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2003-05-29 - 2:08 a.m. Saying Goodbyes to John Went to work today, John called me into the office and said, "Hey, have a seat while I ruin your day." He's going back to Hawaii, it seems; there's a decent prospect of making a hundred grand a year running a couple easy stores there and he will definetly be pulling as much disposable income as he has here in Washington. Also he will be living in Hawaii, not Washington, which is worthwhile. And his kid misses Hawaii and his wife misses Hawaii and wants to get her PhD. at the University of H., and he misses Hawaii and his father-in-law misses them and offered them half of their house for $400/month and .. it would be fairly stupid to turn it down to live in Washington with no friends and no surf and no sun for less money. He will be selling his truck and possibly his old Porsche ("I got it so I could say I owned a Porsche. I wish the doors locked.") and his house and much of his furniture and .. ai. I am at a loss for anything, words included. Two weeks, and the best boss I've ever had, as well as the only good friend I've made that didn't start out as an online-type person in six years, will be gone. I excused myself, leaned on a wall in the bathroom, and cried a bit; it is not often, even on the rare occasions that I cry, that I cannot stop when I feel that I need to, and this was one of those twice-rarified occasions. My company bought me dinner tonight because I am no longer particularly concerned about the bottom line. I thought about accepting the promotion that would have given me John's job after he left, but decided I didn't really want to be the first person whose performance was compared to his -- let someone else look like a failure by comparison first. I am acquainted with all of the managers in the district and most of the assistance managers, by reputation at least and usually by fleeting contact at this meeting or another; none of them can handle a store of this volume without snapping like a twig. I am not looking forward to the complaints from the staff about the new manager, whoever it may be. If you are ever a new manager in a new store and know no one, learn what the rules really are before you start fucking with things -- reading the manual does not mean that you know the rules, nor does it mean that you know how best to communicate them to the people at this locale. People do not like change, and since it is your responsibility to communicate as effectively as possible with the people in your employ, it is also your responsibility to a lesser degree to minimize the changeover shock. Do not change things that do not need changing just to show your authority. Do not micromanage to show that you know what you are doing and that you are superior. Do not reinvent the wheel in an attempt to demonstrate your usefulness. Do not juggle schedules so you can feel like a manager. Keep your eyes and ears open; there are always people whose opinions are constant, and then there are some who are actually making fresh observations when they mention something with the tone of a complaint -- these are the ones to pay attention to in the future. We have a fair idea of who the next store manager will be, assuming he wants to abandon the work he's put into the store he was assigned to rebuild from the smoking disaster it used to be. He most likely will, since we're less of a commute, which counts for more to a lot of people in the corporate world. I thought about giving my two-week notice at the same time as John's -- samurai who fail to protect their master commit suicide or become ronin, it seemed the least I could do. But it is an irrational impulse, and one that I will suppress until I see what the future job-world looks like. I like my crew, also, and would not feel particularly well about abandoning them to the winds of whatever fate an inept manager felt like handing them. I will be taking over scheduling starting Friday so that when the new manager comes in, there is not a whole lot they can screw up unless they decide they feel the need to flex administrative muscle by shoving me off of my tasks, which would result in them having one fewer manager. Perhaps two -- I do not know what Darla's attatchment to this job would be without John at the helm, but I suspect that it would be minimal. Loyalty seems an altogether too-rare quality. I think I began admiring it when I noticed its' absence in myself. Can we really thoroughly and lastingly admire anything without beginning to resemble it? I seem to have developed it, whatever the case may be. This is, no doubt, terrifically interesting for all of you. I will see what I can do later tonight to make another encyclopaedic post and bump this one off the front page with wit and verve, but right now I am simply filled with uncertainty about my future and dismay that my remaining respected friend is leaving. "I'm sorry," he said, "I didn't think you'd take it so hard." I know he wasn't apologizing for leaving, just for telling me in front of someone else; I find it difficult to maintain a managerial image in tears, you see, and my exit was entirely too hasty for my taste. Tears are things you show to people you trust, when there's the option, and I trust no one but John in that building. I genuinely do not know. I get so caught up in work and what goes on there that it is difficult to maintain a rational emotional state and to make decisions based on an accurate perception of events instead of the WORK IS MY LIFE perspective. Even if we get a bad manager, what can it really do to me? A word from me, and they will be talking to some higher-ups who believe that if they can only say enough nice things to me I will make their stores happy places full of birdsong and traditional folk dances. I am more or less immune to the bullshit that an inexperienced or inept manager is capable of spooning into a situation, but I .. ai. I do not want to watch the Store That John Built fall apart, and I think that is nearly inevitable. I am a good manager, and with incredible expenditure of effort and the full cooperation of the rest of the management staff, I could hold it together, but it is not worth being exhausted at the end of the day in a home by myself. If I were doing it to support a family, like John, I would have something to treasure on my days off, to have and to be held by and all the rest of that crap that I don't think much about except in moments of weakness or when I'm actually trying to click with the part of my brain that can't stand being at a job and refuses to participate unless I'm at home, in the dark, and clicking away on the keyboard. He's the only boss I've ever had who encouraged me to succeed at potential cost to himself -- he wasn't going to go any higher in the company, since due to a fluke in the bonus program he'd make less money, but I could always skip over him and then he'd be left with one less competent manager and a much more complicated life. I respect that kind of concern for someone else's life immensely. We all sat around and stared at walls tonight -- there will be no replacing John, and we all know it. "At least," said Mike, "this won't cause as many morale issues as when Jason left." Jason was a manager from the extreme opposite side of the spectrum who snorted lines of coke in the office and hired only attractive teenage girls, then slept with as many of them as possible. He was fired when he was arrested on a combination of drug charges, statutory rape, and failure to pay child support and consequently failed to show up for work for three days in a row. He was popular in the way that loose managers often are -- the universally permissive parent. John earned our respect. I must have looked like I was going to start growling at him, because Mike clarified, "I just mean that Jason was fired and John is leaving voluntarily, and that if the new manager is some jerkwad who decides that verbally abusing John will win him some points, I'd only expect 75% of the crew to walk instead of about 90% for Jason." ..ai. And yet I'm really not taking this as badly as I would have a few years ago. I've learned some things about loss and coping with it, and despite the fact that there's the persistant urge to just turn in my two-week notice and float my life out there without a job or a prospect or insurance or any way to possibly prevent my getting evicted and eventually starving I'll still go to work when I'm scheduled and do what I can to make things go smoothly. I just won't be trying as hard as I was for John. I'll be writing something for him in the next two weeks and probably leaving it on his doorstep before he moves. I hate goodbyes -- mostly because they mean I'm not going to see someone again for a very long time; otherwise there wouldn't really be the necessity of a goodbye, eh? I get some phrases stuck in my head sometimes and they roll around until they find a home. Some of them never really find a paragraph or a page that they feel really at home with, so I stick them in DesktopTextualityFrags and let them ferment, and eventually they become appropriate for something, somewhere and I use them and then they can finally exit my head. too much noize Jhonen said. I think the fragment that will end up working for John's goodbye will most likely be ..and good luck to you as you make your way I will think about what will surround this and get back to it later.
DLand |