Since my last post, things have been happening rapidly. Good things, mind you, but they've made me introspective, as change often does. So now I figure it's time to share.
A couple years ago, I was a vibrant, happy-go-lucky gal with a waitressing job in a fine-dining restaurant I loved and a dream of one day opening my own restaurant. I also bounced about cemeteries with my camera taking pictures of everything that would hold still for a fraction of a second. I was, in short, a whole different woman.
Then one day, I got the news that I was going to essentially be laid off from that job I loved so much. I was devastated, but being a survivor, I soldiered on and got a job managing a store in a local fast-food chain.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Being the over-achiever that I am, I excelled through the training program, acing every test I was given and generally being the golden child. There were very high expectations for me to power myself through the ranks and into upper management quickly. The trouble was, I really and truly hated it. Culture shock had set in and wasn't letting go. I was disgusted by the food, the employees and the customers alike. And it truly hurt my feelings to have fallen so far so fast.
Despite having been the golden child through training, and despite the high expectations my superiors had for me, it felt as if I could do nothing right and it began to weigh heavily on me. Between the stress of the job itself and the wonky hours (getting up at 3am for morning shifts, then having to close the next night at midnight), I was beginning to crack.
Six months in, I was in my store, having a particularly rough night. My staff wasn't listening and the customers were particularly awful. Things came to a head when a woman came roaring in from the drive-thru lane screaming that her fries were cold and disgusting. Though I offered to replace them, she continued to throw a hissy fit and finally threatened me with physical violence. I wasn't about to take that sort of behavior from anyone. I told her she needed to leave before I called the police. When threatened with police action, she left, grumbling the whole way. I was shaken. People get psycho over their french fries, apparently. A few minutes later, an employee decided he was going to test me by refusing to do what I had asked (which was simply to restock the paper products before going home), and the conflict escalated to a screaming match that resulted in me firing the boy. Once that was done, I was a mess.
I don't remember the next thing that went wrong that night. I have no memory of the straw that broke the camel's back. Shortly after I fired the unruly employee, I found myself sitting on the office floor with the door locked, bawling my eyes out on the phone with my immediate supervisor. I had snapped. I had reached the point where I could take no more.
That was the night I had a nervous breakdown. In the end, I was given a week off to recover, transferred stores and stepped down from management, but I was broken. In the weeks that followed, I realized that something inside me had gone dead. I was hollow, fragile, and more prone to extreme anxiety than ever before. I soldiered on nevertheless, hoping that in time I'd get better and enjoy life again. That never happened.
One morning in late November, after a lengthy search in vain to find another job that wasn't going to kill me, I woke up for my morning shift (yeah, still 3am) with the idea in my head that perhaps it was time to get an education and get out of the restaurant business. I had no idea yet what I wanted to study, but I knew I had to do something. My first thought was culinary school. I'd been wanting to go to culinary school for years, be a chef, open my own restaurant. My experience with the fast-food chain, however, had completely killed off any desire I had to ever run another restaurant. So that was out.
Eventually I came to the idea that I would study cosmetology, since it's only a year-long program and it seemed like fun. So I thought I would get my cosmo license and be a hairdresser while I worked on a bachelor's degree in something else.
So I got my duckies in a row, got a Pell grant, got registered, found a new (and incredibly awesome) part-time job from home, and put in my two weeks' notice at the restaurant.
When the semester started, I was still a hollow, fragile mess, but my life was going to change forever when I walked into the first day of class.
More backstory for you later.
No comments:
Post a Comment