Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Suprise Ending


As many of you have heared, I lost my job at the Encore Cafe last week. It was a sudden shock, to say the least. I knew that since the cafe opened it was always hurting financially. It seems that a new cafe in Columbiana is just not what people are able to spend their hard earned money on. The past 2 months the daily take at the cafe went down to half of what it had been.

I understood that; we made drastic changes, but nothing seemed to do the trick. I knew it was hurting. Even though the head cheese never really gave me any indication of where things were, I knew we were hurting bad. I tried to do everything that I could to make things work. I developed recipes that were cheaper for the cafe but also gave some tasty scratch recipes, took care of jobs that would let people get out of there earlier on their shifts, any thing that I could think up, I did. I had a pretty strong suspicion.

My plans were to quit after this semester at college. To work through the semester and find something in the medical field to get my foot in the door since I will be graduating in May of 2010. I knew that I didn't have to put up with the place too much longer. My heart wasn't in it anymore. I never really had control over the place and it was slowly released from me over the past year anyways. Why was I there trying to make good of something that really didn't treat me right in the first place? Lots of promises were made, none of which happened. Ideas were thrown around only to be taken back at the last second. Trust was placed in me and things asked of me, but when I went to take care of them my toes (and trust) were stepped on.

I am glad to not be there anymore for the fact that I never had a worse boss, I never had so much mistrust placed in me. I was never lied to this much for something so simple as coffee, salads, and sandwiches. My faith in people, in friends, was shattered...I lost friends, I gained friends, it was the most trying year of work that I ever had. I have never been hurt so bad and I will never get hurt like that again.

In fact I will never do it again.

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Bleak Outlook

So I'm just sitting at the Cafe waiting for Sam to get done with his new job at 4:30. We drove together this morning (as Sam pointed out, it was the first time that we ever have been able to drive to work together) to save on some gas and because the roads were pretty horrendous that we didn't want to venture 2 cars out there.

We turned onto the side road about 1/10ths of a mile from our house and Sam ran over a black lid to a trash can. I think that our car has a decent amount of clearance under it but that darn lid stuck under the car and we started dragging it. It was so loud! Sam stopped and tried to back up to lose it and it still stayed with us. So we had to pull into a driveway and somehow the gravel in the driveway loosened the lid and it popped out from under our car. It was like a mini snowplow under our car. Goofy, but at least we had a good laugh on the way to work.

I am so glad that we are starting to see some longer days. I think that this winter has snuck up some depression in me that started silently but has recently reared its ugly head. Seasonal Affective Disorder, maybe I need to get some spotlight and sit in it, drink some milk for vitamin D and soak in some rays of artificial light.

We got to go to Hocking Hills right after the new year with some of our best friends. I really had a good time, but it went entirely too fast and it stayed busy the entire time also. I was expecting a little down time, but I didn't find it till about 1am every night, when everyone was trying to stay awake. I loved the Lodge we stayed in this year, it was beautiful and the lay out of the huge cathedral living room/dining room/kitchen was just about perfect to spend our time with each other. We ended up getting into some closets that were closed to our viewing:) and we found some amazing white graduation gowns and prom dresses. From there we made our own fun. As always good friends, good food, good hiking, good sleeping, good dancing. Pictures will be posted soon I hope!

Random thoughts, but thats how I do.