Large and In Charge

"I'm leaving you in charge. You know what you're doing more than anybody else here." I looked up at my boss with determination and slight confusion. He laughed before patting me on the shoulder and walking away, leaving me standing in the entrance in the bakery thinking what the hell?

I was fifteen years old when I got my first job. As I later had found out when he had hired me, my boss thought I was going to be, and I quote "a useless tit". I did give him hell for that years later. He was happy to eat his words when he had seen how far I'd come. But that's for another day.

Sixteen and being told you're left in charge of a department of your local supermarket. That's normal for someone who's sixteen, right? It's normal for all of the responsible adults to have no drive or sense to keep a department running while the manager and assistant manager are away on vacation for two days? You'd be surprised.

My boss had thought I was a clean freak. I was a little confused by this, but I suppose he had never seen my room. I remember laughing after I asked why. "The bakery is always so clean the morning after you work an evening!" I mean yeah, what did you expect to happen when you left me nothing to do? Sit there with my thumb up my ass? It's not like cellphones were as advanced as they are now. I couldn't spend my shift sitting around the corner perusing the internet, scrolling through Tik toks. I had to either work, or spend the entire time standing around, doing nothing for five hours. Not exactly my idea of a good time.

So, that's basically why I was "left in charge" when he left for vacation a day early. Of course, I didn't do anything someone in charge would do. I mean, can you imagine a sixteen year old trying to tell a bunch of middle aged women what to do? Like that ever went over well.

And it didn't go over well. At least, not when I had turned eighteen and did become to have a little more responsibility. I don't know if that place gave me the confidence to be a boss and a leader, or destroyed any confidence I had in myself about literally anything. I still think it's a little of both.

I'm getting ahead of myself. That weekend my manager's daughter was due to give birth a little early. The assistant manager was currently on vacation. My manager also had this issue where he just didn't seem to give a damn. He let most things slide. He was seemingly more interested in having fun and being the "good boss" more than he was actually interested in being a boss.

I just laughed when he had walked away from me. What else was I supposed to do? I was sixteen. I hadn't had the job very long, but had somehow impressed my boss and proved myself more than just a "useless tit".

I didn't realize just how much this moment would mean to me, or how much it likely shaped the rest of my future with the company, and all the ensuing bullsh*t that followed.

Everything seemed to keep on going smoothly that weekend. Though the assistant manager had some choice words about the manager when he got back, but when did he ever have anything positive to say about anyone? He was a drunk, who wasn't afraid if you knew it. In fact, he made it his identity. "I bake better when I'm drunk" he told me, and anyone else in the store. I tried to laugh it off, along with all the stories he proceeded to tell me about his younger days.

But it was hard. Listening to him harp on about how terrible the manager was, when he was nothing but good to me. Looking back now, I can see how right he was. Not that he approached it in the right way; he absolutely didn't. But the my first ever manager was, and I'm sorry to say, the useless tit all along.

- Excerpt from a memoir I'll never write