Real, Actual, Literal Closing Time

I’m thirty-eight years old, and I’ve never been laid off from a job.

But this morning my manager called me with some bad news: the company is closing our store next month. We have less than four weeks left of business and one week of cleanup/shipping.

I am heartbroken over this. Have I told you lately how much I love my job?

I love my job.

Sure, during the holiday season, the hours are long and the pay isn’t competitive, but I’m used to working places where the hours are long and the pay isn’t competitive. Like food service and healthcare.

Sure, during most of the rest of the year, business is slow and I can occasionally get bored to tears. But where is that not true at least once in a while?

There’s a laundry list of bad things about the company I work for, but most of those don’t affect me that much–the real reason I didn’t go into management. On the other hand, I was thinking that maybe it was time that I did, and whenever our current assistant manager had enough and hit the road I might take the assessment test again and maybe I might pass it this time.

No chance for that now, because the only reason I was willing to do that was my manager. He’s seriously the  best manager I’ve ever had. He appreciates me. He’s considerate. He does his job. He’s a nice, friendly guy.

And as much as it sucks for me that we’re closing, it’s a minor inconvenience in the grand scale of things. I’m more concerned for my awesome manager. He’s been treated like crap by this company for the past eight years and he’s stayed around to take it, and now they’re kicking him to the curb without even a so long, and thanks for all the fish. He might not even get paid for his accrued vacation time; he hasn’t received an answer on that one yet.

Sucks.

All I can do now is cross my fingers that they’ve finally closed enough stores in our district for it to be broken up and absorbed by the surrounding districts, and our poor-excuse-for-a-human-being district manager will also be out of a job.

Because we know that it was ultimately his decision to close our store instead of the one a few miles away that’s doing worse on sales and service and loss prevention and pretty much anything and everything that really counts in retail. Because he likes that manager better than he likes my manager. Because she’s been sucking up for the past two months and we got no recognition for being the only store to make our sales goal three days before Christmas.

It’s bullshit, and we’re all pretty upset about it.

And while I’m lucky enough to not be left scrambling for a job to pay my bills when our tarps are locked for the last time, I’m still stuck with a major life decision to make.

What do I do now? Do I start an actual career? Do I go out on the limb of entrepreneurship? I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I have a little bit of time to think about it.

Then again, I could simply do what I excel at: take the next part time job that falls in my lap, and roll with the punches.

I’m really gonna miss this wreck.

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