I'm a good person with a great personality. Anyone who knows me will tell you so. Seriously. Also, I'm funny. I'm cheerful, charitable, and compassionate. I'm smart, picking skills up quickly, finding creative solutions to problems, organizing even the most diabolical of storage rooms.
Why then, did I keep getting fired all the time?
Now, it's not like I've been fired from every job. No, sirree. On the list below, I was only fired from the ones with the asterisk (*) next to them. Some jobs I left under my own steam. Some of them I left under my own steam in less than two weeks (~). But in the following list of twenty-two jobs, which is probably significant for a thirty four year-old, I was fired from six of them. Three jobs in one year alone, the year we lived on Hilton Head Island, jobs 13-18. Look over this list and see what you think:
1) Church nursery
2) Rivers Edge Restaurant, bussing tables
3) * Van Burens upscale women's clothing clerk
4) Painted Clothes, basically a cart in the mall with weird painted outfits
5) * T-shirt printing shop
6) Third Base Video, Balloons, and Tanning
7) Hostess @ Damons, had to wear a necktie
8) * not-Blockbuster Video store
9) Bartender/Waitress at Grumpy's Bar, loud rock bands, dancing on the bar, whatnot
10) National Travel, corporate travel agent, the job that scarred me for life
11) ~ Life insurance sales, and why I thought I could do this???
12) AAA Travel, corporate travel agent again but in a nicer place
13) * Insurance front desk
14) ~ Preschool daycare worker, keeping charge of eight two year-olds all day
15) * Global Reservation System, booking time shares, harder than it sounds actually
16) ~ Travel agency again, vacation travel bookings at a nice little place
17) * Long's Travel, agent for the last time, better money but snotty clientel
18) Hallmark shop clerk where my feet nearly fell off from the pain
19) Legal transcriptionist, nice sit down at home job
20) After school daycare program manager, good work, great kids
21) Real estate office front desk, nice small office work
22) Office manager for court reporting firm, at home work againI have been fired for many reasons, some justified, some confusing. At Van Buren's I was okay in the stockroom, receiving orders, steaming and tagging clothes, but I was awkward as a retail clerk. Seriously awkward. I might have had a hundred bucks in sales the entire time I worked there.
The T-shirt printing shop in the mall? That firing came as a huge surprise. I think I didn't keep the shirts folded correctly in the bins. I'm not sure about that one because the couple who owned the place spoke Vietnamese all the time.
The non-Blockbuster place? Yeah, I didn't show up for work on time one day. That sounds kind of innocuous but, unfortunately, that was the day I was scheduled to open the store. The district manager came by to rate us and there were people standing around outside forty-five minutes into the time we were supposed to be open for business. Um, whoops? "I didn't hear my alarm" wasn't a justified defense for that.
Number 13 was working front desk at a quiet little life insurance agency. I was there about a month when the office manager told me out of the blue that the owner didn't like me. This still pokes around in my head. How odd is that to get fired, not from bad job performance, but because the owner decides he doesn't like you? And how could he not like me? (See paragraph 1 at the top.)
The next was a time-share reservation place. I made the mistake of smarting off at a woman I worked with. Dumb, but I didn't know it would slap me in the face like that. No one else liked her either. Ah, well.
And the last time was the last travel agency. One day one of my swanky clients purchased an around the world first class ticket from me. I was ecstatic to make such an interesting arrangement. But he came in and complained to the manager that I'd gotten him a wrong connecting flight. He asked for a refund of his ($5000) ticket and the next morning, very first thing, I was fired. My boss asked me why I hadn't asked for help with the ticket. Do other people just ask for help with things they think they are doing RIGHT?
Obviously, the firings hurt. All of them hurt at the times they happened and they're a big part of the reason why I don't work outside the home now. It's never been hard for me to get a job and there've been several jobs I've kept for long periods of time. The first travel agency? I was there for more than two years. Hey, now for me, that's a stretch. The second one was for a year. And that year that I bartended and waitressed at the bar? That was interesting. And the legal transcription I did for years, off and on.
In order not to lose my mind over it, I have to keep thinking that I'm not cut out to hold a "real" job because I'm supposed to be writing. It is the only work that holds my focus. I'm praying one day to make money at it. Because Rich is great and he works his butt off so I don't have to, but I'd love to support him in return. And I'd love, just once, to have a career at which I can be successful.
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