A Chance to Grow

I am forever thankful that I live in Forest City.

Let me explain. I used to pride myself in being outgoing. Every year in college I tried to welcome the new freshmen as best I could and really get to know them. After college though... I started feeling depressed. While I was living in Ames and working at the pawnshop, I actually regressed into a hermit. I would pass up invitations from my coworkers to hang out, something I still regret to this day. My whole social life consisted of the small group of people I'd see at the pawnshop, customer or employee. I started feeling completely alone, yet I didn't want to change it. It was killing me. After I moved, I figured maybe I'll be able to fix myself. Surely where I move to will have lots of friends for me!

Garner and I... well we have issues. Don't get me wrong, there are many great people that live in this town... but there's this attitude in the air... this... conceited attitude. You can almost smell the arrogance in the air. It overwhelms you so you don't notice the jewels that it truly does have.  It is here I vowed to try and reverse my loner ways, and I did slowly make progress... but eventually it got even worse. I can't breathe as an introvert. But for some reason... I just didn't want to make a connection with anyone in Garner. I didn't want to become friends with them... One of the local factories had employees that came to the store I worked at and made me feel like scum. They treated me like dirt. They were factory workers in a town they felt would die without their factory, thus I should bow down to them. I was some lowly convenience store worker, not worth the effort it would take to spit on. Now it's not fair to say everyone was that way, or even everyone from the same factory. But listen to this, one guy from said factory came in drunk and started causing a scene, one of the employees felt threatened when he grabbed her, so naturally the boys in blue were called. Because the police took the worker in to jail for the night, our store had a boycott from some members of the same factory... sigh... Every shift at that store started to wear thin... then I got stuck with overnights and donuts... then I wound up working every shift possible at least once a week. My body didn't know when to sleep... essentially... my soul was dying.

I go into detail so much with Garner so you may understand how close I was to giving up. My social life hit rock bottom, I called out for support and got rejection. I kept reaching to move up, but was always shot down, which made me wonder if I truly mattered to anyone. When my life started to lose focus and meaning, I went to my then girlfriend for support, and when I got less than I wanted, I lashed out and lost her. Every so often I still feel a small twinge of pain over that. Thankfully I've moved past it since, but at that time... it felt like everything was falling apart. As my insomnia came back (thanks in no small part to the most irregular work schedule ever created), I actually did contemplate ending it. My mental strength was all but gone, I felt like my life had peaked, like there was nothing left but a useless husk...

Then I remembered one day while I was working at Fareway. A small autistic boy was with his mother buying groceries. I was putting the groceries in her car when the boy grabbed my arm. He looked me deep in the eyes and said "you're meant for something more." It's amazing how your subconscious knows when you're about to destroy yourself, because it forced that memory on me. I wept for a long time, hours in fact. I decided to keep pushing. As the schedule kept beating me down, I kept feeling weaker and weaker. But I remembered that boy, and I pushed forward, sometimes due to nothing more than simple curiosity. Somehow... I made it another month... then two... and just as I was beginning to lose hope again... I got a phone call from my manager.

About half a year before this, Kum and Go had changed their business model. They wanted to keep stores only near major traffic routes, so they sold an additional forty-some stores to Casey's. There was a Kum and Go two blocks from the Casey's in Forest City, but it was a package deal, so Casey's now had two stores very close together (some towns they were right across the street.) The size of this Kum and Go prevented them from adding a kitchen without extensive remodeling (read: demolish and rebuild), but Casey's kept it going. Now this store has been having as much luck keeping managers as Hogwarts keeps defense against the dark arts teachers. Most recently, my manager had been training the new one, and after the training sent the new manager to her new store. A week later my manager informs us she has to go "retrain" this woman on Monday. Actually... she was there to fill in as the new manager was let go...

So here comes a phone call. "Hey Luke, are you still interested in a management position with Casey's?"
"Sure, what did you have in mind?" She explained the situation of the new manager being dismissed. I figured they were finally going to promote their assistant and I'd be up for the assistant manager's job.
"Well we figure without a kitchen to worry about, this is a perfect starter store to test out a potential manager's skills."
"So you'd promote Kyle and I'd take his job?"
"No... actually the open position is for taking over the store."
"Oh... OH!... Ok..."
"The catch is... you have to live in Forest City."

Well after filling out a application and landing an interview, I got the call in mid July that as of the 22nd of that month, the store would be mine. Let me tell you something... that was a GIANT boost to my confidence. But also, upon moving to Forest City, I've discovered something...

I wrote in my last blog (or note if you're reading this on fb), about how much I love my customers. How much happier I am working at this store than my last. But let me take that a step further. Forest City may not have everything, but one thing it is definitely not lacking in, is great people. I have people who come in and have their morning coffee with me. I mean that, they will stay for 20 minutes and talk to me while drinking their coffee and watching me work. I remember as a kid, we'd go to a grocery store and Dad would see someone he knew and would strike up a conversation with them, and I always wondered if I'd ever know enough people to do that. Well I go to Bill's or Shopko, and a lot of times, I will see someone I know. We'll talk and it won't be talking to me as the manager of one of the Casey's. They talk to me as a person. After I gave the subway here a 2nd try, they made my tuna sub perfectly. Not only that, but if I know the person working, odds are they're aware that they're going to make a tuna sub, and they're going to do it in a way they've never done it before as I've got 7 different varieties. (I still recommend adding marinara if you haven't tried it... but also try sriracha). I show up at shooters for their pasta bar on tuesday, and several waitresses come out of their way to talk to me. It's not that I'm special, it's that their just that friendly.

The only reason I come to Garner is my choir. I do truly enjoy directing the choir, but I'm beginning to have doubts. Part of me really wants to resign and go to church in Forest City. Again, don't misunderstand me. The Garner UMC is full of truly great and friendly people. There's just... I am beginning to feel that perhaps I need to not go to the church of which my father is the pastor. I need to leave Garner in the past. I feel like Forest City is giving me the best chance to grow I've had to college, and this time I'm not so stupid to let that go. I am unsure of where to go from here... I still wish I had that crystal ball...