I was doing a quick scan of my posts a little while ago and came to the self-realization that I kind of present myself as a super wonderful person that always does the right thing in all situations. In that way I am kind of like the life coaches that I have been making fun of recently and I'd like to come clean, I suppose you could say.
I have done ok in life overall and believe that I am a moral and good person that has mostly made the correct decisions in life but let's not muddy the waters: we have all screwed up at one point in our lives or another.
While I am a great employee for the most part that is very reliable and honorable and now expect the same of the 2 dozen or so people that now employ, I wasn't always that way and I would like to look back on a couple of jobs that I lost, and deserved to lose, when I was quite a lot younger.
I went to school for construction management and would have liked to have worked in that same sort of job while attending college but almost all construction takes place during the same times that I would need to be in class and they don't generally take on part-timers. I know for my own company, unless I am doing a friend a favor with one of their kids, I don't take on part-timers because it is usually more of a hindrance than a benefit and therefore almost all contractors don't do it.
When I was in college I had a number of jobs that were mostly at restaurants and like most of the teenage or early 20's people that worked there, I didn't much care for the job. They don't give the good jobs to people that age and you get paid as little as they can legally pay you most of the time.
We would get a schedule normally just a few days before the start of the next week and unless there was a conflict with a college class schedule you didn't really get a choice on which shifts you wanted. Well, some days the schedule would be something that you really didn't want to do and on one of those days I decided that I would just not go in, then not answer the phone at my house, then pretend as though I made a mistake and turn up for my next shift like nothing happened.
This was a dick move on my part and screwed over my coworkers and friends and even though it was probably a minor thing in the grand scheme of life, it is something that I still think about today many years later.
Well, my master plan obviously didn't work and when I turned up for my next shift with my nicely clean work uniform 10 minutes before I was supposed to be there, thinking my BS was going to work, I was greeted by the assistant manager at the door.
He had a kind of devious grin on his face and had a prepared statement: he said "I have good news and bad news! The good news is you have the day off! The bad news is that you no longer work here!"
I tried to give my BS excuse and think I even pulled of a level of genuine to it but it didn't matter. Looking back it was foolish of me to even try that and later on I would run into that assistant manager at something social and apologized to him. It was a terrible thing for me to do and even though mobile phones didn't exist at the time, answering machines and roommates did exist so it was really dumb of me to think that I would be able to come in a full day later thinking that my excuse of not knowing would actually work. They DID call me, multiple times.
My second firing was a bit worse because it involved something illegal that could have gotten the restaurant into serious trouble had someone that didn't work there discovered it.
I was working as a busboy which is just someone that clears up tables after the customers had left at a relatively fancy restaurant. Think about one step above Applebees or Outback Steakhouse... that level of fancy.
We didn't have a great deal of responsibility and mostly just needed to not break things as much as possible. The place treated us very well and we actually got paid pretty great too. During the week they had a "restaurant employees drink night" and all drinks were 50% off and this was really popular. I enjoyed going to this as well but there was just one problem: I was not yet of legal drinking age. I rolled the dice and just told the staff that I was of legal drinking age. Since they worked with me they never questioned it.
I don't know exactly how it happened, but word got over to the management that I was hanging out at this event (multiple times mind you) and while the regular staff members might not know my age, the management was legally required to for my tax purposes. I was immediately let go and not by wandering in either - it was done via very angry phone call.
Let me tell you what can happen to a place that is serving booze to people underage in the United States: It's really bad. They will face enormous fines and in bad situations where the selling looks deliberate they can lose their liquor license. This would mean that they would not be able to sell alcohol at all for a probationary period of time and since most of the profit from all restaurants comes from alcohol sales, this would probably ruin the business.
They were very justified in firing me and once again, I would later see the manager that fired me at a party where booze was being served and I was STILL underage, and apologized to him. He accepted my apology but not before giving me a great deal of a talkin' to and letting me know how fucking stupid it was for me to do that.
Maybe call it the ignorance of youth or the belief that the rules don't apply to you but I suppose I am just very lucky that this all happened before the digital age and lower level jobs didn't normally check references because it was too time consuming. With today's tech, I think it would have been very difficult for me to get employed anywhere after these two screwups, especially the one that is highly illegal.
There are more instances, just a few more thankfully, but these are probably the two worst ones. Thankfully my work ethic got a lot better as I got older and it is pretty stellar these days. I just wanted to point out my flaws instead of only talking about my successes.