucking racist homophobic drug addict. These are people I trained myself. They look to me for answers and decisions and yet they are being given white shirts before me.
And today, just as I think it can't get any more ridiculous, I find out that two new people have been offered the management course. Just to be clear, if you ask anyone in that store except the boss, there is NO other choice but me. I am the best. It's just fucking Mcdonalds' but I am the best. I have been for a year or more.
And the choices for the management course?
A fucking CLEANING LADY and a Nepalese woman who can just about speak English only knows how to make chicken products.
My immediate reaction was, of course, rage. There's still a lot of that. But frankly it's just kind of funny. It's literally unbelievable. I could not believe it. Am I in some kind of televised farce here? What the fuck is this? A fucking cleaning lady? It's a joke. It's got to be a joke.
It's ok though. I'm good. I'm cool. There's a manager there who is basically running the store now. He's technically at a lower level than the boss lady but he has high up connections that basically mean he can enforce any decision he likes. And he has promised me promotion before the end of this year if I help him run the store his way. If not I'm gone. Maybe I should be gone anyway, but once I'm a manager I am sort of no longer under the thumb of the boss lady; the power to promote me then lies outside of her hands. Once you're a manager it's all about hitting targets and I can do that. I could have her job in 5 years if I stick around that long (unlikely).
It's the principle of the thing now. I deserve the promotion. I am going to get it. I am going to prove that I deserved it all along. I am the best employee and given time I will be the best manager.
That's all it is to me. It's not a burger shop, it's being the best.
Kudos to anyone who actually read this because I went on for way longer than I intended to and anger has no doubt rendered much of it unreadable.
I kid, I kid.
