One day over the last summer, when I didn’t know Jane as much as I did now, she asked the other cashier (I’ll call her Amanda) if she was pregnant. “Are you pregnant?, you look pregnant” were the words she used to be exact. Amanda is super skinny. Super skinny as in, other than Jane herself, she is the skinniest person I work with. Not that everyone else is fat, in fact they really aren’t because we hardly eat the “food” we dish out (we know better). Amanda is just really skinny. Pretty much Jane must look at her as competition in the skinniest bitch in the whole place contest that she must have created in her psychotic mind, a contest that she cannot lose or the world will blow up. The thing I do not understand about Jane, is she eats EVERYTHING. At work she eats about 5 times in a whole 10 hour work day. And then we all know she eats dinner at home with her husband and kid(s?) (not sure if she has more than one kid, but she definitely has a young son). How she managed to find a husband I am un-aware but I am yet to meet the guy and quite frankly, I am afraid to. Jane used to even send out workers to go get food for her on there breaks which really isn’t a big deal since most of the managers have done it at least once, but she would do it to get things she needed to make her dinner that night for her family, not because the restaurant ran out of lemons or something stupid like that. Not only did she watch the girl (Amanda) that she asked to go pick up her food leave the parking lot and then stalk her car until it was entirely out of possible sight, but she made her give her the receipt (which I guess alone is understandable) AND would time her to the absolute last second that she was gone and if it was longer than the time left in her break (of course it always was), she would make her stay at least that much later when it was time for her to go home later that night. I’m sure there are countless laws that Jane has broken with us over the past months but we simply just can’t “rat her out” for any of them. As much as we hate her, if she were gone it would completely ruin the whole order of things and no one would know how to react. It would be like re-opening the place and starting over because every action we make while working is influenced by the way she is and what she will do if we do something a way that is not what she believes to be correct.
Break
The breaks where I work are like most fast food places. They are a half hour long. A half hour seems like a lot but when you take into account that it can take up to 10 minutes to get your food because you come after all of the customers that actually pay for this crap, you really only have enough time to scarf down your food and then maybe make a phone call, have a ciggarette if you are one of the smokers at this place, or in my case…sit here and write this blog post. If you are under the impression that my job gives me free food or even a discount, you are wrong. If you work a certain amount of hours you get a break where you get one sandwhich and one fry (smallest size of course). When you aren’t working that day or even if you are but not long enough for free food, you must pay for it all at full price. On days like today when the owner desides he is going to randomly stop by to yell at the nice manager working today for things that are out of her control, the food selection is even more limited. This post really isn’t finished but considering I am on break right now, clearly I do not have time to finish it. You’ll be sure to see a follow up of this post after 5PM.
Why I should be sleeping…
It is almost 2 in the morning. Meaning I need to wake up in 8 hours (not so bad) to get ready for work tomorrow. Tomorrow as in…my day off. My day off as in, someone must have fucked up because I haven’t had a day over the weekend off since about 6 months ago when I had no choice but to take off work because I was going to Virginia-oh and Christmas. But of course when I managed to actually have 5 days off, Jane wasn’t the one in charge of the schedule. My actual boss as in the one who gave me my job was in charge of it at the time. The way the schedule worked was she (my boss, lets call her Linda) would make the schedule and all the other managers could make adjustments to it. Every time a manager changed something on it they had to initial there signature. About 2 months ago it got to a point where the ENTIRE schedule was covered in Jane’s initials. So Linda basically gave up and said fuck it, if you’re gonna make me do all this work just to change it all, you do it from now on. So now, Jane is in charge of the schedule. Now if you have a better memory than me you should remember me complaining about working tomorrow even though I just said it was supposed to be my day off. That is what happens when someone calls in “sick” (ahead of time, sure makes a lot of sense) and it is up to Jane to pick that person’s replacement. Now I work 11-5. 11-5 is not bad at all. In fact it is about half of what I usually work on Sundays, so if Jane is working tomorrow I probably wont actually make it out of that place until about 8. Granted, I get paid for all of the time I work and I do need cash, but I am TIRED. My uniform is at a point where I wash it in the washer machine alone with NO other clothes in the load, and use double the detergent and then put it in the dryer by it self and somehow it still manages to come out of the dryer smelling like french fry and burger grease. That smell is now en-lodged into my brain to the point where I will probably be able to recognize it when I am 60. And since tomorrow was supposed to be my day off, I didn’t wash my uniform yet. Guess who gets to wake up to the stench of work at 10 in the morning tomorrow.
A little about my manager
In case someone actually does manage to stumble across this blog and someone I work with does happen to see this, I am not going to use my manager’s actual name. Let’s just call her Jane. Not that I have anything against the name Jane in fact I think it is a lovely name. “Jane” is a short, skinny, 30+ year old woman. She ironically walks like she has a stick up her ass. I’m not calling her cocky (she is) , I am being completely literal. I am yet to see her heels touch the ground while she walks. For months I though that she was playing the bad cop in the whole good cop-bad cop thing managers or policemen like to use (from what I’ve seen on TV). But over time I have learned that she is truly like that because she hates us all with a raging passion. Her attitude towards us all at work has nothing to do with her trying to keep a nice distance between a boss and her employees, it is just simply her personality. She has even been told by the “big bosses” to lighten up with the way she treats everyone. She acts like she is as holy as the virgin Mary talking to someone who is worth about as much as your local pedophile that just moved in on the block no matter who she is talking to. And it is NOT just with us at work! She gets into brutal fights (verbal, not physical) with customers that tell her she is wrong. Regardless of the fact that she would SCREAM at me if I was talking to a customer as if I was anything but a servant for them let alone an actual human being when they claim I did something wrong even when she knows I did not. Jane is not my actual boss so it isn’t like she can fire me or anything. However she is capable of making my life even more of a living hell than she does now. She controls the schedule, who works when, who gets off when multiple people need off the same day, who leaves early, who stays late, and who (me) has to clean or refill things every time she sees that they are not 100% filled or clean. So pretty much, everyone who works at this place has to kiss ass like there is no tomorrow. I mean of course most people talk shit about her but she knows of it most of the time. Maybe she just needs to be the hard ass she is towards us because she thinks she will lose control over us all if she gives us any ounce of sympathy. For months we all hated this woman, but we grew to let her spiteful acts grow to amuse us over time rather then get our panties in a bunch. There is no getting revenge on her, ever. And if you try you WILL end up fired.
A little about my job.
Looking at the title and description of this blog you would probably assume that I have went to college, gotten a nice little career for myself and ended up with a mean manager that likes to get under my skin every now and then. Guess again. I work in a fast food restaurant, which in my opinion has got to be one of the worst possible jobs on the planet. Ignoring that fact that you need to work 10 times harder than someone who sits at a desk all day and actually move around, clean up after, and practically slave over a counter for mostly rude customers flipping out over french fries, you get paid minimum wage. Now I have never been a waitress so I am not calling my job harder than a waitresses, however, unless you are a waitress who gets paid loads in tips (most of the time), if you have an on the books job, you can not have a salary any lower than mine. You are at the absolute bottom of the food chain. You take processed “food”, make it resemble a hamburger, and then sell it to hundreds of people a day. Unless you have worked in this “business” before there is no way that you would be able to see how extreme people can get when you charge them 10 cents for extra tomato on there sandwich. Because 1100 calories isn’t enough, you need to add an extra wad of cheese or mayo to there meal so that they don’t throw a bitch fit.
These are just some of the oh so wonderful conditions at a fast food restaurant. They are all terrible and there is close to nothing good about having such a job, however the absolute worst part of it all, is the manager.
Things my boss did to piss me off today. 