There are certain profiles within the working world - there are always two people at every workplace. There's the bitch, the one that everyone either loves or hates, depending on whether the bitch loves or hates them. There is âlwaysˆ this person, always the one who breeds workplace strife. Sometimes they mean to do it because they enjoy the drama, but sometimes they don't even know it - or at least, I like to think that a certain few of these people are just unaware of the havoc they wreak on the rest of us on a daily basis. Profile Number 1: The Bitch (can also be The Diva, but is not necessarily so). Profile Number 2: The Hated One. As I told Jesse once, if you don't know who the hated one is within a week of working somewhere, you should assume it's you and bust your butt until you get it squared away. As I've mentioned before, I have a good nose for workplace drama - more because I pay attention to human interaction than because I enjoy the dish.
So I had The Bitch pegged within the first day, basically. Jesse introduced her as "The Park Slope Princess," which was enough of an indication for me. Up until yesterday, I'd actually gotten along okay with her - I'm new, and I know how to keep my head down if nobody's deliberately targeting me. But yesterday, inexplicably, it was like she became aware of my presence and the fact that I had no ill will towards her, and decided to change all of that with three hours of inordinate bitchiness. I get - and deeply respect - the concepts of seniority and even the sense of superiority that it brings. But there's no need for the kind of condescending, demeaning attitude that this girl has, and it really pisses me off. I have two more shifts to get through with this girl, but God help me, because I'm dreading it awfully. I'm having to try harder to care about things with every passing shift, too.
I wish the real world were like University - I wish I could, at the end of the "semester," write up an evaluation of Janice, and express my disdain and disgust with both her managerial style and her way of dealing with people in general. As it is, I suppose I'll just have to express my frustration here - I don't want to slander the store as a whole on Yelp!, because I actually really respect the people who work for her, and want them to remain employed. The woman couldn't respectfully interact with one of her employees if her life depended on it - she's caustic, cruel, and about as passive-aggressive as they come. And that's even aside from the fact that she's awful about micromanaging, and doesn't know how to just let her managers do their job.
As long as the blog is still entitled as my Personal Theories, here are my thoughts on managing: a good manager should be a liaison between the owner and the employee. The owner is the idealist, while clearly the employee is the pragmatist. The owner thinks of ways to bring in or keep business, many of which sacrifice efficiency and speed; the employee thinks of ways to open and close and help the customers quicker, many of which sacrifice some of the integrity of the business. These are both valid points - the employee's tactics benefit the owner by clocking out early, but the owner's tactics benefit the employee by getting them more tips. But the manager's job is to negotiate that incredibly fine line - to find a middle ground between the two, and to mediate between these two somewhat-opposing parties. A good manager should be able to see both points of view, and work between them accordingly - this is why an owner working in close contact with the employees makes everything twice as complicated. Every time Janice walks in and starts mucking around, she's undermining Drew or Jesse's authority, and damaging the set of rules being crafted. It's just a shame.
I want to draw an odd - maybe even disrespectful - parallel; craft an analogy that might be weak, but one that expresses a growing apprehension. Is Stockholm Syndrome partially caused by the victim's new found fear of what was once considered normalcy? Maybe as the first part of my retrospective, I think I want to express the city as my captor. In a way, I was dragged here by my sense of obligation to myself - one of the driving forces in my life is my desire to live with an eye to not regretting things in the future. I forced myself into going, and then staying, and then surviving. This probably sounds incredibly melodramatic, but the sense of panic that I felt every single day for the first several weeks - and then less often, but still regularly in the months following - was incredibly real, and immediate. I could feasibly label myself my own captor, but it was the legacy and prestige of the words "New York" that made me stay. But just recently, as my frame of mind has started shifting into "last few days" mentality, I've started thinking I may not be ready to go back to what was once normal. Not because I don't still love Columbia, or my network of really incredible friends and family, or even how convenient my life was; honestly, it's just that transitioning back into what I once considered normal now seems strangely daunting.
Alright. Enough theories for the night.
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