Times I got Fired #3 - Part II

Part II - The School

If you missed Part 1, you can read it here

Strike 2

The bath was all there was.

The first sign of any life was a little way out in front. It was pushing liquid up past the water’s surface and off to one side in a reluctant spout. The warmth curled up into a blanket, then left - and there was only cold again.

I - a concept that evaded me at the time - had drunk enough cooking sherry for a state of full-blown ego disillusionment. 

I wasn’t aware of who or what I was, or what ‘who’ or ‘I’ was.

The bath was all there was.

Some leaks later, a familiar-seeming sound dripped out of the ether and into my head.

“Saaam…. Saammmm-muh… Saaaammmmmm… Samm…”

Gradually, the realisation surfaced that I was I, and that I was Sam, which was comforting. But my understanding of this notion of ‘Sam’ didn’t stretch any further than the rim of the tub.

After more, cold, time, a sense of dulled dread started twisting into the stomach of my new identity.

“...Sam… Sam… Who is Sam? What does Sam… do?..…… Sam has a job. Fuck, Sam has a job. Fuck, what happened yesterday? Fuck, what day was yesterday? Fuck, Sam has work.”

Sam left the only world he had ever known.

I slimed out of the shallows, like the first aquatic creature. 

My pruned fist stopped an inch away from my friend’s nameplate on my boss’ door. Racking up a few more trivial seconds of lateness. I scrunched up my face into the grimace of oncoming repercussions. Slipping in the door, my tousled entrance near enough made my boss flinch.

“Jesus Christ… Sam.” There was no confusing the two. I had the look of a man who had spent the worst part of a night disassociating in his own urine. The sins I suffered for, were mine, and mine alone. A trio of humourless brokers had been waiting 45 minutes in a classroom across town. My best flailing grovel didn’t wash - it hadn’t helped that I didn’t either.

Even given my infinite capacity for weasalry, there was no solid defence for the second strike. That’s what we in the short-term employment biz call: a strike well spent.

Then again, how can you be on time for work, if you don’t know what you, time or work are?

Look mate, if I’d known what I, time or work was, I would have been on time for work.

Strike 3

Despite my factory setting of anxiety, I always felt completely at ease in Last Chance Saloon. The threatening atmosphere of the joint never tempered my behaviour.

Due to circumstances beyond my self-control, I was navigating back from Amsterdam with: a bust phone, a monolithic stoneover, and a 3-euro margin for error - arriving a day late.

Fortunately, living on the margins of error my whole life, I had booked a day’s buffer off work. Unfortunately, I’d booked that day’s buffer based on a google image of a calendar from the previous year. The margins, themselves, were an error. You just can’t account for that.

Laughing, I told my mate-boss that I did book the right days off, just for the year before.

“Oh right… we’ll have to see then.”

I thought I was calling my friend, but my boss had picked up. 

After the early shift the next day, a few members of the team went out day-drinking - or, as we call it in Britain, drinking. Petrified by the mid-day sun, my boss was a frontrunner for the most rigid man in the Mediterranean. 

“Listen, about the job thing mate…” he squirmed. “I think things have run their natural course. Right. I’ll get a round in.” 

If you’ve ever been sacked by your mate in the pub, you’ll know, it takes some of the lustre out of the afternoon. My ex-boss/friend bought me a pint - the guilt of snatching away my livelihood wasn’t worth a packet of crisps, apparently - and told me, “No hard feelings.” The consistency of the feelings is really more up to the person experiencing them. 

Of course, if his hands were tied, I would understand, but he had a bit of wiggle in his wrists. We could have got our bent story straight. Ultimately, he valued his career over our friendship, Human Relations over human relations. Maybe, terminating a depressed friend is a middle-management right of passage.

I wouldn’t have taken a bullet for him, but I would have taken a bottle for him; or a headbutt-from-a-300-pound-Afrikaans-beserker for him. He must not have felt the same way.

Although, in his defence, given my track record, I guess things did “run their natural course.”

Epilogue

12 years later, he text me out of the blue, as if we were long-lost mates. I sent him back a really regrettable Whatsapp - as a “joke” - complete with an audio message reenactment of the pub dismissal. He apologised and said it was heartless, which was sweet of him. So all is well.

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If you liked this… check out:

The House that Pills Built

Arrested for Humus - Part 1, 2, 3

Times I got Fired 1 - The Bakery

5 Stages of Drinking

How to Be an Alcoholic