Crappy New Year

I’ve never really enjoyed New Year’s Eve all that much. I’ve actually never done much on it, except over the last few years spent with my wife (who I’ve never missed one with). Going by the traditional means of celebration, I’ve only straddled the years inebriated and lip-locked only a handful of times. Most often it is hardly ever been memorable.

I had one really lousy evening way back when I was 13 or 14. There was a neighbor down the street that felt that she had the perfect opportunity for me. She was involved with catering and had arranged for me to be the coat room attendant at a local hotel who was offering a New Year’s Eve dinning and party package. I would be paid nothing but tips, but she assured me that this would be a windfall of cash. With over 300 people attending, I would be laughing all the way to the bank. Let’s just say if I got a dollar a coat, that would have been an unimaginable amount of cash at that age. I was seeing green.

I was dropped off in the early evening and was given a run-down of the structure of the event. I was ushered to a meager closet in the main hall just inside the lobby door. I was provided a small basket to collect my bounty. The wait staff would pass by every now and then, each with their own prognostication of future riches. I grinned with green.

People started to make their way in a steady stream. I took jackets and provided little number slips that matched the numbered hangars behind me. People were genial, but not overly effusive in praise for my efforts. The tip basket sat empty. The neighbor lady breezed by right before dinner to check on me. I must of expressed some sort of concern about the lack of green so far. She thought it would be best to get the pile started with her own donation of a dollar or two. This would act as a gentle reminder.

I sat at my post as the party carried on in the ballroom. The volume rose considerably with each passing hour. Canned dinner music, gave way to canned ballroom dancing music. The mummer of polite conversation morphed into laughter that got more uproarious as we neared midnight. This was really the first time that I witnessed people getting drunk en masse. The hallway remained somewhat quiet though, with my only company being those going back and forth from the restroom.

Midnight approached and party hats and noise makers were distributed. The countdown began and 10 seconds later there was was cheering followed by the standard mummering of auld lang syne. Some of the more square guests immediately made their way to my station. The cash explosion was about to commence.

I handed out about ten coats and noted that there wasn’t a single piece of currency placed in the basket. Was I supposed to ask folks for a tip? How hard was I supposed to work for this? As I began to ponder what further actions I needed to take, a disturbance happened down the hall. A loud siren began to blare. Somebody had just pulled the fire alarm.

Hotel employees began urging people to vacate the building. This of course being January, nobody wanted to go outside without their coat. A huge crush of people attacked my booth. Numbered tickets started being thrown at me with folks identifying their belongings on the rack behind me. I was easily overwhelmed, and I just started grabbing coats and throwing them to whoever was taking them. This was NOT a polite crowd. These were lonely people with no other places to go, who just overpaid for a crappy meal, a sip of champagne, and plastic noisemaker. The clock had struck midnight. There was no reason to stick around. Let’s start off the New Year harassing a frazzled teenager behind a half door.

The place cleared out, and I was still left behind the door a few feet away from an annoyed fireman who was more than miffed that people hadn’t evacuated faster. I guess had there actually been a fire, I would have been a goner. The fireman asked me if I had seen who pulled the alarm, being that it was only a couple yards away from where I sat. I told him I heard more than I saw. The fireman declared the building safe and a few folks came back in. Most had left though. I finally looked at my basket, And not a single person left anything.

The last few hours of my year in a mothball smelling closet, and all I had to show for it was the lousy 2 bucks that was placed as seed money. I was more than defeated. The neighbor lady at least noted my situation, and went around to the entire catering staff and asked for folks to pitch in. These kind folks actually pulled $30 together. I wasn’t going to leave empty handed after all.

I think my Dad had actually planned on me bringing home much more as well. He had already decided, without my input, that this money was going directly into my stale savings account. He got it in his head that they were going to take what little I had in there if I didn’t create some activity. Granted, $30 wasn’t going to be the root cause any great account stability. He informed me of his plan, and I told him I understood his concern, but I wanted at least half of it. After such a crappy evening, I felt I deserved something. Hiding it in the bank is not earning to a young man.

I went with my Dad to the bank, he went up to the counter, made the transaction, and we left. I asked him for my half. He said nothing. It was at this point that I realized he had placed the entire amount in my savings account. I’m not sure why he thought he would just get away with this. We got home and I tearfully told my Mom of his devious action. She made him march right on up to his cash stash in his sock drawer and give me $30 out of his pocket. His nature being tight with money, this was a great penalty for his deception.

So in a sense I made $60, which in all reality was a quite a sum for me back then. I’m sure I blew most of it on fast food.

Happy New Year. I hope your year ends better than this example.

The Worst Job I've Ever Had

Whenever I reflect on the difficult job market out there, I continue to count the blessings of my employment. I have never been out of work since leaving college, and even better, I've always worked inside my intended career. However, things didn't start out so well. My first year out of school was trial by fire that I have never really been able to let go. Like many of the things I obsess over, I keep this experience with me every day.

As a character flaw, I'm quick to point out that I was never on the fast track to personal growth. With each passing year I reflect on how little I knew prior, and how I wish things could have been clearer for me. The only class I excelled in grade school was art, and it was the obvious path I should take. What exactly I should do in art was the trouble I had. I wasn't cracked enough in the head to be a fine artist, and I wasn't interested enough to teach. The only viable path was commercial art, and my high school teacher recommended the Graphic Design/Illustration program at Kent State University. I spent many years expecting that I would eventually just be an illustrator, and generally struggled with the graphic design portion of my degree. Eventually though, I began to have more confidence in my design, and it became clearer that this was going to be a more marketable skill once I left school. After being selected to be an intern at American Greetings, my confidence spiked, and I soared through a successful final year of college with the highest marks I had ever achieved.

When the job posting for a Graphic Designer at Cedar Point Amusement Park came to my attention, I thought that I had hit the jackpot. This was by far one of my favorite places to visit, and I knew my skill set would be perfect for them. I was over the moon when I got an interview, and accepted the job with no reservation. I had no idea the worst year of my life was about to begin.

The root problem of this job leads back the man that hired me and was to be my boss. Please let me start by clarifying that this is not a cliche "I hate my boss - stick it to the man" bunch of hooey. I've no desire to perpetuate commonality. His name was Paul. He was a gray man. There was no color to his skin. He was probably only in his 40s, but he looked 20 years older. His breath stank of cigarettes, his teeth stained with coffee. His eyes sagged in deep dark sockets. He carried himself like there were weights hung from his appendages. A living Jacob Marley who has already been assigned the eternal chains of damnation. As loathsome creature as you ever saw. It became clear right away that he was hated and feared by everyone. He was the abusive father to the suffering family that had no other choice to live with him and bear it. I was told he was a recovering alcoholic, which didn't as much help to explain his situation as it was to help further define his low level of humanity. I can't find a single solitary decent thing to say about the man. He was a failure as a human being. He sat in his cave of an office, spewing obscenities, making racist remarks, barking into the phone, and dressing down any unfortunate soul who crossed his path. Many managers in other departments refused to deal with him, some outright refused to speak to him. The ones that had to would seemingly lost days of their lives stressing over it. There was one woman who had pushed to the brink of severe mental illness. His negative energy hung over our dank office like the thousands of Seagulls who circled the parking lots. It took only one conversation for me to be completely rattled by him. He thrived with the thrill that he had such an effect on people.

I'm not going to I'm not going to continue on without making it clear that I am not without fault. I was as green as could be entering the job world. I have this ability to make all the mistakes you are usually told to avoid. Paul reminded me many times in my interview that I didn't know anything. I never felt that I proclaimed that I had, but he wanted to make sure that it was understood that I knew nothing. I was actually fine with that. I was ready to learn as much from this man as I could. The problem is, Paul didn't want to teach anything either. It's as if he never really wanted me to know anything. It was much easier for him to ridicule me and berate me if I had no knowledge. He had this uncanny ability to make me give him the wrong answer. He'd bait me into second guessing everything I knew to be correct. It was almost a game for him.

The other designer in the department was a small mouse of a woman. She was married to a park manager, some schlub who was being groomed for bigger and better things by being forced work non-stop from March to November. She had three children, none of whom she ever spoke warmly about. She was plain, neither attractive nor unattractive. She was an unfulfilled woman. The single joy of her week came on Friday afternoon when she would phone the guy who I replaced. The guy that I am told suffered through close to 7 years of Paul at his worst. I'm going to be so bold to suggest that these two had something on the side. It may have just been that survivor syndrome that forms a unbreakable bond between people after experiencing a traumatic event. I thought at first that I could confide in her, seeing that we were now in the same unfortunate situation under Paul. I was blind-sided by the fact that she wasn't as harmless as I perceived. When given the opportunity, she would lash out at me like a pit bull. A beaten and abused dog that was still loyal to its master. I guess I made her situation bearable by taking all focus off of her, and allowing her and Paul to have a common enemy.

One major issue was that I couldn't make two moves without having to ask one of them a question. The guy before did practically everything, and therefore they knew nothing. This guy didn't leave any directions either. I'm rather sure that the bristled responses I got were because they didn't want to own up to not knowing. Mouse lady spent most of her time on the phone for Tech support for Adobe Illustrator, mainly because she just didn't know how to use it. Paul caused a great deal of damage to his own machine because of his short fuse. So anytime I needed to know where a file was, or who to call for certain jobs, the chain of command, or be privy to one of the thousand park processes - I had to ask them. I started collecting my questions, because if I was going to get yelled at, I might as well get it all over with in bunches. I eventually got yelled at for doing that.

There was one particularly ugly day when they cornered me in a conference room and told me everything they didn't like about me. She screamed at me that I didn't listen, despite the fact that she never had any direction for me. They actually told me to lose my attitude, as if I was somehow doing something to wrong them. I'm reminded of the scene in Animal House where the one fraternity was paddling recruits, and they had to yell out with each swat "Thank you sir may I have another!" I can't describe how upsetting this was. Never have I been brought so close to tears in my professional life. I have never since encountered a situation where someone was belittled to a near breaking point, and I honestly can't imagine being near or a part of such thing now. I hate them both for that.

Having the coworkers closest to you making life hard is one thing, but then having the entire office location start in on you is another. I am embarrassed now to have not recognized sooner just how united the entire organization was against me. All the clues were there, I guess I wanted to think so much more of these people. The office admin would come in and regularly ask me If I liked what I was doing. She was hoping for any bit of negativity she could take back to the Office Manager, who would report directly to Paul. One of the the Paint Shop guys would just plainly ask me daily if I had gotten another job yet. I was particularly troubled by him, as I didn't remotely work with him. He got so disgusted with the concept of me he couldn't even eat in the break room with me. Even the park architect and his drafting assistant would be baited into being criticizing me, coming in with random comments about my work. I picture them now huddling in one of the front offices, plotting out new and innovative ways to make life difficult for me.

It was by far the lowest point I had ever reached. I felt like I couldn't just quit. All through college they warned you of tarnishing your resume with short stints. I had nothing else to compare the situation to, so I could only imagine it was like that everywhere. I also didn't want to fail, especially since this was my first job. My self esteem couldn't have been lower. I had to learn how to fight it, or I'd never get anywhere. I was becoming one of them. One of the lost souls who hated everything about their miserable existence. If I was such a terrible designer, why wasn't I ever fired? Why was I never asked to leave? It was because these zombies of the graveyard that is Sandusky, Ohio fed on the life that I had. I would have eventually lost every positive thing about my being. I set a mark of at least one year, and once I hit it - I looked for another job. Oddly enough, I was hired by the first place I interviewed at. Strange, since I was so inept and all.

I left with every shred of dignity I could muster, because If anything, I could at least be a better person about it. I gave my two weeks notice, and intended to give them every single hour of work up to that point - despite the fact the the new job needed me right away. I did everything by the book. The mouse woman asked me on my last day if I would remember them, perhaps expressing a slight pang of guilt. I gave some polite non-answer at the time, but if could answer her right now I would say this: "Yes - you've stayed with me every day of my career. I learned who I didn't want to be, and that was the only valuable thing you taught me."