Please turn Off the Lights--Chapter 1
I've always had a hard time expressing my deepest feelings. The way humid days have a hard time actually raining...and instead the moisture seems to form on your brow in little droplets. I began my first job as a cashier for a fast food restaurant at the beginning of my senior year of high school. The job was easy, a little too easy perhaps. A big part of the job was to "always look busy."
So I had to walk into the vacant dining area and wipe off tables, empty tables that had not been used in hours. the first time I had no problem grabbing a "fresh" rag and making my way into the poorly lit lobby. The bland tables stared at me blankly, and I wondered why I was washing them off. there was not a single crumb, stain, or evidence tha anybody even knew the place existed. Nonetheless, I swept the rag across table after table and made my way back behind the counter. the day carried on like a turtle making it's way across a barren highway. Ten minutes, which felt like an eternity, had passed and the manager made his way over to me and told me to go ahead and wipe down the dining area. I scoffed, which may not have been the best way to express myself to my manager, and I informed him that I had just done that, ten minutes prior to his asking.
"Julie," he said, "what have i told you about looking busy?" As if I were a child. I deliberately evaded the question and instead said, "we haven't had any customers, it would be pointless to wipe down the tables in the lobby."
He smiled at me, and handed me another of those "fresh" rags. I took it respectfully and walked out into the lobby and began again wiping the vacant tables, which had been empty for hours. I would have liked to told him "no," that I would not wipe down the tables, that he could do it himself, or find some other spineless idiot to do his bidding for him. Maybe after that I could have stormed out, and never come back except to eat, or maybe not even then.
Instead I wiped down the lobby, and even dusted the fake plants that hung sporadically around the room. ten minutes later, I wiped down the lobby again, and eventually I mopped the boring burnt orage floor with an odorless concoction of water and some cheap cleaning solution. Yes, that was this job, boring, repetitive, and too easy. I still wonder to this day how I survived there for four years, and never once stood up for myself. Other employees came and went, some with incident, and some without. I was always there though, the girl you could depend on, the one who was always on time and always willing to come in on her days off.
I recall an employee who was hired and aquit withing two weeks. His name was Chad, he had light brown hair, pale skin, and a cocky grin. As soon as I saw him, I knew he wouldn't last. He was too defiant, too quick to say no. When the managers told him to wipe down the counters, he said no. When the managers told him to tuck in his shirt, he said no. When the managers told him to be friendlier, he said ok, and then continued doing the same thing that he was doing before. I envied his freedom, honestly, but only because I knew I would never be able to say no the way that he did. The day he quit was a day to remember around the restaurant, that's not to say that people still talked about it, but it was quite a scene.
The manager asked Chad to map the lobby, which had been done about an hour earlier, and of course, ever the broken record, no was the reply. The manager stepped back in disbelief and repeated his request. chad smiled his cocky grin, and repeated no, then he said, "You know what's wrong with you people? You lead silly, mundane, pathetic little lives. You have no direction." With that he turned, winked at me, and left.
Of course the only person who it affected in any sort of way was me. The wink left me startled, and then the manager handed me the mop. I wished at that moment that I could say something to the manager, that I could tell him no, and then turn around and leave. At the time, chad's exit was all that I could think of. I thought of him as heroic in some rogue way. Perhaps it was my naivety, or my lack of backbone that mae me think so. Later, I realized that it didn't matter what kind of exit was made, whether Chad has puit in his two weeks, been fired, or left the way he did; the simple truth of the matter is that the workday went on without him, and the fast food restaurant is still standing, with or without Chad. The manager probably doesn't even remember him or the incident, but at the time it seemed significant.
The fact hat Chad's exit probably left a very small impression on very few people made me think that my exit probably left barely a blip on even my own radar. I put my two weeks in, after I had already found a new job, and I turned my uniform in the day after my final day. My manager thanked me, took my uniform, and turned around and asked some kid to please wipe down the tables in the lobby and mop.