A New Beginning?

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

I kept repeating that quote after I came home tonight from work.  No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.  No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.  No one can make you feel inferior....no one....

I quit my job today.  Usually, when one leaves a job, it is customary to give the company two weeks notice (and in Japan, a whole month).  I have followed this courtesy at all of my jobs...those that allowed me to stay on long enough to do so, that is.

All but this one.

I had taken next week off for U.S. Census training, and since the schedules are done one week previous, I figured now was the best time to quit, since they had already scheduled me out for next week.  I also thought that I had read in the company handbook that during the first ninety days, an employee could quit at any time and for any reason, a power usually reserved for the employer in regards to the employee.  So I quit, effective today.  Unfortunately, I was told that I read that part wrong, and that the penalty is that this company may never hire me back.

I had two main reasons for quitting immediately.  One was that I didn't want to announce my departure, and then have to put up with two weeks of people asking why, of looking at the disappointment in people's faces, of fumbling for an answer that makes my decision clear without placing blame for my departure on any one person.  In other words, I wanted to leave quietly, without people knowing that I was leaving until right before I was gone.  Well, I bungled that, as this immediate departure will probably cause more problems than giving my two week notice would have.  Oh well.  It can't be undone.

The second reason was that the job sucked.  Physically, mentally, emotionally, I might have been able to squeeze out another week (I had next week off, so I only needed one more), but it was a struggle just to make it to the weekend.  I stayed an hour over my scheduled end time every night this week, usually for an hour or so (last night, I only stayed 30 minutes over).  Tonight was the only night that I put everything out on the floor (I worked in a bakery department), and I stayed 1 hour 15 minutes over!

Then there was the training.  Originally, I was trained to be a barista.  Then the construction of the coffee shop was delayed.  I was moved over to the bakery without having been certified for the barista position.  I was officially trained a total of sixteen hours in the bakery (they kept saying I was a trainee, but every night that I worked at the bakery, except one, I was alone for all but an hour or half hour at the beginning of my shift, and the one in which I was only alone for the last hour was worse, because the person I worked with baked so much that I couldn't put all of it out on the shelves in the hour that remained).  In fact, though I was trained for the morning shift, the first time I was put in the bakery by myself was for a night shift, and there was no overlap with the person who worked the earlier shift.

Finally, the job itself just wasn't for me.  I should have said that when questioned by the manager on duty as to why I wanted to leave immediately (so much for leaving unnoticed, huh?).  I am not a fast worker, except as a cashier.  I prefer jobs that aren't so hectic.  This job was more or less a shot in the dark, and it got me to the point where I could take the census job, without a gap in pay, but it wasn't a job that one would associate with me.  For people who can do that kind of job, good for them.  They probably had proper training.

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
-Henry Ford

This quote is on my desk, though I had to search the Internet to see who said it.  I've been looking at this quote throughout most of the day.  If quitting is a type of failure, then indeed, it is giving me an opportunity to begin again.

Did I make the right decision?  I don't know.  I should be able to find something within the four weeks that I am working the census job, and hopefully something that will actually cover my expenses, rather than just put a dent in them, as my recent job did ($8.65 an hour).  The only reason to hang onto that job for a little longer was its benefits, but why join a union, with union dues, if I'm only going to work at there for a few months at most?

Years from now, I'm hoping that I'll look back at this decision as similar to Jack London's decision to continue writing stories over working a steady job at the post office, and not as a step that leads to my having to leave Seattle due to lack of funds and lack of work (though that's being a bit dramatic).  Due to my quick exit, I know that the company I worked for won't hire me again.  At least my checks are still being sent to my barista training store as opposed to the one in which I worked at the bakery, and at least I shop at a different grocery store than the one that I worked at.  But I shouldn't be this depressed less than two days before my birthday.  I should remember the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, and realize that today I fulfilled one of my favorite quotes:

Always do what you are afraid to do.   -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Maybe this is a turning point in my fortunes.  As Aaron Eckhart said in The Dark Knight, "The night is darkest just before the dawn."

Here's to the dawn.




Author's Note: This post was written on Friday night and posted just after midnight on Saturday.  So when I write "today," I'm writing about Friday.

Quotes

Back in high school, my mom bought me a book called The Book of Success.  This book, edited by Richard Shea, was a quote book separated into twenty-three chapters, with the quotes in each chapter pertaining to that chapter's title (for example, a chapter titled "How Much Money Do I Need?" included quotes about money).  Still one of the most inspiring books that I own (and one that made me realize what a hell of a writer Melville was--though I still can't get through Moby Dick), the book introduced me to the world of quotations.  I have been collecting them ever since, through things I have found online, seen on TV, read in books, observed in movies, or heard in songs.  I also received a second book of quotes in college (from my friends this time) called The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, edited by Tony Augarde.

Most of the quotes that I collect are inspirational.  Some have to do with literature, others politics, still others people.  Some are just plain funny.  All are filled with wisdom.  And while it is impossible for me to share with you all of the quotes I have collected over the years (unless I want to spend most of my adult life writing this post), I will share with you some of my favorites.

Of course, no collection of quotes would be complete without some from Oscar Wilde.  Possibly the wittiest man who ever lived, he is also one of the most quoted.  Here are some of my favorites, and the names of the works in which they can be found (if known by me):

"All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy; no man does, that is his."
     -The Importance of Being Earnest


"All great ideas are dangerous."
    -"De Profundis"


"I sometimes think that God, in creating man, rather overestimated His ability."


"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma.  In the afternoon I put it back again."


"Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious.  Both are disappointed."
     -A Woman of No Importance


Lady Hunstanton: I don't know how he made his money, originally.
Kelvil: I fancy in American dry goods.
Lady Hunstanton: What are American dry goods?
Lord Illingworth: American novels.
    -A Woman of No Importance


Likewise, no collection of quotes would be complete without some from Mark Twain.  A near contemporary of Wilde's (he was 19 years older than Wilde but lived 10 years longer), he also could be witty, though his witticisms tended to have more "bite" than Wilde's.  Here are some of my favorites:

"Noise proves nothing.  Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid."


"Love your enemy; it will scare the hell out of them."


"If you teach your people--as you teach me--to hide their opinions when they believe the flag is being abused and dishonored, lest the utterance do them and a publisher a damage, how do you answer for it to you conscience?"
     -addressing Joseph Twichell (letter?)


On Jane Austen: "Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."
    -Letter to Joseph Twichell, Sept. 13, 1898

Like Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain also commented on writing.  The following quote is often misquoted (as is Wilde's about the comma).  Here is the correct wording:

"The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."
     -Letter to George Bainton, Oct. 15, 1888

In fact, many of the quotes I collect deal with writing, writers, and art.  Here are some of my favorites:

"Art is as real as life itself, and, as life itself, it has no goal or meaning, it exists because it must exist."
     -Lev Lunts, Russian author


"True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics."
     -Yevgeny Zamyatin, "I Am Afraid" (1921)


"No man can write who is not first a humanist."
     -William Faulkner


"Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself."
     -Orson Scott Card, Introduction to Ender's Game


"Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything."
    -Eugene Delacroix


"The artist believes in the future because he lives in the future."
     -Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881), dedication of Boris Godounov


Finally, here are some of my favorite nonliterary quotes:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."
     -Albert Einstein


"An artist is never poor."
     -Babette, from the movie Babette's Feast


"As long as one suffers one lives."
     -Graham Greene, The End of the Affair


"To die is nothing, but it is terrible not to live."
     -Jean Valjean, from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


"We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge."
     -John Naisbitt


"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."
     -Aesop


"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
     -Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story


Feel free to share your favorites in the comments section.

Until next week!