On Wednesdays, we wear pink…
I walked off the job on Monday and I am now at home applying for other jobs and listening to Laura Nyro records. It is not as tragic as it sounds, but maybe it is. I have $180 to my name and two bills totaling $240 due by February 14. Happy Valentine’s Day! I am taking our tax returns in tomorrow to get them back ASAP, but that will cost $80 and I can only hope we get the boon payback we did in 2010 —that was some good money, let me tell you.
Do you think I’m crazy? A lunatic? Jumping without a net? I think my husband is deeply distressed, and wouldn’t you be? I really can’t blame him. But here’s the thing: I had to do it.
I am 46 years old and if not a hairless child of God, at least a child of God. I am a good person, a smart person, and though nobody died and made me Angelina Jolie, I think I present myself very well. I work hard and don’t slack off or give trouble.
I’ve been through a lot in my 46 years. I’ve been suffering with a raging case of IBS since last year, and if that’s TMI, oh well. At least the heart attack is over, and my husband’s rare life-threatening blood disease. I don’t ask for much. I shop at thrift stores. I go to the library. If you bought me a funnel cake I’d look at you like I just got a Cartier watch.
And I’ve been through some shit jobs. I know it, you know it. I clawed and scratched my way up the chain at the newspaper, with male colleagues trying to stymy me at every turn. I loved the yarn biz, and though that ended badly it did for others, too. I was not the exception, or the rule. When you work for a small biz owner, the fish is rotten from the head down. I get it.
Did Barnes and Noble suck? You bet it did. Customers are the worst. BUT. The girls I worked with gave me faith in the next generation, and kept me on my toes. I miss them all so much, I wonder if they know how much they meant to me? And management had its good ones and bad ones, but I always felt things were handled….professionally. I wasn’t going to be kicked out the door without a lot of due process. And I never was.
The annuity firm job really only bothered me because of the crazy co-worker who left. Everything else I could tolerate. My boss was one of THE BEST bosses I have ever had. As my father lay dying in a Hospice bed, she grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to take off as much time as I needed, paid. Because I could never get that time back, and I needed to spend it with my family.
Who DOES that anymore? Who? What company? I’d like to know.
And even though I poke at Camp Scabies, I want you to know I spent a week training someone else and told them NOT TO PAY ME. Because I felt bad about leaving, and I wanted to do the right thing.
So believe me when I say, that if I walked out of a business on the fifth floor of an old office building on Monday at 4:40 p.m., telling the receptionist that I’d be right back, then got in my car and drove away with $180 in the bank, there was a damned good reason. And ask me, just ask, if anyone called me to see where I went, or why I didn’t come back.
You won’t ask because you know the answer. No one did. No one will. Nor do I want them to. We’ve all dealt with Mean Girls before, and that’s the truth. But this went way beyond that, even though they DID have a “Pajama Thursday” last week and conveniently forgot to tell me. Not that I really cared, because I don’t wear pajamas to work. Ever.
So I’m not going to write what happened, and go over it. I’ve told my husband. I’ve told my mother, and I’ve told a friend. I’m done. I don’t ever want to think or speak of that place again. I made another mistake. A huge one. But at least it’s over, and I won’t be having heart palpitations like I did every time the phone rang and it was the psychopathic supervisor on the phone for me.
Here’s a song I have been listening to for the last few days, because – well, because I do like The Kinks, and forgot what a fun little video this was. Sort of a rock and roll Atonement, if you will.
Cheers.
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