The Barback's Bad Luck

Written January 10th.

I knew I had made a huge mistake after the first night of my new position.  I tried to talk to my manager but he said he was too busy for me and that I should see him the next day.  I did.  I told him I wanted my old job back.  He said he’d talk to his boss.  The next day, he said I should be able to transfer back to my old position the next week.  Fine.  Only two more days with the scary and hairy hobbit man.  I can deal. 

Next week rolls by and I talk to my new manager and ask him what’s up with transferring back and he changed his story.  “Well, I talked to my boss and he said you have to either sink or swim.  You gotta stay with me and maybe on down the road, if he needs any other customer service person, he’ll consider you.” 

Uuuhhhh.

I stood there in a kind of shock because he had told me the week before that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to go back to customer service.  They still needed to fill two slots on my team and I could easily slide into one of those spots but the boss’ reasoning was that I had made this decision and now I had to stick with it or quit.  Really?  Really? 

“So, what do you wanna do?”

“Well,” I replied, “I can’t quit.  I need this job, so…”

I then asked him what my pay would be.  After repeatedly asking him days before, he still hadn't given me a straight answer.  If I'm going to be stuck doing this, I at least need to know what my pay is going to be.  He went to the human resources lady to ask her.  She replied with a salary that was about a dollar and some change less than what I was already making.  Really?  Really?  After my boss had repeatedly told me it would be a pay raise?  I sat with the human resources lady and my boss and claimed there was some definite miscommunication going on.  She sat stone faced and told me to come back at my scheduled work time and that she and my boss would talk about it to see what they would do. 

I left the building and sat in my car and cried a little bit.  How is it possible that things just consistently turn to crap with me?  How is it possible that I keep making the wrong decisions, keep digging myself deeper into this hole?  Even more than that, how is it that I can’t even get out of these situations that I put myself in?  People make mistakes, sure, but most are also able to clean up their messes.  Yet, for me, I'm forced to wallow in them.

I had a few hours to kill until my scheduled work time so I went driving around a bit.  A few minutes into driving, the human resources lady called me on my cell phone and told me that they had made a mistake with some paperwork.  They never offered me an offer letter outlining the job duties and pay rate and therefore I could go back to my old position.

"You got lucky this time," she said, "but in the future, you need to take responsibility for your actions."

Well, earlier, when I was talking to the human resources lady and my boss, I told them upfront that I wasn't trying to cause any problems and that I did take responsibility for not fully investigating the position but I take no responsibility for the pay.  I kept asking about that and kept getting different answers but it pissed me off because she was acting like I was being unreasonable.

She then went on to tell me she was concerned about my decision to become a barback because of the decrease in pay and the gritty nature of the work.  Well, she never bothered to come to me about her concern.  But, you know, other people did come up to me.  That's the funny part.  People that I didn't even know where coming up to me in the days before I changed over and asking me about it with a sort of bewilderment in their eyes.  I should have taken that as a sign that something was askew.  Apparently, everyone but me knew this was a bad move.

What really pissed me off was the fact that the human resources lady said without the slightest bit of sincerity in her voice, "I am just concerned that you're happy."  Complete bull.  If she was concerned with my happiness, then she would have allowed me to go back to my old position without any hesitancy.  And to compound my anger, I still hate customer service.  Don't forget that I might have made a stupid move but that was fueled by my complete dissatisfaction with customer service.  I was basically looking for a way out.  Unfortunately, I ended up screwing up worse but I'm still not happy with customer service.  I'm less miserable, you could say.  It just upsets me that I have to keep hoping and wishing for stupid, degrading jobs because I can't do any better.

And then comes the whole idea of not jumping from job to job and sticking things out when they get bad.  I understand that, I really do, but this wasn't me just hopping from one job to another.  This was me transferring to a different position, realizing it was a giant mistake and wanting to go back to what was doing.  I just don't know anymore.  All I know is I can't find relief.

She said I was lucky to get my old job back but if I was really lucky, I wouldn't have ever gotten myself into this situation in the first place.  No, there is no lucky Brannon.  There is only that dead guy who can't seem to get anything right, who keeps finding himself in these silly, sordid situations.  It's almost as if my life could be a sitcom.

 Except it's a lot funnier when it's not happening to you.