Breaking All The Rules

So what's the first rule of blogging then? Don't talk about your job, right?

I hardly think that's fair. Jobs are the source of so much of what goes on in our lives. Many people spend more time at work than with their families. It's hard to avoid blogging about work. Still, I've avoided talking about my job, not that it brings anything intellectually stimulating to the table. Although, I do come home sometimes with wildly amusing tales that occasionally plumb the depths of human stupidity. I suppose I've been wary of skating into that arena because my job is neither as cool nor impressive as many that other bloggers possess. And while I'm certainly not ashamed of what I do, there is sometimes a lingering sense that there are going to be people who think I should be. Like I said before, it puts food on the table and pays the rent, and I don't plan on doing it forever.

So, I'm a restaurant manager.

If you didn't know already. Sure, it may be menial, but there's always something going on and you get to meet new people, even if there are the occasional physical hazards (I electrocuted myself yesterday, lightly). And there's all the HR-esque stuff I get to do: interviewing wackos, hiring the least weird of the weirdos, firing people, sorting out employee squabbles, and having the occasional Come To Jesus Talk (a CTJT if you will) with people who need it.

It's not a bad gig. We get to do all kinds of stuff you can't get away with in 'professional' work environments, like the time they retaliated against one guy by putting his street clothes in a bucket of water in the freezer. Or the time a couple of the guys sharpened a broken broom handle into a spear and were throwing past the office into a stack of boxes. Stuff like that. Or one time I made a series of little snowmen, doing the Y.M.C.A., on a window ledge. When I came back five minutes later they were all decapitated (and splattered with meat blood for effect [Sorry vegetarians]).

Oh, then there's the high school students. Oh, those silly, silly people. They're making the transition from the sheltered world their parents and teachers have kept them in to the real world with (for some) their first tentative steps into the job market. (Okay, some aren't that sheltered, but a lot of them are.) Of course, a few of them don't seem to understand that I'm not their parent or teacher. I don't have to be their friend or even like them. I'm their boss, and I'm not going to coddle them, and I'm not here to make sure everything is going to be all right. Okay, that sounded kind of jerkish, but it's true. I will be friendly and helpful and supportive, but I'm not going to hold anybody's hand.

The point of all this? I'm not entirely sure, but now I can regale you with work stories, past and present, with out having to give a lengthy back story. I guess.