Greetings from sunny and hot Las Vegas to all my faithful followers, loyal friends and random stumble uponers.
It's been a month since I last wrote any sort of a blog, and I've been not so active since earlier in the year, though I've been lurking about commenting on blog posts, photosets, and group threads now and then. My semi-exile was just me needing some space from much of social media and some time for reflection and thinking about why I'm here on Suicide Girls. Perhaps that's a topic for another blog, During my "hiatus" there have been a great many blog homework topics that I've wanted to write about. I decided to start with this one:
@rambo & @missy asked...
TELL US ABOUT A TIME WHEN YOU STOOD UP FOR YOURSELF
Although I am slow to anger and it takes a lot to get a rise out of me, I stand up for my family and close friends often. Like the time me, my wife and my sister-in-law went to a concert at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. My sister-in-law was on crutches because she had sprained her ankle quite badly. Rather than try to manage the crowd when the concert was over, we decided to stay in our seats until the crown dispersed. That way it wouldn't be a struggle for my sister-in-law on crutches in the crowd. An usher came by and told us we had to leave the area and go to the concourse. I explained why we were waiting but he had no compassion and insisted we move to the concourse. I lost my shit and gave him a hellacious verbal razing. Didn't do any good, we still had to leave, but my family and friends know how fiercely protective I can be.
But that protectiveness toward my family and close friends doesn't translate into sticking up for myself very often. But there's always been this one time that I did that's never left my memory.
It was a year or two after I graduated from college, Mississippi State University. I was still living at home in a little town in Alabama... Fayette. There wasn't much there, restaurants or things to do. We had Hardee's, Jack's, LB's (a family owned BBQ place that's long since closed) and Pizza Hut. I worked at Pizza Hut. I opened the restaurant on weekdays, with weekends off. I got to work at approximately 7:00 AM every morning, making pizza dough, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, spaghetti, filling the make table, chopping onions, green peppers and other pizza toppings, preparing pan pizza dough (cutting, weighing, rolling it out, oiling pans, putting the dough in pans, and proofing the dough [heating it slowly so it rises and doesn't fall when it hits the refrigerator]), washing prep dishes and utensils [by hand... we didn't have a dishwashing machine] and more. And preparing cheese, pepperoni and supreme pan pizzas in advance (Back then Pizza Hut guaranteed a personal pan pizza in something like 15 minutes to compete with fast food restaurants for lunch customers). I did all this by 10:00 AM or so when we opened the restaurant. The first wait staff usually came in at 9:00 AM to set up the front of the house, including the salad bar.
We had a general manager who popped in from time to time either before opening or right around opening. He always came unannounced... never told anyone when he was visiting. He never greeted us when he arrived. No "Good Morning." Not even "Hello." He never had anything nice to say. No compliments for the good job we were doing despite not having any store management at the time. All he ever did was complain.
Anyway, one morning, I realized we didn't have any green peppers. Whoever made the order for that week didn't order enough. I wasn't authorized to take money from petty cash in the safe and go to the grocery store to buy green peppers. So I prepared the supreme pan pizzas without green peppers. They came with sauce, cheese, pepperoni, sausage, onions and green peppers. It's all I could do.
The general manager popped in just before or right around opening time. Like always, no greeting, no compliments, just complaints. Then he took a look at the supreme personal pan pizzas I had prepared and asked me what they were with a angry tone of voice and displeasure. Because he was yelling at me and disrespectful, I raised my voice and said "Supreme Personal Pan Pizzas without green peppers because we're out of green peppers and I don't have authorization to take money from the safe, go to the grocery store across the parking lot and buy some."
He responded by taking me to the storeroom in the back and jumped my shit. I told him that I didn't appreciate that he came here unannounced, never said anything nice, no hello or good morning, and always complained, pointing out all the bad stuff and never commenting on any of the good stuff. Then he said "I don't like your attitude. You need to walk out that door [the back door], change your attitude, and come back in, or not come back in at all. Then he got a phone call (this was well before cell phones).
I never did walk out the backdoor. I got back to work, filling lunch orders. He finished his call and left a little later.
The next time he popped in? "Good Morning Vickie. Good Morning, Bill. How are you?"
I quit later that year but not because of the general manager.
Thanks for reading.
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Stay Tuned...
DeadGuitarist
Besides Suicide Girls, you can find me on various other social, photography and music sites, as well as career oriented sites:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM | REVERBNATION (ARTIST) | SOUNDCLOUD | FANDALISM | TUMBLR | FLICKR | 500PX | VIEWBUG | GURUSHOTS | WASTED YEARS (MY PERSONAL WEBSITE)| YOUTUBE | LINKEDIN | AMAZON WISHLIST | Soon to be on Patreon, a brand new website, and an online store where you can buy products with my photos on them.
I'm also on SnapChat (Gri11Sgt), Periscope (GrillSgt) and Uenme (RhythmGuitarist).
I'm not super active on all of them, but I add stuff to each of them occasionally that you won't necessarily find on my SG profile page.
