Tears started coursing down my cheeks as I slipped into my car. I pulled the door shut as sobs wretched my soul. I leaned my head on the steering wheel and felt a large, cold tear run down the inside of my shirt and into my bra. "God, I hate this fucking place!" I murmured to myself.
"This Fucking Place" (TFP) seemed to routinely make me feel like a cast aside piece of garbage. Sometimes it seemed like their sole entertainment was finding new ways to show me just how insignificant I was and how I had failed at my one shot of doing something that I really wanted to do.
I started working at TFP first. After taking several months off from working, I started putting in applications at places. My original plan for starting to work again was to make enough money to be able to leave Paul and the choke hold he seemed to have on me. TFP called me only a couple of minutes down the road after I turned my application in. I got the job quickly and started working the week of July 4th. I was impressed because my boss gave me July 4th off. Not many low-wage jobs will let you have July 4th off on your first week. I was not planning on staying there long and I did not think I had a future there. My plan was only to make a little money.
I got a raise after about a month of working there. That was my first raise in my life. I felt like gold. The owners loved me and I mostly loved my job. After a month and half of working there, My boss offered Paul a job. The catch, however, was that he needed to work at their location in the City, an hour away. The pay was great, but we were taken aback by the long drive he would be making every day. At first, we turned my boss down. Then my boss promised that in January I could transfer down to the City as well so we could either drive together every day or move down to the City. With these new terms, we accepted the job. In early September Paul started working in the City. His best friend was also hired to work together with him. Most days, they could drive together.
Paul's best friend moved down to the City after just a couple weeks at the job. This left Paul driving every morning alone. We tossed around the idea of moving down to the City early and having me drive every day back to my job. The change in hours and the long driving times put a strain on our relationship and we started fighting often. We were finally settling into a routine when one day Paul called me while I was driving to work. I thought he was calling me to thank me for the pleasant night before we had had together. I started chattering happily to him. "Baby," he interrupted me, "I'm in trouble." The police had pulled him over in the City and insisted that because he did not have a license he could not drive away from the scene. I had to drive the hour to the City to pick him up and take him to work and then return to my own job. That was the last day that I worked that job. The owners allowed me to transfer to the City location immediately so that Paul would not have to continue driving and risk getting pulled over again.
I started calling my job "This Fucking Place" after that. I was not a good fit for the location in the City. My coworkers were lazy and my new boss was a womanizer. I tried to learn to fit in but the different standards between the two stores left my constantly fighting an uphill battle. My manager could get away with anything because she was speculatively sleeping with our boss. At the beginning, my boss tried to talk to me often and tried to flirt with me. This made Paul livid and we started to fight again almost every day because of the situation. I did not feel that I was in a position to refute my boss's advances. However, to save my relationship, I started turning a cold shoulder to my boss and even getting aggressive in situations where he was getting to close. This added friction between me and my boss and my manager.
One particularly fateful day, my boss would come and stand over my should and watch either my entering in the computer system or the customers entering the restaurant. Paul felt that this move was just an attempt to get closer to me and possibly even touch me. Paul would not speak to me the rest of the day. After finally learning what had made Paul so angry, I realized that I would have to put a stop to that too. The next day, my boss tried to repeat the previous day. I became very aggressive to him, asking every time he stood behind me, "What do you want?" He quickly stopped doing it but it made me feel like a terrible employee. I always wanted to be nice to everyone, especially those I work with, but being with Paul made that impossible.
I found myself getting less and less friendly towards my coworkers as time went on as Paul continued to put the pressure on me to not be too friendly.
In November, we started working in the evenings at my first location again.
