Fired Up

Yesterday I got fired. Technically they "terminated the position," which is more like a layoff, because I do get to file for unemployment. But it's so much more dramatic to say that I got fired, and the drama of this whole situation has been kind of fun.
For the past year and three-quarters, I've worked at a chocolate factory; the first year I was a chocolate factory tour guide, which was challenging and fun and sometimes not fun. Oftentimes we were understaffed and undermanaged, so there was frequent chaos and frustration, but I worked hard and learned a lot about chocolate.
After about a year in the store, the chaos and frustration got to me. I was very close to putting in my notice when the vain but charismatic (how many charismatic people aren't vain?) owner/founder of the company offered me a position "upstairs in the marketing department." In the heirarchy of the company, downstairs people were the engine--everything they did was very cut-and-dried and devoid of glamour: shipping and receiving, accounting, customer service. Upstairs was a privilaged land for the few, a hazy place which served as the company's creative heart. It was a firmament of ideas. No more nagging customers, no more phones ringing incessantly, no more slender paychecks. So I accepted. The glitch was that I had no marketing experience, which I made clear. "I'm a writer," I said. "Great!" our charismatic-vain leader assured me. "That's what we want you for, your writing skills." And now I'm here, at home and jobless. I tried to do a good job, but my advances in productivity and efficency were spurned. No one gave me work, and no one responed to the work that I did. Every day I'd go to work and stare at my computer and think, christ! How am I going to get through this day. Sometimes I'd create tasks for myself, like cleaning the filthy staff kitchen or hanging pictures in the conference room; usually, though, I messed around on the internet. My job was to make it look like I had a job, which was very draining. All around I'd see my co-workers upstairs with me frantically managing their workloads, and I'd feel guilty and lazy. Sometimes I offered to help, but all I could do was write and clean kitchens and test recipes. Writing for work or for myself became very difficult. I never felt inspired or motivated or focused; the only time I wrote was at work, usually revisions of verbose essays on cacao that one of the founder of the company had written years ago. I should have quit. I knew that I needed to, but not having to worry about money was so seductive. I opted into the 401 K and was squirreling funds away in a savings account. I figured I could stick it out at least until after Joe and I got married and all of the wedding chaos was over. But yesterday the company took care of that for me. I was always prowling around with a shadow of suspicion that they'd realize their mistake and call me on it, but generally I was such a non-entity that I assumed it never occured to anyone to do anything about it--except our new marketing director. She came in February, and I think right off she had me down for house cleaning. They fired me with another girl, the graphic designer. The marketing director said that she needed someone with analytical skills, not writing skills, and that she needed a graphic designer with more leadership skills. Both of those things are true. But what gets to me is that all of the work--and pretend work--that I've done in the past six months is totally worthless to them. The marketing director was basically giving me busy work until she could pink-slip us. It makes sense now, how she was friendly on a personal level but treated me as a nuisance whenever I asked her for feedback or direction--she had to come up with a lie or some vague excuse why I should hold off on this or that project. What a colossal waste of everyone's time. This whole little six-month experiment is a failure--I however, was paid for this failure, while they lost money. So I think I've come out on top. I actually feel somewhat guilty about not being proactive and assertive enough to leave on my own accord--I knew the jig was up. Really, I'm too good of a writer to work there; I'm a creative writer, not a copywriter. Writing copy is hard. I'll leave that to the pros, to the marketing director and the replacement she already hired for me. Nice sneaky trick. Part of me is bitter, which I think is normal and very human and a feeling that I'm entitled to indulge in. Like I want to say that the marketing director is a squat frizzy-haired bitch, but I'm actually very happy to be let go--I should be thankful to her, not hateful. I'd fire me, too. The killer is that I'd spent the whole prevous afternoon making marshmallow and graham crackers so we could develop a recipe for our company e-newsletter. I got up and cut the marshmallows into squares and packed them up and carried them to my car so I could drive to work and start my day of nothing. On the drive over, I passed a guy in his early 20s standing in front of a movie theater in flip-flops and jeans holding a tall paper coffee cup. He had shaggy collegiate hair and this wonderfull look of purposelessness--it was 9:30am and there he was, standing in front of the movie theater, sipping coffee and deciding what to do with the day. I had a sudden longing for summer, for freedom. "I want to be that guy," I thought. Well, today I'm drinking coffee here at home at my desk. My fingers feel good on this keyboard. I'm doing what I'm good at. It's overcast today and I put on a Nick Cave CD that I've not listened to in years, and it sounded good. I used to listen to Nick Cave all of the time back when I was a tourtured, creative artist. The new person starts on Monday. I hope they like the job and do well there, because now it's not me that has to.