Doctor's Orders

 

      I quit my job six months ago because it was killing me.  

    I spent the pandemic (and the previous two years) as the manager of a gas station/convenience store/donut shop/sandwich shop/pizza joint also known as a C****'s Ge***al St**e.  It was a job I loved and was really damn good at, until I hated it and it sucked the life out of me. 

    A little backstory, I took the job three and a half years ago, one year after the store opened in my town to much excitement and fanfare.  The first manager lasted three months, the second was fired for a plethora of offenses, then the store went four months without a manager.  It was a disaster area that was losing money and I was brought in to fix it.  For two years, I built up the business, cultivated an exceptional team and made that store into a moneymaker with a great reputation.  Good for me.  

    And then, 2020.  Working in retail, as an ESSENTIAL WORKER, during the past year and a half has been one of the shittiest, soul-crushing, thankless, bullshit experiences of my entire life.  The horror stories you hear are not exaggerated, people went batshit crazy.  Where I live, it literally started on the first day of the state wide mask mandate.  It was like some long dormant gene reactivated and turned otherwise mild mannered, polite denizens of the state of Minnesota into the rage filled, drooling flesh eaters from 28 Days Later in a moment.  The shift was shocking, unexpected and completely demoralizing.  Perhaps I was naïve in thinking that my fellow Minnesotans would sigh and grumble but follow the rules because that has been my experience in the past.  We don't make a scene, we don't go crazy, we tend to follow the rules and bitch about it, but we do what we're supposed to do.  Until now.

A few highlights from my Mask Mandate Diary:

Day 1:

Saturday, July 25th 7:00am

Working this weekend because I don't know how it's gonna go and I want to make sure I'm here to diffuse any situations that might arise.  Should be fairly quiet and people will adjust pretty quickly. It'll be fine.

8:15am

Just called the cops on a guy who decided to berate my cashier, call her every name in the book and threaten violence on a 20 year old, 5 foot 2 inch, 90 pound bundle of sunshine for daring to ask, in the sweetest possible way, "Do you have a mask you can put on?" He pulled one out of his pocket, put it one and promptly turned into Jack Torrance at the END of The Shining.  While I can't call for not wearing a mask, I can call if we ask someone to leave and they don't.  Cops show up, guy continues his increasingly unhinged and loud as hell rant about oppression, Communism, whores and, inexplicably, Canadians...no idea what their role is supposed to be in all of this.  The cops escort him out to the parking lot and I lost audio at this point but I assume it went something like "You can't arrest me this is America you're violating my rights you can't make me, guns, blah blah blah, God, blah blah blah, rights, blah blah blah, commies, Canada, boo hoo boo hoo you're mean she's mean how dare you MAAAAASKS!" And then he takes a swing and a weird kick thing and the next thing you know he's twitching from a taser and being stuffed into the back of the squad car.  

8:50am

Was just called a Nazi bitch by a guy who comes in at least three times a week.

9:15am

Guy just threw a cup of coffee on the floor because we offered him a mask.

9:30am

Now I'm a Communist.

9:40am

I'm a bitch again.

10:00am

Crying cashier in my office and the kitchen guy is ready to start throwing fists.

10:15am

Talked the kitchen guy out of straight up murder, he's outside smoking and muttering behind the dumpster.

10:25am

Now I'm a sheep, apparently sheep are brought back in line by having pizza thrown at them.

11:00am

Back to work after a trip home to change my shirt.  May or may not have had a shot of whiskey before leaving the house.  I'm not going to say I DIDN'T.

Noon

I should have brought the bottle with me.

12:15pm

I DEFINITELY made a mistake in not bringing it with me.

12:50pm

I'm a Nazi again, but a whore this time.  I feel like that's a demotion from Nazi bitch.  I'll have to work harder.

1:10pm

Debating calling my husband to bring the whiskey to me.

1:30pm

 Maskless asshole just opened the bakery case and coughed in an exaggerated fashion, we will be throwing everything away.  Should have made him buy the lot.

2:00pm

I hate everyone and I want to go home.

2:15pm

Crying in the walk in cooler is not as therapeutic as it used to be.

2:20pm

Two people crying in the walk in cooler is slightly more therapeutic.

2:30pm

YAY!  I've regained bitch status, I'm a Communist bitch, but still...

2:35pm

I'm an effing DEMOCRAT bitch...I think I'm having an identity crisis.  I don't know what kind of bitch to be.

3:00pm

Yeah, I'm done.  Time to go home.

3:10pm

Buying whiskey, I don't want to go back there anymore.

    Variations of this day went on until mid-May of 2021.  Most people eventually behaved themselves but we were called names and sworn at or yelled at on an hourly basis.  Combined with cleaning and sanitizing protocols from both the state and corporate, rule changes and updates on a daily basis, nervous and scared employees threatening to quit and my own worries about myself, my husband and my kids, I became a bundle of highly functional nerves.  During all this chaos and uncertainty, corporate decides to plow ahead with sweeping policy changes unrelated to COVID because we didn't have enough going on.  Taking pictures of our coolers to prove we were stocking them, checklists for cleaning, for paperwork, for you name it.  We had to take pictures three times a day to send to our supervisors to prove we were making food and doing every little thing.  Because we have time for that, you know.  Being unable to turn off my phone at night.  Employees with positive tests, store shuts down for the SteriClean team to come in.  Cleaning up after the cleaning team.  Quarantining because I was exposed, hoping to be able to relax but waiting for test results leaves you unable to relax.  Knowing I had now potentially exposed my husband.  New rules about manger's work hours that eliminated any real time off, a new scheduling system that removed all autonomy to make staffing decisions, hours being cut, out of control micromanaging with no real support all came together in a perfect storm. 

      Why do I feel like shit all the time?  Why am I not sleeping?  Why am I throwing up on a regular basis?  Why am I sleeping all the time?  Why am I crying at the drop of a hat?  Can't see the shrink because of the shutdown. Not seeing my sisters. Seeing people ALL THE TIME, not seeing the people I like.  Being insanely jealous of people who get to work from home.  Being irrationally angry when I would see people complaining about working from home. There was literally nothing I could do about any of it so I internalized and swallowed and stayed the course.  When the rules started to relax and I was able to get a hair cut again, my stylist made a comment about "people with thinning hair like you..." and my heart stopped. I have NEVER had thin hair...ever.  Thick and curly and the only thing I have consistently liked about my appearance.  WHY IS MY HAIR THINNING??

In April, I went in for a delayed checkup with my doctor (something else that had been put on hold for ages) and got the shock of my life.  Everything that had been going well, was going in the opposite direction.  My triglycerides (which had never been an issue) had soared to an unconscionable 843 (under 200 is where you want to be), my kidney function had gone to hell, my liver didn't know what to do with itself, my blood glucose, which had been well controlled, was nothing but peaks and valleys when a boring line is the goal and my A1C (the big bad diabetes number) had gone from an almost pre diabetic number to well above.  My doctor and I sat in rather stunned silence after going over all these terrible numbers and kind of stared at each other until she said "Okay, what the hell is going on with you?  Your triglycerides alone are going to kill you."  Look, I haven't been sitting home eating sticks of butter so WHAT THE HELL?

    So then she asked about my life...well, there you are.  I've never been a particularly stress-ridden person and as it turns out, I don't handle it well.  Apparently, I manifest my stress in a number of interesting and alarming ways, most of which could have killed me.  Her solution?  Cholesterol medication, Xanax and a recommendation to quit my job that I think was half in jest but I took all of her advice and followed it to a T.

Six months later and EVERY SINGLE thing that went to hell has resolved.  Clearly, I responded well to all treatments and have regained a peace of mind that I didn't even know I had lost until it was gone.  I did quit, took another job with a significant pay cut but that brings me more peace of mind and satisfaction than I ever thought possible.  I have time for the things and the people that matter most to me and I have returned to being the person I forgot I was for more than three years.  I will never again allow something so destructive consume so much of me, I can't afford it.