Shut Your Pie Hole!

I've never been accused of being a rumor-starter. Well, until last night. I should have known better.

Like with that disastrous job at the writers' non-profit, and during all the interesting changes at my non-profit job in NYC, I kinda prided myself on having developed the ability to put various tiny clues together to figure out things before others (i.e. like when someone is about to quit/be fired, etc.). This has never really failed me, though sometimes I haven't gotten all the details right, and it's typically something I keep to myself until it all comes out publicly.

Typically.

At Shop-n-Smile there are only two supervisors I really like to work with: Joe, an older, seemingly-gruff man who is actually pretty funny and nice, and Candy, who's about 10 years older than me, and also a lot of fun to work with. They take their jobs seriously and are both very competent, but are thankfully lacking that 'Shop-n-Smile disciple' gene that seems to be embedded within the other managers, and makes me want to projectile vomit.

Besides the dozen or so employees who have recently jumped ship, and made me impulsively want to quit each time it happens, now it seems Candy might be leaving also. This makes me very sad, since I find it so difficult to just tolerate working at Shop-n-Smile as it is, and having to close each night with one of the Mr. Intense Supervisors will just make it all the more teeth-gritting.

Then last weekend, one of the Mr. Intensity's called a "huddle" of all the employees. He was chatting and being his usual children's-show-upbeat self (which can turn into wrath is you say the wrong thing, a la Angie), and he blithely made a comment about Joe that went something like this: "Oh, well it won't matter anymore what Joe thinks after August 27." Mr. Intensity just kept right on talking, but a red flag went shooting up through the top of my head and began waving furiously. Was Joe leaving on the 27th?! I looked furtively around, but no one else seemed to catch it, or care.

I knew this was entirely possible, since in actuality, Joe is a career banker, but after moving to Missoula, was unable to get a good banking job (gee, startling), and ended up working for Shop-n-Smile. I knew if he could find a really good banking job, he'd probably nab it, and who could blame him?

Later that same day, Joe was handing me his wife's business card. She, too, is a banker. Joe is always trying to get Beau and I to move our banking services to that of his wife's bank. As I was looking at her card, Mr. Intensity was walking by. He suddenly yelled back, "Hey Joe! What are you trying to do? Poach J. away and take her to your place?" Again, red flag a'flyin! I thought to myself, "This confirms it, he's leaving to go work at a bank!"

A few days later, I was closing with Candy and she was telling me about her potential job offer at another place, which sounded great. I asked her, "Is it true that Joe is leaving too?" She paused and turned to me, mouth agape. "Is he leaving?!"

Uh oh.

Candy continued, "Really? I thought I heard something going around, but I wasn't sure. There have been signs." (This just seemed like further confirmation to me). "I'll have to call Bev and find out for sure," she said.

That was the last I'd heard of anything, until last night. I came into the store for my shift, and there was Joe, arms akimbo. "I want to talk to you," he said, curling his finger and gesturing me toward the office.

Uh oh.

Once inside his office, which has one of those giant "I can see you - you can't see me" windows, Joe unloaded. "What did you do? Rumor spreader! The whole store is talking about how I'm quitting! What did you say to people?"

After a few rapid blinks, I regained my ability to speak. "What? No! I only talked to Candy. What happened? Are you quitting?"

After informing me, that no, in fact he was NOT quitting, nor had any intention of quitting, he then began a story about how this "rumor" of his quitting had made it around the whole store, until it had finally reached the store manager who had called Joe into his office to have a serious talk, ask if he was really leaving, etc. Joe, unaware of any of this, and pretty fucking shocked, could only tell the manager the truth, he was staying put.

Joe then gave one of his gruff smiles. "It actually did help me out though."

"Oooh, did you get a raise?" I asked, full of hope. Wow, then he'd actually OWE me one for that!

"No, not that, but it helped things out a lot."

"Well, there you go! I did you a favor!" I triumphed.

Joe gave me the stink eye and said, "Nice job."

Of course at that point I apologized profusely. Idiot. You'd think I'd learn. About a month ago I had said, in passing, to Candy, "Damn, I'm gonna quit. I hate my schedule!" It was true, since my boss is continually fucking up my schedule and adding shifts after it's "finalized," which irks me to no end. But I say I'm going to quit all the time. Ask Beau - it's like the first thing out of my mouth when I come home cranky and tired each night.

Candy, taking this VERY seriously, brought it up in the managers' meeting, got my intense boss in a bunch of trouble, and then later, I had to suffer the pain-in-the-assness of having THREE different managers come up to me, including the store manager, asking me to stay and proclaiming how valued I was. Sheesh. I love Candy, but COME ON!

Okay, lesson learned. This time.