arly in April, I was about to start work.  I work at the stadium in San Diego, walking around selling crap to people.  Not a great job, but it's very part time (5 hours a game or so) and pays on commission, so it's quite profitable. I average $150 or so per event.  It's also good for the exercise, though the constant cement walking and up and down steps results in sore feet and other leg joints, and frequent blisters.

Here are several blogs about work, and a little misadventure I had there.  The conclusion is at the bottom, below the updates.

April 9, 2002

So, the first day of work, and I'm not totally sick of it yet, but I'd certainly be fine never doing it again.  Which may well be the same thing as "totally sick of it" if you want to get technical about it. 

Nothing all that idiotic occurred, so no danger of ranting on about it and providing material for my eventual termination. Yet.

I made $117 there, pre-taxes, got nickle-sized blisters on both heels from my old shoes, aching shin splints, and slightly sunburned.

April 10th, 2002

How's this for irony? I posted on the 8th about how I had to learn the lessons Dooce has to teach, and not post a bunch of funny-but-insulting stuff about my work, lest it eventually get back to the shaved chimps that run the stadium and company I work for, and I get sacked.  *oops*

So tonight I got screwed over by a stand manager and was forced to walk halfway around the stadium to get more of the poison I was peddling, and on the way there I was fuming and smashed my wire vending basket thing into the wall and swore in sailoresque fashion, mostly under my breath.  My smash broke the flimsy little plastic price thing on the wire basket, but those things have a life expectancy like a box of Krispy Kremes in a police break room; they break all the time, and cost about eight cents to replace.  It was somewhat satisfying at any rate.  Funny how cursing and hitting things is so effective at soothing foul humor.

I got to the other stand and talked to a level supervisor and she of course assured me the manager was an idiot and couldn't do what he'd done, and she'd take care of it.  So I sold another load of overpriced donuts, and then coming back for more (to my stand, not the other idiot-staffed one) I see another supervisor who says I must report to the main office immediately.  No explanation given.

Didn't occur to me that it could be anything of importance, maybe some quick conference on the manager restocking dispute.  So I get down there and they won't say shit about what I'm doing there, but I see the broken donut price sign on the desk, which is not expected, and is almost certainly a bad sign.

Anyway, 15 minutes later the other supervisor eventually arrives, as does the Union Rep, and I'm told that 2 fans saw me smack the wall, as did some usher, and they swore out a complaint, or something.  I can't quite imagine anyone so bored that they would bother to do that.  I mean if you were driving along and saw some worker who was clearly pissed about something give his bulldozer a smack, would you call his bosses to complain?  I should hope not.  And I'd hope that if you did they'd humor you and then once you hung up they'd laugh about what idiots people were.

Sadly that didn't happen at my job, and I'm now suspended while they "investigate" the situation.  What that means I don't know, I mean I admitted freely doing what they said I did, so what's to investigate? I was pissed, I hit the wall, I broke the little price tag in two (it can be taped and used again with about ten seconds of labor), and...

This is more or less a perfect example of why all workers so hate management.  They cave over any little thing.  You see some new TV show with something semi-offensive, and some housewife in Kansas starts writing letters and network executives break into a panic.  How can they not know how stupid people are, and how easily upset?  All employees in almost every job spend most of their free time joking with each other about how stupid management is, and how stupid the customers are.  It's like there is some sort of partial lobotomy workers undergo when they become management, and they forget all of their real life experience and common sense.

That's not entirely what it's like where I work; the management is largely clueless of how things need to be done, but most of the employees are even dumber, so I can see why management fears to leave them/us any real latitude in operations.  When you are trying to get 17 y/o part time idiots to do a job, you have to pretty well spell it out to them.

But I can't see why they would actually bother with idiot complaints.  I mean if an employee gets in a fight, or rips people off, or smokes pot on the job, that's something to worry about. If someone sees an angry employee smack a wall and keep on walking, that's the type where you nod and smile and act concerned, and then once they're gone you throw the paper you were writing on in the trash and joke with your co-workers about how stupid some people are.  Sure you tell the employee to be cool and not do that again, and you see why they were pissed in the first place, but why waste time doing any actual investigation?  It's not like the customer will ever know one way or the other.

Anyway, like the example of the bored Kansas housewife with her letter writing campaign making network execs tremble, this sort of thing shows a lack of common sense/proportion on the part of management. 

But given that it's me being fucked by things, I would see it that way...

So I make $40 instead of $120 since I had to leave early, after wasting 45 minutes in the office for something they could have told me in 2, and I'll miss tomorrow at least, though the Union rep thought it likely they'd quit dicking around and I'd be back working by the more-profitable weekend.

I get home after that and take off my new shoes, and the 3 or 4 layers of medical tape I had over band aids are literally dripping blood, and there are big wet spots on my black socks.  When you can see blood on black cotton, that's a bad sign.  Both heels, from the huge blisters I got yesterday.  Really worth the $20 a foot and 6 hours time spent having such fun, huh?

I'm not quite good enough at feeling persecuted to work myself into a fury about things.  It's not as if I don't hate the job and really want to not work there, so a day off that I probably wouldn't have worked anyway, what with my feet/legs/knee/ass/back aching so much isn't a big deal.  And I did do more or less exactly what I was said to do, and even though I was in the right about what I was so mad over, that's no excuse.  And I know that you have to keep it in control in front of the marks, and I didn't, and I know the company has to pretend they give a shit about what people whine about.  I find it mostly depressing just due to other things I'm already miserable about, and of course rather ironic, given the Dooce prophecy I've been seeing like an anvil descending towards my Wile E. Coyote persona.  So that's that.  Someone send me $20,000 so I can live on that the rest of the year and never return to the stadium.  Please?

April 12, 2002

So I'm not working tonight, and they wouldn't tell me shit on the phone.  I'm about to blow a Dooce here, blasting idiotic management, stupid busybody customers, myself for not calling the Union in immediately Wednesday morning, and anything else I can think to curse at.

Called the stadium and talked to the vending supervisor, as they call him, and he had nothing to say.  No I'm not working tonight, no he can't give me any details.  He said I'd get notification in the mail, but nothing arrived yet.  I live 10 miles from the stadium, if they mailed it Wednesday it should be here by now.

This is the sort of thing that makes people hate management.  Their weasely, gutless response to things.  Rather than just telling me I'm suspended for X days, or I need to apologize to the customer, etc, they hide in bureaucracy and stupid "by the book" procedures. It would be so nice if the world were run by intelligent, flexible, common sense-enriched individuals.  They could look at things objectively, make an evaluation, and go from there. Rather than depending on trying to stuff random life events into pre-written guidelines and rules that allow for no real flexibility or adaptability.

I'm mainly disappointed in them being so gutless about a complaint.  Sure you have to humor the customers, they've been told they are "always right" for years, and some of them (the ones w/o real jobs of their own) might even believe it.  But no employee is so stupid as to really believe that.  You tell the idiotically-irate customer what he wants to hear, promise that you'll take care of whatever has upset his little world, and then once they've waddled off, feeling self-satisfied, you go back to doing whatever you were going to do in the first place, knowing that their reaction was a rare anomaly and nothing to get upset about.

So anyway, I'll see if I can get a couple of lingering site projects finished tonight, what with this sudden free time to work on them. =(

April 16, 2002

I am fired, BTW.  Not quite officially, but the company is "moving to terminate" me, or so I've been told.  Not by them, of course.  I've only worked there for 13 years, after all.  Hardly enough to expect oh, say a phone call?  Perhaps after 15 years they give you a phone call to let you know they're firing you.

So how do I know this?  Well, since I called the Union and then went down to file a grievance in person.  And the Union rep called the stadium and managed to extract the info.  Probably risked several fingers in the process; like taking a granola bar back from a weasel.

Yes, it's a weak metaphor, but I had to work in "weasel" in some way.

I haven't the heart to go over the whole thing again, and nothing has changed from what I first posted about it last Tuesday.  So please to be reading that first, if you didn't already.

So as I said, there's nothing new.  I got pissed at another employee, entirely with cause, since he was going against the rules and policy, just to fuck me.  So rather than belaboring the argument there, perhaps escalating it to a screaming match, I just went back to my stand, where I could get more crap to sell, and knew I'd be able to tell my stand manager about it, and he'd contact a supervisor, who would take care of it.  Which I did, and he did.

The problem was that on the way back I was fuming, and smacked my wire mesh carry thing into a wall, breaking the flimsy little price sign off of it.  And some customer saw that and complained.  And management obviously had some desire to be rid of me, to bother with such a minor issue.

I have hated the job for several years, and really wanted to quit like two years ago.  It ruins my feet/ankles/knees/hips, I'm always sore and hardly able to walk after working several days in a row.  And as I've detailed in the past (even before they were trying to fire me) it's a total waste of time.  As I see it, the benefits of a job are:

• Money.
• Interesting.
• Meet new people.
• Learn useful skills.
• Opportunity for advancement.

In this case, I get a partial on #1, and nothing on the rest. I have had opportunity for advancement, but as I generally work 5 hours and make $150, and managers work 9 hours and make $10 an hour, and their work is far less enjoyable, I think you can see why I didn't want advancement.  Though you do get the perk of trying to fire people you don't like for no good reason.

So as things stand now I'm working with the union to try and get reinstated. I want to at least make them work to fire me.  If I'd actually done something wrong enough to be fired, I wouldn't really care.  I've had ample opportunity to steal several thousand dollars cash any number of times, and I would not have been caught.  They might have suspected after the third or fourth time, but they couldn't have proven a goddamn thing.  That would be worth firing me for. Or if I got really pissed at some idiot manager refusing to put the bottled water into the walk in so it would be, you know, cold, and punched his trout face in.  That would be worth firing me over, and worth getting fired for.  Hitting a wall in a moment of temper is just not how I'm willing to go out.

On the other hand, it's sort of a blessing in bad makeup.

I was prepared to work most every game there this year, hating it as always, earning just enough $$ to survive on, while continuing to live with the disposable income of a welfare recipient.  I have other job opportunities; I could work for some web design company, my dad works part time with a textbook company that always needs more people to do editing and design and writing and other such things, and pays well for it.  I could hustle up more freelance web design work; I did a lot of that a couple of years ago.

Any of those would be far better for me than the stadium work, especially given the apparent vendetta against me by management.  I'm biting my tongue (fingers) about management for now, given that I'm trying to get the job back, and at some point they might trip over this webpage and use my own noose to hang me.  I don't have any real animosity towards anyone in management there or other employees.  There is a general level of incompetence that's almost shocking, but I think that's the case in most every blue collar job.   And perhaps white collar, if Dilbert is to be believed.  However I can't comment on those specifically, but I certainly could about the company I work for.  And generally-speaking, the lower level employees are the dumbest, but it's not like management doesn't regularly do their part to monkey wrench things, mostly with general cluelessness.

I'm sure discussing that (this) sort of thing would be "actions to the detriment of the company" as they said about me hitting that poor defenseless wall.

I don't have any real anger at anyone in management, but I could certainly vivisect a couple of them.  Both on personal habits as well as job performance.  But look, it's a relatively thankless, miserable job, dealing with tons of mostly high school kids who don't want to be doing what they are doing.  Management has to try to get them to come to work largely on weekends, and at irregular hours and schedules, and get them to work when there are ready distractions all around.  It also doesn't pay well (hardly any of the management work full time, just on game days, or make enough from it to live on) so what sort of quality of employee is going to end up in that job?  Obviously the bright, motivational, productive type will have a real job, full time for a real company.  Not part time calling a bunch of little punk kids every other day to tell them what time to get to work tomorrow.

So in fairness, you can't really expect great bosses at a small time job like that.  Not that that makes them any less great.  Especially ones that have legendarily-stupid laughs and no visible chin or waist.

I thought, hours ago, about a funny thing to discuss about this whole lost job thing, so I'll throw it in now, assuming anyone is still reading after all this whining.

A job compared to a girlfriend.

Do you need either, or both?  I'd say you need the job, and the GF (or wife, or BF, or whatever) is optional.

The fringe benefits of a job are mandatory (pay), while the fringe benefits of a GF are optional, and can be replaced. So to speak.

A shitty job can be made tolerable by having a nice GF to spend time with when you aren't at the job.  The opposite is almost never true.

A GF is more likely to help alleviate the crushing, bitter loneliness that is life.  A job is more likely to add to the crushing part.

Getting a GF requires you to go out in public and talk to strangers, or get a recommendation from a friend.  A job is pretty much identical on that front.

A GF forces you go leave the house and do expensive things you don't really want to do.  A job forces you to leave the house and do unpleasant things to afford the other unpleasant things.

So I conclude that a job is a necessary evil, while a GF is just evil.

April 22, 2002

I got a call from the guy who is working to fire me at work on Friday, but didn't get the message until late that night, and they don't work weekends.  I'll call him today and see what's up.  He sounded cheerful on the answering machine, so was probably calling to tell me I'd been fired.

I made over $100, got about $15 in tips, got out before traffic, and my feet and legs hardly hurt at all afterwards, so it was a good night, by my rating system.

Conclusion

Dread = motivation to get a better job.

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.