The Bad Ole Days

Did I ever tell you about the time I worked two jobs? No?……I didn’t think I had. In 1997 I finally got my own apartment. I barely made enough money to pay the bills and buy food for Melissa and I. Shortly after we moved in, my car broke down. (Of course, don’t ya know that’s how it goes?) My car broke down to the tune of about 600 dollars. Which I did not have. I had just moved into this apartment, and the idea of having any savings was completely foreign to me at this time. I could barely afford to eat, much less save money.

I had a real dilemma. I worked for a small company as a receptionist. I reported directly to the owner of the company. He was willing to loan me the money and he was willing to accept installment payments. I already knew that I didn’t have enough in my meager budget to allow for this. Hence, the second job. I was desperate lucky enough to be able to go back to work in a restaurant I had worked in before. Melissa had an in home sitter at this time because I couldn’t afford regular daycare. Her sitter was willing to keep her on the nights I had to work. So, my day would go like this: Get up at 5:30 am (because I lived 45 minutes from where my day job was) get ready, get Melissa ready, drive 45 minutes, drop her off, go to work, work all day until 5. At 5 I would go in the bathroom, change into my waitress uniform and go to my second job. It was hell right here on Earth.

Since I am all about keeping this real, I have a confession to make. I sucked at being a waitress. My tips reflected that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t keep orders straight or brought out the wrong food. I had two things working against me. The first one is that I tend to wear my emotions on my face. Which means, if I am ticked off, it shows. The second, was my unfortunate bad temper.(Does that mean I was temperamentally challenged? It could be real…right?) All it took was for someone to be rude to me and it would send me on rampage of stomping around and muttering and carrying on. Most of the time, I would carry on in the back of the restaurant where customers couldn’t see or hear me.

Once in a while, I would fill in as a hostess. Let me tell you “The Rules” of subbing as a hostess when you are a waitress. If you are subbing as a hostess, you are not supposed to wait on tables. One reason is that the pay scale is different for each respective position. So on this particular day I was working as a hostess for whatever reason. The restaurant got pretty busy quickly. There was this gnarly old man sitting in a booth near my hostess station. As I was running around trying to seat people, he caught my attention or something. He was ranting and raving about how I wasn’t doing my job, and I should be waiting on him, blah, blah, blah. Don’t you just love it when customers tell you what your job is? Like there is circular that is passed out that has all of your job duties in it for all the patrons to peruse. Maybe they are published in the newspaper so that all customers will be armed with the knowledge of what you are supposed to be doing. This way if you are failing in your supposed duties, one of them will be able to quickly point out where you are going wrong, and exactly how and what you are supposed to be doing. I digress. Sorry. Anyway, I let that old gnarly man have it. I was having one of those days where I had just had enough. I was a broke, tired, single mom and putting up with his crap was the last thing I wanted to do. I basically told him that MY JOB was to make sure that customers had a place to sit. MY JOB was not to wait on him. IF HE would be patient, a server would be with him soon to WAIT ON HIM!!!

I don’t remember how long I did this. I want to say maybe a couple of months. I would leave work at night anywhere between 10 and 11 at night. Then I would pick Melissa up at the sitter’s, go home, go to bed and do it all again the next day. Pretty soon, another opportunity for me to repay this loan became available. The person who had been cleaning the office where I worked decided they didn’t want to do it anymore. I offered to take over. It was really a sweet deal. I made extra $350 bucks a month for cleaning the office every weekend. It took about four hours to clean. I quickly turned in my notice at the restaurant and took over this cleaning job. It was perfect. I could bring Melissa with me and instead of having to work three or four nights a week, I only worked four hours on Saturday or Sunday. Bliss! Joy!

Thinking back on this time in my life, I realize that things were really hard. The “hard times” I experience now are nothing like the “hard times” of back then. Hard times back then included wondering if there was going to be food on the table. Hard times now are much different.

My pending student loans are what brought this memory to the forefront of my mind. In a few short months, it will time for me to begin repaying my student loans. After a careful budget analysis, I have determined that in order for us to remain a little comfortable, as opposed to strapped, I need to take on a part time job. Which is sort of a bummer since the whole reason I went to college in the first place was to make things more comfortable for my family.

Anyone know of any offices that need cleaning?