I wrote this back in 2007. I republish it here, with a few edits, to test the Substack posting system.
For those of us not blessed (or cursed) with trust funds, rich parents or other forms of independent wealth, the salad days of our teenage years and early twenties are more often than not filled with a succession of demeaning, badly paid and otherwise unpleasant jobs. The upshot of this, besides the meager wages, is the collection of interesting stories and valuable lessons gathered along the way. I myself did everything from selling Kirby vacuum cleaners to turning a wrench at Jiffy Lube. Sadly, the latter job ended after a mere eight days after I was informed by the district manager that I was "not Jiffy Lube material".
However, he story and lesson I want to impart to you today isn't mine. It belongs to my co-worker. Let's call him Bob, since that's actually his name. His early work history is even more interesting and colorful than mine. Bob's got a lot of stories and they're almost all hysterical. Of all the stories he's told me, this one is my favorite.
Back in the day, Bob had a job working as a cook at a local eatery in the small seaside village of Port Jefferson. It was the summer and the joint was busy all the time, but especially on the weekends when it was jam packed. Now Bob's a bit of a goof, but he's smart and hard-working and this little restaurant was very lucky to have him. Good cooks are hard to come by and Bob gave up almost all of his nights and weekends that summer slinging hash for the man.
Some of Bob's friends weren't so lucky. They had jobs as servers and buss boys and were generally easily replaced. Often they were let go for very minor infractions or because they "just weren't working out".
The management had a particularly interesting way of letting staff go. In the kitchen was a schedule with all the workers' names and their days and hours for the week. If the manager thought someone wasn't working out, they'd go the schedule with a Sharpie and draw a thick, black line through the row with that person's name. They wouldn't call them and tell them that they'd done this. They wouldn't take them aside and explain why they'd been let go. When you showed up for work, looked at the schedule and saw the black line through your name, that was when you'd find out the you were gone. If you came to work and started working without looking at the schedule, the manager would simply say, "Did you check the schedule?". That was it.
As you can expect, many people found this pretty upsetting. A lot of the workers were teenagers and this was one of their first jobs. One girl of Bob's acquaintance broke down and cried when she saw the black mark through her name. Management thought this was pretty amusing. I guess they figured that it kept people on their toes since nobody knew where the axe would fall next.
Bob had finished his degree before the summer started and had been sending out resumes and going on interviews. As the summer drew to a close, he got an offer from one of our local defense contractors and accepted it. Since he had worked almost every weekend all summer, he figured he'd quit the restaurant job and enjoy a weekend with his girlfriend before he started his real job. So he went to the restaurant, looked at the schedule, took a marker, drew a black line through his name and left without saying a word.
Friday night rolls around. Like I said, during the weekend the place was jam-packed with people and, since was one of the last weekends of the summer, it was even more busy than a regular Friday.
Of course Bob isn't there and the place is in chaos. The manager calls Bob at home and starts cursing him out.
"Where the f-ck are you? Why aren't you f-cking here? We're f-cking swamped!"
"I don't know why you're calling me. I don't work there anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"Did you check the schedule?"
The manager puts the phone down to go look.
"Who put a line through your name? I didn't do that."
"I did."
"You can't do that!"
"Sure I can.", Bob says and hangs up the phone.
Two things made me think of this particular story today. The first is that we've gone through a reorganization here at work. Management dropped the bomb last Friday and it becomes effective this coming Monday. A lot of people are pretty unhappy. Sections have been combined and supervisors demoted. The one guy who really know how everything works and what to do when things go all pear-shaped has been demoted...again. Nobody was consulted or spoken to before the new org chart came out.
None of this affects me directly, but I feel bad for all the people that it did. A lot of these people helped build this place. They've sweated blood to keep it running. They've answered the phone at 3AM, threw on their clothes and trudged in half-asleep to get this beast back up and running again. In the end, what do they get? Did you check the schedule.
And in other news, Circuit City fires 3400 of their employees because they get paid too much. Apparently, these $11-$18/hour fat cats, many of who have worked in these stores for years, are sucking the life out of the retailer and must go. CC will graciously allow their highly paid ex-employees to reapply for their jobs...in ten weeks. Of course then they'll be starting at the bottom of the ladder, but them's the breaks.
I'd like to think that what goes around comes around and the people who make these decisions will eventually suffer the consequences. Unfortunately, that almost never seems to be the case. Sometimes, like Bob, we can get a little, sweet, temporary revenge, but more often than not it's our names that have the big black line through them when you least expect it.
Keep checking the schedule.
Thank you Chuchundra from 2007. Well done, as usual.
For some context. Circuit City filed for bankruptcy about a year and a half after this post was initially published.
The Story Of Bob
I feel like as a teenager/young adult working these kinds of jobs, I learned way more from the Bobs of the workplace than anyone else. You start out the girl crying when she sees the schedule, but if you can stick it out, best case scenario you end up Bob. Great story!
I had a tiny moment a bit like this once (though less vivid of a story), when an employer screwed me over. I got injured working there, and it was my manager's fault, but the only witness was that same manager, who lied about the whole thing to cover his own incompetence. His boss (who I fully believe knew he was lying) nevertheless told me I had to come in, despite the injury. I told her that wasn't happening and that I quit. She insisted that I had to give two-weeks notice and that I had to either come in or get my shifts covered. Since I didn't need the reference, I said, "Actually, I don't. You see, Washington is what's called an 'at-will' work state, which means...[you can pound sand, essentially, because I don't have to do jack for you]." She was left pissed and spluttering, because she obviously didn't expect any of us to know our rights. It didn't help with me being injured and out a job, but it sure was satisfying.