Nobody knows the troubles I've seen...

I’m tired and my kid has a cold. It’s funny, dropping him off at the daycare when I know he’s got a cold…it’s like trying to sneak drugs onto a plane or something. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it’s a totally fucked up thing to do, but what’s the alternative? I can’t just stay home from work because the kid’s got a cold. I mean, if we’re talking about fucked up things, I can’t stay home from work if I’VE got a cold, and I make people’s drinks and serve food. It’s a problem with being a bartender…There’s really almost no one to cover for you, because there are so few shifts as is. With wait staff, there’s like 3 or so people working at any given time, and that turns over three times in the course of my shift, so there’s a huge pool of people who can work as a waitress on a Thursday morning, but I’m the only bartender. This is problematic for a few reasons. First, as I said, I could have explosive diarrhea and I’d still have to come in and serve people food, because if I don’t there’s literally no one to do it, and secondly, when I do need the time off, which is often, it’s a complete pain in the dick to get my shifts covered…This leads to a lot of really pedantic finger wagging and talking down to from my * ahem* superiors, who seem to think that because no one can cover my shift, I must need a general explanation of how society functions and how this place stays in business, and you know, why I’m such a self centered asshole. My manager actually tried to shame me for not being able to cover more shifts, never mind that the reason is that when I’m not at work I’m the sole ward of a fucking baby that I can’t just put in the closet when the other bartenders have jury duty or tickets to Jay Z or well, explosive diarrhea. This is the curse of being a manager, I suppose. Whatever, he’s a complete choach, and I try not to listen to anything he says, as a general rule.
It’s funny, on one hand, I need this job, and I like the flexibility and the cash and the general sense of not having some terrible job that keeps me constantly working long hours and freaking out, and on another hand, I feel like quitting would be the best thing that could happen to me. I constantly think I’m gonna get fired, which is ridiculous, because I don’t do anything that would warrant getting fired. It’s almost like a fantasy I have where I walk in, and they fire me first thing in the morning. That would be sweet, but that’s not how people get fired. People get fired at the end of the day. People close the door and tell you that they’re gonna have to let you go.
In the place I work, the person who would be in charge of firing me, were it to happen, would then try to have a bit of a dialog about why this was all going on, but I’ve already decided that when and if that fateful day comes, I’m not listening to that shit. As soon as I hear “we’re gonna have to let…” I’m out the door. I’ve already listened to these people talk more than I’m comfortable with for a lifetime. The SECOND it’s not somehow tied to my financial betterment, I’ll never listen to them again for even a moment.
Here’s the other thing I think about on occasion. It’s come to my attention that a lot of people are reading this thing, more than I really thought…I wonder if my employers are reading it. Is my manager sitting upstairs while I stack glasses reading this shit? That creates a strange situation. I mean, they, if they DO ever read this, surely don’t want me knowing they read it, as they don’t particularly like me, and they don’t want to feed into any ideas I have that they’re paying any special attention to my life one way or another, and I certainly don’t want them reading my random gripes about my job, but at the same time, I kind of love the idea of this manager sitting up in the office, reading this, then coming down and pretending that she didn’t read it and talking to me, even though she’s just read this part about exactly what she’s about to do…it’s like spaceballs, when they fast forward the tape to ‘now’. Do you know what I’m talking about, kids? Good times. Okay, enough about that place. Sheesh.
Tomorrow, I leave town for a week. It’s gonna be rough. How am I gonna write this bad boy? I don’t even think they’ve strung up internet wires out in Colorado yet. I’m going to a wedding, and I’m gonna see some friends and I’m gonna have to take my insanely wiggly baby on a plane. He’s a full on monster these days and I don’t know how in the hell we’re gonna keep him still for even a second. Do they make baby oxycontin? That seems like it would do the trick.
I’m tired. I’m always tired. I used to never be tired, then the baby came along and totally fucked up my sleep. If we have another kid, which is part of my plan for world domination (I want to birth out a whole boy band and be next Joe Jackson) I’m not gonna have a good solid week of sleep for the next what? Nineteen years? Jesus fucking Christ. It’s funny. Childhood lasts forever, particularly if you just get out of school and play in a band for a decade or so, but adulthood…that shit goes so fast. I feel like I’m already done and used up. It’s just all planning and the future and tracking and how old you are and jobs and retirement and fuck! I’m thirty two and I feel like I missed something and it’s too late to get it back. It’s time to die. There you go, you didn’t get yourself on the fast track in your twenties, you’re fucked. You might as well talk to those bar managers you seem to love making fun of, because that’s your future, man. Middle management in the service industry. Ooooh. Cool.
Don’t any of you people out there want to hire me for something? I can write a page about felching, tit fucking, farting, fucking animals, internet pornography or even something else, non butt/dong related pretty fast. I do these entries every morning in about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the subject. I’d be a great addition to your magazine, editor of the New Yorker! Consider this here essay my application. Oh, what? Real jobs don’t take those…that’s right. Well, this is my resume? No? Huh…fuck it. I guess it’s back to the bar.
xo