Thursday, April 24, 2008

My work environment reminds me of Haiti

How harsh does a work environment have to be to constitute me storming out? I wanted to storm out of the kitchen a couple of times this week. I am not an overly unkind person. I would never leave my boss with all my work, the extra work I'm picking up because of my lazy coworkers and all her work. Not only because she's 9 months pregnant or that I'm trying to ask for a raise and a transfer and a month long leave of absence, but also because I like her and I think she deserves good employees. If two out of the four employees she's got are unreliable, moody and really unskilled in the kitchen, I'll step in and pick up the slack. Men don't belong in this industry anyways. We should just fire these two men. The three women there really do all the work anyways.
If that wasn't quite enough, I had to deal of the corporate portion of this job today as well. Nothing says "Leave this company as quickly as possible!" as a surly HR manager who has no people skills. So, as soon as I find the time to step away from my tasks big enough to tackle 2 1/2 large men, I sit down with the Columbus regional manager and the midwest regional HR manager. We need to discuss my possible transfer to a cafe in Chicago. The gist of this conversation was her telling me why I couldn't make it in Chicago without her coming out and saying, "You can't make it in Chicago". Should I tell her the reason I'm limping is because of the shin splints I'm getting from running around this ill designed kitchen? No. Should I explain to her that I'm working with two punks who can't tie their shoes without me telling them where their laces are? Should I say I know more about this kitchen than she does about her prestine HR office, but she'll never see it because she's middle management and her life goal is to make people feel smaller than her? Never. I say nothing and like a pansy, I let her tell me that the pace in this cafe is quicker than I've ever seen, that the areas in Chicago I'm looking at are too expensive for me and that I probably won't get a raise big enough to live in Chicago. What a punk. I should've let her know how I deal with punks in the kitchen. (which really isn't much, I just ignore them until they notice, but I like to think I'm tough)
I've got agencies that would pee their little pants to get me to work for them. I don't have to deal with corporate punks and kitchen punks. I think it's time to cause people to pee for me.