Diary of a House: Part 6

Chapter 7: I am the man...ager

I had my interview and I was quite nervous as I had only met Paul once or twice before over the years. I thought my interview had gone rather well and when it came down to talking about pay he had mentioned that I would be looking to get a 20-25% percent raise. I did some quick math in my head and that was over $13.50 an hour! Woo hoo!!! I went back to the copy center and grabbed a calculator and did some more math to get an idea of how much my paychecks would come out to. I was set. No more worries of how I was going to pay my bills. Life was turning around for me finally. Then I realised that I had the interview, but I still didn't have the job yet.

About 2 weeks went by before I had heard anything about the job. Looking back at it now, it was that prick Pauls way of making me sweat. I finally FINALLY got a call from him and he offered me the job. I said I'd take it and asked about the pay. "Oh well we'll talk about that when the time comes but I'd say you're looking at around 20%." Around 20% as in maybe 25%? My mind was stuck on that thought as he said goodbye and hung up. What does around 20% mean? I know now that it meant I was about to get fucked over.

So Michigan City had opened up sometime in August or September, and Valpo was supposed to open sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I knew that it would be a little tough to make it till then with my current financial situation but I could do it as long as I tightened the belt a bit and didn’t start buying anything outrageous. Well I had also forgotten that my best friend Justin had finally proposed to his lifelong girlfriend Grace a while back and their wedding was coming up in November as well. They had asked me to stand up in their wedding as well which I was more than happy to do but I made it quite clear to both of them that me standing up in their wedding and paying for the tux rental was going to be my gift for them. No presents or a card filled with cash from Jim at the reception so don’t even bother looking.

Well after the wedding, money was tighter than ever so I knew that I’d have to be really careful about not pissing off Rob and getting my hours slashed like he did once before he got mad at me. Side note: Yeah Rob…. I remember that. I was back in the copy center and hadn’t worked in tech for six months. I get scheduled to work one night in tech which I was ok with. That just happened to be the day that the LP guy showed up and he found 2 or 3 computers unalarmed. Now most sane people would have been mad at the tech guy who set the computers up unalarmed in the first place, not the copy center guy who happened to be working in tech when the LP guy showed up. Rob threw his keys down on the ground at my feet and said in a very gruff and angry tone, “Just fucking fix it.” I thought to myself, “Is he blaming ME for this?” Yes… he was… Rob then went back to his office to work on next week schedule. And guess who only had 12 hours next week. Jim… the copy center guy. For the next month I had to float in vacation hours to help pay the bills. What an ass.

Anyway… back to the story. I knew that the Valpo store would be opening soon because one Sunday at Highland, Paul brought in 2 other managers to start doing training at my store. Woo Hoo! It won’t be long now before I leave the Highland store and move onto greener pastures.

Well about 3 weeks later, I find out that the Valpo stores opening date had been bumped back. How did I find this out? From Paul? From Rob? No, from my ex girlfriend who was also a manager at Highland. She heard it in a managers meeting the week before. The store would now be opening in February 2008 instead of late 2007. Well thank you very much you big bunch of asses. Thanks for telling me, the guy who needed money more than the rest of these chumps. Not only that, but I come to find out that our outside hires who were doing training at the Highland store were going to still be doing training. Not only that, but they would be receiving their full management pay while I would still be part time making my measly part-time pay. WTF? You mean to tell me that two chumps who never worked for this place a day in their lives are already making more than me? A guy who shed his blood sweat and tears for this fucking company? Vengeance will be mine!