Write What You Know

Or simply transcribe your life

Ah, the opportunities that come from a crisis are really something, aren’t they? When managers leave in droves and corporate is really scrambling to replace bodies, that’s usually when it’s my time to shine.

I just wish that I would’ve paused and asked myself why managers were leaving in the first place. Of course, the lure of a new name badge, desk, and a dollar more an hour in pay was just too alluring. You understand.

Looking back, I neatly documented it in my comic.

This was a phone conversation rather than a meeting. Still….what?

I worked at a major company that, like many major companies, had major problems. They were unintentionally playing musical chairs with the district manager in my region. (Quick aside: it’s more fun to play musical chairs when it’s intentional.) There was a reason that they played this game. Nobody wanted the job.

So District Manager A made me an Interim Manager.

The Tabby at my store was convinced that I wasn’t coming back. I was convinced that I was. Tabby threw me a going away party.

The new store was rough. Right off the highway. It had a wide variety of customers, many of whom liked to yell. I liked the workers there, but they would while away the workday by gossiping about people I had never met, and others that they had never met either. It takes a certain personality type to gossip about coworkers at another store that you haven’t met. These were such people.

Ok, there wasn’t a Gayle at this store. Gayle was somebody who I worked with years ago at the library. I liked Gayle. She had a great personality. Sadly, Gayle is no longer with us.

Why did I toss this strip into the story? Clearly, not as a tribute to Gayle. I think my brain was short circuited from the stress.

I’m hopping around a bit, because this did go on for…what was it supposed to be? Two weeks? Hahaha…oh, that’s funny. No, it dragged on forever. Two weeks was just some sort of placeholder in the paperwork.

Speaking of paperwork, one of my first tasks was to update an endless stream of binders. I’m still not sure what was so important about the binders. The company was a bit binder-obsessed.

Keep in mind that I was never formally trained as a manager. I never completed their six week program. In fact, I wasn’t even an assistant manager long enough to complete their training program. I had gone from being a normal worker to a store manager in less than a year.

Also keep in mind that I was doing this for one of the biggest companies in the world. Surely they have their act together if they’re that big, right?

My god, those binders were time-consuming. I’m sure as I type this that there are many binders, still there, in desperate need of updating.

Yeah, this was me. We are on District Manager B now.

In real life the job of Manager for this store was still an open position. District Manager B was the one accepting applications for the job of manager at the store I was managing, so I applied for the job. Why not? I was already managing the store. Might as well get more money. I was kind of nervous about it as I submitted my application.

District Manager B ghosted me. I never heard a word about my application. He announced the new guy during one of these ZOOM meetings.

Some guy was coming over from Pennsylvania, and he was having trouble finding a new apartment. They needed me to stay longer.

I had to give my first rating to an employee that I had worked with for a couple of weeks. This is a wish-fulfillment strip. In reality I think I marked her down as “swell”.

Ah, and here I introduce Winter Sun. Winter Sun is like April Bloom. The reason he’s like April Bloom is because the guy in real life was the complete opposite. He ignored me when I first came into the store and I didn’t realize he was there.

He wound up being a nice guy who was young and ambitious, but perhaps a bit nervous. He was one of these guys who was very intense and memorized the rules like his life depended on it. He also only needed four hours of sleep a night. As a result, I think he helped out at every store in the district.

I was still trying to figure out those binders.

There are times when your life is moving in a direction without any effort on your part, and you have to swim against the current to change course. I chose not to swim because I really wanted to see where this was going.

At this point we were on District Manager C and I was resigned to going back to my old store.

In the strip, Tabby rescued Penny and wheeled her back to her old store. In real life, District Manager C sent me to manage yet a third store as I was literally leaving to go back to the old store.

And why not? After all, I had proven myself. At what, I’m not sure, but I think I had proven that I would drive to whichever store they sent me. It definitely wasn’t binder organization.

In this strip, Penny is saying what I said in real life. I was just going with the flow.