Validation

Have you ever had one of those moments when all of the awesomeness that you live, breathe, and exude is validated?

Well, I have.

I have worked for a certain company, in a certain store, since I was twelve.

Yes, that's a little young to have a job, but whatever. I've held regular jobs since I was ten, but working for this company was the first 'real' job I held that did not pay by the strawberry quart. My mother ran the community room in a store where kid's birthday parties were held and she needed help setting up, conducting, and cleaning up for birthday parties. I was cheap and available labour, so of course she put me to work over a decade ago.

In hindsight, this is probably around the time I began to develop my abject, violent hatred toward screaming, crying underdeveloped human spawn.

...but that's besides the point.

Once I was in the store, I never really left. Found a niche in the bakery and I've been there ever since. I worked every aspect of that damn bakery - I cake decorated, worked the floor, the freezers, packaged - you name it! Whereas all my other friends flailed around for jobs during their high school and following years, perpetually poor and bumming money off their parents, their work ethics too shoddy to even hold down a decent wage, I had a solid job I could depend on and people who could depend on me to come in rain or shine.

And then new management came into the bakery several years ago and it all went to shit. Some of you might be able to imagine it, right? The nightmarish conflagration of a chauvinistic misogynist boss who lies to your face, threatens and harasses you, doesn't do a lick of work for himself, blames his short comings on every else, so on and so forth. If you can think of it, this horrid scum-bucket probably fit the bill to a tee and then did you a solid by exceeding your expectations.

People started dropping like flies in the bakery. I held on because this was MY freaking job and new management could pretty much go fuck himself. I took the shit this man handed out by the shovelful for several years, gleefully making his life a living hell every moment of every day he ever thought to dare look my way. Don't get me wrong, I worked my ass off in this bakery. I got shit done, but hell would freeze over before I ever got appreciated for it. Near the end of it, he pretended i didn't exist, because anything less than that would result in some pretty cruel rebuttal. I can get creative when I feel that someone needs to be punished for wrongdoings.

You know, I should have went into law enforcement or something...

Or maybe not, since I still consider tar & feathering as a legitimate form of punishment.

That is also besides the point.

You know what finally made me up and transfer out of that bakery, out of that store? That asshole tries threatening me with a few choice words. When you grow up with your mother saying it's okay if they hit you first, so long as you hit them last, I wasn't going to take shit like that off some little scum-of-the-earth dickwad fucktard.

No, it didn't erupt into violence. Although, I did warn him once that if this were the French Revolution, I would have cut off his head by now.

What his threats did culminate into was me quitting that day and transferring to another bakery, leaving him high and dry for good, trained senior workers. The new bakery I am in is absolutely brilliant - I get appreciated for all the awesomeness that I live and breathe. It's a new thing, I gotta tell you. I work my ass off for a whole day and then I get thanked for it at the end. It is like I fell down a rabbit hole and ended up in Wonderland!

The icing on the cake though? That wonderful validation that I am exactly as brilliant as I think I am? That oh-so-tickle-me-pink feeling that leaves me charmed, happy, and full of righteously served vengeance?

The fact that the bakery I left is now forced to hire three people just to cover off the hole that I left.

Yes, you read that right. Three people. I am the strength, speed, and ability of three people.

So next time I tell you I'm awesome, you'll know I'm telling the truth.

And now for a much needed Diva Moment: