I Did Not Do My Job.
After I’d been working there for a couple of months, the cafeteria served cake with green icing, a Saint Patrick’s Day special. Green icing was special, and cake was … well, it was cake! So virtually all the students chose Saint Patrick’s Day cake for their trays.
Unfortunately, the cake tasted nowhere near as delicious as it looked.
As if working in unison, the entire population of Mount Union rebelled against the cake by crushing it with forks. I watched as tray after tray glided toward me, each one with a plate containing a piece of smashed chocolate cake and a fork smothered in green icing.
By using forks to obliterate hundreds of pieces of cake, this student protest meant that hundreds of forks had green goo oozing from between their tines.
As plate cleaner du jour, this did not make me happy. My job was to take all of the forks out of the smashed cakes, wipe them clean with a filthy rag, dispose of the cake from the plate, and toss the clean-ish, rinsed silverware into a bucket to be more thoroughly washed.
But on Saint Patrick’s Day, I did not do my job.
What I did instead, after carefully rinsing six or eight forks, is to take the forks, still covered in green icing and cake crumbs, and throw them directly into the garbage can.
I threw away about 147 forks. Then I high-tailed it out to drink green beer with my friends.
The cafeteria had lots of other forks still available, so I didn’t think anyone would notice.
I was wrong.
The next day, I was called into the office. I didn’t even know the kitchen had an office. But it did, and someone I’ve never seen who claimed to be my supervisor asked me to come in.
I had no idea why I was there.
“Tell me how you like your job,” she said.
“I like my job!” I said. I didn’t know what else to say to make this believable, so that’s all I said.
“So tell me what happened last night with the forks,” she said, as casually as she could. It felt more like a question than an accusation, but I still felt a little queasy that she used the word “forks.” I still thought I had gotten away with it.
“Some of the forks were really dirty,” I said. “I didn’t think they could be cleaned properly.”
“So what did you do?”
“I threw them away.”
“You can’t do that,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, genuinely perplexed. “I just figured there were a lot of other forks and we didn’t need ones that were ruined.”
“The forks cannot go in the garbage,” she said. “Last night, someone had to dig through the garbage and pull out every fork you’d thrown away.”
“Sorry,” I said, not actually sorry at all. I hated those forks.
She stared at me for a second. Then she simply stated: “You’re fired.”
My stomach caught in my throat and I started to cry. I may have asked for another chance, but I rightfully didn’t get one.
I’d never been fired before. And to be fired from such a menial job … it confused the heck out of me. It never occurred to me that I’d done anything really wrong. I had a lot yet to learn about employment and taking responsibility for my actions.
It was a very long time before I got fired again, but only because it was a very long time before I got another job.