Today I had an assignment that totally kicked my butt. I left feeling a bit beat up; I knew I hadn't done my best work, and the discouragement was exacerbated by the fact that the other interpreter I was working with is particularly skilled and highly respected. It was the first time we had really worked together, and I wanted to shine.
This person totally had my back during the gig and we (really, she) made the assignment a success; she was incredibly gracious and warm afterwards when we had lunch and talked through some of the particular challenges of the setting, the consumers involved, and the topic.
As I spent the afternoon reflecting on this morning's challenges, my mind drifted, as it tends to do. I started to reflect on some of the best and worst jobs that I have had. I've been more-or-less gainfully employed in some way since I was about 13 (usually working multiple jobs simultaneously); though I can say that I actually have been doing some sort of productive activity beginning long before that. My parents always worked, and it wasn't uncommon for my maternal unit to take me to work with her to provide uncompensated child labor. But as I grew older I had jobs of and on my own, the vast majority of which were less than auspicious but by no means nowhere near odious.
Save one.
The worst (and that's really not even a strong enough word) job I had lasted less than 4 hours at best, and to this day lives in infamy in my mind. The job that I look back on with the most distain, ire, and regret was Taco Bell, and I was in my late teens. I thought it would be a pretty cake summer job. If only I knew...
My first day started relatively uneventful: doing dishes, cooking meat. Pretty easy. Just a couple of hours to "get a feel" for the restaurant, where things were, how it ran, blah blah blah. No training, no orientation, just here's the sink--wash these dishes; here's the stove--cook this meat. I was to return the next day at 11 am to start my next shift. So, dutifully I reported to work, expecting to wash more dishes, cook more meat, collect my paycheck doing simple grunt work. It wasn't long before the lunch rush began, and the asshole, I mean manager, du jour decided to put me on the assembly line. At this point I need to reiterate the fact that I was on Day Two, and had NO orientation, training, nada. I didn't know shit from shinola when it came to what product had what on it. Luckily, there was a cheat sheet posted above the assembly line explaining which products had what inside of them. Needless to say it was an failure of epic proportions. Within 5 minutes, the line was backed up, and I had the asshole (oops, I mean manager) standing behind me yelling, literally, for me to hurry up. I franticly grabbed lettuce, cheese, meat, beans, whatever was in my reach and slapped in onto the eagerly awaiting shell in front of me. To say I did so with reckless abandon is probably an understatement.
Not only did I pretty much get every order wrong, I succeeded in doing nothing more than angering the assh-- manger further. He roughly shoved me aside, screaming so the entire dining room could hear: "C'mon! Any idiot can do this!" Not to be outdone or shamed in such a manner, I replied equally as loudly, "Then have a fucking idiot do it!!" As I stepped away from the line and untied my apron, the manager, purple with rage, looked at me and yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doing?!" I looked him square in the eye, dropped my apron on the greasy floor, and calmy replied, "Apparently I'm qitting," and turned on my heel and walked out, head held high while customers and employees alike stared at me, slackjawed.
I haven't been to a Taco Bell since. I didn't even go back to pick up my pittance of a check for the whopping less-than-4 hours I had worked.
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