A short story
This is another of my short stories, I like this one a lot actually as it shows some decent inner conflict. Hope you enjoy it!
On Friday I became a manager.
That was the first time I became somebody important, if you consider managers to be important. Personally, I think everybody is a manager. We have to manage our expenses, our time, our reactions, our expectations; we have to manage everything in our lives in order to cope with the ever flowing reality of life. Becoming a manager after over seventeen years on the job is not such a big deal, it just means it was probably time for me to move up for a little bit, in order not to be cut down. They did that on Friday, they promoted me, but now that I think about it, it only made sense as they needed some sort of justification to cut two guys from the line. Increasing expenses they called it, and I was the scapegoat, I had to be the manager. I ask myself, not them as I don’t want their wrath, why wasn’t I named a manager sooner if they saw so much potential in me? They probably don’t, and I don’t know if I’m ok with it to be honest. I’m not any better than any of those two guys, I’ve worked longer, sure, but that doesn’t mean anything in particular. Thinking about it for a bit longer I realized that those guys were younger than me. Did management do me a favor? Am I that pitiful in their eyes that they cannot bring themselves to fire me? Maybe I am, just don’t know it yet. I’ve worked for seventeen years in the line dammit! I know all about the system and how everything works; I know people from other departments and know what’s right and what’s wrong.
Those two guys didn’t deserve to get fired, not Billy whose wife had a young child, not Tom who was still paying for his small rundown place. Increasing expenses. Increasing expenses could be stopped if they stopped wasting so many resources and committed themselves to run a more efficient workplace. And what the hell happened with Fred? Was he not managing the line alright? The problem is not with the line, the problem is with the entire operation.
Now I have to go to work on Monday as a manager again, officially this time. Look at everybody in the eye and tell them what’s going on, how we’re going to make things better, how we have a plan to achieve more results and get bigger. Weren’t we working hard enough already? What we means is the guys from upper management, those suits who have no clue what we have to face every day in the line to make sure the quotas are filled. How on earth am I going to tell them that we have to work even harder? Nobody ever listens!
I like doing my job and getting good results. They didn’t have to promote me for me to keep doing my job. Why the hell did I have to be promoted to manager?
Have a nice day!