I bet you get your way a lot. I bet you scare people by making them believe that you’re going to sue or get them fired. I bet you get a lot of discounts by complaining about things that are just a part of policy, like the fifty dollar discount I gave you tonight. I bet you think you’re real tough shit. I bet you’re the only person on the planet.
Here’s what you don’t know about the person you spent 20 minutes screaming at for following the rules and not letting you do laundry at midnight:
This is my last night working a six night streak. My knees have been hurting a lot lately, and I’m a little scared because this is about the age when my dad started to develop his completely debilitating arthritis, the arthritis that he takes 40 pills a day for, the arthritis that put him on disability in his mid-forties, the arthritis that makes him wear heavy duty braces on his knees just to do something simple like walk around the mall for half an hour. The other day the pain made it difficult for me to slip the receipts under peoples’ doors, and I started limping. I haven’t told anyone about it yet. I’m hoping it will go away. I need this job.
I just found out yesterday that my long term boyfriend is going to join the air force, which means I won’t get to see him for a long time. We already live two hours apart, so I don’t get to see him all the time anyway. I spent yesterday bawling my eyes out because of it, and because when we were talking about it he said that it would be harder for me than for him because “women form deeper attachments than guys”. He realized he’d put his foot in his mouth and he took it back later, but hearing that messed me up a little bit. I suffered from severe depression for years, and it took me a lot of work to get to a place where I was happy and could love myself. Even so, I have deep-rooted insecurities leftover from my darker days, and they’ve added a lot of stress on our relationship. We’re each other’s first significant other, first kiss. We’ve been friends since high school but waited five years to take it to the next level. The entire reason he’s joining the air force is so that he’ll have a good job and good benefits so he can take care of me in the future. I’m working like crazy because I want him to know that he doesn’t have to take care of me.
He hands in his application tomorrow morning. It’ll take a while to process, then he’ll go to basic for 8.5 weeks, then on to tech school, which will take 7 months. That’s almost a year of maybe seeing him once. After tech school, he’ll move to a base to work, probably in the US but maybe not. Four years active duty, four years inactive service. There’ll be a month in between tech school and him getting stationed. I think he wants us to get married during that time. I’ll have already graduated by the time he’s done with school. We already know we want to get married for sure, but getting married after being apart for so long will be difficult. We both know that. If I want to go with him to live on base, though, we’ll have to be married. I never in my wildest dreams saw myself as a military spouse. This changes everything.
I’ve always been one of those people with a lot of potential. My professors claim me as one of their most intelligent and talented students, but lately I can feel myself giving up on my dreams. It’s weird to feel yourself giving up and not do anything to stop it, to just let it happen. I don’t know where I’m going anymore.
If I were a brave person, I would slide this note under your door tonight. Why? Because I want you to know that when you scream at service workers over policies that they can’t change, you’re degrading a human being. You think that swearing at me and standing at the desk for twenty minutes is going to make me break? You’re the least of my worries. And yeah, you’re an asshole. And because you’re an asshole, I’m not going to give you this letter, because you would call corporate and corporate would call my manager and I would probably get fired. And like I said, I need this job.
I could tell you about the drunk people who pass out in my lobby even though they’re not staying here so I have to call the cops on them, and I could tell you about the guy who screamed at me so much throughout the course of a night that he made me cry twice in one shift about something I couldn’t control (I was 19 and still working on getting my composure). I could tell you about the guy who calls under the guise of making a reservation only to masturbate to the sound of my voice. I could tell you about the 55+ year old businessmen who think appropriate small talk includes “The reason you’re swaying is because you want to have sex with me.” (In fact, the reason I’m swaying is because my knees hurt.) Or I could tell you about the guy who screams at me and demands a phone number for corporate to complain about me following policy and not letting him into the laundry room in the middle of the night to wash the clothes he got dirty when he jumped into our pool fully dressed while on vacation. But I think you’re familiar with that story. (If that sounds suspiciously like bullying, it’s because it is.)
I deal with you and people like you so that I can make money to pay for gas to visit my boyfriend for the short couple months we have left together. And if that sounds suspiciously human, it’s because it is.
P.S. – Ditch the nose ring. You’re just validating a negative stereotype, and nobody needs that.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
yousharknotpass
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