Training

Every day has a beginning. Every car has an unread manual, and every job has a training. Yesterday I had mine.

Training. It’s all about learning to do things right.  There are right ways and wrong ways of handling things. Right ways to start the day, start your car, and start your job.

I've attended training several times on several subjects. Old dog, new tricks? Not a problem here. Give me paper; I will pee. See?  I even attended college for four years of training. When I graduated, they gave me a ceremony and a sheet of paper.

“Bad Rob! Bad Rob!  Not on the dean’s leg!”

Training. Every training I've attended has had one thing in common: other trainees.

Until now.

That's right. Yesterday's retail training was created for a pee army of one: me.  I show up; human resources shows me a room, a computer, and a set of headphones. This is how I trained to serve customers.

"To serve customers! It's a cookbook!"

Ok, not really, but at least that makes sense. Ask any farm-raised kid, you don't want to get too familiar with your meal. You get friendly, and they get harder to kill. That’s what one on one computer training is good for.

But when it comes to people training to work with people, I don’t get it. A computer can create a composite situation. It can show you how to address computers.  It can’t create a human experience. Dealing with people is tricky, and every situation is different. Using a computer alone? No papers, no people, kind of a piss poor idea if you ask me.

They didn’t. They set me in a room and told me, “Follow the screen instructions.”

Now I'm not disparaging my new employer or even suggesting they create a cannibal line of human byproducts. As far as retail folk go, I like my employer. I shopped with them before I worked for them. There's just something weird about learning customer service alone.

"Please press 1 for 'hello,' 2 for 'may I help you,' and 3 for sleep behind the fixtures."

Half way through the training, my head started nodding and my eyes spun.  Maybe this was a trap. They don’t want to train me as much as they want to brainwash me.  That concerned me;  I like my dirty mind.  I needed a break.  I needed to pee.

Luckily there was a paper in the corner. After watering down the news, I recognized something I hadn’t seen before.

Did you know that people are marching in our streets?

I had no idea until I stopped to wet the roses.  I’d been too wrapped in my own unemployment and foreclosure to notice the world around me was falling apart. According to the trickling pages between my moist fingers, that is exactly what the people were marching about.  Well, unemployment, foreclosure, world falling apart, and several other Armageddon issues.  Environment, global warming, scratchy toilet tissue; if it dissatisfied, people marched.

Now I don’t want to sound bitchy, but I’m a registered grumpy old man. I’ve got a lot to bitch about.  Why didn’t I get a personal invite to this pity party? I mean I lived almost twenty years in Los Angeles. I know a thing or two about entitlement.  Now I’m being shunned by the disenfranchised?  Whassup with that?

“Sorry Rob.  You’re not pretty enough for our revolution. And did I mention that you’re in retail?”

The ink dripping in my hand said this was the future of social upheaval. I have to admit, I threw up a little in the back of my mouth and took a computer break to weep for my generation. 

See, we’re screwed and we don’t even know it. It’s not our fault; we haven’t had any social injustice response training. We were too young when our parents took it to the streets. We’ve gone almost forty years growing fat at the man’s table. Now our revolution muscles are atrophied and we’re expected to march.

Some of us want to do it cuz it’s cool.  I mean, we’re the blank generation. We got skipped. This is our chance.

Others want to do it because of parental pressure. We’ve got our mom and dad telling us that we need social drama to live. A legacy. A cause to rally behind, otherwise Gen X will mark the spot of what could have been. We’ll be the generation of coulda-shoulda-woulda.  And what’s scarier than a hoard overbearing baby boomer mom-and-pops bearing down on us like a toxic guilt cloud?

“My son could have been a dissident but instead he chose to be an architect.  We’re so ashamed.”

On the other front we’ve got the backup generation behind us pee-pee-shuffling for their chance at the bowl.  They’re unsatisfied with the litter we’ve left in their way and they’re not afraid to pee on a few legs to make their point. They’ve listened to Grandma Grandpa and Rockstar Video Games. Boomers say, you need some civil disobedience, and according to Grand Theft Auto, that begins by driving over a few hookers. Next Geners would march, but their Bluetooth controllers only send a signal so far. And they’re pissed at Gen X for that limited power.

If only there was some precedent for the struggle of today’s societal woes.

“There’s no wi-fi. Let them use dial-up!”

Look at us! We’re Gen X. We’re the confused generation in the middle.  We’ve made the best of what we can of the world that was given to us. The generation before didn’t teach us to share; now the generation behind us wants to bite us in the ass. We want to do right, but we don’t know how. Our movies tell us that “Greed is good.” We want to please everybody. We’ll march. Please just stop calling us slackers.

So here we are, expected to lead a social revolution, and we can’t pick a cause.  We’re spoiled children and we want it all, but we can’t agree on what “all” is. 

The closest we’ve come to a focal point is money. Is that really what we want? Are we so lost that we think money will cure it all.  Cyndi Lauper said that money changed everything. She also liked to bop. I don’t think her version of bopping is appropriate for a social demonstration message.  Although our parent’s generation did chant, “make love not war.” In our alone with a computer generation, maybe bopping is the answer.

But we’re doing this on Wall Street. So is our statement that we want their money? Do we really want to trade places with the bankers?  Did my generation forget to read Animal Farm?

I don’t even think we watched the cartoon. Maybe if it was an Anime we’d have seen it. We love everything that comes from Japan; they work so hard.

We also love commercials.  They’re the anthems slogans and marches of our generation. While previous generations had to rely on pamphleteers to give them liberty or give them death, my generation finds their voice in a J. G. Wentworth commercial, “It’s my money, and I need it now!” 

Look up irony in the dictionary. You’ll see these marcher pictured there. Marchers are using money-men slogans to show their disapproval of the money-men. What’s next, picketing Wendy’s yelling, “Where’s the beef?”

We all have a beef. We just can’t agree on what it is or who to blame for it. We just know that it’s not us, so it has to be somebody we perceive as having what we want.

Without focus, this revolution won’t go anywhere. Nobody with power will take us seriously. When was the last time you marched into your boss’s office with that kind of game plan?

“What do you want?”

“Stuff.”

“Uhm, OK…”

And what if we do get enough propulsion behind our revolutionary jets? What if we do overthrow the system? What next? We’ve then got a disorganized crowd getting nothing done and helping nobody.  We’ll wallow in red tape of such proportions that a month’s supply of Cialis couldn’t help our performance. Is this what we want for our Gen X legacy? 

If it ain’t fixed, we’ll break it further.

Now don’t get me wrong. I know I won’t see Social Security. I know I’ve been released by an employer for repurposing by a society that can’t figure out what to do with my talents. I’ve lost a home to a bank that wouldn’t work out a payment plan, because it made better sense to them that Freddie Mac would buy back the property at full price (so that Freddie Mac could turn around and sell it for half the value they paid), leaving me alone with in a pit with my second mortgage lions hungry for monetary morsels.

I believe that we’re gambling on a system rigged against the common man, but if we’re going to stand up and make it right, we need to pick our battles, and strike with focus and make demands that the system can understand.

Think about the battle of---Sorry, I forgot my demographic. Remember that scene in Serenity, where Malcolm pisses off the Reavers to drag them into the battle against the alliance?  Well Serenity is the focal point.  It’s the object, dragging the force of everything else behind it. Without the Serenity catalyst, nothing happens, and without focus, a gen-x revolution is nothing but a bunch of headless chickens wandering about.

“I won't get et! You shoot me if they take me…Well, don't shoot me first!”

There’s something else that our revolution forgets. Revolution takes time. Most everybody standing up for our “benefit” is sitting down in the job line. People aren’t taking vacations time to do this. They’re taking unemployment. Or, unfortunately, for those 99ers, they’re taking nothing but Baby Boomer contributions, stoking the fire. 

I’m a little grumpy about this.  I’ve been forced back into a life of retail, because I can’t live out my dream.  I’m sitting in a room alone with a computer, because I need money.  There are people out there marching who refuse to stoop to the levels I’ve had to stoop. What makes them better than me?  There are jobs.  Trust me when I say that they suck, but they do keep us alive. So while I’m practicing to ring up a person with money for a paycheck of little money, some dissatisfied x-er is taking money from another person to sit on the steps of Wall Street.  You know what’s even worse? Both of us are probably getting paid by the same source:the same people making money on Wall Street. See, they don’t really care about the people on the street.  If they did, they’d have done something about it long ago.  We’re not hurting them.  Without a focus we’re gnats of nuisance.  It’s not until you touch their money that you’ll have their attention.  Right now you’re serving their purpose by stealing the focus from what’s really important.

Take a tip from me my riotous friends. Training is important, so is appropriate training: learn what’s important and focus on that. Without that, you haven’t got a paper to piss on. 

Now where was I?

The computer says, repeat after me, “Would you like to put that on your in-house credit account?”

The Interview

Today I interviewed for my seasonal retail job.

I attended my big retail reunion. Everybody was there. Scampering manager, paper shuffling human resources lady and computer savvy assistant.

“…but it wasn't a dream! It was a place! And you - and you - and you - and you were there.”

"Are you nervous?" asked my queen, before I left, as I stared into the mirror.

"No," I assured her, cinching my tie with a really cool dimple just under the Windsor knot. My hands were steady, my mind was sure. Sure that I didn’t need to worry about a retail interview. I could show up dead and know equal excitement.

“More brains…”

Still, once I’m in the car and down the road, the coffee in my veins offered more concerns than mindless zombism. I jittered with antici…………pation . It wasn’t an “I won’t get the job” jitter--okay, it was exactly that, but for different reasons than you might think. The coffee tapped Morse code reasonable factoids on a left brain node, reminding me that interviewers are anything but constants. This sent my right brain into a scenario free-fall. What if I interviewed with some twenty-something lackey, as familiar with the interview process as Zsa Zsa Gabor was familiar with Motel 6?

Left brain analysis followed:

Q: What's worse than landing a retail job?

A: Being rejected by a retail job.

Now both brain sides are spiraling into chaos. I speed past my turn-off. Great, now I might be late. Nothing makes a better interview first opinion.

Shut up, coffee.

I rein my brain back in, turning all control over to my ego. 

“Bout time,” he says, slapping both lobes into submission as I park the car.

It’s funny. Once I walk in the door, it's like I never left: cosmetics on the bottom floor, home store on the top.

"Where are the elevators?"

That’s not me. That's a customer asking me. Yeah, apparently I look like I belong here. My ego raises my right arm, pointing to the elevator alcove to the back of the building. “It’s over there ma’am.”

It’s time to disengage the ego.

He did his job though. Its 11, I'm on time for my interview.

"They're running late, someone will be with you shortly. Have a seat."

"Thanks." I take one.

So does Lidia, the 11:30 and Bonnie, the 12:00.  The good news is that there are two more seats, should the interviewers current activities run later than 1:00. The HR woman mentions that department managers are conducting the interviews.

Great, that’s just what I was worried about. The coffee in my veins starts brain tapping again.  I try to ignore it. Caffeine is my left shouldered devil whispering failure.  I concentrate on the world around me instead. Somebody’s no longer working in one department.  A manager comes up to get the hours released so that anybody else can work them.

Shortly after 12:00, a side door opens beside the HR counter and a small blonde woman steps out, “Robert?”

I stand, and smile.  I’d like not to, but it’s like the smile is ingrained.  What kind of weird water torture did they do to me the last time I worked retail that I can’t stand without smiling? What other weird idiosyncrasies are programmed in my brain?

” I think I’m getting this rash. Oh!  I forgot my nametag!”

Greeter woman’s nametag says “Nancy.” Nancy leads me down a long corridor. We pass several rooms with people sitting behind desks.  I don’t know these people, but I know who they are. These people are the “executives.” The dukes and duchesses of the retail world.   

Almost at the end of the corridor is a small room.  Nancy peeps her head in the door and says, 

“This’ll work. Come on in Robert.”

I won’t bore you with the interview details. Only one of us should be bored through that. Nancy asked me hypotheticals like, “Tell me about a time when you saw somebody, a friend or a fellow employee, do something dishonest.  How did you handle it?”

I didn’t even think about my response.  The words flew out my mouth like a flock of truisms (yes, truisms travel in flocks and yes, these flocks were spewing from my mouth).  She nodded and moved to the next easy question which was answered by another flock. I was astonished. This was the first time in a long time that anything other than a murder of crows came near my lips.

Fifteen minutes in the interview, Nancy leaves the room.  “I need to check something.  Don’t worry, I’m hiring you!”

Trust me that was the least of my worries.

I know?  I sound like such a pompous jerk!  If you were them would you hire me? Me neither! They’ll let anybody run interviews in retail!  Still, Nancy loves me, and I don’t know why.

Nancy returns with another woman who introduces herself as Betsy. Betsy is the manager I saw at the HR counter asking to get hours opened. She has a position in suits she needs filled.  It’s a commission department and she wants to know if I want it?

After what Nancy’s told me about the non-commissioned hourly wage, commission doesn’t sound too bad. Still, commission is the reason I left retail. I don’t want more sales pressure.  I just want to make a little spare money.

Betsy and I discuss her opening. Betsy’s a great manager. I’d love to work for her. She’s honest. She knows her peoples strengths and their weaknesses. We both agree that when it comes to her opening, I might be the weakest link.  See, although Betsy’s great, her department is what I’ve known in my past retail life as a shark tank. They smell blood, and leave no trace of their prey.

I’ve worked the tank. I’ve been the shark.  No more. As I explain to Betsy, my strengths are building relationships with the customers and the fellow employees—and this part I don’t tell her—even if I’m not planning on being here forever.

So Betsy and I shake hands and agree to stay in touch. 

After Betsy leaves, another woman comes in to talk with Nancy.  There’s some confusion over Lidia and Bonnie, the other two girls interviewing. Nancy wants to interview the one who’s applying for a cosmetics job, and wants the other woman to interview the other. Unfortunately, there is some confusion as to which interviewee is which.

“Bonnie’s the cosmetics girl. Lidia is the other interview.” That’s me. I know the answer. I was sitting in the HR office with both these girls. My ego’s burst his bonds with the “I told you so” tone.

Nancy and the other woman look at me then at each other, and then the problem is solved. The other woman leaves. Yup that’s me. Retail Rob: problem solver. Sigh, I feel myself slipping back into a skin I shed so long ago. 

I try to shake it. Looking at Nancy, I ask, “so when does this seasonal position end?”

Nancy stands and offers a hand and her big retail smile, “This isn’t a seasonal position. We’re hiring you as a regular employee. Welcome aboard.”

I feel an itch in my chest. I think I’m getting a rash. My left brain reminds me that it’s not a rash. It’s only that I’m missing my nametag.

The Job of Humility

"You act like you already have it," my queen says.

"That's because I do," I reply.

That's right, after two-and-a-half years of "freelance work" (pronounced "unemployment") I've got a job interview I know I'll nail. How do I know the job is mine? Because I don't want it.

In all my blog-long days, I've aimed my little pointer at a wall-poster portraying a writer as seen page 1543 of Webster’s New World Dictionary and said, “That’s me.”

“Rob I thought I asked you to keep your pointer private in public.”

In public or private, I’m a writer. I’ve soul searched, career searched and word searched. Paid or unpaid, a writer, that’s who I am.

That's why tomorrow's seasonal retail sales associate interview transfuses my vein’s blood to bile. Trust me. There’ll be no writing there. It’s all smiles and serving the whims of a less than adoring public.

“Do you have this same muffler in a microfiber teal?”

“Well, it’s called ‘the great grey wooly.’ I’m gonna say no.”

“Why don’t you check anyway?”

Ready to serve…

"I hate retail!” so went my post-collegiate cry, followed by the words, “I will never return!” Notice the audacious pride in my voice. That's how you know I really said it. The mark of a true writer is his proclamations of pure melodrama.

“I’m wounded to the soul!”

“uhm, suck it up honey, it’s called a hangnail.”

“My lifeblood…spills…out…”

“Yeah, I’ll catch that in this great grey wooly thing you brought home.”

So if we move the self-pity train back down the tracks to six months ago, we’ll see my queen and I talking about work: why she does it, and why I don’t. Words are tossed in the air, “writer,” “underappreciated,” “freeloader,” and the like. This is where I walk off in a huff. Right after she suggests I take a “nametag” gig.

"Retail is like saying, 'I failed.'" I say. Unemployed or not, I am not a failure. Once again I proclaim to never see my name punch-stamped and glued to a plastic logo-broach again—ever—never-ever.

“…and I’m here to tell you, that’s a mighty long time.”

So here I am, at the end of a mighty long time feeling mighty disgruntled.

I mean, what the heck? I spent twelve years of my life in retail. I did everything from sales, to stock, to manager. It's why I went to college. Then there's the four years to earn a bachelor's degree, the ten years in another career, and all the lines in-between scrawling out my after school special story. Why the hell would I return to retail?

Because apparently God wants me to.

Yes. For anyone who's read my life, there shouldn't be any confusion: Where God leads, I follow. Usually I follow feet first while my hands claw for finger-holds in the where-I-wanted-to-go tundra.

In the past two years I've clutched for regular work. I'm a writer. Employers need writers, why don't they need me? Their lacking has been my disheartening. In the time I've known the Pirate Queen, she's landed two jobs while I can’t stick one.

That hasn’t stopped me from trying. I've applied for jobs as copywriter, web writer, and even Hallmark writer and still have only gotten one callback.

Roses are red

Violets are blue

You need a job

But we don’t want you.

Happy Unemployment!

Hallmark

And yet (and this is an even more important and yet) writing may be who I am, it may even be who I'm called to be, but it's not feeding my family. My queen makes good money, and it's enough to survive, but it's not enough to pay for one wedding, four tires and uncounted emergencies. We need Rob to get paid.

I've been doing some reading to counter my writing. I read a book on facing giants, like David faced Goliath. At this moment, a job is a big giant staring me down, daring me to work.

One of the chapters in the David book dealt with humility. It talked about looking down on others in lesser standing. Sort of a reverse giant deal. You know, suddenly I’m the giant, and some lesser retail idiot is the—yeah, anyway I don't do that, but I do look at some work being more worthy my time than others. I am, after all, a writer, and writers don't do retail.

But out of work writers do what they have to. I thought of what I could do. I can't get a job, so now what? I remembered the book I was reading. I remembered retail. I remembered humility.

So I said a prayer. I reminded God how much I hated retail, how much I hated working weekends and holidays, and I reminded him how little I could actually make and that I'd need suits. I told him that I would give him my cry, and let him decide.

I applied for Christmas seasonal work, and spent the rest of the day in mourning. By Wednesday God gave me my answer. I'd been invited for an interview.

Now it's my turn to keep up my end. Tomorrow I swallow my pride, and I give the interview that gives me the job. Right now, this is about humility.