And so life continues....
I don't update this thing anywhere near enough. It seems like I lack the inspiration for writing in this forum that had possesed me so strongly a month or so ago. No matter. Maybe I'll pursue the path of so many of my Live Journal contemporaries: frequent short updates and then occational in depth rants. I've always felt that this sort of forum should be used for extensive philosophical discussions or insightful reflections on life. And my greatest fear about it has always been that it would become type of LJ you cringe when you read. The sort that goes "OMG today me and my friend monica went to the mall and saw ryan this cute boy that i like LOL JK but monica went into the shoe store and so we spent the next three hours in there trying on shoes and i got the cutest little pink pumps LOL OMG". I'm clearly not a fourteen year old girl but you still get the idea. So I'll try to update more but I need you all to play a role in this drama that is about to unfold. I need you all to play the benevolent gatekeepers and tell me when my retoric becomes uninteresting and uninspired. Agreed? Good, on to other crap.
This last week our HR manager, a guy by the name of Joe, quit. In our store, like in most retail establishments, there is always a minor cold war that goes on between between the entry level workers and the management. It makes sense, they have power over you and often do stupid things. It's like national politics on a very small scale. In our store our the main difficulty lies with our general manager Rebecca Elliot who, for those of you that havn't heard us talk about her, is the retail equivalent of George W. Bush. Really just seems do every last thing she can to make her employees miserable. I've dealt with her for upwards of two years now. Joe however was significant because for the first time since I'd started working there I felt like there was someone in the upper levels of the store that was actually on our side. Even more significantly than that though, is that the more time I spent around him the more he reminded me of two of the Truely Good People I've met in my lifetime. I'd like to talk for a minute about what I mean by Truely Good People. I'm sure you've met one. Someone who, near as you could tell, selflessly put the interests of others ahead of his own. A person who always had a decent kind word to say when you needed on and a person that you felt truly cared about all of the people around them who treated them with any degree of decency. But most of all they were people that you felt that they always acted in a way that was in keeping with their own morality. They're a very rare breed though. And amoung the thousands of people I've met in my lifetime there have been perhaps four or five that I can remember who actually met this higher standard. Of course there may have been others but I never got to know them well enough to really judge. So five or so of them. Of course these people were flawed like any other human being. Some were quite socially inept. Just like anyone else they were all enticed by human drama at sometime or another and were battered by it. Sometime they made decisions that people hated them for. But throughout all of this, these people remained true to themselves and whenever you spoke to them, you always walked away feeling better for having done so. I've no doubt that they would all be dreadfully embarassed to hear me say that about them. So Joe reminded me of two of them. It is possible that he could have even been the sort of incredibly rare person that would fit into that category. I suppose I didn't really get to know him well enough to judge. However, I do know that my working life has been tremedously diminished by this man leaving. Almost everyone in the store got the guy gifts and said kind words to him his last day. So that's where we stand with work.... nothing between us and the whirling derbish of hellfire.
Goodnight,
-E
This last week our HR manager, a guy by the name of Joe, quit. In our store, like in most retail establishments, there is always a minor cold war that goes on between between the entry level workers and the management. It makes sense, they have power over you and often do stupid things. It's like national politics on a very small scale. In our store our the main difficulty lies with our general manager Rebecca Elliot who, for those of you that havn't heard us talk about her, is the retail equivalent of George W. Bush. Really just seems do every last thing she can to make her employees miserable. I've dealt with her for upwards of two years now. Joe however was significant because for the first time since I'd started working there I felt like there was someone in the upper levels of the store that was actually on our side. Even more significantly than that though, is that the more time I spent around him the more he reminded me of two of the Truely Good People I've met in my lifetime. I'd like to talk for a minute about what I mean by Truely Good People. I'm sure you've met one. Someone who, near as you could tell, selflessly put the interests of others ahead of his own. A person who always had a decent kind word to say when you needed on and a person that you felt truly cared about all of the people around them who treated them with any degree of decency. But most of all they were people that you felt that they always acted in a way that was in keeping with their own morality. They're a very rare breed though. And amoung the thousands of people I've met in my lifetime there have been perhaps four or five that I can remember who actually met this higher standard. Of course there may have been others but I never got to know them well enough to really judge. So five or so of them. Of course these people were flawed like any other human being. Some were quite socially inept. Just like anyone else they were all enticed by human drama at sometime or another and were battered by it. Sometime they made decisions that people hated them for. But throughout all of this, these people remained true to themselves and whenever you spoke to them, you always walked away feeling better for having done so. I've no doubt that they would all be dreadfully embarassed to hear me say that about them. So Joe reminded me of two of them. It is possible that he could have even been the sort of incredibly rare person that would fit into that category. I suppose I didn't really get to know him well enough to judge. However, I do know that my working life has been tremedously diminished by this man leaving. Almost everyone in the store got the guy gifts and said kind words to him his last day. So that's where we stand with work.... nothing between us and the whirling derbish of hellfire.
Goodnight,
-E