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.