I collapsed into a blubbering heap of over-tired mush this morning.
What it comes down to is: Cara and I will never be friends. Our personalities just don't mesh. I have a much sillier sense of humor, and she looks at me like...
It's an effort in self control to deal with my ineptitude and it's no use to try to humor her with any attempt at light-heartedness.
Granted, when she approached me this morning, I was over-sensitive, having worked the majority of my shift already on little sleep. But I honestly thought I was doing well last night. The store was spotless. Everything was stocked, everything was refreshed. For the majority of the night, there was little to be done and too many of us to do it. So I spent a lot of time sitting down, because the point is to get them self-sufficient, and the sooner we make it there, the more fine-tuning we can do.
Garreth showed up at 3:45 am, which I thought was late, but his trainee was trained at the last opening here, so he's on the fine\-tuning stage, so he was allowed to be in for 4. He didn't see any problems with my work. Cara showed up, bee-lined in my direction and demanded why things weren't done. Within 5 minutes, she found 3 things I had done wrong.
I started ranting and spouting all over the place. I'm sorry, but it isn't possible that I do everything wrong. How can I possibly have made it through 7 weeks of training if I do? And her answer to this was that I was fresh out of the book and everyone else had already figured out the tricks.
I said I had been serving coffee since I was 14 years old, and managed a Tim Hortons for a year and a half. I've probably got 10 times the experience that she has with coffee, but I don't get any respect for that.
She said yes I did, I got the job.
I started this opening with the idea that everything was different. I am so tired of being the rookie and not knowing anything, and needing everyone to pick up my pieces. Especially since I do everything the way I've been taught, but apparently that is "from the book" and this is from real life. And apparently, I'm too defensive about these things, and I just need to take everything as constructive criticism, because we are all on the same team.
I feel like the member of the team she tries to ignore.
There is no convincing her that this job is harder because I have been away from home for 3 months now, and I miss my friends and family. She just kind of agreed with me to shut me up.
"Yeah, I'm sure it's hard. But you need to stop taking everything so personally."
I don't think she believes the 2 are connected.
So all of this happened in front of my trainees, and one of them is the most annoying person in Maine (which is a state with a lot of really annoying people in it.). He's the baker and took it upon himself to try to raise my spirits by giving me advice.
Trainees are not allowed to do that. Officially. I'm making that rule. He pisses me off on a good day, but today, I wanted to stuff his head in the convection oven.
What sucks the most is knowing that I have made friends in Ops, but I will never work with them. It is a very US/THEM situation. I have no idea who they are talking about when they tell their stories about past openings. They have no idea who I'm talking about when I tell them stories about the Ramada or my training. I hate that I'm going to be restricted to just these people.
I'm more and more ready to go home.