Now, I’m not talking about happiness over responsible decision-making. Neither my life nor my summer was ruined (though I did break up with my newly unemployed boyfriend), but that incident drilled something into me that’s been impossible to shake until very recently: the idea that happiness should not take precedence over some amorphous sense of commitment. Day.īut of course I went back, apron strings between my legs. I just wasn’t happy, and I didn’t want to show up. I wasn’t moving to New Hampshire, nor had I been diagnosed with a severe shellfish allergy. I wasn’t building a career in food service that necessitated a move up the ladder to Mike’s Clam Shack. I wasn’t leaving for a better gig or more money. I had made a commitment to this job, they said, and we do not just renege on our commitments when the going gets tough. They calmly told me I had to suck it up and go back. I think he was just pissed off, suddenly down not one, but two able-bodied minimum wage employees, and he knew that he could ruin the paltry remains of my summer by pulling “parent rank.” And given my anxiety-laced speech the night before, he probably also suspected that he’d be outing me before I’d had a chance to let mom and dad know I was not the future valedictorian they thought they’d raised, but rather a sniveling little quitter. I knew, my parents knew, and my boss knew that my presence or absence was not likely to alter the fate of his glorified-Applebee’s establishment during the dog days of August. Let me be clear: this is like saying that a single fifteen-year-old in the Zhengzhou factory is critical to Apple making its quarterly numbers. Lots of Canadians, it seemed, would be clamoring for the soggy, overpriced lobster rolls that only I could serve them. My boss had called to inform them of my “rash” decision and asked them to intervene, saying I was too important to the successful operation of the restaurant to lose at this critical juncture. The next morning, my parents were waiting for me on the couch. Somehow I instinctively felt like it had been the wrong thing to do - even though my boss was a jackass and even though my manager was totally inappropriate and even though I really hated smelling like the bottom of a Fryolator every day when I got home. Heaving my cojones wordlessly into her minivan, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her right away that I’d quit. To add insult to injury, my mother was waiting in the parking lot to pick me up from my shift. When our four-minute conversation was over I was near tears and shaking with what my thirty-six-year-old self recognizes as panic, but at the time felt like imminent death. I plotted, I schemed, I rehearsed my quitting speech. It was terrifying but also, liberating! I would march into my boss’s office, untie my dirty green apron, and announce that he could take his chewed-up Bic pen and cross me off the schedule. Look, I was young and in love and this was the first time I had ever even considered railing against The Man. (Sorry, Canadians, but this was an epidemic in Southern Maine beach towns in the mid-nineties.) It was the tail end of the season and my boyfriend convinced me we should both just quit and enjoy our Labor Day weekend - far from the reeking bus bins and the scallop-scented fry batter that clung like barnacles to our Gap khakis. I was tired of sloshing pepperoncini into the salad bar every day for a bunch of ungrateful Canadian tourists who never tipped. The owner was a squirrelly Jehovah’s Witness who made me uncomfortable every time he showed up on site. My prickly, crazy-eyed manager was always hitting on my boyfriend, who also worked there. When I was fifteen, I tried to quit my summer job at a local surf & turf restaurant.
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