Well, nothing much has happened lately worth reporting. I only worked in the lunchroom on Monday of last week, and I spent most of the rest of the week just sitting at home not really doing much of anything. It felt weird and boring not to be going to work.
One day last week while I was off, I was at Walmart, and happened to see the "bad attitude" substitute lunch lady (named Nicky) that I worked with in the lunchroom recently. We stopped to talk for a few minutes, and she told me that the lunchroom manager had talked to her boss and told her that "Nicky just didn't work out...but WE LOOOVE DEANA"! So we laughed together about it, because Nicky didn't care; she doesn't want to work there anyway, and she told me "better you than me"! :)
I'm working in the lunchroom all this week, but I think I'll only be working on Friday of next week. But after that, the lunchroom manager told me today to just expect to work every day from then on. So I'm 99.999999999% sure that they'll hire me on full-time sometime within the next year, which would of course be awesome! It's absolutely fantastic to have a job at school, which naturally coincides with my own kiddo's school schedule. So I never have to worry about my work schedule conflicting with my kid's school schedule. Back when I used to work at the bank, it always stressed me out about what to do with Lilly during days that school was closed (for snow and spring/fall/summer breaks, etc.), and I hated having to pay a day care $85 a week to take care of Lilly so I could work. And I had 4 weeks of vacation time available to take that I had earned, but my crappy boss always seemed to frown on me taking time off, even if it was to take care of my own kid. One day I timidly requested my boss for time off to take care of Lilly, and my crappy boss huffed back, "Can't you hire a babysitter"? I'm so glad to be away from that awful woman.
Speaking of the awful bank I used to work for, I heard that they recently laid off a whole bunch of their employees (again). They do that from time to time, and they always keep their employees on pins and needles wondering if they're going to be the next victims of the ax. They intimidate their employees, making everyone who works for them feel like little children who never seem to be good enough, no matter how hard they try. They scare everyone with "look busy", "Management is watching", "just be thankful you have a job", and generally make everyone feel like their neck might be the very next one on the chopping block. It's mentally and emotionally damaging. They keep everything top-secret, and basically scare the crap out of everyone constantly as far as their job security is concerned. I realize that as a bank, secrecy is of utmost importance, because after all, what if they told some of their employees on a Monday that Friday would be their last day. Well, that would give those probably-disgruntled employees several days to sabotage the crap out of the bank; potentially ruining it to the point of having to be shut down. But this is the same stupid bank that practically went overnight from basically giving all their employees high-fives and showering them with turkeys at Thanksgiving, hams at Christmas, and raises and big fat bonuses year after year, to *needle scratching record* *crickets chirping* *'you'd better watch out because the boogeyman is gonna get you'!* I know the economy is to blame, but there's a lot that the bank could have done (and could still do) to help their employees' morale. If they cared. Which they obviously don't. It makes you wonder if they ever really cared at all, even back when times were good. Leaving the bank, regardless of the reason, is like going through a bad breakup. And most of the time, the bank lies to everyone to save their own face.
For example, the bank went through a rash of many of their older employees suddenly "retiring" back when I still worked there. In actuality, at least one of them that I know of for sure was actually laid off. This woman was over 70 years old and worked at the bank for 18 years seriously doing basically nothing at all, and whatever little she pretended to do, she completely messed up. She spent a lot of her time standing outside smoking cigarettes, even right at the front door in plain sight of customers. For the 16 years that I worked there, I was the unfortunate person that got pegged to be this woman's main backup. Which basically meant that I had to do her job and mine too, almost constantly. But since she didn't "do anything", it shouldn't have been a big deal, right? Wrong. This woman served as a receptionist and switchboard operator. So most of the time, I ended up having to do her job and mine too (and when you're a receptionist and switchboard operator, you don't get to take breaks and leave your desk...at least not long or very far).
One day, this woman was told in private that she was being laid off, but the bank of course went through its usual elaborate cover-up, and I ended up having to plan, coordinate, and hostess this woman's "retirement party". Of course I had a tremendous amount of help from my friends at work in doing all of this; my friends always helped me because I was constantly expected to put on parties and crap like that, and they knew I couldn't do it by myself (and besides, it wasn't fair to expect me to have to do it all by myself). Anyway, I guess an extra slap in the face was when I was told to order the "retiring" woman an engraved crystal bowl. From TIFFANY'S. Luckily, the CEO's assistant handled the order (and even had to use the CEO's own personal credit card to pay for the stupid crystal bowl, since the bank stopped issuing their employees company credit cards a long time ago). And even though the "retiring" woman was employed at the bank for something like 18 years and 2 months, they had the crystal bowl from Tiffany's engraved to say "19 years of service" with her name and the bank's logo. And this woman never contributed one real thing to the bank whatsoever. They kept her around for 18 years (giving her pretend tasks to do that didn't matter), made me (for the most part) do what she was responsible for (in addition to my own job), finally laid her off, pretended that it was all her idea to "retire", and then made me plan and throw her that elaborate "retirement" party. Talk about a slap in the face. And I got another slap when I casually mentioned to my own crappy boss that I had been with the bank for 16 years, and she didn't even act like she cared at all. She said nonchalantly, "hmm; I didn't realize you'd been here that long" and immediately changed the subject. Even when I quit my job unexpectedly, my boss called me the following Monday (and I let it go to voice mail), and all she said on the message was "I'm sorry you felt like you had to quit, but there's still a lot of stuff here that you're responsible for". Uh...no?!?
Anyway, I didn't mean to launch into yet another tirade about the stupid bank I used to work for, but it's just that hearing that they had recently let another batch of their employees go made me think about it again.
Which also makes me wonder that if I had never quit the bank, would they have eventually let me go as well at some point? I can't help but think that I would have. I even felt that way back when I was still working at the bank. They always kept everybody so scared of layoffs all the time that I stayed pretty nervous (which I'm a nervous person anyway).
So even though my sudden bank-quitting in September of 2012 was a complete shock to everyone (and I'm sure lots of people thought it was probably a terrible mistake), I think it surely must have been for the best after all. I think that in the one full year of me not working, I was able to slowly figure things (and myself) out a little bit more, relax, de-stress, and after some eventual life-disasters with Jamie getting unexpectedly (and unfairly) fired from his job (and me practically having a nervous breakdown), I think the page of the next chapter of Deana's Life has finally turned!
It just goes to show you that you should never say never. And you should never feel stuck and bad, because you really can change things. I always figured I'd be miserable at the bank for the rest of my rotten life. If someone had told me on September 1, 2012 that I would be a freakin' lunch lady in less than a year-and-a-half, I would have totally died with laughter and disbelief. But here I am! And everything's cool!
Who knew?!? ;)
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