5.5.25

a list of the bosses i've had:

first boss: ms. nebi. my best friend's mom when i was 15, she ran the lifeguarding company i worked for. the beginning of my life as a bad employee, i hated lifeguarding and told ms. nebi i wanted to quit after two weeks. she called my mom and had my request overruled. okay. ms. nebi hated my handwriting. when she'd look at my ph logs, she'd say: what is the point of writing things down ashley? and i'd say. so other people can read them -__-

second boss: jenn from the breakfast place, she would probably still refer to me as her daughter. she was my mom. the breakfast place was a family. i don't know how connected to the culture i was at 16 but i believe this is before the "work isn't your family" movement. i will never forget the first time i was going to have sex with a boy (in high school i was a devout lesbian (i worked there for many years)), everyone gathered in the back room before our shift to give me their best hetero sex tips. just like your family would. anyway jenn is great and i love her. she hired a lot of people who had been in jail because she was an addict and knew it was hard to find work with a criminal record. my coworkers would joke that the place was run by teenagers and ex-cons. jenn bought a house on her 10 year anniversary of being sober and it felt really sweet to get to watch that sort of full circle moment ... she always said i needed to wear the deoderant they gave her in jail because i was so sweaty and the prison jail made her stop sweating. also jenn went to weekend jail for a spell and i thought that was really funny for some reason and would joke that working at the breakfast place was like my weekend jail lol. she knew my entire (actual) family and i knew most of hers. my grandmother loves her.

third boss: kirsten <3 kirsten made me feel like the ideal boss is a woman who has just given birth. maybe some would say she was checked out but i think she had a good attitude towards work. in that it was just a job. she led a movement where we all "signed in" at 8:45am instead of 9am in the morning and then as a result we got to leave an hour and fifteen minutes early on friday lol. crazy how i do this anyway most weeks but it feels so much better when it's an explicit rule everyone is doing

fourth boss: joe. joe was my boss for a while at [techcompany] and we had a horrible relationship. he gave me a bad performance review #neverforget. what, just because i openly dislike the work and never speak in meetings doesn't mean i deserve a 3/5. i don't have malice for him in my heart but he basically had no idea how to do my job while being in total control of me and i really hated that. also when my sister [TRAUMATICEVENT] i was like "i need to deal with this traumatic event" and he was like "okay but you still need to do your work". i sobbed too hard in the car about that to write anything nice here.

fifth boss: corrine, second boss at same tech company. they fired joe. see, i told you he didn't know anything. corrine and i had a big arc. when i came under corrine's care i was still committed to being a demon employee. it was obvious we were all gonna get fired. but corrine saw something in me. a corporate goon. i don't know, we ended up having a good relationship after she confronted me for being a criminal slacker with bad vibes (sorry!). by the end she was effusive with me in a way that was nice but also confusing, because i wasn't used to saying "i love you" to my boss (???). i swear to god we had to end our 1:1s with an i love you exchange. when my sister [TRAUMATICEVENT] the following year, she was extremely kind and accommodating ("i remember you went through something like this last year :)"). anyway, this slots her in the category of maternal boss. i sent her a gift when i left (by left i mean was fired). guys, relationships are dynamic and can evolve.

sixth boss: meredith <3 i didn't appreciate her enough. initially i found her warmth off-putting (you just can't win with me!). i was a fool for this. she would doordash me treats when people were mean to me at work. she let me take basically 2 paid months off (not all at once) even though i was a lowly contractor with no formal PTO. she felt deeply that our work was just a job. when we were at an offsite together, every night she would text me something like: sleep well <3 with a red heart. she doesn't work with me anymore (which is so sad) but we stay in touch and her husband is running the marathon this year so we'll reconnect!

my boss now: ??? maybe i ruined things forever the time we had our first meeting and it was pretty obvious i was crying with my camera off while also audibly shuffling cards lol. i came to her under sad circumstances (the leaving of good boss meredith).

honorable mentions: my boss at the tutoring place i worked at during college was so absent that i was basically the boss (ideal). i should have gotten this formalized though, like why was i fully running the tutoring center (opening, locking up, talking with parents) with no special bens. i loved my boss at a resume writing job i worked, but i quit after only a few months because i was really busy (it was my second job). i asked to come back about a year later and he said no but then also rebuked me for fudging a month of my employment there on linkedin. like i quit in late september and had that i worked there from july - oct and he made me change it. i guess it's a lie but like. come on. it honestly really hurt my feelings because before i quit things were going so well, i was the first on my team to get promoted. i also worked at a little publication during hs/college, and that was one of my most favorite work experiences, i loved everyone there so so much. shout out to the squad there, i know they're all reading this.