"I wish I knew how to quit you"...

booth
Originally uploaded by himbly.

...I said last night as I cleaned up the projector.

G-damn this is a difficult job to give up. Last night after some confusion surrounding my start time...

(he told me, "come in whenever you can, i know you're busy." but whenever I could meant for me around 7..."oh! no no no! you have to come in right away", he said -at 5 (an hour before I was even supposed to work). so I hopped into the car and drove down there. My boss has a 4 year old little boy who, although he is an adorable little bundle of cute is also spoilt rotten. Wait, I'll finish this where I was supposed to...)

...so I hopped into the car and drove sped over to the theatre. There, that's where the rest of that sentence should have gone. The whole way I practiced my "I-don't-think-I-can-do-this-job-anymore-but-maybe-I-can-just-go-on-as-relief" speech. I had it down by the time I parked. I was kind, yet determined...perfect. Right. In I go.

I marched...well, no, I didn't. I walked with confidence up the stairs and found my boss with his son in the office. My boss looked flustered and his boy looked repentant. My boss started to explain...and, being that he was obviously agitated and has a thick accent, I really couldn't make much sense of what he was saying but from what I could get it sounded something like his kid was interested in electronics and seems to have snuck all things electronic that was not nailed down ~somewhere~...from their house and from every nook and cranny of the theatre. All the evidence was laying at my feet and the kid who usually is a sweet little ray of sunshine was now standing with his head bowed and looking up at me with his big, sorry doe eyes. I didn't want to laugh as it seemed it would make light of whatever punishment he was receiving.

I went to the candy counter, laid out the midterms I am in the middle of marking and got to work. I had at least 30 min before the movie would let out. I just didn't have the heart to tell the guy I sorta quit when he was in the middle of trying to figure out what piece of equipment goes where.

He came down and we sorta talked about it. He "assured" me that things will be better now and that I can start coming in "whenever I feel like". I agreed and felt better. He left. I rethought the conversation and past events. Dang. Evidence has suggested that "whenever I feel like" does not match his idea of "whenever I feel like"...was I back at square one?

My boss is very nice and very very non-confrontational, so he didn't trick me purposefully by any means. What he probably did do, though, was set up an impossible or at least improbable situation that will end in me fixing it by coming in when I don't want to.

So, when it was all over and I was upstairs cleaning the machines I sighed and said, "I wish I knew how to quit you." It's okay, they're familiar with the source of that quote. They played it for weeks.