“It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.”- Harry S. Truman

I got fired from the boys and girls club last week, yes that's right fired! Fired from a job that even 16 year old high school drop outs can excel at, but why and or what for you ask? Well I can't really point my finger at one thing in particular. Things started off so well, my interview was good and they called me like two hours later to offer me the job, then when I went in to fill out paperwork, the manager told me about how excited she was to have me work there and she had heard such good things about me, and I just kinda felt confident that even though I had zero experience with kids in that age range, and I've only done crafts not planned them, i thought hey how hard can it be, but boy I guess I was wrong.

The first week went fairly well in my mind, except for one minor incident involving the kids shutting my art room door and locking it while we where having a dance party and one little girls Dad ended up waiting at the door for like five minutes while Alli ( The Second in command) pounded on it to try to get someones attention, but no one could hear because the music was too loud. I didn't know at the time that my room door shouldn't be shut, anyway to make a long story short, I had a parent complain and Kayleen (My Boss) called me in that following Monday to discuss it and do a little evaluation to track my progress, If only I had known that would come back to bite me in the butt later!




After a couple weeks I got the feeling my Boss no longer thought very highly of me, because she had to get on me a lot for things like taking too long to prep my room for projects, or not regulating the supplies so the kids didn't use too much, or keeping my shelves organized, but I felt like when she reprimanded me about things I did what I could to change them, but I just felt like I wasn't what she expected and she was disappointed in me.



I'll be honest with you my friends I'm lazy by nature and I have zero to no organizational skills plus I get distracted really easy and so a lot of the time things don't get done in a timely fashion because I get side tracked or I try to take too much on at once! So I'm assuming my self evaluation was a little different from my boss's.






Anyway, the straw that broke the camels back was last Monday's craft. I got a recipe out of an art book for "Paper Clay" it's clay made out of construction paper, flour, and water. At one point during this activity I said to myself man this is going really well, I'll have to do it again sometime. . . . . Yeah, not so much! At one point I was helping some kids rip up paper while about 4 others where kneading their clay, when one kid took it upon himself to pour out WWWAAAYYY too much flour onto the table, but I thought no big I'm sure we'll use that all up anyway, once again BBAAADDD Idea! Some of my more rambunctious kids started spilling flour all over the floor making a mess but not one that I thought was impossible to clean up.




Then Inna (another staff member) came in to see what was going on and thought it would be cute to take pictures, and me who's always down for a cute photo op thought it would be funny to put flour on our faces, but I should have known better, because I guess my bright idea made the rest of the kids think it was OK to throw flour at each other.




The next thing I know Alli walks in to see flour all over about 3 or 4 kids and a flour trail from my room to each of the bathrooms and the Utility closet. She didn't say anything at the time, but I guess she was pretty pissed off.





Clean up time rolled around and I sent kids off to wash up, and enlisted some helpers with cleaning off the tables, but the two girls helping me with that thought it would be much more fun to have a sponge/water fight instead, thus making a lovely paste on my floor where there was once just flour! Turns out kids also had clay stuck to the bottom of their shoes
which ended up embedded into the carpet, I guess you could say things went from bad to worse at that point.






I mopped that floor twice and it ended up looking like I never touched it, and the carpet outside my room didn't look too great either, so I text my Boss Kayleen after words to inform her that I was super sorry, but my craft was way messier then expected and so my room was not in tip top shape and I would gladly come in the morning and clean up what was left to clean if she wanted, she did not appreciate that, and told me it sounded like there was a lack of control and said we would discuss it in the morning.




She text me the next day and asked if she could have a meeting with me that afternoon and the next thing I know is I'm being told yesterdays events where unacceptable and this job is not a good fit for me meaning as she didn't see any improvement from my first evaluation.






And like the true champ that I am I just hung my head and cried!






Cried because I didn't live up to the hype, cried because I lost my main source of income, cried because I had never been fired before, and cried because I was a failure.






I hated that job, I hated it because I knew I was no good at it, but I didn't want to quit just because I thought it was hard, and I really felt like I could improve myself there and isn't that what some jobs are for?






But never the less I guess we will never no what self improvements may have happened had I been a better employee.







I posted on my facebook that day that I felt like I was failing at life, because I'm getting older and I feel so far behind compared to the rest of the people my age, and I'm feeling unsure about the future and I just really don't want to be a loser, but I'm feeling more and more like one as I shift from job to job, and live from paycheck to paycheck.





For the most part I've felt like my life has been fairly trial free, and as I was sitting in Institute the night of my firing we where discussing Adversity and I came to the conclusion that this just must be the cross I have to bear, that I'm slower at life then everyone else! So I'm just gonna have to be patient until my proverbial ship comes in.




On a lighter note. . . . to quote from scripture and/or a talk from President Henry B. Eyring, "I am not yet like Job", if you read the bible and know about his story, that guy had it rough and lost everything, and I can't really complain because at least I still have my family and friends unlike him!




Oh and I can't forget to mention, after I got the boot I headed straight to the college career placement office and got some job referrals. I applied for a job at Safeway that night, and thanks to my good buddy Ken Russell I had an interview Monday and I got the job, but from this moment on I will no longer be discussing my jobs until they turn into things that are more long term, because I bet this constant job switcheroo is getting old! But I'm super thankful I was able to find something so quickly, that's a little unheard of around here!





The Glass is making it's way back to half full!







I hope you are all feeling a little peace in the midst of your trials as well!








and with that said. . . .






Peace out!