- So this woman calls me up, and says, “Hi, this is Josée from (unintelligible.) We have you as an emergency contact for dad_mcl?”
Now my dad happens to be in Pakistan right now :eek: covering the war. So of course I jump out of my skin. “What! What happened!”
“No”, she giggles. (Giggles!) “Nothing’s happened. We’re the people who installed an alarm system in your parents’ place, and we want to sell you an alarm.”
Guess what, girlfriend: now I don’t need an alarm system because I’m already fucking alarmed! I didn’t expect you to know my dad’s in Pakistan, but good goddess, woman, if you couldn’t think of something a little more tactful to start the conversation off with than “We have you as an emergency contact for your father,” you’d think that you’d come up with one after the fifth or sixth person went hysterical and shrieked in your ear!
Get a life. Get a vocabulary.
- To John, my boss: Oh, you did not go there. You did not just. You did not just accuse me of not living up to my commitments and screwing you over because you are doing the scheduling THREE DAYS IN ADVANCE and find out that Surprise! I have commitments over Thanksgiving weekend!
Do NOT talk to me about commitment. I have worked here for longer than anyone but you and the assistant managers. I have worked here for the whole summer. I have worked for you through hirings and firings. I have worked for you through ranting customers and ranting staff. I have worked through you calling people faggots in my presence, having coworkers call me a pedophile (as a joke), having coworkers get up and walk away when I mention that I have a boyfriend, being teased, and being insulted.
When you did the smart thing and set up your summer schedule a month in advance, I bent over backwards for you. I took a train home five days early from my family vacation, the only vacation I got all summer, so I could help you out. I continued to work for you after school started.
I have worked for you through exploding machines, spraying ice cream, and numb fingers and oxygen starvation from working in the refrigerator. I have come into work when I felt like shit and didn’t leave until I almost fell over and had to go to the hospital. I have come in on half an hour’s notice. I have cancelled commitments to work for you and then had you cancel on me. I have done all this for you with good grace and good humour.
I will not have you lay a guilt trip on me. Two weeks ago I was teetering on the brink from stress, and I told you I was quitting. And now you’re trying to guilt trip me into giving up my Thanksgiving weekend commitments for you?
Let’s get something straight. Until you do the schedule, I have made no commitments to work on a given date. I have come to you with scheduling issues in the past, and you have constantly told me to tell you about them later, closer to the date. DO YOUR SCHEDULING IN ADVANCE, YOU TWIT, AND YOU WON’T RUN INTO SURPRISES LIKE THIS. The idea that someone might have commitments on fucking Thanksgiving is not the sort of cultural anthropology that it takes Claude Lévi-Strauss to do for you.
In short, you have spent the last five months exploiting me. Guess what, honey: you don’t own my labour. I own my labour, and I sell it to you, and this weekend, it is not for sale.
If you don’t like the way I do business, you don’t have to do business with me. Fire me. I already offered to quit.
But have fun finding a student with five months’ experience at your store who’s willing to work early weekday afternoons during the school year.
And in the meantime, you’re on borrowed time. The only reason I’m here is by my good grace. Do not insult it if you intend to keep it.
