You know what really fucking bothers me about school in general?
It took away my passion.
Before high school I loved to read. I devoured books over and over, stayed up reading with a flashlight when I needed to know what happened next chapter, cherished every book and refused to crack their spines.
Now I can’t remember the last time I read a real book. In English class they would assign us Great Gatsby and Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness and Grapes of Wrath and I couldn’t bring myself to read a single one. Too many things to do, not enough time. Reading became a burden, not an escape.
So I just stopped. I stopped reading every second I had free time. I stopped picking up books in the bookstore. I gave away half my collection. I keep saying “I’ll get back into it soon” but it’s been years.
I stopped reading because I was being forced to read books I wasn’t interested in, and now I’m being forced to read 200 pages a week from textbooks to not fail my classes. I stopped reading because school killed that passion.
This is the exact same experience i had with reading.
I used to work at McDonalds (I know). Opening usually involved me at the front counter with a headset on so I could do drive-through orders and handle making coffee / putting orders together / taking money at the front from the little old people that came in at the crack of dawn every morning. We would also have a manager who was there to be important and one person in the kitchen. We’re a small rural town so usually this is fine but we were on kind of a major highway so sometimes it would get busy out of nowhere.
Depending on the manager the amount of help we had would vary wildly. One morning we got super busy and I started cracking under the pressure. I’m a fantastic multi-tasker but my drive-through line was backing up since I was trying to juggle them and all the walk-in folks from my front registers and when it gets packed…well, it’s fun. I glance around trying to find my manager for help. I see him on one of our cameras – he’s outside smoking a cigarette around the side of the building. Mind you, this is like his third trip out to smoke this morning. I’m absolutely dying trying to get caught up. Customers are being passive aggressive saying they will come behind the counter and get their own coffee and stuff. I have people yelling at me in my headset from the drive through. I end up having to remove the headset just to try to get the frontline sorted. I start making progress with the front but I basically had to sacrifice the drive-through customers for two minutes.
Apparently the cars outside start yelling at my manager and interrupt his smoke break so he comes in, sees me with my headset off and goes berserk. He’s like “WHOS TAKING THE DRIVE-THRU ORDERS?” I’m in the middle of trying to get a fresh pot of coffee going so I sort of auto-respond “No one. Hang on.” as I continue to dash around behind our counter to grab a fruit & yogurt parfait for an order. He basically gets in my way and starts giving me shit. Loudly, talking to me like I’m a dog. I point to the camera and yell, loudly enough to disrupt the entire inside of the restaurant. “I’m these two registers, first window, second window, and I’m bagging. I’m like FOUR PEOPLE and you’re out behind the building not doing SHIT!”
His eyes go wide. I can tell he knows I’m holding on by my last thread. He’s sighs. And he’s like “You’re in a ton of trouble but we can talk about this later.” No. Fuck him. I’m done. I’m all riled up from random customers yelling at me. I toss him the headset. “You want to give me shit for not being able to run like four stations with no support? Run five. I’ll watch.” I remove my name badge.
He went to say something to me. I turn away, facing the one girl working in the kitchen who is watching this all play out. I remember telling her “I’m so sorry.” and then I dropped my name badge, toss my hat on the counter, grab a water cup, put on (and zip) my jacket so my uniform is covered up. I go to the drink fountain, fill my water cup, and then I go sit on the far side of the seating area and watch him go down in flames. He ends up ALSO taking off the headset and picking up the phone so he can spam call the whole workforce one by one trying to call for help. It’s like 5AM so no one is going to accept a call from their work number. About ten minutes into his struggle he ends up very loudly pleading with me to come back from behind the counter. I can’t even see him on the other side of the sea of people swarming the counter at this point.
I call back “I need a smoke first!” and I go outside.
So for the “history of unions in tv and movies” video, my favorite thing I dug up was this bit about South Park during the 2008 writers strike. Those guys are…not awesome at supporting their peers.
(If you want to watch the whole thing, here’s part one and part two.)
also corporate: why are all the good employees quitting? why are we understaffed? we gotta fix the high turnover rate that happens god knows why. everyone on the floor go and work harder to compensate while we figure out this mystery thanks
Danish (my native language, english is my second language), and I plan on eventually learning french. In Denmark where I live, along with many other european countries, learning multiple languages is mandatory for graduating from school
I saw a sad facebook post from the gay bookstore back in Ann Arbor where I used to live about how they hadn’t sold any books that day so I went on their online store and bought a couple, and while you don’t get #deals like elsewhere online, I’d love it if y’all would consider buying your next gay book from them instead of like, Amazon.
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