What a weird week at work. Some iffy dealings that've been in the offing finally came to pass. I want to write them out here to get a clearer look at them.
First, two days ago I took Big Boss aside to point out that a decision he'd made about a difficult customer was unfair. Based on BB's call, we (the store) were cheating the customer.
"I don't care!" he practically yelled at me in exasperation. "I just want this guy out of the store."
This confirmed something I'd gradually come to suspect:
Big Boss is charismatic, and he talks a good line about Christian charity, but he doesn't care so much about individuals.
I've worked with him for a year and a half. We're so different, it's taken me a long time to figure him out. He grew up in a crack-addled city and got Saved by God, so there's that, but I don't think our differences are primarily cultural.
He reminds me of my sister who once said to me (about something important to me), "I don't care what you think."
I wasn't surprised BB didn't care about an individual, but I was surprised he would admit to me that he knew he was ripping this individual off. I guess he felt backed into the corner; he's usually Mr. Smooth.
I was so shocked at what he'd said, I just walked away.
Then, thirty-six hours later, in the middle of last night, three guys in masks broke into the store with a crowbar and stole the office safe full of cash from three days' sales.
The store's video recording shows the thieves rolling the safe on an office chair out to a waiting car. I'd like to see that, actually.
Big Boss went on TV news today and talked about how tragic it was that the thieves chose this way of life and targeted an institution that helps people. "I feel a little bit betrayed," he said.
I don't believe in instant karma, but it did cross my mind that he'd just knowingly approved ripping off a customer.
Mostly what I think, though, is that this is a classic example of the poor & powerless preying on the poor & powerless.
As a coworker said, "They weren't going to rob U.S. Bank." (There's a branch nearby.)
It reminds me of something Mr. Furniture the artist always says about divide and conquer:
"Black-on-black crime is part of the master plan."
Finally, after that all had settled down, Big Boss said in front of other people in the break room that he wasn't going to listen to anything I said.
This was over a minor matter. I was showing a new guy how to empty the kitchen trash, and commented it doesn't get done every day. This is verifiably true, but Big Boss took offense.
Again, I was shocked that he was so blatantly petty. It's like once his pastoral facade slipped, he reverted to some childish style.
So, that was all weird. But the happy weird part is that I don't care that much. (And I hadn't even taken CBD this morning.) I was taken aback, but I thought, Not my circus, not my monkeys.
My monkeys are books.
I spent the afternoon pricing special books to put in the locked display case. Just yesterday the first US edition of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had sold for $100. Unlike a lot of the store's customers, this customer paid with a credit card, so that money didn't get stolen.
I replaced that book with another one for $100, another find I'm proud of: a beat-up old book that could easily have gotten tossed.
It opened up like a geode to be a first ed. (1932) of Amelia Earhart's The Fun of It: random records of my own flying and of women in aviation. See the amazing little phono album in the back pocket? Too bad the book's in such poor condition, but it's still a very cool find.
So, yeah. A weird week.
Now that I've written it out, I think I didn't get very upset over Big Boss today because it's a relief to have the truth out in the open.
I've liked BB--he's easy to like––but I haven't quite known what to make of him, and I've trusted him less and less over time.
Still, this is the worst I'd expected, not the least, and I'm sorry about that.
Now I understand better why the former book lady disliked BB so much. She had practically hissed at me, "He's illiterate!"
I'd thought she was being nasty, and she was! but she also was sort of right. Choosing not to read anything except the Bible, which Big Boss told me he does, is a relative of not being able to read.
The upside of this is that he leaves my BOOK's alone.
When I cashier, I rarely have much to do with him. I focus on the customers.
First, two days ago I took Big Boss aside to point out that a decision he'd made about a difficult customer was unfair. Based on BB's call, we (the store) were cheating the customer.
"I don't care!" he practically yelled at me in exasperation. "I just want this guy out of the store."
This confirmed something I'd gradually come to suspect:
Big Boss is charismatic, and he talks a good line about Christian charity, but he doesn't care so much about individuals.
I've worked with him for a year and a half. We're so different, it's taken me a long time to figure him out. He grew up in a crack-addled city and got Saved by God, so there's that, but I don't think our differences are primarily cultural.
He reminds me of my sister who once said to me (about something important to me), "I don't care what you think."
I wasn't surprised BB didn't care about an individual, but I was surprised he would admit to me that he knew he was ripping this individual off. I guess he felt backed into the corner; he's usually Mr. Smooth.
I was so shocked at what he'd said, I just walked away.
Then, thirty-six hours later, in the middle of last night, three guys in masks broke into the store with a crowbar and stole the office safe full of cash from three days' sales.
The store's video recording shows the thieves rolling the safe on an office chair out to a waiting car. I'd like to see that, actually.
Big Boss went on TV news today and talked about how tragic it was that the thieves chose this way of life and targeted an institution that helps people. "I feel a little bit betrayed," he said.
I don't believe in instant karma, but it did cross my mind that he'd just knowingly approved ripping off a customer.
Mostly what I think, though, is that this is a classic example of the poor & powerless preying on the poor & powerless.
As a coworker said, "They weren't going to rob U.S. Bank." (There's a branch nearby.)
It reminds me of something Mr. Furniture the artist always says about divide and conquer:
"Black-on-black crime is part of the master plan."
Finally, after that all had settled down, Big Boss said in front of other people in the break room that he wasn't going to listen to anything I said.
This was over a minor matter. I was showing a new guy how to empty the kitchen trash, and commented it doesn't get done every day. This is verifiably true, but Big Boss took offense.
Again, I was shocked that he was so blatantly petty. It's like once his pastoral facade slipped, he reverted to some childish style.
So, that was all weird. But the happy weird part is that I don't care that much. (And I hadn't even taken CBD this morning.) I was taken aback, but I thought, Not my circus, not my monkeys.
My monkeys are books.
I spent the afternoon pricing special books to put in the locked display case. Just yesterday the first US edition of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had sold for $100. Unlike a lot of the store's customers, this customer paid with a credit card, so that money didn't get stolen.
I replaced that book with another one for $100, another find I'm proud of: a beat-up old book that could easily have gotten tossed.
It opened up like a geode to be a first ed. (1932) of Amelia Earhart's The Fun of It: random records of my own flying and of women in aviation. See the amazing little phono album in the back pocket? Too bad the book's in such poor condition, but it's still a very cool find.
So, yeah. A weird week.
Now that I've written it out, I think I didn't get very upset over Big Boss today because it's a relief to have the truth out in the open.
I've liked BB--he's easy to like––but I haven't quite known what to make of him, and I've trusted him less and less over time.
Still, this is the worst I'd expected, not the least, and I'm sorry about that.
Now I understand better why the former book lady disliked BB so much. She had practically hissed at me, "He's illiterate!"
I'd thought she was being nasty, and she was! but she also was sort of right. Choosing not to read anything except the Bible, which Big Boss told me he does, is a relative of not being able to read.
The upside of this is that he leaves my BOOK's alone.
When I cashier, I rarely have much to do with him. I focus on the customers.
I empathize with you on the weird week. Parts of it remind me of very different scenarios but with similar details that compelled me away from my "Evangelical Christian" phase 20 years ago (not Fundamentalist in the strictest sense, but with roots there). There was no room in the theology of the nondenominational church we attended in the 1990s for people being ill/having illness of soul, which is how I now describe the not great/inconsistent things it's easy to see anyone doing (harder to accept seeing myself do), no matter their biblical literacy and salvation story.
ReplyDeleteMy next phase was the height of Protestant living (which, as I have reflected, was much more Fundamentalistic), in its admission of faith and people being deeply flawed. I loved this admission, and I'm still grateful for it. The answers that group found in the Bible, though, were purely moralistic. God is a courtroom judge to them, who lets some people have a free pass, because this makes a good story (the foundational understanding there is that we are not real; we're a story God is writing - or something similarly artistic and tragic). It was cool and academic, and the best part in my opinion is it led me to the Orthodox Church.
(Which I don't mind if people consider my next phase.) Orthodoxy contains, regarding soul illness, the belief that Christianity, as originally delivered, was not set in a courtroom, but in a hospital (speaking in images; this was John Chrysostom). Healing is the whole idea, and this for the purpose of union with God. Healing goes on into eternity but requires the admission of an illness. And the acceptance of Love. Anyway, I find this more practical, actually, when dealing with the insanity of corrupted human actions.
DEANNA: Yes! I think you are soooo onto something fundamentally different between me and Big Boss---our conception of God.
ReplyDeleteHe has told me we shouldn't get "too comfortable" with God--we should remain in awe of his fearsome power.
I imagine God as more like the gentle hospice nurse played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Magnolia".
I looked it up and a reviewer descibes the character as being "good in the face of his own unimportance."
Where there is hierarchy there’s every form of ugliness. The academic version of telling someone you’re not going to listen to them is just saying nothing, but then responding with enthusiasm when someone else makes the suggestion you just made. But I do remember a tenure-track “colleague” who ended a list-serv reply to an adjunct colleague with “Let us be dead to one another.” Hoo boy.
ReplyDeleteMICHAEL: "Let us be dead to one another"---that's a CLASSIC!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was eighteen, my father wrote to me,
"My obligations to you have been fulfilled."
He was an academic--I think that explains the stilted formal language.
Thanks, Fresca; I need to see Magnolia! I also love Philip Seymour Hoffman's characterizations and miss him. We Orthodox sing of God's humility: He (God's son) went "down to hell" and released the captives there. Beforehand, he also is portrayed as having extreme stress over being humiliated and killed. I think the humiliation part gets lost on people. It's what PSH's character is going through in the scene you shared. Fear of that leads to academic responses. It's also known as going the extra mile for another.
ReplyDeleteI think, just from my own little brain and experiences, that a matriarchy has as much potential for cold, academic responses as a patriarchy. Because humans.
Um, I'm just seeing I mis-read "heirarchy" as "patriarchy" (I wondered why that was relevant...). Sorry! Never mind that last paragraph.
ReplyDeleteEarhart book...very cool.
ReplyDeleteBB, not cool.