T(h)rust

I faced the horrible task of letting one of my workers go a couple of nights ago. It wasn’t my choice; it’s just how this game is played, I suppose. And I’m not very good at the task. I mulled it over for a bit before calling him to tell him the bad news, which I’ve hinted at for a few days now. The truth is, I knew I would have to do it – I just didn’t want to.

I’ve never been good at this sort of thing. If memory serves me well, I remember I’m even terrible at telling people to go home and get their act together – which wasn’t my call either, but somehow it was my burden to bear. This incident – if I do recall – also left me with the label of racist, as the parent of the girl thought my decision was solely based on the color of her daughter’s skin – which isn’t true, because I thought the girl was Hispanic.

Firing someone – or terminating his services, in this case – isn’t much different from breaking up with someone. He asked me if there was anything else, and I told him it was all out of my hands. We’d been having problems with the company that brought him to us and we were already replacing everyone with in-stadium staff. Simple as that. I felt bad, nevertheless, so I sent the woman I dealt with an e-mail stating that he was a great worker and I hoped that they would find him employment swiftly.

The new team consists of someone who did clean up the previous year, my mother – the clean up expert – and a new guy – someone who’s a year younger than me, but looks at least a decade my junior. The latter is the one I’m confused about. He’s a great worker, but also godawfully slow. Not only that, it seems he hasn’t come into his own. Like he’s still somewhere between adolescents and adulthood. Someone who hasn’t fully broke out of his awkward period.

He’s a great guy, though there’s something about him that just reminds him of, well, me. A much more exaggerated version of me – my phobias, my neurotic tendencies, my anxiety. No. Wait. Not exactly me. He’s more like me if I didn’t take charge of whatever pathetic life I had before this alter ego syndrome took over. He’s my Edward Norton to my Brad Pitt (though neither of us are remotely attractive and I’m about to kill myself for making a Fight Club reference).

There was a moment of clarity when he started spilling certain facts about himself – facts that I did not want to even know about because there’s a line that I like to draw that keeps me from knowing too much about the people I’m working with, for and otherwise. Not to mention that having people open up to me crosses my comfort zone and my immediate response is to bail and leave them hanging there, drying in their own mess.

I suppose it’s a matter of trust and I don’t much like it being thrust upon me that quickly. When people do that, they become the emotional vampires I despise. The ones that smother you with a thousand excuses to stick around – “Oh, I need your help,” “My boy/girlfriend broke up with me,” “My parents still don’t understand me,” “Maybe we should go/do somewhere/thing together.” And when I shut them off, cut off all my faked empathy and interest, they go ballistic. It’s just best that I don’t get involved in any way with such people, unless I like them to a degree where their shit doesn’t faze me.

Not to mention that this guy still has a high school view of the world. When asked what he thought about the wedding cake above, he said it looked more like a funeral cake – which is the first I’ve ever heard of this. I explained the symbolic aspect – the even in death aspect, if you’re not catching my drift – but nothing stuck. I also explained the personalities that Jyg and I both hold. Nada. I was back being judged again like I was in high school and only this time I didn’t have any school books to throw down and say, “What?! You gotta problem, fucker?” – course, I only imagined myself doing this in high school as I was rather fragile.

Now that I’ve managed to slip into a segue, I’m gonna take it. I’d also like to say that I’ve hunted for rings lately and I think I found the right one, but I’m terrible at making decisions. We’ll see.