On Friendship

I love my friends. I really do, all of them. Bust most of all, I love that none of the friends I currently hang out with were friends I knew in high school. Actually, Panda is the only one I had even MET while I was in high school. The rest all came later. Sure, I still talk to some people from high school, and I'm friendly with them, but I don't really spend time with them.

In high school, I went from being a quiet, introverted, nerdy, artistic, unsure kid to a outspoken, intro/extroverted, nerdy, artistic, confident man. Part of it I attribute to working at the movie theater, if only because it forced me to be more social on a regular basis. When I got hired there, I didn't know any of my coworkers, even the ones who went to my school. Not a single one of them. And, honestly, I was pretty pissed off when my friends from school started applying to work with me.

Work was my place to unwind, be me, and grow into who I am today. And those assholes ruined it.

I was never a huge fan of some of the things kids I went to school with did. I was never a smoker (and, to this day, have never smoked anything in my life). I was never a drinker, at least until I turned 21, and even now I rarely drink. Drugs were never my thing. I didn't get off on doing off the wall, batshit crazy things just to get a shocked look out of someone. And I wasn't into yelling nonsense just for the sake of being loud. It's not me, never was. I got along with these people, but in retrospect I didn't see them as friends. I could understand them, but none of them every really understood me, or made a noticable effort to try. Luckily, I was able to delude myself into thinking they did.

My friends now, on the other hand, all have similar interests to me. They genuinely understand who I am, and how I am, and for the most part, why I am. They know I'm in a bad mood at a first glance, even if it's not obvious to me. They know when I'm happy, and they know when I'm struggling to grasp something.

Now it's story time.

When I was 19, I had an epiphany while at work one day. I'm fairly certain I was 19, at least, although I may have been 18. Irrelevent, I suppose. Anyway. at the time, I was a projectionist (that person who starts your movies), and it was before digital went big, so we actually had film, and platters, and all that fun stuff. So, after a rather solid night of running my projection booth, getting everything started on time, etc., I get called into the head manager's office. It was around an hour after we had closed, so this was a bit unusual (I helped with closing out registers sometimes, but that was usually 5-10 minutes after closing). So anyway, I get there, and go through a torturous lecture about how I was starting movies too early, or too late, or just not when they wanted me to, making it so our ushers couldn't clean the theaters between showings. Basically saying that we had many many people sitting in filth, and that it was all my fault. The ushers told them this. My friends. Told my boss that they weren't able to do their jobs, because I was goofing off all night instead of doing my own work.

Here's the thing about that. It was a flat out lie. The usher staff rarely cleaned out the theaters as thoroughly as they should have, and for weeks they were just as filthy as they were that night (which, by the way, was a Friday or Saturday, so lots of people). The managers confronted them, and they knew I was working, so it was easier to throw me under the bus than take the blame for their own mistakes and work harder to fix it. I explained to the manager that my movies all started at their scheduled times, and that they may run over or under the "estimated" time due to advertisements and trailers and whatnot. I pointed out that something like half of the movies showing were new, so the times may be wrong anyway.

And then I made a list for them. See, I knew the ushers and what they really did with their time. And I am a vengeful man when provoked. If I make a mistake, call me out on it, sure. But don't put my job in jeopardy and make me like incompetent because someone calls out your lacking work ethic. So anyway, I made this list. Of everything that was going on that they weren't seeing, and what kind of impact it was having. I even let them know that I had participated in some of these things, and was just as at fault during my tenure as an usher as the rest. Not cleaning theaters, intentionally breaking equipment and supplies (did you know that some of the bulbs used in movie theaters cost several hundred dollars each?), leaving in the middle of their shift for a few hours (on the clock) to get drunk/high/laid... All that fun stuff.

So I was the bad guy. Fine. Whatever. Did I overreact? Possibly. But to me it wasn't even JUST that I was getting my head bitten off over something I didn't do. It was that these people, who were supposed to be my friends, were the ones responsible. I don't take well to betrayal. I didn't regret my response then, and I don't regret it now. Why? Because I have friends now that will actually back me up, even when I'm wrong (although they'll also call me out on it). I got out of there, have a better job now, and a better life, while some of them are still doing the same thing they were 7+ years ago.

I guess what it boils down to is... Haters gonna hate.

Cynical? Perhaps.

There's a woman at work, who used to be in my department. Well, not like.. a member of my department. Just always IN it, like, physically present in the room in which I happen to work. This is odd, because the room (at that time it was our old room) is secure access. She worked for my boss' boss, so I guess that gave her access to come hang out with us and set up contests and whatnot (we really only had 1, but it's the only one we've had in the 5 years I've had this job).

So anyway, she got to know us all pretty well. How we handled calls to the help desk, how we dealt with supervisors, and our general personalities. Apparently I'm the "cynical" one.

Strangely enough, I didn't know this until earlier this week, some 4 and a half years or so later.

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a pessimist at work. I doubt the honesty of people in other departments, as well as their understanding of what we, as a business, are responsible for. I'm in a position to look at things globally, and put the business before individual teams of associates, and all that jazz. All they care about are their own stats, their own associates, etc. Which is fine, really, because you need to look out for number 1, I just don't have any of those concerns. But the reason I get annoyed with them? Because the stuff they do isn't even related to the business half the time. They take people off the phone to sit at their desk and listen to music and talk about random crap. They'll schedule an hour long meeting to send someone to a store to buy streamers. Or to eat cake. I'm not exagerrating, by the way, I've had someone schedule an hour long meeting just to have their associate eat cake. Really? You're at WORK. Act like it. Having fun is great and all, but not when we're close to completely missing our contractual goals with our clients. I don't think the stockholders, CEOs, vice presidents, etc would like to know we just paid out millions in fines and penalties so you could eat pie and talk about that actor/rapper/model/pair of shoes for an hour or so. It hasn't happened yet, because my group and I are amazing, but we've been getting closer and closer.

Well, I guess I am a bit cynical. But only because other people make my job much more stressful on a daily basis.

Ho Hum

Not much to write...

Been working those happy fun time 50-hour-or-more weeks. Slowly and surely burning myself off so that I can save up more money, and not continue this pattern when we have full staffing again.

Got my new slim 360 (the old one broke too much), and with it, Netflix. I'm addicted to it.

I move three weeks from Saturday! (9/25)

Karen Gillan and the woman who plays Carla on Scrubs are my current celebrity crushes.

That's about all I've got.