On responsibility

Being wrapped up in my minor agony yesterday, I forgot to mention something fairly important: M.A.E. (Ms. Almost Einstein, The Boy’s girlfriend) finally managed to lose her “housekeeping” job at the mountaintop lodge yesterday morning. She called in sick a couple of days with back problems and so on, and that was apparently the last straw.

The Boy is displeased. “That was a good job! She needs to be more responsible!” he told his mom yesterday. “I don’t like my job all that much, but I go and do it.” Judging from the reports I’m getting, he does pretty well at it too (at the same lodge, he’s a dishwasher, like the dad in “Robots” who dreamed of being a musician... spooooky). His 90-day review is coming up soon, and he’s probably going to get a fairly substantial raise. I don’t know if he remembers he was pretty much the same way about a year ago. He would give it everything he had, at least when he didn’t have something else going on that he wanted to do (like band practice). He blew off one job that way, without having another one lined up, and wound up not working for several months. Maybe he did learn some lessons during his summer of discontent.

So M.A.E. put in apps at several restaurants in the retail district. An IHOP opened recently, which the wife is itching to go to. She wasn’t with us yesterday when M.A.E. did an app there; we joked about eating there & telling her about it afterwards. That would have Not Pleased Her At All. One of the non-manager (unfortunately) people at Arby’s was ready to hire her on the spot.

I wonder if she has a mild form of clinical depression: she certainly sleeps enough for it. She wants to become independent, but doesn’t push herself hard enough. The housekeeping job was better than most in a lot of ways; she had a decent benefits package (the lodge is in a state park so they get state bennies) and reasonable pay for unskilled labor. She was talking about landing a “hostess” job at a fancier restaurant, but she’ll probably have to work her way up to that.