Tonight, I saw David Bazan and his band play Pedro The Lion's Control, which is one of my favorite albums of all time. God damn, was it a brilliant show, and it's probably the best birthday present anyone's gotten me, regardless of whether it was 3 weeks in advance of my actual birthday or not. The rest of my day, however, had me as angry as I think I have ever been.
Most of the time, I am more than willing to put up with a specific manager's bullshit, suck it up, and be polite. Not today. After having tried unsuccessfully for 10 days to get my shift covered, I sucked it up and went in this morning and put everything I had into it in hopes of maybe getting let off early. My shift was scheduled to end at 7:30, and my friends and I wanted to leave early so we'd be sure we didn't hit traffic.
So 7:25 rolls around, and over the walkie I ask Linda (my manager) if there's any last quick thing she needs me to do. She says "Is the trash and cardboard gone?" and I replied "No, but that's going to take me a half hour, is there anyone who can help me?" She replied "It's the responsibility of the closing stock person to take all of that out before clocking out" and I replied "Well, I'm off right now and closing isn't for another 4 hours" and she said "You're going to take the trash out or we're going to have a talk and you're going to leave later." Bitch, you don't get to make decisions that affect payroll like that, not without talking to the store or district manager.
Cue epic fucking rage time. I grabbed the key to offsite off my belt, slammed it on the counter where it belongs, emptied all the trash cans, emptied the register trash bins, tied everything up, grabbed all the bags and hucked them into the trash compactor as quickly as possible, slammed it shut. Went back for the cardboard, and didn't even grab all of it, because fuck no I'm not going to fix her fucking mistakes. Shoved my boxes full of empty boxes into the cardboard compactor. Some of them wouldn't quite fit all the way through the door, so I lifted myself up onto the compactor and shoved them in, kicking and kneeing and generally doing what I would've loved to have done to her face.
You don't keep me from my heroes. Not now, not ever. Not when I bust my ass trying to get as much done as possible so I can leave work early. Not when she fucked up payroll for this week by keeping me a total of 90 minutes longer than I would've been there if it hadn't for her fucking up her job. Not when she's already officially on thin ice with corporate for a history of rulebreaking and making her subordinates feel like shit. And certainly not when it's the first time in 10 years David Bazan has played "Rapture" and not when he's never going to play it again. FUCK NO YOU DON'T FUCK WITH ME SEEING MY HEROES.
I am filing my second formal complaint about how her behavior toward me has been disproportionately ill compared to the rest of my coworkers since day one. This has been the last fucking straw.