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I managed three locations for a cafe chain, which sounds impressive until you understand what it actually meant: I was the person who showed up when the espresso machine broke at seven a.m., when a barista didn't show for their shift, when the district manager needed same-day numbers I didn't have because I'd been too busy running food to pull them.
I want to be honest about something people don't usually say out loud in these posts: I liked parts of it. I liked the regulars, the fifteen-year-old kid who came in every day after school and ordered the same drink, the old man who tipped in coins he clearly counted out carefully at home. I liked being good at something physical and fast-paced after years of feeling like a background character in my own life.
What I didn't notice, because you don't notice these things when you're inside them, was what six years of twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, were doing to my body. It started as a tingling in my right hand, the one that pulled shots and steamed milk hundreds of times a day. I told myself it was nothing. Then I started dropping things. A ceramic mug, then a full pitcher of milk, then, one bad morning, a tray of pastries in front of a full dining room.
I went to a doctor eventually, only because my wife made the appointment and drove me there herself. Repetitive strain injury, advanced enough that he used the word "irreversible" about part of it. He asked how long I'd had symptoms before coming in. I said maybe eight months. He didn't say anything, just wrote in his notes, and that silence told me more than a lecture would have.
I tried to keep working through it, because that's what you do when you have a mortgage and a kid starting school next year and a company that measures managers by whether the location hits its numbers, not by whether the manager can still feel his fingers. I hid it. I switched which hand I used for what. I told my regional manager I was "just tired" when she asked why I seemed off.
The thing that finally broke it open wasn't a single dramatic moment. It was three weeks straight where I couldn't hold my daughter's hand crossing the street without pain shooting up to my elbow, and I sat in the car outside the store one morning and could not make myself walk in. Not wouldn't. Could not. My body had made the decision my brain had been avoiding for the better part of a year.
I quit with almost no notice, which I feel guilty about, because the people I left behind are good people and understaffing hurts them directly. But I couldn't keep trading my hands for a bonus structure that would forget my name within a quarter if I got badly hurt on shift.
I'm in physical therapy now. Some function is coming back. Some, the doctor's honest about this, probably isn't. I think about the fifteen-year-old regular sometimes and wonder if he noticed I stopped being there, or if the next manager just slotted into the routine like I was never anything more than the person who made his drink.
I want to be honest about something people don't usually say out loud in these posts: I liked parts of it. I liked the regulars, the fifteen-year-old kid who came in every day after school and ordered the same drink, the old man who tipped in coins he clearly counted out carefully at home. I liked being good at something physical and fast-paced after years of feeling like a background character in my own life.
What I didn't notice, because you don't notice these things when you're inside them, was what six years of twelve-hour shifts, six days a week, were doing to my body. It started as a tingling in my right hand, the one that pulled shots and steamed milk hundreds of times a day. I told myself it was nothing. Then I started dropping things. A ceramic mug, then a full pitcher of milk, then, one bad morning, a tray of pastries in front of a full dining room.
I went to a doctor eventually, only because my wife made the appointment and drove me there herself. Repetitive strain injury, advanced enough that he used the word "irreversible" about part of it. He asked how long I'd had symptoms before coming in. I said maybe eight months. He didn't say anything, just wrote in his notes, and that silence told me more than a lecture would have.
I tried to keep working through it, because that's what you do when you have a mortgage and a kid starting school next year and a company that measures managers by whether the location hits its numbers, not by whether the manager can still feel his fingers. I hid it. I switched which hand I used for what. I told my regional manager I was "just tired" when she asked why I seemed off.
The thing that finally broke it open wasn't a single dramatic moment. It was three weeks straight where I couldn't hold my daughter's hand crossing the street without pain shooting up to my elbow, and I sat in the car outside the store one morning and could not make myself walk in. Not wouldn't. Could not. My body had made the decision my brain had been avoiding for the better part of a year.
I quit with almost no notice, which I feel guilty about, because the people I left behind are good people and understaffing hurts them directly. But I couldn't keep trading my hands for a bonus structure that would forget my name within a quarter if I got badly hurt on shift.
I'm in physical therapy now. Some function is coming back. Some, the doctor's honest about this, probably isn't. I think about the fifteen-year-old regular sometimes and wonder if he noticed I stopped being there, or if the next manager just slotted into the routine like I was never anything more than the person who made his drink.
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