Dear Hearts
I am done with Boss Lady and Caroline’s.
When I went for the initial interview, Boss Lady warned me about Cyndi—her 15-year sales associate who is basically a bitch. Boss Lady told me how to placate her and to stay out of her way and jada, jada. Boss Lady inherited the business from her father. It was her father’s dream—never her’s. She couldn’t let her father’s dream die. Her dear mother died two years ago, so I thought maybe she inherited Cyndi in some way.
I was nervous about going back to work. But, ya’ know what? I did my fucking best. I picked up lint off the basement floor with my latex-gloved hands. I swept the five leaves and two feathers in front of the store, not into the street, but a dustpan that I emptied into the garbage. Why? I dunno.
Yeah, I screwed up the China inventory.
“How could you mess up so badly? They were all organized by color!”
I know because I organized them by color! I did what I was told with a smile.
Cyndi so set me up. She told me where to find a stool on which to sit, when she knew Boss Lady didn’t allow sitting. (My lower back was on fire—and I have a high tolerance for pain—but when my fibroids aggravate my Womanly Time—it hurts a lot sometimes. Cyndi told me to check in the crystal one way, when Boss Lady liked it done another way.
“Do you have a boo-boo?”
“Yeah, I cut myself,” I said putting a band aid on the pad of my index finger. Hmm. Open wound. (I showed that cantaloupe who was boss.) The public. Money. Dirt. Blood. Infection. Huh, I thought I was being prudent.
I forgot my water bottle. When I came back for it, “What you can’t go half a day without water?”
Eww.
I stopped wearing “nice clothes” because whatever I wore was dirty in a day. I put one of my Mass veils around my face when cleaning the basement. Whatever.
Wednesday when I was vacuuming the packing room with a shop-vac I literally tied my dress up around my knees because I kept yanking it out of the sucking mouth of the shop-vac. All the while worrying that I’d be in trouble for not doing a good enough job.
“Nice job,” said Boss Lady. I wagged my tail and waited for my biscuit.
As I stood totally unsafely on a tall metal ladder to get the get that none of them were tall enough to get I thought: this is my punishment for disability; this is my punishment for quitting my teaching job; this is all it’s ever going to be for me.
Martha pointed out that even people on disability don’t deserve to be treated like shit. I don’t deserve to be treated like shit.
Dr. Swede: “I am made in the likeness and image of God.”
I am made in the likeness and image of God. You don’t get to treat me badly. Ever.
Let me repeat that shit.
I am made in the likeness and image of God. You don’t get to treat me badly. Ever.
I am made in the likeness and image of God. You don’t get to treat me badly. Ever.
My identity and authority comes from Christ. You don’t get to treat me badly. Ever.
So when I had a feminine emergency…no…here are the gory details. I had to practically explain them to Boss Lady, so you all might as well know. And, come on. Periods are so weird. If men bled from that area of their body they would go to the ER. We just have to plug it up. I have fibroids. They make my periods heavy. As in bleed through the tampon onto the thick, uncomfortable synthetic, cotton pad shoved in my Victoria Secret’s underwear. Every woman know that feeling. That wetness. That feeling of the blood actually leaving your body. And then the OH SHIT. I need to get to a bathroom now, because it’s probably already a crime scene down there.
I was on a seven-foot ladder. I stopped. Took the mother-fucking time to fold the ladder up and lean it against a display case so I wouldn’t get in trouble. Then motioned to Cyndi who was busy with the Boss Lady and customers that I had to go to the bathroom like no delay. I told sweet Laura, who was my only solace there, that I had to go to the bathroom because I was leaking.
Oh, yeah. It was a crime scene. I cleaned blood off the bathroom floor. And, there’s no garbage in the bathroom, so that made things a bit more difficult. Got myself plugged again. I knew lunch was coming so I took a minute to take my colitis pills. Laura and I commiserated about the pain-in-the-assness of having a period. We laughed I think.
“Katherine! You don’t leave the ladder on the floor. Someone could trip on it and sue us! Cyndi didn’t know if you’d left for lunch (never have I) or what where you’d gone!”
“I had a feminine emergency.”
“Well, you don’t leave things on the floor like that! No one knew where you were! Just go take your lunch now!”
I have a formidable temper. I was raised by New Jersey-ites.
HELL, NO.
Every nasty word I know came out of my mouth when I got home. Hat went flying as did boots and socks. (Earlier in the day Boss Lady commented on my “big girl cowboy boots.” Apparently, I am just shy of being West enough to not have my signature cowboy boots be considered a costume or fashion statement.)
I was done. That did it. I was not to be yelled the way Mrs. P. did in high school when there was an attendance mix up. No fucking way. If I wanted that—I’d go back to my 65 grand a year job. I was not gonna ask for permission to go to the bathroom when every woman in that store (all women) had been in that same situation. And if somebody tripped over where I left the ladder. Well, natural selection because it couldn’t be in plainer view.
On second thought, how is my being on the ladder around customers safer than the ladder being folded up and alone? Couldn’t assholes trip or knock me over regardless? WTF?? Especially considering the ladder is not flush on all its legs. What would she have done if I had fallen and hurt myself? Have me disposed of?
I was done.
When Boss Lady and I were alone I took a chance to explain: “I left the ladder there because I had a feminine emergency and I told Cyndi where I was going. I was then taking my colitis pills.”
“You could have taken a moment to take the ladder to the back (um, no I couldn’t have) and you need to tell me too where you go.”
“I was leaking.”
“Still. Tell me (she had been with customers) next time.”
Later, I was taken to the basement to wrap up sale items in newspaper. At first, it was the plates, then it wasn’t. Then it was just the non-matching items. Then it was the small plates. A vague gesture of her hand indicated the precise items I was to box as I sat on the floor in my dress. I read the comics—I forget how funny Garfield was.
I had actually changed into my sandals for the second half of the day—but my boots. They're made for walkin’.
I took my germ gel (a big pumper that I bought for the store) and left that day.
I knew I was fucking done.
Martha was so proud of me. But, she AND G-Pa said I needed to tell Boss Lady WHY I was quitting. (Mom gave G-Pa a filtered version of the bathroom thing.)
Out of courtesy to her, I went to the store yesterday to let Boss Lady know that I could work next week because my dad was having to have surgery ASAP. That’s no lie. It’s a cyst on his finger. The MD just doesn’t want to have it infected.
“Fine,” she said. No concern about my dad.
“We need to have a conversation,” I said.
None of the three or four times that I gave her were good. She’d talk to me when I got back. Uh, no. I will call you.
So, after I ate a chicken sandwich with feta cheese and mushroom and french fires--thanks G-Pa for the comfort food--I called her around 8:30. Her husband was pissed that the phone rang.
“Am I calling too late?” I asked her.
“No. But, we’re resting.”
Nice passive-aggressive guilt.
“I’ll call back.”
“Nooo. I’ll just go to another room.”
I’m not going record the whole conversation. I was assertive—at one point saying “excuse me” when she talked over me. I said that I had spent a career and marriage being bullied and she needed to find someone else—although I would work for her when I got back since Laura would be in Arizona that week.
“Don’t come back here.”
Don’t come back here.
Don’t come back here.
Ya’ know what? I don’t think I will go back “there,” because I’ve been “there” and done that and “there” is a very dark place.
I stayed "there" in my marriage and my job until I was physically and emotionally sick. This time, I walked out of "there" before either could happen.
Spending time with G-Pa and volunteering at Burning Bed—worth nine dollars an hour.
So, no. I will never go back there.
Smoke ‘em if ya’ got ‘em. God Bless
In the name of The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Mother Mary, Saint Brigid; Saint Jude; Saint Therese Lisieux; Archangel Michael, and my Guardian Angel.
PS: I still feel like shit because I hate confrontation. How can you just be mean to people? I don’t get it. I apologized for everything when I worked there short of the Kennedy Assassination. She couldn’t say sorry ever? Sorry, Boss Lady—you’re no Trump.
PPS: To the woman who worked in the hair salon or drug store—I am sorry. When I got back to the store after lunch that day I pounded on my steering wheel hard. I am my father's daughter. A woman saw me as she walked past the car and I hit the steering a fourth time and gave me a look. I put up my hands Jersey-Shore style as she hesitantly turned her head back and I shouted from inside the enclosed car, “What?” You wanna go, bitch?” I may or may not have said bitch. I can’t remember. But the poor woman probably saw the New York plates and Trump, Catholic, and Masonic stickers and thought—“the Angry Cult-Worshipping, Idolatrous Trumpeters are coming to the Holy City! Oh my God! Lyle, get the dog and let’s go to Kansas with sis! We’re no longer safe here!” So, I’m sorry, ma’am.
This Jersey girl just had enough and I’m never going back there again. That’s why I am here.
