I can tell you how. Buckle up.
It all started when my mom met my dad.
I kid, but since they had to have the hots for each other and no lifeguards are on duty in the gene pool, here I sit, blogging.
I was born in 1989, the year of our lord, but today’s tale starts in 2012.
I am 22 years old and know absolutely everything. Not contesting this confidence is the fact that I’ve been fired from essentially every job I’ve ever had—as a stockboy at Whole Foods for accidentally cutting open too many bags of bulk items with my boxcutter. Then there was the t-shirt printing shop, where I accidentally ruined an expensive screen with my boxcutter. Then, there was the fish department at Petsmart. I’ll spare you the story, but it involved a boxcutter.
The only job I have yet to be fired from is the bodybuilding gym I currently work at. Not only have they not fired me, but they’ve made me the manager. My qualifications for being the manager include: catching the mouse that kept eating the protein bars and muscle milk in the stock room. It was the largest mouse I have ever seen and still haunts my nightmares. We called him mighty-mouse.
End of qualifications.
Besides Varmit control (I walked in and found him dead), I have the worst sales record of the whole staff team. So, I’m kind of a big deal, and making me the manager just makes sense.
It’s day one of my new role. I walk up the steps with a puffed-up chest and swing open the double glass doors with both hands. Brother, today is a day the lord has made. And if I wouldn’t be damned,
…I get fired.
It involved a boxcutter.
Just kidding. The truth is, there’s a guy who starts every conversation by inviting people to his Chamber of Commerce leads group. He is highly sus as he only approaches handsome younger men. Guess what? Today’s my day. And apparently, “I have a girlfriend” was not a professional way to respond to him.
The owner, needing to make the customer happy, fires me.
The owner, understanding the guy is creepy and I’m just super-funny, rehires me the next day.
The next month would prove bewildering for me. I was now handling customer complaints and staff complaints and even complaints about how I would eat donuts at the front counter in front of people were trying to lose weight. These folks had obviously never had a fresh Shipley’s Donut.
Or maybe too many of them, anyway, some complaints include:
An elderly customer with a cane was angry that the only handicapped parking spot was taken by another elderly person who could walk without a cane.
The tanning bed bulbs seemed “old” for the price we charged for tanning. To this day, I do not know what this means.
The gym needed to be open on more holidays.
The gym should be more respectful of employees’ families and close for more holidays.
I was freshly adjusting to the legal drinking age and now getting yelled at by dudes in the locker room wearing towels over their heads (but never their private parts) about how the sauna had “too much steam and not enough heat.”
I soon learned that the only thing I was managing was everyone else’s mood.
And boy, I sucked at it. I went home most days feeling like a wet rag of unseen, unappreciated, and disapproval.
Enter my Eat, Prey, Barns & Noble era.
Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence”
Robert Greene’s “The Art of Seduction”
I’d read anything I could to learn how to treat my nine-dollar-an-hour “big boy job” like a career.
Guess what. I got really, effin, good at it.
Over the next year, I’d have memorized hundreds of people’s names (the sweetest word they can hear), their pets, their goals, and even their dreams and problems at home.
I’d handle conflicts like the outcome didn’t affect me.
I’d get a raise.
I’d sell a butt-ton of memberships.
I’d become semi-famous at the gym and get the nickname of “mayor” by some of the OGs.
Naturally, I became booked solid with training clients and started driving a Mercedes. WHAT A DOUCHE.
I didn’t know sh*t about growing a business. All I had done was make sure people enjoyed being around me, and it worked beautifully.
:: Jeff holds Grammy and squeals, “You like me, you really, really like me!” ::
And this, my screen-staring friend, is where it all goes horribly wrong.
Kinda.
Lo and behold, the turn of the story has come.
But the Gettysburg Address is 272 words, and this post is already double that.
Part 2 of three coming up next.
