I Say High, You Say Low

Pork Quesadillas with Corn & Avocado salsa 

I'm super in love with this plate.  The pork and cheese quesadillas with the pickled onions and corn avocado salsa are my idea of a summer dish! 

This my 3rd week back to work and some of the bloom is off the rose so to speak.  It is amazing to see coworkers again, I stay grateful for the job.  I don't want to paint myself a victim or try to gain compassion but for the writing experience I feel compelled to share some of these retail stories.   Many times its therapeutic for me.  Admittedly too, I bring it to balance out some of the PC culture because on one hand we notice what we choose to but other times things happen outside of the media narrative and they are also true, convenient or not.  The world is messy and stories don't follow any political agenda.  

Coming back we have to remind customers right and left to pull up their masks while inside the store. There's a way to say it nicely and then there is the way some of my coworkers choose.  Because our staff is so diverse, I started to notice that the prejudices that blatantly existed before flowed out to this practice as well.  The Afro Rican colleague would harshly yell across the room at the Jewish people as if they were pooping on the floor.  Pull up your mask or I'll call security and have you thrown out!!!, my other coworker barks to Russian & Chinese families.  It seemed pretty hate filled from where I sat.  I'd love to film this, it's truly something horrible to witness. It's not white's yelling at blacks, this is New York so it's immigrant against immigrant and there is no hiding their glaring disdain for each other. I was shocked being back in this environment again. It's not natural to be this mean.   But the Puerto Rican woman helped a black couple moments later, even stood less than 6 feet from them and carefully explained the selling process without uttering one word about their improper masks, slouched down below their chins.  It was all sunshine and roses and kindness she only pulls out for selected groups.  And I only mention her ethnicity in order to imagine if she were white.  How today I'd most certainly feel obligated to report her and would get no objections, I might even be considered a hero.  But this is not that, but just as bad. I've learned to shut up and remove myself as the best possible outcome to these scenarios.  It's not right but there is no way I'm teaching a 50 something bully anything.

I work with a girl with Aspergers as I've mentioned before.  We've worked together for several years and I love her dearly.  I love her.  She's often not thrilled with me.  Says I remind her of her mother that she despises.  I push all of her buttons, never intentionally.  When she speaks to me she always says my first and last name loudly, I believe it's her way of keeping me at a distance emotionally.  She can be very sweet and giving but she can turn around and be quite horrible.  She has felt comfortable enough to bully me pretty strongly on occasion.  Embarrassing things, in front of customers I won't go into but I take it, usually because I feel it would be cruel to be confrontational.  She deserves it and I'm not always cool but I try to be.  The other day she said some pretty mean stuff and I called her on it because I feel less tolerant post COVID, but in a polite way so she would have to own it but not be ashamed.  She immediately felt bad and apologized a couple of times. One of the new girls who probably wonders what the hell also said something to her.  She held onto the guilt for a couple of days until I think she somehow became upset with me again.  This bizarre relationship has gone on for years because I work in an ungoverned department.  No one ever gets called on their bullshit because our store culture is to fight your own battles, work it out, in these giant windowless cell blocks.  I'm fine with that except for when I can't.  So, this girl who is really a 40 something year old woman, says to me she'd trade me her day shift for my night because she still felt so bad.  With an exaggerated evil grin, out of an 80s horror movie she made this suspicious offer.  I hate working nights so of course I jump at the chance. We sign the paperwork and get the approvals.  When it's all locked in she jumps up and down and says, Oh and by the way, you have to go work in the warehouse for 3 hours before the store opens that morning knowing full well that I've been out with a bad back.  She started laughing like a troll who just pulled off an evil trick, which she did I suppose.  She hates physical work and must have learned the early shifters were being asked to help out downstairs so this was her revenge.  It's certainly not the worst thing she's done to me but coming back and experiencing all this old bad behavior again fresh,  I just don't know where to put all of this reality that doesn't easily fit into the two distinct piles created by the world right now.