Work
Ugh... This week is going to suck...
For those of you who don't know, now that I'm no longer on the track toward the ministry, I have 2 part-time jobs. I started at the first one (The Container Store) about a year and a half ago. The second (Starbucks... again), I started last June. The only reason I went back was insurance. I wasn't getting many hours at TCS, and I wasn't able to find a full-time job, and Jennifer had quit her full-time job to start working as a full-time counselor. Just about that time, her clients (patients... whatever) either got enough better that they didn't feel the need to continue counseling or just stopped coming, and there weren't enough new people coming in to replace them. On top of that, her preexisting condition (osteoarthritis) meant that for just the two of us to get insurance, we would pay over $1,000/mo.
So I took one for the team and made a huge mistake by going back to Starbucks. I figured, hey, I can work mornings at the bux and afternoons at TCS. Yeah, that means I'm up at 3:45 a.m. to be at work by 4:30. I'm on my feet for a 6ish-hour shift, come home to walk the dogs, and then go to another on-my-feet shift for 4-5 hours, sometimes going as late as 9:30p.m. If I want to spend time with my wife, I have to stay up even later into the evening, which just sets me up to be tired the next day. I do this for 5 days straight every week, get up at 7:00 on Sunday for Church and then sleep in on Mondays (I always take Monday off). So now, I can feel my life getting shorter every day that I have to force myself out of bed hours before anybody on God's green earth should have to be awake.
And as much as I really like my coworkers and my manager, the company itself has become quite toxic for me. I realized a number of things. They don't care how hard I work; it'll never be enough. They don't care how precarious each day's schedule is; if somebody calls in sick, we're screwed. They don't care that 90% of all the changes they implement make things far more difficult for us; most of them haven't worked in an actual store for years (or a drive-thru store ever), and they are all salaried. Despite the "partner" rhetoric, they don't care about our feedback; we really are just employees to them. They don't have to deal with the customers, the schedule, the burns, or the hours, all starting at less than $8/hr. It's gotten so bad that I can't even enjoy my Mondays off because I just spend the whole day dreading the coming week.
So now in two weeks, when we close on our house and it no longer matters how long I've worked at one place, I will be seriously evaluating my employment there and will probably be turning in my 2-weeks' notice shortly thereafter. Jennifer supports me 100%, and I can get benefits through her full-time job at WashU, which is really nice. But that's yet another month that I'll have to be doing this...
For those of you who don't know, now that I'm no longer on the track toward the ministry, I have 2 part-time jobs. I started at the first one (The Container Store) about a year and a half ago. The second (Starbucks... again), I started last June. The only reason I went back was insurance. I wasn't getting many hours at TCS, and I wasn't able to find a full-time job, and Jennifer had quit her full-time job to start working as a full-time counselor. Just about that time, her clients (patients... whatever) either got enough better that they didn't feel the need to continue counseling or just stopped coming, and there weren't enough new people coming in to replace them. On top of that, her preexisting condition (osteoarthritis) meant that for just the two of us to get insurance, we would pay over $1,000/mo.
So I took one for the team and made a huge mistake by going back to Starbucks. I figured, hey, I can work mornings at the bux and afternoons at TCS. Yeah, that means I'm up at 3:45 a.m. to be at work by 4:30. I'm on my feet for a 6ish-hour shift, come home to walk the dogs, and then go to another on-my-feet shift for 4-5 hours, sometimes going as late as 9:30p.m. If I want to spend time with my wife, I have to stay up even later into the evening, which just sets me up to be tired the next day. I do this for 5 days straight every week, get up at 7:00 on Sunday for Church and then sleep in on Mondays (I always take Monday off). So now, I can feel my life getting shorter every day that I have to force myself out of bed hours before anybody on God's green earth should have to be awake.
And as much as I really like my coworkers and my manager, the company itself has become quite toxic for me. I realized a number of things. They don't care how hard I work; it'll never be enough. They don't care how precarious each day's schedule is; if somebody calls in sick, we're screwed. They don't care that 90% of all the changes they implement make things far more difficult for us; most of them haven't worked in an actual store for years (or a drive-thru store ever), and they are all salaried. Despite the "partner" rhetoric, they don't care about our feedback; we really are just employees to them. They don't have to deal with the customers, the schedule, the burns, or the hours, all starting at less than $8/hr. It's gotten so bad that I can't even enjoy my Mondays off because I just spend the whole day dreading the coming week.
So now in two weeks, when we close on our house and it no longer matters how long I've worked at one place, I will be seriously evaluating my employment there and will probably be turning in my 2-weeks' notice shortly thereafter. Jennifer supports me 100%, and I can get benefits through her full-time job at WashU, which is really nice. But that's yet another month that I'll have to be doing this...