Suicide Is Painless

It is better to burn out than to fade away.
--Kurt Cobain

That is what I wrote on the eraseboard of my supervisors a short few minutes after I got fired.

Then I hopped across the street to the Marriott and filled out an application. I got a few out already, between them, a couple of local clubs, and Best Buy since the suspension.

I think my getting terminated instead of quitting is a blight, but once they find out the site-specfic reasons why and alongside my prior clean record of 3 years it should lessen the sting.

At least I'm going to be missed. My supervisor was solemn, very sad. One of my few friends around gave me a hug and seemed proud of me, and my favorite supervisor was down because she wasn't going to be watching football with me come Sundays--though if I do get a door job at a club downtown I have to let her in. (Aaron, I told you Karyn liked me. Told ya.)

Nothing from The Best Saturday Ever on its own got me fired, but cumulatively everything did. If I wanted the press I could be saying I got fired because of my love for Veronica Mars. (Love that was shown back, let the record show.) But I knew what could've happen--even if I thought it was going to pan out at the suspension level--and I did it anyway, and made my peace with it as it happened. I told Ivan my friends always looked out for me and blessed me. I just got to find some strangers to do it now.

And to keep up the positives, here's 10 things (at least) I won't miss about work:

1. The ugliest fucking uniforms this side of the 70's Padres. The best one merely made me look like a milkman. The ugly ones were damn ugly. And now I'll never wear them again.
2. Working weekends.
   
3. Missing football games.
4. Working New Year's fucking Eve, and Day.
   
5. Standing a shitload, which wasn't so bad until I started spending 30 hours a week crashing on Grandma's couch. Which reminds me--
6. --going from work directly after sleeping at Grandma's.
   
7. NO hot girls in our department. NONE. Except my ex, and I already got her, so...
8. Doctors asking me to write $2 receipts for coat checking their bag. DOCTORS!
9. Increasingly working someplace where I cared more about the people than the job; the realization that I'm going to miss the people I worked with and the checks.
   
10. Let it be known that the people who fired me for this infraction after 3 years of a perfect record in the past 2 weeks suspended me for 30 hours--paid me for 12--and made sure to give me my biggest check of the year on the way out the door.
    

After the paperwork was done, I was asked if I had anything to say. Could've gone a lot of ways. I settled for "Nothing that wouldn't get me fired."

That's how I spell maturity.

And as one of my Song of the Year candidates so eloquently put it--

Move Along the All-American Rejects (double irony, gotta love it)