With my unemployment having run out, the good news is I now have a job, the first job that came along. The bad news is that it doesn't come close to paying all the bills. I'm no longer bleeding money, I'm merely losing it at a rapid rate.
I've worked in food service before. Hell, I thrived in it. Of course that was in college where I was highly motivated to do my best and excel at it because I was using the money I was making to pay for that college degree, the college degree that was supposed to keep me from ever having to work food service again.
If you've never worked food service consider yourself lucky, and I don't mean a few shifts at a fast food joint after school, I mean serious employment. There's just so much piss and shit and pettiness that comes with it.
Scheduling for one. A predictable schedule is a foreign thought. One day you'll close and not get out of work until 10:30pm and then have to be back at it to open at 6am the next day. Not even enough time for a full 8 hours of sleep. You don't even get to eat at normal times because you're busiest when everyone else is eating. Your lunch is at 2:30 and dinner at 4:30. Never having two days off in a row, are rarely are one of those days on a weekend, a three hour shift one day, eleven the next, and still struggling to get enough hours.
The part that drives me crazy is closing. Work hard, do your job quickly and efficiently and you get to go home earlier, and a smaller paycheck. Then there's the petty territorial pissings of people not pulling their weight, having the time and knowledge to help, but not doing so. Or helping when not needed, thus insulting the sandwich making skills of the person being helped. It's stupid, it's petty and in the grand scheme of even a six hour shift none of it means jack shit, but everyone does it, because making the same food in the same way day after day, shift after shift is mind numbing and spirit crushing. Complaining, whining, being a total pain in the ass for a few minutes helps pass the time and break up the monotony.
Of course I can't start work without going to the company's orientation ... Bread-ucation if you will. For christ's sake. I spend nine plus years doing marketing in the food industry. I used to make up stupid names like bread-ucation and I'd make and design the training manuals. I'd forgotten more about food safety and sanitation than the trainer has ever known. That's not an insult to the trainer either. The trainer give the typical the company is wonderful spiel you'd expect, adding on for good measure that they employees are like a family, and it's "always so sad when someone goes off and gets a real adult job." Thanks for the reminder of where exactly I've fallen too. After a few hours of bread-ucational videos and paper work, we get to familiarize ourselves with the menu, in the form of free food, and make our very own name tags with markers, crayons and stickers. I set to work on creating my name tag, which apparently was good enough to solicit a compliment from the trainer. Seven and a half years earning a degree in Visual Communications, and nine years of graphic design and marketing have culminated in this moment. I want to take my fingers stained with green Crayola magic marker and gouge my eyes out.
The job, not bad at all. It's an honest days work. It was the last millennium when I last worked and wasn't in charge of someone. So not being "the boss" was an adjustment, but I soon settled into my role busing tables, delivering food and other such menial tasks including taking orders from kids not yet old enough to drink legally. According to a pedometer app on my iPod I'm walking about fifteen miles during a six hour shift. I could extrapolate from that what I walk in an eleven hour shift, but I was happier not knowing that. After nineteen months of forced lethargy, it's killing my feet. Each shift my feet callous a bit more and the pain subsides a bit, but usually I have to come home and wait at least an hour for the swelling and pain to subside enough that I can fall asleep.
Of course the inevitable happened, I just wasn't prepared for it on the second day. Someone from my old life came into eat. I don't think she recognized me as I was out of context for her, but it reminded me how far I'd fallen. Two years ago I had a job, with and office and a desk. I had a multi-million dollar advertising budget I was responsible for. Maybe even a little power and status. I had people who answered to me. I had a wife and kids. Now that's all gone. Job's been gone for nearly two years. The wife left with the kids a year ago as of Monday. It's all gone. I asked for a smoke break. Instead I went to the restroom a weeped for everything I lost.
I told myself I wasn't even going to acknowledge that anniversary. It's not an anniversary, it's a milestone at best, and certainly not one that should be celebrated. I do not miss my wife, I do miss the mother of my children, if that makes sense. I feel I failed my kids for not finding a way to make it work. I sought advice from a friend who told me "Do whatever you want to, just do right by your kids." Advice I think I'd given her a half dozen times before, yet, when I heard it given to me all I could think was "it's too late for that, I've already let them down" even though I'm not the one who gave up, even though I'm not the one moved out and moved on. I was willing to try despite all the shit, insults, put downs and abuse just to remain a family for the kids. Just to see my kids. Hell ... for my kids, I still would do it, if I thought there was a sliver of a chance it might happen.
I used to see them twice a week and every other weekend. Having a work schedule has totally thrown that off. Closing seven out of eight nights in a row, I haven't even been able to squeeze in my daily good night phone call in a week. I miss unemployment when at least then I could see my kids practically whenever I wanted. I had my kids two weekends ago for a overnight. At least I think it was the weekend, it's hard to tell anymore. I pick them from the ex's apartment after work, and as I'm leaving her new boyfriend shows up. That was even more fun than it sounds. I'm not sure if it was a planned accident or not, but regardless, I left as quickly as possible without saying a word.
The next morning I'm bringing the kids back and as we get to town my daughter chimes in from the back seat "Daddy! Daddy! I want mommy to go back to living with you." Six months ago I would have been able to tell her that's what I wanted too, but now ... now, I just don't know what to say to that.
I get to the ex's apartment and with the kids in tow, I knock on the door. No answer, so I knock again. A few moments later the door opens and I can tell by the fact her long hair is still inside her shirt this isn't going to end well. I quickly move the car seats from my car to her van and hurry back inside to say my goodbyes to the kids. My daughter is bouncing on the couch "Daddy! Daddy! Guess who's upstairs sleeping!?!" That was a wonderful double whammy in the span of ten minutes.
Fine, she doesn't have any respect for me anymore. At this point I don't care, but have some fucking boundaries for the kids for Christsake. I wanted to tell her off, and tell her what I thought, but ... reality is the bigger deal I made of it the more likely she'd do worse just to spite me. There's nothing I could say that she'd think wasn't fueled by jealousy.
A few days later she's dropping off the kids at the house. We're making small talk and she throws out there ... "So, on Saturday that was WhatHisName" I can only imagine the look on my face, "Yeah, I kinda figured." Cheerfully she continued "I was going to introduce you two, but I figured you'd both already knew who each other was." "Yeah." "So ... what did you think?"
Really?!? My (still legally) wife is asking me for my ... approval on her boyfriend? Because my opinion matters? Because I have an opinion? Because somehow I learned something about his personality for the twenty seconds we were in the same room, avoiding eye contact at all costs? Really ... what kind of answer was she expecting? What do I think!?!
I think he looks exactly like me. I thought that from the first time I saw pictures of him on her secret FaceBook account, long before I knew they were dating. Well, I suppose I should clarify, he looks exactly like me, right before I lost my job ... slightly heavier and with a blonde pony tail. Yes, I'm totally aware that sounds like the jealous rantings of a ex. It's not though.
Yeah, I'm not a blonde anymore. I dyed my hair a month ago, red. As the ex was dropping off the kids, my daughter was enthralled by this, and asked me why I didn't make it pink, her favorite color. I told her it had, at one point, been pink and grabbed a stack of pictures from the other room of my hair in various colors and lengths to show her. I show her a pink hair one "Who's that?"" "Daddy!" She would squeal at each and every picture. I set the pictures down and my ex picks them up to show my son and play the same game. "Who's that?" My boys looks, grins as big as he can, points and in his cutest voice and says ... her boyfriends name.
She tried to blow it off as if it was nothing. "He's almost two, he gets confused" and then laughs. As if that explains it away. No, that's not an explanation, that's the whole problem. He's two, he gets confused. He should never be confused on who Daddy is. They're my kids and nothing can change that. Move away, date other people, remarry, whatever, there still should never, ever be any confusion on who Daddy is. Never... Never! They're my kids. Mine.
It was soul crushing ... no. It was worse than that. It's like every decision I've ever made I now need to questioned. Every thing I thought I valued, I need to reevaluate. Everything I thought was important, maybe isn't.
I've been telling myself for nearly two years everything happens for a reason. I don't know the reason for all this. I'm beyond broke. I'm beyond lonely. I'm emotionally beaten. I'm exhausted. I'm defeated ... no. No, I'm not. If I were defeated I could give up and quit, but I'm not even lucky enough to be that far down anymore. Now I'm just slowing running into the ground deeper and deeper, using my skull a bore for the drilling. I tell myself I work where I work because I'm going to meet someone there. Then just to remind me of where I stand in the social hyarchy there one of them says to me "You're like old enough to be my Dad ... well maybe an uncle. But you're like up there." As if I needed reminding that I'm a dozen or so years older than everyone who works there except the management.
What? What do I have left besides my never ending supply of food pantry Panera Bread?
This is my life now.
