#i have a lot of sympathy for this abusive asshole of a truck but at the same time like. he sure sucks

[bitegore]

I was reminded that i've written like, almost an essay about Motormaster Characterization in the comments of a fic i wrote in class one time and now i'm gonna transfer them to a post so you can all see them.

Obligatory reminder at the start that a) this gets long, and b) this is my own personal take. If it conflicts with yours, great, two cakes, I like reading fics with different interpretations than my own. However, if you vibe with it, buffet rules apply, take whatever you want and however much you want and leave whatever you don't :D free headcanons to a good home or whatever, lol

In regards to Motormaster's approach to authorities, subordinates and equals:

Motormaster literally doesn't know what an "equal" is. If he were anyone else, Scrapper would be approaching him as an equal, but Motormaster has no idea what to make of equals. He has subordinates and he has authorities who must be obeyed, and if one isn't an authority one MUST be a subordinate somehow, or at least treated like one in his head. It's not really his fault that he has no social skills whatsoever, but either he needs to learn them or he needs to get out of the way, pretty much. Scrapper just kind of goes "okay, fuck it, i am your superior by rule of seniority" instead of trying to make friends as equals. Onslaught doesn't have the leave to throw his weight around the same way, so instead Motormaster acts like a dick until some other authority (here, Scrapper) gets in his way about it, but Onslaught is perfectly capable of retaliating as long as Motormaster starts it.

In regards to Motormaster having been "built for leadership" vs having the actual qualities of leadership:

I like the idea that Motormaster may have been "built for leadership" (he is probably the best leader of the bunch just by process of elimination, unfortunately) but he does not have enough emotional maturity or problem-solving skills to actually lead. This guy solves all his problems by hitting them until they go away. You cannot be a leader like that, it does not work, your team will either fracture underneath you and stop working or they will fracture underneath you and decide to get rid of you, no two ways about it.

...Motormaster is so headstrong that he refuses to listen to any ideas he can't pretend are his own or otherwise line up along what he already thinks. Scrapper can threaten him into being polite, but unless he makes politeness into a game to be won that is a prelude to fists and swords and guns (it can be done, but probably not by Scrapper) he cannot convince Motormaster of the value of being polite. He can tell Motormaster that he needs to treat his team better or he'll be ousted, but he can't convince Motormaster of the same unless he can frame it as not only not treason (he Will defend the other Stunticons' honor, after all) but the correct Decepticon response, and something that Megatron would approve of, AND that treating his team with kindness and evenhandedness is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength, AND!!!! that Mtoromaster will come over stronger not only to his team but also the rest of the faction if he jumps to violence less and trades on words rather than actions. All of which will require a really deft hand, and one Scrapper doesn't feel like wielding at the moment. ... I think that's one lesson Motormaster will have to learn from experience, actually. I can't see anyone meeting him at his level and also being someone he'd deign to listen to in the first place, so instead he'll have to suffer the consequences of his actions in some way or another to decide that he needs a new first response to conflict outside "roll over and seethe internally" and "literally start beating people"

What it really comes down to is that Motormaster lacks almost every tool in a good leader's arsenal. He is a poor communicator, he is recalcitrant, he is stubborn, he takes his failures out on his team, he claims responsibility for his teammates' successes, he is absolutely ignorant of his own flaws, he has no emotional management skills and even worse emotional mediation skills, he does not work with his subordinates but against them, and he sees nothing wrong with this. He's not entirely to blame because he is new, untested and untried and without any of the experience he would need to actually succeed at this, but he's also got no interest in changing, because he thinks he has this shit in the bag and it's only because he was saddled with a defective team full of idiots who don't know how to listen to him that anything ever goes wrong. And, of course, not only does everyone outside the Sunticons know this, but most of the Stunticons do, too :( Motormaster is the only one who thinks he's doing a decent job. The other Stunticons just also don't know how to do anything different either, since none of them have those skills either, and they've never been led by a team leader who does.

Irt the "age" of the Stunticons, something difficult to quantify because they're adult robots who were built very recently and given 0 guidance on how to be functional people:

The stunticons in general are fascinating to me because they have the like, physical and social standing and skills of a young adult (i'd place them around mid-twenties, given they're new to the Decepticons and could be likened to recent college grads) but absolutely zero life experience whatsoever, and the emotional self-management skills of an older child at best. It makes for a really interesting contradiction because they are like. SO ill suited for basically any task that isn't "go in, shoot autobots, get out" and even then they struggle with that because they don't get along well. Given a little bit of time and patience- and probably some external lessons on "being nice", "using your words", and "communicating issues and then solving them together" like the average person irl gets from the ages of 2-15 lmfao- I think they'd all be able to mature into genuinely effective fighters and a genuinely functional team, but first they like. have to not kill each other or get shot for insubordination lmao

Irt Motormaster trying to start a fight with Scrapper, a large part of the fic, but also regarding his approach to interpersonal dynamics in general, just applied narrowly:

Motormaster doesn't have any emotional processing skills, just like the rest of his team. None of them have any life skills at all. Scrapper is just impossible to rile unless he wants to be riled, and since MM has no way to escalate the situation that wouldn't put him objectively in the wrong (he cannot start hitting people here! they're of the same rank as him and both have seniority, though onslaught's position is significantly more tenuous than Scrapper's, so it's against the rules) so instead he just has to chill the fuck out or leave, which would be retreating, which would be losing. So he can't do that either. Someone help this poor truck, he can't start a fight without getting in trouble :(( his life is so hard :((((

and, finally, in the eternal and hilarious words of my friend @megatronismegagone who summed this all up better than i ever could (because I have to write whole fics to say what others can manage in a few sentences, of course)

his self awareness is at negative 1000 and his dicks bigger than his brain. hes such a fucking dude. oh my god. onslaught needs to kick the shit out of him a few times. actually no he needs someone to dunk him in the ocean and shake him dry every time he does or says some bullshit. his socialization is lower than his self awareness somehow

[sickofyourfandombullshit]

Heathers 2018

So when I saw @princess-has-a-pen​ post about the new Heathers remake I had to look it up for two reasons:

1. I’m a huge fan of the Movie and Musical and 2. I had to see the fucking horror show that Spike TV was no doubt going to turn it into.

Now Princess asked in their tags the exact same thing I asked myself when I saw the post:

“Why?”

Well friends, strap yourselves in cuz I’m about to take you for a fucking ride.

Why remake Heathers? A movie that has solidified itself as a cult classic for it’s gritty, fucked up story and characters that took pretty much every kid who went to high school in the 80′s (or any time really) life and amped it up to 11?

Cuz the original Heathers is full of 'problematic' things and they can now remake it to be more 'progressive' while snagging a new audiance of younglings who know about Heathers because of the musical.

Now my friends, as I stated before, I love both the movie and the Musical, but as a mature, rational fan over the age of 30, I can look at something I love and point out it’s flaws and believe me, when it comes to the source material, Heathers the Musical is stuffed full of flaws and that creates some problems.

I am pretty sure all the Tumblrinas who idolize ‘Heathers’ have only seen the musical because honestly, the ‘date’ scene where Heather McNamara gets raped in the background would be enough to make them REEEEEE all the way to the fucking bank.

Like legit, she is literally struggling under her date (and not in a fun way) to make him stop and Veronica just fucking leaves her there. We don’t see her get away or anything, so you can only assume that that whole thing didn’t end well, especially given how miserable McNamara is in the movie to begin with.

The Muscial made light of a lot of the grim parts the movie worked to highlight, specifically bullying and suicide and the dangers of giving into pressure and just  being a fucking terrible human being. Not to mention it twisted things in a way that actually reinforced some harmful tropes. Specifically with the two main characters JD and Heather.

JD in the movie is a completely sociopath who physically and mentally abuses Veronica for almost the entire thing and in the Musical they gave him the stereotypical ‘troubled boy who wanted to make the world better but it just got out of hand’ treatment. Like “Oh yeah, he murders three people and tries to blow up a school but his dad’s a jerk and his mommy committed suicide so you can’t blame him! Deep down he’s just a tortured soul who really loves Veronica!”. Spoilers! He doesn’t love Veronica, at least not in any way that should be even entertained as any sort of ‘love’. He and Veronica’s relationship coupled with his ‘sacrifice’ at the end of the play made me cringe extra hard because it felt like it was romanticizing abusive relationships and in all honesty it was. A specific scene from the Musical where I thought they were actually going to address the toxicity of their ‘relationship’ (at the end of the ‘Our Love is God’ musical number where Veronica seems to have a mental break down as she screams ‘Our Love is God’ over and over again as if to drown out the fact that she just assisted in the murder of two people), was brushed under the rug the next scene and seemingly forgotten about till something ELSE big happens and then it’s fucking Ground Hogs Day apparently.

Veronica in the movie joined the Heathers before the movie even began because she wanted to be popular and due to her skill in forgery is pretty much made their pet project. She’s not as much of a cunt as Chandler or Duke but she's still pretty fucking bad. She kills Kurt herself, blows off her actual best friend in exchange for shallow popularity, laughs over Heather Chandler dying and only turns on JD when the suicide note she writes for Heather Chandler backfires and causes people to glorify Chandler as a saint. This as well leads her to realize that it’s pointless to kill people because someone else just takes their place as “The Mythic Bitch” ala Heather Duke’s transformation (also because JD straight up slaps her in the face for trying to back out on him). She only ever does anything semi sweet at the VERY end after JD gets blown up. In the Musical she is portrayed as a sweet innocent little buttercup who is super besties with Martha and sticks up for the little guy and never meant to hurt anyone and was just dragged into everything bad by bad people. She feels constantly guilty for it and seems unable to make any actual choices herself outside of breaking into JD’s house to fuck him. She’s totally innocent guys. Totes.

And before you say “C’moooon it’s a fuckin’ Muscial!” you need to go watch you some Dear Evan Hansen or Les Miserables because those two Musicals are heavy as fuck and had no problem in showing how fucked up serious shit like war and suicide was through flawed characters.

Now with this new series coming out it seems destined to fail. It has only been releasing Instagram videos to promote the show and already it’s hitting all the same old PC points while being SO EDGY at the same time. It’s Riverdale all fucking over again.

“The terrible trio is more like a set of outcasts who have taken over Westerberg High School.” -EW article

Like really? Fuckin’ really? The Heathers were all popular girls due to their wealth (McNamara), beauty (Duke) and over all exuding of confidence and attitude backed up by all of the previously stated assets (Chandler). They weren’t a bunch of outcasts. They took pride in how they looked and how people saw them. I don’t understand this fucking need to make every kid nowadays an ‘outcast’ in an effort to make them ‘relatable’. They did it to every kid in the Power Rangers remake and MJ in Spider-Man: Homecoming and it’s starting to  get fucking annoying. Oh well, gotta get them kids with all that EDGE!

So let’s look at the ‘Heathers’ (I can’t bring myself to not put that in quotation marks when talking about these piles of hot garbage):

Heather Chandler is a plus-sized, Skrillex haired edge lord who looks like every Tumblr Feminist/Suicide Girls reject and literally gives off no aura of power or fear at all. She just comes off as some fat bitch who found the HAAS RadFem movement on Twitter and used it to fill herself with enough undeserved self importance to justify being a cunt to everyone. Yes, where the original Heather Chandler got her power and reputation through sheer intimidation and personality, this Heather Chandler looks like the type of girl who will physically assault you in the bathroom and threaten to sit on you till you die.

Gee golly, I see Heather Duke is a sassy gay male now (and a white one at that). Wow, it’s not like that hasn’t been done a billion fucking times. Funny that he’s a white dude whose character in the movie and play turns out to capitalize on Heather Chandler’s death to raise their own status to the ‘queen bitch’ of the school. That’ll do GREAT for gay stereotypes I’m sure.

Aaaaand Heather McNamara, our possibly Asian possibly Latinx butprobably just party bag of mixed race token character who is the literal punching bag of the group. At least that seems to have not changed but I am sure it’ll help add shallow sympathy since now it’s not a bunch of white kids beating up on a little white girl, it’s a bunch of white kids beating up on a little minority girl. Goodie goodie.

The rest:

JD literally gets nothing to show from his video except one speaking line where he is telling Veronica that she’s “Not like Heather Chandler” she’s “better” while quick cutting a bunch of random shots from the show that mostly seem pointless and just confusing with one flash of him apparently running the flat of a knife on his palm behind his back? So we get nothing from our poor, tortured sociopath. I can just hear the producers of this show now: “We can’t show him being too soft or the old fans might not watch it and can’t show him being a psychotic asshole or the Musical fans won’t watch it, so make it just as cluster fucking and confusing as possible so no one will ask questions and just be drawn in with all the cheap visual click bait!”

For Veronica we again get nothing. One line of “Dear Diary, I hate my friends but that doesn’t mean I want them DEAD!” followed by more random cuts of shots from the show, many of bloody scenes and hints of violence but a lot more of just weird confusing scenes that make no sense. It’s kind of funny for the sheer reason that they seem to be banking on people just already knowing who these characters are ala the original movie but at the same time are trying to pull in new audience members with all the vague quick cutting which they seem to have mistaken for ‘mystery’.

And last  but not least, we have Betty Finn. What’s that? “Who if Betty Finn?” all you fans of the Musical ask? Well you wouldn’t know who Betty is unless you watched the MOVIE cuz Betty is who Martha Dump Truck replaced in the Musical because Betty wasn’t fucking sad sacky enough and they didn’t want to clutter the script with such a minor character. Betty was smart and an actual good person, the only good person in the movie honestly, who was Veronica’s friend since they were in diapers. She didn’t have a huge part in the movie outside of providing some blackmail material for JD to use against Heather Duke and trying to get Veronica to stop being such a moron (which failed). Now she’s appears to be the stereotypical side character that will be prominent in the show, probably as a comic relief character or plot device to be used against Veronica at some point.

Now, there is a huge question you have to ask:

Where is Martha? Will Martha even be in the series? Alright, it’s two questions but you get the point.

I have two guesses;

1. Possibly

but more than likely

2. No. Absolutely not.

Why do you ask? Because Martha’s character served as a plot device in both the Movie and the Musical to show how awful the Heathers really were and how their bullying was actually dangerous. Martha was a fat, slow, ugly dump of a girl. Problem is, you can’t make fun of that anymore. It’s not ‘progressive’ to make fun of people with those flaws. As well it wouldn’t make sense, Heather Chandler is fat in this remake. Unless they’re going to go full retard with some kind of ‘internalized fatphobia’ shit it wouldn’t make sense to make fun of Martha for that. Heather McNamara is the stereotypical ditzy airhead which doesn’t seem to have changed in this remake so to make fun of someone being ‘slow’ while laughing at an Air-Head-of-Color would just be super duper mean!

If they DO put Martha in, she will either have to still be dumpy, slow and fat and end up being the most popular character in the end for ‘not giving into societies beauty standards’ or some shit, OR she will have to actually flat out die from her suicide attempt to push the EDGE and drive plot.

Either way this whole thing is going to be a train wreck that will either take off at the idiotic rate in which Teen Wolf and Riverdale did or be an utter failure.

I seriously hope for the latter. Sorry this is so long and there are probably some spelling and grammar errors. It’s literally 2:30 in the morning and the Monster I drank is starting to ware off so I’m running on fumes.

[francisrochon-blog]

Blog #1: A Reflective Month

I have a general idea of what makes a good blog, or what a blog is really supposed to be: It can be about anything. I think that’s the main appeal of it. So I decided that maybe I’d give it a try. That once a week I’d challenge myself to just sit down, think of something (literally anything) to talk about, and just talk about it. Doesn’t matter how boring it might be, or personal, or funny or whatever. I want to try and just put out my honest thoughts on certain aspects of my life, other’s life, the world around us. Again, this can be about anything. Some points might be more serious, some more reflective (see what I did there?) and some might just be about me talking about my favorite games or favorite music or whatever. No matter what, I just want this blog to be about me, and hopefully all of you will be able to enjoy this too.

*Takes a deep breath*... So without further ado, here goes my first post.

Some of you may know this, but I used to have a part-time job a little over a month ago. I won’t be saying the name of the workplace or using specific names for some of my co-workers for the sake of keeping people anonynomous by default (and protecting myself if I ever go too ham when I’m trying to criticize something), but the people that know me in real life (for the most part) know where I worked. And I have a LOT of things to say about the place, but I’ll try and start with the good stuff to not sound like a total hater here.

The work itself was not bad... for the most part. When everything that was meant to be done was done, when everything was organized and when shifts went well, I had no issues with the work at all. Obviously there’s always the feeling of getting up and telling yourself “Fuck I need to shower, get dressed and go to work at x place”. But on a lot of my shifts (mostly nights/closing shifts) I always found myself looking back on it when one of my parents picked me up to drive me home, and thinking “honestly, today was not a bad shift at all”.

Now granted, and I’m not trying to gloat here, but I was pretty good at my job. There’s a reason that I was offered a supervising position about 4-5 months after I started. I did decline the first time, sighting that I wasn’t fully ready to take on that responsibility (despite literally every single one of my fellow night-staffers told me I was more than capable of it). But about a month later they were pretty desperate to have another supervisor, and this time I said yes. It’s always important to challenge yourself and to push yourself to your limits to see what you’re truly capable of and to eventually push past those limits and redefine them. That’s how people grow and become stronger overall.

But anyways, back to the quality of the job itself: although when everything went smoothly the workload was fine, it honestly would have been a much less enjoyable experience if it wasn’t for the people that I worked with. I’ve made so many new connections and friends through working at that establishment for only eight months. It really surprised me just how easy it was for those people and I to get along and just talk. Obviously it took some time to get used to each other, and teamwork to get things done quickly and efficiently is a priority at those kinds of workplaces, but it was pretty much always an enjoyable experience. There are so many names that I could name on here that I could just praise endlessly for how hard they’ve worked despite the odds, how much I’ve seen them grow simply by being their co-worker/supervisor. It really gave me perspective on how a having people around you can boost your confidence and self-esteem, just by knowing that you have the mutual effect for them as well. 

On top of that, a particular person I met at this establishment really resonated with me. This was someone who showed me the ropes on my very first shift there, and who ended up being not only a co-worker, or my supervisor, or a mentor: They became a true friend. Never would I have imagine that working there would yield me such a strong and beneficial friendship. You wouldn’t believe how happy I was to look at the schedule, see that person’s name a little over mine on the same date, with the same hours. “Fuck yes, I’m working with X tonight!”

And the reason that this gets me so work-up is because we both have this mutual respect for one another, as we’ve both experienced certain things in life that is hard to share with other people. Yet this person found themselves comfortable sharing some fairly personal things with me, and vise-versa for me to them. We trust each-other, care for each-other (in a platonic way) and respect each-other. Not only that, but holy shit this person was amazing at their job. I knew that everytime I had a shift with this person that the shift was going to be fun, that things were going to get done and that I’d be able to just be comfortable knowing that everything would be alright. We worked so well together as well, almost knowing exactly what was on the other person’s mind just by looking at them. It’s hard to describe, and it might sound somewhat hard to believe, but that’s literally what we had. We had worked so many shifts together that we knew each-other’s workflow and could rely on one another.

I’m certain that if this person that I am describing is reading this, they know who they are. Working with you was by far the most enjoyable experience I had working at that place. No matter if one of us was having a bad day, or was feeling a little bit sickly or whatever, we always had each other’s back. When I first started supervising, this person made sure to give me all of the pointers while not putting too much pressure on me. If things got a bit crazy, they didn’t mind taking the wheel for a bit until things went steady. This rarely happened mind you, but having that reliable safety net is always going to help. So for that, I thank you very much. I think that I’m a very lucky person to have had the chance to meet you and get so close to you on a personal level, and I hope that our friendship can last for as long as we can remember each-other’s name (hopefully it’ll last forever, but you get the point!).

Unfortunately... that’s where the positives end when it comes to that workplace. Not to put this place under the bus, but pretty much every other person that I talked to that had worked in customer service always felt EXTREMELY bad for me once I told them where I worked. Comments like “Oh my god I’m so sorry for you” and “I could never work there” were only two of countless comments that I received. I found it quite comical, but at the same time it’s comical because it isn’t innaccurate. 

Now I don’t think this is entirely the fault of the brand itself. It is a popular brand for a reason, with some very die-hard customers who love the product to the point of purchasing it religiously. People can get mad if their product isn’t as perfect as it was the day before, or the week before, or the month before, or year before etc. That’s fine, I can understand that. 

But HOLY SHIT!!! Some of the types of customers I saw when I worked there was out of this world. Like honestly how do these people have friends or jobs when they can be total fucking assholes? (I know, I know, rich coming from me, right?). Like honestly, just from working there I’ve gained so much more respect and sympathy for others working in customer service establishements. I’ve worked in it: We’re humans. We fuck up. It happens. You know it does. You fuck up too. Everyone fucks up! Accept the apology your server gave you after making a mistake, take your re-made product and leave with a smile. There’s nothing good that comes from telling that person that they’re garbage at their job and should learn how to do something “simple”. I could literally go on a whole fucking tangent explaining how much harder working in that environment looks like, but I’ll keep that for another day. This blog is already long enough as it is, and I don’t want to extend it by another 300 000 words.

But again: the brand itself is not at fault here. But the specific location I worked at was... well, to put it simply, poorly run compared to how it should have been. I’m not going to go into detail, because some of it was not its fault, but when it fucked up, it fucked up really big. For those who know what I mostly did over there in terms of work... you’ll know what I mean when I say “Why did they order this much stuff? We don’t NEED this many of this product!”. It got to a point where I loathed Saturdays because I knew that was a delivery truck day, and more often than not I’d get boned by it. And not in the good way.

But some of the management staff there... really pissed me off. Now I had it very easy over there. I never once felt like I was disrespected by my higher-ups or anything of the sort. However, many people that I worked with told me bits and pieces of some of their issues with the management staff, as well as some of the work staff. And my God, some of this stuff was downright psychological abuse. 

Nobody deserves to work in that kind of environment. I mean fuck if I wanted to get psychologically abused I’d go r/dota2 and write a poste about how League Of Legends is the best game of all time and that Dota 2 can suck a big fat cock or go on r/leagueoflegends and talk about how Dota 2 is for the pros and League is for the casuals. And you’re telling me I can get PAID to get told that I’m worthless, ugly, awful at my job, a good-for-nothing twat who’s only faking all of their problems for attention? Like really? How were these abusive people not getting fired on the spot? Some of the MANAGERS were saying these things, mind you. That’s how bad it was.

And this all ties in to why I’m not working anymore. Again, none of that abusive stuff happened to me, and this had mostly happened when I was not on shift, or before I even worked there. I didn’t have any experience with that kind of behavior head on, so I was okay with working there for the time being. But then it happened.

That person that I talked about early, that friend who was probably the hardest-working person at that store, who devoted multiple years of their life working for that establishment througout all of the awful working conditions and the abuse... that person was fired. They were fired without a valid reason. 

Now again, I won’t go into detail here. I won’t go into this person’s personal life because it is not for me to put that out there. But this person was the LAST person who deserved to get fired by a fucking mile. And it sickened me that these people didn’t seem to see just how much effort this person put into everything they did when they worked there: the hours they put in, the quality of the work they did. Yet for some reason, they were not appreciated or liked by the higher-ups. 

And as much as I praise this person for everything they’ve done, they aren’t perfect. I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect. Nobody’s perfect, we all make mistakes. But this person’s very slight mistakes at that workplace did not deserve the treatment they got. All of the logical reason that I can think of as to why they would get fired... honestly, by that logic they should have fired literally everyone in the goddamn store. Like, you should have SEEN the effort this person put into every shift to make sure that when we left at the end of the night, that everything was as spotless and organized as possible. Yeah, of course it won’t be perfect every night. Maybe it was their fault, maybe it was mine, maybe it was the fault of another of our co-workers on that shift. But either way, it happens to everyone. The way that they got rid of them was also very unfair and honestly cruel (Also a topic that could easily extend this blog to be double it’s current length if not more). And when that person sent me a message that they had gotten fired, I had made up my mind.

I’m not going to work there anymore.

Now this wasn’t the only reason that I left that workplace. I am a college student, and because my school schedule was so sporatic in terms of timings (as well as living 45-90 minutes away from the college, depending on if I go directly by car or take the public buses) the only reliable schedule I had was to work on the Evening Weekend shifts. Every weekend. For like 6 months. 

So there’s that: it was quite draining. Not only that, but I currently in the fourth week of my field placement in my college program, which is a five day a week work day. I get up at 6:30 in the morning, and I get home at 5:45-6pm at night. And then imagine having to work the weekends, my only two days off, on top of that. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt. It would have been awful.

Not only that, but I was already considering perhaps finding another job during the summer after school ended. For some of the reasons mentionned above, I was considering moving to another work-place, but also because I would have wanted a little bit of a break as well, as these last months have been pretty crazy for me on a personal level. But when my friend told me they got fired for the very little reasons they did, and knowing the history of abuse and horrible treatment... I had enough.

I didn’t want to willingly work somewhere and promote that kind of behavior. And the more I thought about it, the more I saw that they disrepected what they saw as “the weaker-workers”. That was very insulting to me, seeing as I had been working there for 7-8 months, and yet they were treating others that had started working around the same time as me (and in some cases far longer than me) so much worse. It sickened me to be a part of it, and what sickened me most was just how much I didn’t speak up about it, or fight for my co-worker’s respect. This was a way that I saw that I could at least try and make-up to them for that. 

So I gave my two weeks. I decided it was a good time to just focus hard on my field placement to make sure that everything goes right, that I can have a good balance of work and pleasure (hehe) as is recommended. This would also help me transition into a more traditional adult lifestyle, what with the work hours and the liberated weekends.

And I can tell you... This is so much better.

Now obviously this isn’t for anyone, but I’m not even getting paid for my placement, doing work that these people get paid to do, yet I am so much more comfortable and happy working there than I was at that other place. The people are obviously a big reason as to why I enjoy working there, but even just the workload itself, although hefty, is manageable, and I don’t have the added pressure of having to maybe serve 70 different customers in the span of 45 minutes. I get to focus on one task, get it done without much interuption, and then move on to the other task. Especially when it’s something that I love doing, such as writing, it makes it all the most enjoyable.

So if you’re going to take anything from this absurdly long blog-post, please take this: It’s worth it to keep at it. It might be difficult, or seem impossible or like it’s a waste of time and money, but it really isn’t. I’m near the end of my college experience and am about to embark into the adult world. I am scared, of course. But I’m also confident, thanks to my field placement and because of the people I have around me that support me no matter what. Life can be fucking rough at times, I know. It ain’t always easy. But it does get better. You just have to step over those hurdles of life as they unexpectedly come your way. And no matter how much time, energy and effort it might take for you to get over them, if you can manage to get over them...

Then you are the true champion.