Change, comfort, and complacency

I’m thinking this will be the last post for this month and around the first of next month I will share another installment with regards to the Streak Era. Perhaps this post will somewhat lead into what that post will be about.

Anyway lately I’ve been thinking a lot about my time at The Show. Sometimes the negative feelings crop up but then I go back to the time I’m living in currently. Perhaps my time there at “The $h!tshow” lead me to the time I’m living in currently.

This month has proven to be a significant month in recent history. And one significance of this month was finally finding a job to leave The Show. I know it can’t be stressed this month eight years ago my decision was to finally leave the cinema behind. My nightmare was to still be working there up to my fifth anniversary there and left behind by people I had considered allies. Not all of them were however also note that changes were going on around me and I was stuck.

That changed when Gotham Bank finally handed me a job offer. And while I was somewhat apprehensive, I accepted the offer and decided it was time to leave. I could’ve stayed, perhaps there was a wish they would insist that I shouldn’t leave. Some of my coworkers were emphasizing that perhaps keep this job and work at the bank to make more money. My answer to that was fcuk this place.

Aside from the trial as a bank teller for almost a month and a half I’m better off moving on. It was time to go, I had to show that I could find another job and move on from mgmt who in trying to admonish me tried to make it seem like that job was such a better deal compared to others. That sounds like the sales pitch of someone who probably was themselves miserable at The $h!tshow.

Anyway the main goal of the Streak Era was to find another job. In October 2014 that goal was finally achieved and it leads me to another era which lasted until October 2017. During that month yours truly faced the Climax of the Reign of Error at the Hole. The end of the Streak Era was what I was working towards, however, the “Climax” was unexpected. That moment represented the unexpected loss of a job that had given me great confidence after the trial at both Gotham briefly and The Show long term.

Specially with The Show and the Hole the ongoing issue was comfort and complacency. I had comfort at The Show, the drama was draining yet I was comfortable. Not comfortable with the drama nor the compensation though the situation. I knew who were likely against me and for the most part who were for me. From mgmt to coworkers, and the people who created issues I tried to avoid them with varying degrees of success. By the time of my departure it seemed nothing was ever going to go in my direction. Perhaps someone up there wanted me out for reasons really unknown to me other than perhaps I ticked them off or just because it was the easiest thing they could do.

Perhaps they were just shocked that I had found a job and had finally opted to put in my two-weeks notice aka my victory lap. Who knows they weren’t keeping me around and I was taking this important step to move forward to take on a much better role. Perhaps take up a bump in pay and the opportunity to take on some benefits. I could stay and hope for the best, however, what if things don’t change for the better.

As for the Hole I would call that a case of complacency. What I didn’t expect to happen did. And as with The Show what happened here also involved mgmt. However, I have to own my part of it. They made my attendance an issue and there was a mgmt change and for the person I’ve often referred to “Ruthless” on this blog was not someone I could ever do right with. And let me just say with what happened to him later I can laugh somewhat about the climax later.

Another thing I might note that I was blocked from doing what I hoped to do during that rather difficult year as it turned out. I had someone hanging around looking for an opportunity and essentially waiting for me to fail and rubbed it in once I did. That was complacency and it hit me hard and it bounced me back out of a place that I latched onto after going through leaving The Show and losing my job at that bank.

The primary lesson here is if you’re unhappy about your situation it’s up to you to do something about it. Standing around won’t change your situation and hoping for the best won’t insure that it won’t turn out for the best. Also never be too comfortable or complacent. Never assume that your “position” will not be challenged.

Both working to change your situation and not being comfortable or complacent are very difficult tasks but necessary. This is why I wrote this post.

I depended on someone else with whom I really wasn’t on the same page to deliver me a position to leave The Show. At the end of the day I have to do most of the work and not only did they leave it to me to do the work they worried me about things I really had no interest in. They admonished me as if I failed in whatever I do like….wait for it….a disappointed father. Their keen interest didn’t result in a job offer and their advice and following it to the letter also didn’t result in a job offer.

And I hope that in looking for a better position I won’t do as a colleague had done once things started to turn for me. I won’t hope someone fails and that I’ll blow it up once they do. However, I want the best opportunity for me to open up and even if it doesn’t go my way I hope for the best for others. It’s not worth rubbing in someone’s face their own mistakes.

And of course if I’m not happy try very hard to execute any potential plan to move forward and make a change. You don’t have to be stuck somewhere that you’re no longer happy and never assume that out of nowhere the situation just won’t change for the worst.

As for the next Streak Era post, I will discuss the plan for that period of time. What was I working on in the long run? Did my initial plan work? See you in November!

Outcomes

The basic outline of what lead to the Climax of the Reign of Error was as a result of a delayed train going to work on a Saturday in 2017. The train just sat for a few minutes at a stop on the way to work and as a result I was twenty mins late on that morning and it was a very early morning too. First order of business I went to get a delay slip from a ticket agent at a stop closest to the Hole.

I later gave that slip to Gary an assistant mgr who said he’ll give it to Ruthless Roger and get that last tardy excused. As you know we saw how that turned out. He snuck up on me and spoke in his nerdy baritone and sent me to the store mgmt offices where Morley found every way he could to justify why I was getting dismissed from the company. In my mind it was unfair, but I had to accept because they weren’t changing their minds that this was a legit call.

Their primary justification was that corporate hadn’t said anything about any delays and no one else was affected by it. They claimed they waited a couple or so days before they made that decision, could be bull$h!t but who knows. So for them and probably Rog who walked right back out of the office without a word I just don’t know how they arrived at this awful call. One can only assume that he just wanted me gone for reasons only he really knew.

Another justification was according to the fact that I was already on an attendance probation. And it was justified that these delays were covered by the point system and thus if you have enough points, if they don’t want to accept a delay slip from public transit then you go bye-bye.

I was given differing explanations for the attendance probation. Morley in that instance said for approximately six months if I’m not tardy again and all my points clear off then I’m officially off the probation. However, yet another store mgr who had actually left about a month prior had told me when I got served with that during the summer that I couldn’t be late at all for the next six months. So they didn’t entirely understand this either, no clarity…

So either way I was out of the picture and anyone involved with this right or wrong were just viewed as @$$holes!

Let’s fast forward about four years later. This past summer I was late in almost a similar fashion, except I was just about an hour late due to yet another delay. In ’17 I learned through social media that there was a sick passenger no announcement was made on the train by our motorman beyond our train was going express which helped make up some time.

On the other hand all I knew in ’21 was there was a track condition near the next stop as announced by our motorman. At that point I was on the outskirts of downtown Chicago. As we continued waiting I decided it was time to just do something else so I went to a very friendly and helpful ticket agent in the station house for a delay slip and decided to walk to the nearest elevated train line.

The difference between ’17 & ’21 was the personalities and the lessons learned. When I got to work I made sure this time to go to my store mgr told him the situation. Of course he told me he had to see if anyone else was affected by it, which I realize by experience. He said he was going to get back to me by the end of the day which he hadn’t and I didn’t follow-up right away until…

One of the assistant mgrs was about to write me up for it. I told her the situation and at least this time I was carrying my delay slip in my wallet as my store mgr had taken a copy of it. He was going to kick it up the chain of command and I still got the original slip. She threw the write up away as taking away that last tardy brought me back down to where a write-up wasn’t necessary.

And it had to be reiterated again when my boss was about to serve me again for that tardy. I told him the situation and the store mgr was in mgmt offices so we asked him. Store mgr said I was good and thus still wasn’t held accountable for that tardy. For the record I still have that slip at home…

A few lessons learned in both of those instances is just follow-up and if necessary escalate. Perhaps I could’ve done much better in the more recent example, though I did hold it as something of a wild-card successfully. However, I could’ve been a tad more forceful.

This second stint I’ve been much better about my timeliness yeah I’ve been late though I do work with people who are much better with being on time. They don’t even like to do grace periods, where I was told I likely won’t get marked down for grace periods however the company doesn’t want that abused either.

Regardless as a worker or even a job seeker there were situations where there were managers who were just sticklers for time. They don’t like for anyone to be even one second late and will hold it against you forever. In those cases, I was somewhat glad to get away from those types because it was going to be a problem no matter what.

In the case of ’17 I was up against a boss who may not have been a strict stickler for time just a stickler for the rule book and was very willing to follow it to the letter. Today I can just laugh at that because we now see how that worked out for him…

Also to be stated in ’17 I was on the brink fell right over the edge. In ’21 there was no brink to fall over just wanted to avoid getting marked for a tardy which really wasn’t my fault.