Rage inspires like a fire, but then it rains fear.

HALF COBB SALAD

And under that, on the ticket that printed out in front of me demanding to be prepared for the customer in front of the register:

HT UP THE CHX

I squinted at the ticket and looked behind me at the large man who requested his chicken to be heated.  This was a first, and I wasn't in a mood to satisfy bizarre requests.  My manager was standing next to me.

"Heat up the chicken?  How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"Uhm..."

I looked at the bread oven and shook my head.  I thought of the sandwich oven and how messy that could get and then I thought of the microwave.

Then another large ticket of orders printed out.

"I don't have time for this and I don't even know how we would do it."

So my manager told the cashier, who didn't raise any alarm at the possibility of doing something like that, to tell the guy we couldn't do it.

"Uh" I heard from her as I had the lettuce in the salad bowl, waiting to put the rest of the ingredients on as I knew this wasn't over.  "Uh, sir, we can't heat up the chicken"

"Well, you've done it before!"

Later I learned that the last time this guy had been to the store was when we had a large press-like grill for the sandwiches as opposed to an oven with a door that cooked things four times as fast.

"Just put it in that oven."

I scooped the chicken not giving him the generous portion most got.  I walked over to the oven, opened it with a thud, and slammed the chicken down on the tar covered grill plate.  I shut the door and waited a few seconds before opening it again.  The chicken at this point had transformed from a solid to something closer to a plasma.  I scooped up as much as I could, most of it spilling between the cracks and slammed it down on the salad.

He stood there watching me intently as I grabbed the packet of guacamole and brought it to the salad and prepared to squeeze it carefully.

"AAAARRRRRGGHHHHH" He screamed, startling everyone around him, including me.  I tossed the packet of guac in the direction of it's correct place in the station and continued to make his salad, tossing all the ingredients on as fast as possible.

At this point I heard the man complaining about me loudly to my manager. I didn't hear it all as I was near a blind rage at being screamed at like that.  Nothing bothers me more as a human being that somehow still clings onto his dignity as being yelled instructions by a stranger as I make that stranger food for the couple cents I earn in the thirty seconds it takes me.

I'm already bringing myself down a level to make people I don't know food, the least they can do is acknowledge me as a person.  This guy couldn't.

"You know, we all have problems, I have problems, but I deal with it, and he should too man, I mean why can't he deal with his problems, I just want to eat my salad without guacamole and he has to start slammin' shit around."

So the guy got a refund, great.  Reinforce the child's tantrum, that will make him act better next time.  That's the problem with service industry, we treat customers like they are right and give them rewards for the worst behavior.  And that person learns that he will be rewarded for complaining, for being rude, for treating minimum wage slaves like inhuman shit and then complaining to their supervisors trying to get that person to lose their means of income. 

In the grand scheme of things, not that important.  But I was inspired after that.  I really was, I was inspired to leave that life behind, to work my ass off until I never had to work a job like that again because I just can't.

I can't.  I truly hate the customers.  Until the customer makes me laugh, until the customer treats me with dignity, I assume the worst and I hate them.  Working at these places brings the worst out of me.  I can't live being so misanthropic.  I have to escape.  So I devised a plan to spend the weekend writing.  I dreamed in those moments where I thought I might get punished of going camping by myself and bringing nothing but a notebook.

But it didn't happen.  Slowly the anger faded, a customer (a male I was strangely attracted to, and who perhaps was hitting on me, but that could be my narcissism coming out) complemented me later on and it vanished completely.

And I didn't go on my writing retreat I've been wanting to go on.  I fear that I might not ever do it.

That rage always disappears, it can't sustain itself because I always destroy it with my humor.  Psychology tells us now that catharsis is a myth.  That one cannot get rid of rage by hitting things or yelling or just "letting it all out" as it doesn't get rid of the rage, it just reinforces that behavior (lot's of talk about reinforcing, perhaps my mind is screaming out at me about my own self-reinforcement I'm currently denying).  But humor is my catharsis.  I tell people these stories and they laugh and it is cathartic.  Perhaps it is a healthy mechanism that most don't have.

Or maybe it's another passive aggressive tendency.

I always thought of myself as passive aggressive, as I am, really.  I rarely tell someone they are bothering me or that I dislike something about them, instead I passively try to hurt them in ways that are subtle in varying ways.  But then the person does something nice for me, or says something nice and instantly I feel terrible about it and stop.  I looked up passive aggression on wikipedia thinking it would encourage the personality trait, instead it pointed a mirror at me:

• Chronically being late and forgetting things: another way to exert control or to punish.
• Fear of competition
• Fear of dependency
• Making chaotic situations
• Obstructionism
• Procrastination
• Sulking

Fuck, wikipedia has my number on that one.  Nailed it.

Eh, digression, I'll talk about that other stuff some other time.  This is about my inspiration and how it dies so quickly.  The fire that burns at the wrong times and dies before I can cook something on it.  My creative drive starves as I feed my id with food and alcohol and video games and television shows.  My id wins every time.

I've written so much on this subject that if I had directed my energies instead at something else I could have accomplished the things I want to accomplish.  Maybe.

Though I think I can change.  I just have to start, somehow.  I have to put my back against the wall, or on the edge of a cliff and either start accomplishing or live the life I fear I'm going to live.

Fear, I think, is the optimal word.  Fear of failure, fear of success.  The fear of actually putting all of my energy into one thing and finding out I'm terrible instead of dabbling in tons of things to see if I have a natural talent and if I don't giving up for the most part.

And that's what I do, each time, I dabble and when I don't immediately succeed I give up.  No more, though.  I'm sticking with the two dreams I have now until I know for a fact that I can't do it, and when that happens I'll keep slamming my head into the wall until I can either do it or, or...

No, I will do it.  I'll succeed.  I'll succeed for the right reasons, but mostly for the wrong ones.  I'll succeed to spite the chicken guy and the people who assumed I was stupid when they met me, and the people who didn't call me back, and the people who wouldn't be my friend or whatever.

I'll succeed to spite myself.

I have to.  I have to or, as the cliche goes, die trying.

Big changes are coming up in my life, and I'm already fearing I will fail like I did last time I moved away from my hometown.  I hope I learned something. 

I hope I can learn to escape the cycle of rage and fear and face the fear by using the rage on it instead of strangers.

I've ended this post about four times now, so now I'll admit I don't know how to end it, or if it is ended and say this is the end of it, right here, the end, and hope that I write another post soon and that I'm so afraid.