Right now I'm struggling with sacrifice. I have an incredibly shitty job at the moment, so I'm sacrificing my time and energy and, to be honest, a large chunk of my soul.
This job is actually in second place for worst job I've ever had. The title-holder for that was my two week stint at a collections agency where I was referred to as a "dialer bunny" and spend several hours a night sitting in a cubicle in a neighboring city getting screamed at over the phone by people who just could not afford to pay their hospital bills. I seriously pray that I will never have a worse job than that, but the one I have now is significantly shitty.
I got my first job when I was 16. A friend of mine was working at Cinnabon in the mall and put in a good word for me, and somehow I landed the job without an interview. It honestly wasn't that terrible. I worked very hard and received very little recognition, but the job was easy and it was neat to be able to actually bake things.
They had a pretty standard dress code/appearance policy at Cinnbon. No visible piercings or tattoos, no coloured hair, blah blah. After a while I started to see how far I could push the boundaries of their policies. I died the top layer of my hair hot pink, but left the underneath brown so that when my hair was in a pony tail and I wore a hat, you really couldn't tell it was dyed unless you looked very close. I also stopped taking out my eyebrow barbell, which was kind of hilarious since a fellow I worked with continued to cover his with an enormous band-aid.
The only comments I ever received about my appearance were from customers, and they were entirely positive (sometimes, uh, too positive. I had to hide in the back room from a certain exceptionally creepy older dude.).
Over the years, and through many different jobs, my appearance has drastically changed. I'm sure if I went to apply for a job at the mall these days I would get laughed out the door.
The best job I've ever had was working for the independent video rental store, Video Difference. That place spoiled me so much! Absolutely no dress code, other than having to wear the black staff t-shirt. Other than that I was able to wear my patch pants, dye my hair, stretch my ears, and have visible tattoos. I think at my most extreme, I had 3/4 inch ear lobes, dread locks, and a vertical bridge piercing (I essentially had my forehead pierced). My boss didn't care, customers thought I was "neat", and my appearance never once stopped me from doing my job as a store supervisor.
Like I said, I was spoiled by that job, because now I'm trying desperately to find a new one and I think I'm in trouble. This is where the idea of sacrifice comes up. I know that I'm absurdly hire-able, especially for someone my age, but at this point the idea of having to cut my hair or hide my tattoos really upsets me. My dread mullet, while it may look kind of ridiculous or disgusting, is actually very important to me. 10 of the dreads were given to me by people who are very special to me (the first dread I attached I've actually removed since a) it smelled like a dead dog and b) belonged to an abusive ex-partner. It did get the ball rolling, though.). I also have a bottle cap that was given to me by the old drummer of my band, a vertebra that I found at the bone yard, a seashell that I found at the Halifax catch-out and several other important relics decorating my dreads. This isn't just my hair, it's an ongoing sentimental art project, and I'm just not ready to cut it all off so I can sell shoes to bourgeois fucks.
I don't know what to do. On the one hand, everything is impermanent. I could cut my hair off, get a job, and just grow it back later. On the other hand, I know that I'll never be happy if I continue to sacrifice who I am so I can get a shit job and make money to spend on what, beer? Records? Beer and records are great, but I can live without them. I need to pay rent and I need to feed my cat, but other than that nothing is worth sacrificing my happiness.
I guess this was just a long winded way of asking if anyone has any leads on cool jobs in the HRM?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
