Chump in Charge

When you are a part-timer - real bottom of the barrel, insignificant employee - you get truly fucked on long weekends.

You can bet your life that every salaried employee will take the Friday of Memorial Day weekend off, leaving part-timers holding the bag. I must admit, as a salaried employee, I did the same thing many, many times. But I am on the other side of the equation now and I resent it.

Because I should be retired, not in kindergarten.

Everybody disappeared last Friday, leaving me and another part-timer in the box-office. She left at 3:30. I was alone from 3:30 to 6:00. In an empty building.

Normally I enjoy this, I pray for it, I look forward to it - I hate being around people. But on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend I feel like a chump.

Everybody else is water-skiing, smoking fat cigars, barbecuing, kayaking, consuming large, enlightening volumes of alcohol, laughing, telling stories, enjoying the company of friends, enjoying the company of relatives. I am sitting in a vacant building, the phone is not ringing, no one is stopping in, bored to death and resentful. And when the phone does ring, or somebody does walk in, I get furious - I do not want to deal with you. 

What the fuck is your problem? Can you not just leave me alone?

I walk (limp) around the buliding, ride the elevator, look out the window at people below happily bouncing down the street in Memorial Day freedom. I reflect upon the train wreck that is my life, leaving me washed up and stranded on the Island of Unfulfilled Potential. Shocked to find myself here - in ragged clothes, with rancid breath and lifeless eyes.

Oh well, what are you gonna do?

Chump in Charge. Sounds like a position of authority to me.

As much as I am ever going to get at this point in my life.