After having worked several jobs over the course of my 20-some years on this planet, there has been only one constant in the duration of my (admittedly sporadic) bouts of employment: I am guaranteed to be a nightmare for the Human Resources Department. I’ll say and do damn near anything with little regard for the ramifications of my actions with respect to the status of my own employment or the general atmosphere of my workplace. The reasons for this are both few and simple: I don’t care about my current job nor have I ever cared about any past job. I don’t want to be doing them, they are beneath me and so are the majority of the people I interact with while going about my duties, customers and fellow employees alike.
I am currently employed in a low-level retail setting as I search for a ‘real’ job with my newly-minted degrees from Arizona State and my nightmarish tendencies have already come into fruition. A few days ago, I said the word ‘fuck’ which, by all accounts, is about as uncommon in my day-to-day as nitrogen is in the air surrounding us all. In other words (for those of you who may have forgotten your elementary science studies) I swear constantly and rarely refrain from verbalizing any and all of my thoughts as they arise.
In this particular instance, after the store had been closed for the day, I said it in front of two females and three males, one a Mormon, one a manager, all others on par with my title and largely in-line with my sensibilities. The manager then began to explain that I can’t “…drop ‘f-bombs’ in front of the ladies.” I thought he was kidding because I’ve heard him say ‘fuck’ and worse many times in front of plenty of people. We then had a bit of humorous back-and-forth before I finally realized that he definitely was not joking around, he honestly meant that I can’t say the word ‘fuck’ in front of any females. I asked him if he knew how sexist that was and that Human Resources would probably have a heyday with such blatant gender discrimination. He then pulled that move that every person who is too dumb to argue pulls (if they’re in some way in a position of power over their opponent) when he said “End of discussion.” My parents used to pull that shit with me when I was a kid. They have since learned to simply ignore me, especially when I’m speaking.
I’m seriously considering reporting him to the HR Department, not just because I was discriminated against and that’s fucking bullshit (if I were female, he would not COULD NOT have verbally reprimanded me in the same manner using the same words) but a small portion of it was that, for the first time in a long time, I couldn’t say what I wanted. I couldn’t stand there, tell him to go fuck himself, gracefully knock over a few cardboard displays and simply leave without a care in the world, never to return. As much as I hate to say it, I need this fucking job and, as a result of that need, I had to swallow my pride and my words, hike up my testicles, and just quietly clock out like the piece of shit, part-time retail bitch that I am.
