The Boy That Sits Over There….

I just came to a realization, literally, one minute ago, that I am in serious denial.

I’ve spent most of my life expecting romance to come in a movie package deal. But when talking about the latest superhero movie “Dawn of Justice”, I had this to say to a co-worker:

“Critics say that people were building it up in their heads and were disappointed when it didn’t match what they thought it should be, but if you go in with no expectations, the movie was great.”

Why am I capable of going to see a movie with this openness, but I don’t use this same mindset for my life? If I can listen to a song, watch a movie, read a book and have a completely blank expectation for how those things will pan out and I’m always genuinely happy at the ending, why can’t I live my life in that state of wonderment and bliss?

I make up in my head what I think a certain scenario should be. Ex. Boy meets girl, talks about deeply personal stuff via messenger, boy asks girl out, relationship ensues. But instead of that being the case, boy just never does anything, girl has to decide if she even likes him and I wind up completely upset over something that I don’t even know exists. Instead I could just let things happen and be happy that I have made a new friend. But of course, my romantically inclined body wants more from everything and everyone. I want the most intense, most amazing love story, I want friendships that will last for 50 years instead of 50 days. I want more than this world has to offer. (Disney reference!)

I need to find a way to open my heart to something that might not be perfect. Messy is not necessarily bad, it’s just not what is expected. And the unexpected can be great. Spontaneity can not be planned, right? Which is something us romantics tend to appreciate.

This is the beginning of me just accepting life as it comes, not planning how things SHOULD be, but letting them happen as they unfold and appreciating those things all the more.

Workplace Internet

I live in constant fear of losing my job.

I am not a terrible worker. I do exactly as I’m told, I give great ideas to my boss and I’m always willing to pitch in. I am the girl that is constantly asking for something else to do, just to keep myself busy. Where my fear comes in is when I have downtime. Idle hands make me a little anxious. I sit in my desk chair after I’ve finished all my work and I wait while my students take their tests. I am expected, at this point, to sit patiently and quietly until a student has a question. Imagine, sitting in a chair, staring at a computer, waiting on someone who is taking a three hour test to need your help. It’s madness, especially for someone as restless as I am. And I have found myself turning to the internet for it’s guidance.

Out of an eight hour day I spend six of them on YouTube. Only two hours of my day is devoted to answering questions, taking pee breaks and snacking on chips from the concessional. The minute someone looks like they are going to ask me a question I jump up to help. I do not use the internet to avoid work, but to make it go by faster with nothing else to do. This act alone is enough to warrant my fear.

I’m not watching porn. I’m not watching anything particularly controversial.  I am usually perusing MineCraft videos and watching Jenna Marbles play with her dogs. It’s mindless and numbing, but it takes up some of the dead time in my work day. Somehow though, it is always seen as a terrible thing in the workplace. I am no doubt looking up different way to murder my coworkers and I obviously do not have enough work to do. Only half of that statement is true. There isn’t enough work for me, but there also is just enough that you need me here. I am terrified that my boss will walk in and be upset that I’m watching StacyPlays lose over and over again to Graser10 in Mineclash.

The moral of this story is: You may lose your job one day because you can’t sit still for a few hours, but do you really want to work someplace that bores you so much that you need to make a new Pinterest board?

The Truth in Longevity.

I’m writing these words with anger driving me. In a few weeks I may not feel the same way, but I want to know how I felt at this exact moment in my life when I read this twenty years from now.

I’ve spent two years in my position. Two grueling, tragic, and downright ridiculous years fighting to love something that I knew I would grow to hate. When I first began this job I looked at it as a new beginning. I was getting to work with people from all around the world, I would be getting valuable experience in a field that matched my personality traits, I would spend my days gabbing to people about their kids and jewelry and not be yelled at later because I wasn’t turning over tables fast enough. It was a new chapter; a new leaf to turn over. And for the first time, I felt like the work I would be doing wouldn’t be a job anymore, but a passion. This was short lived in my opinion. Within three months, most of the employees had quit due to poor management and lack there of and I became the most knowledgeable person in the building. I had to learn things on my own, without training and help. I had to be on the phone with our systems everyday for weeks. I spent so much time learning all that I could so that I could take care of the company that I was so excited to be a part of. Within the first six months I had obtained two raises and numerous praises from our owners about how well I had handled things. I could do no wrong and I excelled in everything I did. This feeling was short lived however.

After a year of being the MVP of the hotel team, I was put on a back burner as we welcomed a new, fully-equipped-for-work-ethics, General Manager into our midst. I was extremely pleased that someone had come in to take some of the weight off my own shoulders and felt even more confident that I was in turn teaching this new woman how to do her job. It was enlightening and educational to work along side her and transform a broken system into what I considered to be a fully functioning atmosphere to be called a hospitable work environment. Everything from that moment forward was truly blissful. We had a team that was nice to each other and went out together after work. We helped each other learn and grow as a team. Our new management right along beside us. Again, this was a short lived feeling.

Do you see the pattern??

In our line of work, or at least in MY line of work, where every happiness is dashed away almost as quickly as it came, it’s hard to stay positive. As soon as our new manager got the hang of our brand, she didn’t need me anymore. I was just a front desk person again. Not being needed or useful began to torment me, so I began coming up with more and more ideas for projects that I would never finish because hearing the words “this is a great idea, but we can’t really do that” became the loudest silence I had ever heard. So I just did my job, day after day, continually repeating the same steps, the same words, the same slow paced environmental tasks that I had to do. I became bored and started finding “unsatisfactory” ways to waste my time. I watched so much YouTube and television. I played countless app games on my phone. I even started this blog whilst sitting behind my desk when I should have been doing something productive on a work scale.

During this downfall of my own productivity, all the others in my team were also on a decline. Within a few months that entire team had moved away, found new jobs, or just left us to do something else. I had an entirely new group of people to be with and while they were and still are great, they are not like the old team. They don’t take care of each other like we did. It’s constant nit-picking and down-grading and outright destruction of emotion. I do love my new co-workers, but the emptiness I feel when I think about them makes me realize that it’s just not the same.

With all this lack of love and kindness from everyone, the change in my shifts from the days to the nights, and the recent news of our General Manager leaving us for a better job (which I am completely excited for her about, though I did cry for a week about it), it’s just shambles now. Pieces of what was left of a once great empire. All the emotions of this are magnified by the lack of people I get to meet on my night shift. I have no audible outlet anymore. I collect my thoughts into webs of ire and pain and stew them for weeks at a time, which is completely outside of my personality traits. I don’t like to sit in a puddle of depression, contradictory to my bathing preference.

With all this pressure and anxiety and emotional turmoil that I’ve endured in just a few months, it’s no wonder that my presence at this company is now in jeopardy. I don’t want to be here any more than anyone else wants me to be here. My path lies in another direction and I think it’s time to run. I’m nostalgic for my lost co-workers and their amazing personalities, but maybe this has helped me grow into a knowledge of who I want to be in life and who I want to surround myself with.

Maybe I’ve learned something bigger than how to put a person in a hotel room.

Don’t influence me on how to feel.

So here’s the scenario:

You just dyed your hair, you feel fierce, you even put on a splash of makeup before driving an hour to work an overnight job. You feel a little sick because it’s flu season, but that isn’t keeping you from singing your favorite songs on the radio at top volume. You feel kinda awesome.

Then you get to work. Normally this doesn’t bother you because you love your job and your co-workers. It doesn’t even matter that they have you working graveyard; it gives you plenty of time to think of concepts for your new blog. Today is different though. You had a bit of a panic attack leaving work yesterday because your paycheck didn’t post to the bank at the time it usually does. You got just a bit worried that something was wrong so you had been looking forward, all day, to getting to work and opening the pay stub to make sure it was there. You rush into the building, put down your purse and immediately walk over to the cash drawer where the checks are hidden. But, something is in the way. It’s your co-workers knee. He’s blocking the drawer. You politely say excuse me and he responds with “What do you need in there?”. It seems like this would be obvious because payday is filled with people digging around in that drawer, but for some reason he wants to ask you about it. “I’m getting my paycheck” you say in a questioning tone, not a forceful one, but full of confusion as to why this person is questioning my motives.

“Are you having a bad day?”

I am now.

This is my thought process. Why is getting my paycheck so threatening that you feel defensive about me being in our cash drawer? It’s not like I have ever taken money from it for my personal gain. I haven’t ever thought about trying to screw up your count. Why, today, do you feel the need to question my motives? I was genuinely happy and having a grand ole time until you said something that made me instantly defensive.

I began to wonder if there was some reason that I should be concerned about getting in the drawer. Did something happen that I don’t know about? Do people think I’m a thief? Did I forget to do something with money that is causing my co-worker to believe that I can’t be trusted in my own cash drawer? The answer to all of these is no, but somehow I can’t help but feeling that his reaction is somehow my fault.

________________________________________

Why do we let others dictate how we feel? With six simple words, my co-workers question changed my entire perspective on my night. I am now full of hostility and judgement. Why does today have to be a bad day in order for me to be determined to see my pay stub? Is it okay with you, person I only see ten minutes a day, if I have other things going on in my life that don’t involve you?

Now let me interject here that I LOVE talking with my co-workers. I have personal relationships with all of them and adore them. I’m not the kind of person that can come in and just begin working. I want to know how your day was and how the kids are. I would not, however, start a shift of with “Are you having a bad day?”. People don’t respond to this well, as we can clearly see from my own reaction. If someone has genuine concern for how your day is, they will ask about what you did that day, not the tone of it. “Are you having a bad day?” is code for “What is your problem?”. It means that you, the bad-day-haver has some form of wall around you that others can’t see. My wall, in this scenario, was my determination to make sure things were okay with my cash flow. Obviously, my co-worker didn’t know what I was thinking or doing, so he reacted the way anyone would react to my actions, but in a nicer way than “Why are you invading my personal space?”

Sometimes things that people say, give us these insane brain signals that tend to make us defensive, even if there is no reason to be. People who ask “Have you lost weight?” only mean the best by that statement, but for people who have previously been overweight, this could bring up painful memories and trigger our barriers to come up. It’s very hard to know what string of words will cause these reactions, but when we hear them we will and instantly it will be war between the unsuspecting offensive speech maker and the unwarranted defensive emotionalist. Something neither of you intended but exists all the same.

So for those of you that have experienced this, please make sure that the person that is now shocked by your defensive outburst knows that you didn’t mean any harm. The words spoken reminded you of another time and you shouldn’t take that out on your co-workers, they might be your boss one day.