Many Leaders, no Leadership

Many of my entries have been about work as of late, and I'm beginning to understand that If one works in a place he or she does not have the heart to work in, then that place can be hell. Or perhaps put another way, heaven and hell might in fact be one in the same, depending on what life you have led. If a choir of angels singing about God is excruciating, imagine living that through eternity.

My point being, I want to be a band teacher. I've wanted to since the first day the Russ Newbury shook my hand and told me "good work" on a piece I wrote my senior year in high school. I wanted that kind of experience, to be able to shake the hand of a student of mine, say well done, and influence them on their otherwise unresistant ambitions.

I work at a restaurant. (Not quite a band teacher, is it?) This restaurant happens to have some fine workers in it. Some fine workers are the store leaders. The basic tenants of being a leader is to be able to lead. This is where the logic falls apart. These people cannot lead to save their worthless hides. Final syllogism: The restaurant has leaders that don't lead (once again, if you follow the math on this crap, that is W sub r/(leaders+(-leaders))=undefined quantity: because one cannot divide by zero.) In essence, this place runs itself on pure pissy ego and not so much on strong foundations.

I was in an unpaid for meeting yesterday about our current progress in the store over the past year. It was about 1 million dollars off projected due to a few undeniable factors. The city of Bozeman is pretty much anti-big box store. In order for Wal-mart to expand their store, the needed to jump unreasonable hurdles, including funding a mass transit system to compensate for the jobs that the city would lose and gain from having the store open in town. By making the claim that Wal-mart would kill 100 jobs in the city, they forced retribution on the store, which they replied that they would add 200 jobs to compensate. The rebuttal was that the 100 unemployed would work for the Wal-mart and have no way to get there, thus mass transit was necessary for the whole city. and Like a gay guy telling me about his plight with his lifestyle change, Wal-mart said "fine, you win, I'll agree with you," not so much because they had a point, but because you can only take this crap for so long before you get tired and cave.

so, back to the subject, 1 million dollars off. Joe cut his losses. He has been here a year and expects to turn a profit. no one makes a profit in the first year, any economy wise human being can tell you that. He then explains the accountability aspect of the job. "I am a nice guy, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but when you walk on me, I'll drop the hammer." I think if you talk in metaphor cliches, you need to be beat and told how to convey words with real thoughts and not broad speculations. either way, he did have a point, show up for your scheduled time and work hard. However, this accountability should run both ways and doesn't. Joe shows up every day, I'll give him that, but the fact that I had to scour up someone myself and get a day off that I requested a month ago indicates to me that he is not putting in his fair share of the work. I am also confused on many job operations and timing issues that I must be able to accomplish. Ask questions, he says, Joe, i tried, you told me that you would get to it in a minute and that you had something more important to do. You did, yea, I'll give you that, but you never got back at me with any answers, so I stop asking. What's the point of asking when I have to find the answer my fricken self anyway? I have been "instructed" 6 different ways on how to close my station, all of which seem to conflict with one another. I never have a free moment and yet I'm always the last to leave. I don't know what they want clean at any given point in the night, don't know when to close a fryer, don't know where things are in the walk in cooler, and really, it's because no one has stood up, taken any sort of leadership role and made sure that standard practice is followed. It's absolutely irritating to have a damn cheerleader pretending to be a coach, waving her damn pompom and cheering "let's get this kitchen clean" instead of running practice, going over the plays, giving push ups to the slackers and giving instruction to the ones who need it.

I wish I was doing what I want to do now. But I do what I must.

sparate from myself

I have come to a harsh conclusion. I am strung out too thin in my endeavors.

I have done the math. I am expected to: Practice 14 hours a week minimum, do 2 hours of homework per class per class hour, participate in 14 hours of class per week(28 hours of homework for those of you keeping the algebra alive in this entry(minus 8 hours for classes involving practice(then adding 14 hours a week(minimum) to that hourly load)) work 32 hours a week until midnight, and , in the off times, take care of my daughter. evaluate:14+14+2(14-2)+32+Td=...
...84 hours +Td a week of misc. work. divide that by 7 to get the expected work a day, and you get 12+1/7Td hours a day. factor in that weekends are more work than any other day and the fact that most of the sleep I receive is actually a nap before class, and also factor in that Td is anywhere between 2 and 8 hours a day, and the fact that Td varies by the amount of molar pain my daughter has, nights can add another 2 hours to the already existent 2 to eight. My expected workload therefore is anywhere between an uncomfortable 14 to 22 hours a day. not to mention the fact that I need wind down time in a day. another hour donated to the Gods of blogging and pixelated virtual interaction with an "AIent" being inside the PlayStation II. Also factor in the constant nurturing of a marriage. more like a houseplant then a romantic painting. you have to water a marriage, fertilize a marriage, and (for the love of god ladies) cross pollinate marriages in order for the plant to stay alive.

I am tired, as always. I have also come to the conclusion that, in fact, I have had more days without a shower than a man should without being locked in a plastic, air tight box. My week has sloshed together into one greasy streak and I'm starting to lose my focus on time and space. is it Monday? Wednesday? the forth of July? 2001? 2007?

As far as I can tell today is today and I have no idea how I got here. Time has caught up with me recently and I can't help but wonder if I'm so tired, what have I done to become so? I have a stack of notes in my own handwriting that i don't remember taking and a book of homework I do not remember doing.
I feel like jack from FIGHT CLUB. snap awake at LAX, Boston, JFK, Galatin field... While and alter ego seems to be setting up another life without my participation, letting me in on a few things about the organization but keeping me in the dark on the methods and sick practices employed to successfully overcome the world. but I digress...

I seem to digress a lot in my blog... oh well...

I seem to have a lot on my plate right now. And as my once stalwart visage succumbs to fatigue, I can't help but wonder what kind of person I am when I don't pay attention to it. I am apparently more studious in my sleep that in my waking hours. and if that part of me can break free, it will be like Tyler Durden all over again, only instead of scorching smileys on office buildings, I'm doing my homework for me, and keeping myself from cleanliness. I'm a dirty scholar when I am not paying attention I guess.

Well, I don't know what the kcuf is going on.

I've been working at my new job now for about 4 weeks... Well, I had a week where I had to attend and perform at a wedding... And 4 days without experience due to a slow day that I was supposed to work until volume and was sent home... And a few days that I had to tie up some loose ends at my previous job... And all in all, I have probably been working for a week and a half, but what the heck! Yea, I've been working there for four weeks.
In that time, I have learned that I have no idea what is going on... EVER! I work as hard I can for as long as I can and can't keep up. Joe, the proprietor of the establishment I make my occupation even observed motive to interject "Ryan! Have you learned anything in the past 4 weeks!" And to tell him the truth, I had learned about 1 and a half weeks worth of information which was more like a religious dogmatic tripe, point being that I have learned about 5 ways to prepare a house salad and all of them conflict with each other and the crappy training video I watched in the bar of the Outback Steakhouse 4 weeks ago.
I arrived at 3 on a Wednesday afternoon to work in order to open cold side, or the salad, fryer, and dessert stations for the whole night. I had never done it before and was given an ultimatum "Have it ready by four." To put it into perspective, it was like asking my baby daughter to report on her findings about the underside of the couch. As much as she sees the underside of the couch, she lacks the verbal skills to make such a report. I lacked the common sense of a restaurant to set up the stuff I was using. I wish I did; I would have not about had a nervous breakdown in a walk-in cooler after Joe informed me that it was 4:05 and he had to bail my ass out. The night before I had run out of... All salad making material. Upon my restock of the line, I had 20 minute salads... (A salad is late after 2 minutes) On top of that I was also having to make the fry stuff myself because the guy that should've been doing that was busy closing the stations. I didn't know how to make a lot of the stuff that they asked me to and when I asked about it, well, let's just say they are all vets of the arches and this makes them fry jockeys and jackasses to boot. It was like calling a San Fransisco condominium complex, I couldn't get a strait answer. (but a whole lot of gay ones.)

It's not all bad though, I actually got a compliment form Joe. He said that I did a good job today. John, one of the other managers, said that I was improving, and they did realize that I had worked a week and a half, not four as the books said. I am still working to be better. In the end, this chick Gracy told me that it would be impossible to learn all of this stuff in a week and a half and so long as I bust my ass she has no problem with me. She then said she wanted a beer and continued to grill steaks until the sun began to rise again.

Um...

Well, I've been a while posting and a long time coming. I think I have been to busy for this stuff recently but now I have a couple of seconds to spare before dinner. I currently received a raise at my crappy little retail chain job and it seems that everything is just peachy. 8.50 seems to be a reasonable wage for unloading a truck at 6 am, but sometimes I wonder just how much longer I can take this crap. Some people make their first million by the time they are 23 and I simply don't make ends meet daily. It's just nice to know that I am a 23 year old loser with a wife and kid living at my parents place and that some other chode is out there on a yacht sucking jello shots out of their paid for escort girlfriend's naval. He will never know sacrifice just because his dad knew a guy who knew a guy who killed this other guy to give this guy's guy's kid a job in some place that pays him a salary to babysit pencil sharpeners and spreadsheets for 4 hours a day.

I'm tired. Let me rephrase that. I am a male and therefore immune to the rigors of childbirth, labor, and pregnancy and so I am, but have no right to be, tired. I don't know what it is about a guy who wants a nap that drives women to disregard any anguish that any man endures. Let me be frank! I am not a sexist by any means, but please realize that men have to work for a living. The next time any woman wants to whine at me because I have a higher wage in the workplace, she should first realize that I work in retail, so every grunt is treated equal with wages in the tower of retail. Second, when was the last time that any of you whiners moved over 100 pounds of brick for some dumb chick who thinks she needs 20 bricks to frame a bunch of flowers that her husband works so hard keep alive. Let's not forget that the men are the babies of you women that when a megalomaniac president can find just cause to send to a sandy crap hole covered with oil, they could be forced to pick up a gun and a tee shirt with a bulls eye and go kill some charlie or towel heads, or whoever we deem is the damned threat to the world. Women don't register with SS on their eighteenth birthday. You scream for equality when all you really want is the perks with none of the side effects. Many of you are no better than slave owners 400 years ago, who wanted plantations but no toil in the field. Take it or leave it that is just my opinion of convenience feminists. But I digress.

I am tired, but I am disallowed to rest. The guilt pushed on myself is too much to let myself stop, and at the same time too tired to be an effective worker, father or husband. So, what to do... rest? Seems easy enough. But I have to be the one to stand strong, to be emotionless and a steady rock in which the world anchors itself. In the words of Jack "I'm the warm center that the world gravitates to. I am Zen" Zen is work. Zen is turbulent. Zen is not Zen. Now what? I shall remain stoic.

Chronos Et Veritas

I sit here now, typing one handed, the other hand around a crying baby who would prefer squirming and falling to her doom than sleep, drinking cherry coke reflecting on how far I have come. My boxes are strewn about filled with books, sheets, my music, amd my books of sheet music, while I wallow in my own remorse for the fact that, once again, I am forced to move back into my parents place from Missoula due to money issues... Last year about this time I was typing one handed crying, the other around a stigma of regret that inclined me to prefer squirming to my doom than sleep, drinking a cherry coke and reflecting on how the hell I got here. I had less boxes strewn about filled with text books, bed sheets, my music, and my textbooks of sheet music that I refused to go to bed for, while I wallowed in my own remorse that I am forced to leave Missoula for the first time, due to money issues.

This leads me to a conclusion. The proverbial "History repeats itself" slogan held by High school history teachers and twice devorcays (not too sure on the spelling there) is proved positive in the case of love and life. Once again I'm sitting amidst my failures and miseries... the smoldering pieces of a life set for greatness, but can only achieve mediocrity and blood loss with no gain. Once again I am left with only my closing door and my things. There's a difference this time however. I have more stuff. Another pearl that I have drug to the abyssal floor amidst the water monsters and angler fish and brought to ruin.

The people seem to increase by every monumental failure I achieve. The first one was just me. A near failure at school, a job that was floundering, and a personal failure of my own dealing with my own personal life of lust and self loathing. Then I drove the object of my lust into the hole with me the second time, getting her pregnant, marrying her on a spur of the moment, and starting our life of ruin, getting fired from a pizza place for leaving the back door open once when a half wit bastard operations manager waltzed in. Now, on to the most recent acquisition of post-cataclysmic rubble, My daughter was born into a world that has given her no chance and no hope monetarily. However, I look into my whole upbringing. My father was no older than I was when he had me and I guess by that time he was as desperate.

He had no "father figure" to speak of and well, I had a very present father figure with no reference to a father figure, so to sum up, that's an example of an example of no example. He had his own style of parenting that made me in a lot of ways the way that I am. He was a basic man for whom steak and potatoes were a bit flashy. He was honest to a fault and was always up front with me, especially when he was mad. I feared him and loved him all at once. It was his honesty that ultimately taught me everything that I know about interpersonal relationship. Now, I have only the shady outline of what he knew and what I learned form what he knew. But I digress

Back to history repeating itself. I'd like to propose that history repeats itself, but it repeats itself in a form of fractal geometry. Much like a figure repeating itself over and over, smaller and smaller into infinity, there is a point where the pattern of life creates the same pattern inside of itself. It gets so small that everything, to a final point, becomes blurry. History makes this evident in the events before the printing press. There is a definite schism in history before standardized printing that the pattern of history's fractal becomes clear. Everything after that is definite dates and definite locations, with people and places, until the present, the main picture revealed. Beyond the present is only an assumed pattern of what the past looks like.

The same holds true for human experience, the foundation of history in general. From the time you are born to the time you have your first memory, you have the same fractal. There is your first memory that acts as the printing press of your brain. It's always some intense memory, like falling down stairs or crying when a tooth gets slammed out of your head by the front door. The printing press starts the chronicles and annals of your own life until you are in the present and finding that your future is zoomed in on your past.

My father's printing press for his mind was growing up. He didn't have so much fun with 15 brothers and sisters. he learned to cope and to be simple and to be honest. The fractal continues with my cluelessness and my own experience.

So, finally, the world comes into focus, and I find myself in my own little fractal pattern of striving, failing and moving home to start again...

4 AM Flow

This is my issue with economics as it stands for us, the retail whores who wake and sleep at the beckon call of fat cat jerks that think that they own everything because they have a salaried job in a crap hole department store.

It all begins at the source. The president of a company tells his underlings that his analysts have reported that a computer told them that a certain point in the store is lacking. The president informs the underlings that the stats need to raise 3 points. Now, these underlings have received their status by removing the space between their shoulders and their employers fat posterior, thus making them come to a dire conclusion.
"Say," says underling rat bastard number one, "I know that the president told us that we needed to raise this stat by 3 points."
"Definitely," Mindless drone underling number 2 replies, all the while sizing up his new rectum neck warmer in practice for his new raise.
"But, if we were to say that the president, praise his name, were to request 6 points to an underling of ours, it would look better for us in general without any work on our part."
"assuming," piped in number 3 "that they would agree to working for 6 points."
The other two look at number 3 and chuckle to themselves in a dramatically ironic manner. number 3 worked himself up the head to butt ladder only recently and was unwise to the ways of the retailers cult.
"3, man, you are new here and we'll cut you some slack" number one replies.
"yea, man lighten up" number two adds in. "and anyway, we don't expect anymore than 5 points."
"I don't understand" 3 replies.
"When they fail to provide the 6 points for us, we still have 2 more points et gratis and we can give our underlings an unsatisfactory grade." number 1 begins to tighten a belt around his neck to warm up for a tight sphincter of the presidents excretory system.
"So we don't have to pay them anymore than we do anyway," 2 replies, while considering the prospect of jimmying a shoulder into a tight space.
The decree was made to the underlings underneath the underlings under the president of the retail corporation.
"Say," says underling underling number 1, "I know that the men upstairs told us that we needed to raise this stat by 6 points."
"Definately," Underling underling number 2 replies, all the while sizing up his new rectum neck warmer in practice for his new promotion to butt plug of the president...

This perpetuates itself into a massive accumulation of proposed points that eventually trickle down to the president's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling's underling;s underlings employees.
"Alright my little work whores... I mean horses. We need to increase our points in this area by 2,000,000 points."
We the meager workers of the retail trade do the impossible and with sacrifice of our personal lives, health, and guilt free conciseness, we manage to muster 5,000,000 points. which raises the salaries and positions off all of the underlings above us. Since the biggest slice of the new revenue will be going to the screwed up Christmas tree of soulless corporate colon divers, we the meager who woke up at four in the morning opening boxes and running machinery until two in the afternoon are told by our employers that "I'm sorry, but we can't give you a raise. The company cannot afford to give you a raise on the account that you have so much overtime."
All ready, we can see this guy grabbing the rubber bands from the couches that we unloaded with the sweat off of our backs and puts them around his head in preparation for the day when he too can be a hemorrhoid in the CEO's pooper.
We at the bottom have no chance. but we do what we must.