Life
is full of twists and turns and how we handle them is part of growing into
civilized human beings. I was having a chat
with my brother last night and my nefarious neighbour came into the
conversation. I commented that he was
one person I truly disliked in this world and Erik reminded me that we
shouldn’t carry around burdens such as dislikes since it only weights us down. True enough but I don’t carry around active
dislike, it only creeps in when the annoying jerk intrudes into my life as he
currently is doing.
But enough about me. I notice that there are a lot of people in
the world who worry and nitpick to such an extent that it is ruining their
happiness. Over the years I have worked
in large companies and extremely small ones but as an observer of people it
seems inevitable that one person will have a personality that will eventually
grate on me. I’ve learned that none of
them are in my control so while they can be annoying the best thing is to
ignore and avoid them so that they don’t upset your life.
Here’s an example of what I mean by
grating on me. I worked at a car
dealership which was owned by an American couple. First of all the situation was kind of weird
in that there was only one desk and one chair so Debbie and I would have to
take turns sitting down at the desk.
Naturally I felt awkward sitting down when the boss’s wife was standing
so guess who sat in the chair most of the time.
Now that didn’t irritate me but it wasn’t long before I began to notice
how inconsistent she was. She would tell
me as one rancher after another came in that she had a crush on him, and wasn’t
he oh so cute and so on. But when he
came in 6 weeks later she wouldn’t remember his name. Within three months I knew pretty much all of
our regulars’ names and every morning I would go to the schedule to scan all
the names so that I would remember them when they came in. How hard is that to figure out? Apparently that isn’t something a Texan can
figure out even after 5 years of working there.
She could never balance the cash at the end of the day without it being
a long and frustrating process and she couldn’t understand that I could have it
done in less than 15 minutes so she was always implying that I wasn’t doing it
right. Now that is something that can
grate on a person’s nerves, what with her being the boss’s wife and all. I would just smile and shrug my
shoulders. Then after a while she would
start to be disruptive during cashout time; while I was supposed to be cashing
out she was supposed to take care of the final customers of the day but she
would suddenly disappear into the back of the shop and I would have to stop
what I was doing to take care of business.
Somehow I would manage to get back to the cashout and get it done. But about a year and a half later, one day
and for whatever reason that I still don’t know, I supposedly cashed out but
had not balanced. I wasn’t aware of the
error. The following day I couldn’t find
the accounts to do the back end entries and when I asked Debbie where they were
she said she didn’t know but I detected a guilty look in her eyes, and a gleam
of satisfaction. Hmm. I waited for her to disappear and then I
whipped into Art’s office and it only took me a second to realize that I had
not finished up. I was shocked and didn’t
understand how it had happened. Of
course, Debbie had disappeared and there had been a flurry of activity but for
the past year it hadn’t bothered me so I was considerably surprised that I had
made such a mistake. However I realized
immediately that I was in a no-win situation and so I tackled the problem,
balanced, concluded the back end and put everything back in Art’s office before
he got in. I waited. Sure enough Art called me into his office and
asked me how it was possible for me to balance.
I looked him dead in the eye and said “I
don’t know.”
He was flummoxed. He had expected excuses and
self-justification and he got nothing but a passive acknowledgement. He persevered by reminding me that we “had
procedures”. I nodded agreement and kept
my mouth shut. He continued on about the
procedures. I nodded again. He repeated a third time about the procedures
and said I was to do it exactly as it was printed out. And in my mind I thought “tell that to your
fucking wife, asshole”. I just continued
to look him in the eye and nod. He gave
up but I am sure he realized that he had lost the battle.
I returned to the desk and I could see
Debbie sitting there and gloating. I
just kept on the placid face and took the next customer and she flew back into
Art’s office to find out what had happened.
She came back and gave me an odd look.
I just looked like a cow chewing cud.
I needed the job and wasn’t going to give in to anger. That was the day I learned to control my
temper even though I would have dearly loved to retaliate. After a year and a half of balancing every
day, how should a boss handle an error?
Pulling a loyal employee on the carpet in such a sneaky, underhanded way
is disgusting. I lost all respect for
both of them that day, even though I hardly had any for Debbie at that
point. Loathsome.
As you can see I still get ticked off when
I think about it. But the point of this
long story is that I don’t think about it.
This was some 16 or 17 years ago, whatever under the bridge. I only hauled it out to make a story for
today.
Enough said.
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