The title speaks for itself. This thing happened, and it happened to me. You don’t imagine that you will no longer be allowed to come into work anymore. It’s not exactly out of the realm of possibility, but getting the pink slip usually doesn’t come on the everyday radar of what you think about. This day was like any other, and that’s actually the tragic part. I had only been in the job about four months, I was just starting to make headway with my coworkers and supervisors alike. I made them laugh, they made me work. I put a smile on their face, they put a mop in my hand. The world went round and round.

I was a waiter at a big banquet hall, I was one out of a hundred-fifty servers. I really enjoyed the job, it was fast paced and always interesting. One of my first shifts was serving breakfast to a crowd of about fifteen people who were on a religious retreat for marriage counseling. It was frigid that morning, and I had to be at work at 6 A.M. When I strolled in with usual prowess at 6:20, I found a nearly empty building with sleep-walking staff. Of course they weren’t happy with me, but it was only twenty minutes and we had a job to do. We got to work setting up silverware, making sure the linen was positioned just so, fixing floral arrangements, and sobering up. You see, I had a few beers the night before, and setting an alarm for 5:30 in the God damn morning was so crushing that I decided to have a few more. So when the clock struck 8, that’s when I was finally awake.

Before you wash me in your judgement, let me explain to you how good I had gotten at this. The summer before, I made it through a sales meeting and two conference calls with nothing but Tequila and self-loathing in my system. While working at a fast-food restaurant, I was once so high that I took three giant gulps out of a strawberry milkshake before I realized it wasn’t mine. For a period of time I was working over 60 hours a week at two different jobs. Any free time I had was used to calm down and smoke weed. So what? I am young and full of life, these are the years for stupidity to trump responsibility.

Unfortunately, responsibility came a-knockin. My service as a waiter was good enough to be yelled at one minute, and congratulated the next. A table full of old white ladies will drink two full pots of coffee before you can say: “Lubriderm,” but serving lunch to a hungry hockey team is about shoveling the carbohydrates at them by the truck load and staying out of the way when they feast. Despite my fast formation of rich experience in the food service industry, I had yet to grasp the concept of arriving on time. It plagues me still to this day. Occasionally, by extraordinary circumstances that belong in the anthology of whimsy and caprice. Normally, I am the guy that forgets just about everything upon departure. My wallet is in yesterday’s jeans, phone still plugged in the wall, and my glasses are on top of that book in the corner by the thing.

I’m always late. I know it, and now you know it. Why hadn’t my employer jumped on board with my tardiness? Well, you see they had a system; three strikes and you’re out. I was on my second strike when judgement day came. I turned 21 in February, and then my very dear friend and roommate Shomari turned 21 the following April. We went out, as college kids do, to celebrate legally the thing we have been doing twice a week for three years. On this particular special occasion, I let it all go. Stress, inhibition, resentment, and responsibility. Nothing mattered to me. Not in that bar, not on that raining spring night. I had two Long Islands and a Jagger bomb, then a cold beer and two shots of Tequila. I followed that with 15 minutes on the dance floor and then knocked back a shot of fireball. Now children, some people refer to this state of mind as “Lit,” others might look upon my sloppy drunk self and make the determination that I was “Turnt.” That’s all bunk. I wasn’t any of those things. I was fucked-up-shit-faced-fallin-down hammered. Gone. Wasted. Lights out. I spent that night not in my bed, but praying at the altar of the toilet.

The following morning I was scheduled to be in at 8:30 am, with another shift following that at 11 am. I didn’t wake up until 10:15, which thankfully gave me enough time to get ready for my second shift but did nothing to excuse my absence from the first. I had three missed calls and a really bad case of the spins. I walk into work, sweating profusely and cringing at the thought of how quickly my shit got out of hand. This particular afternoon, our guest of honor was none other than Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. I completely forgot, the disgraced dweeb that occupies the Statehouse was coming to my house that day. The hall filled with movers and shakers. I stood in the wings, still quite drunk. The Governor moved through the room, shaking hands and posing for pictures. He came around my end of the room, and started to make his way to the podium to deliver remarks. I extended my hand and said “Thank you for coming, Governor.” He smiled, said thank you, and kept moving. It was just a few moments afterward that I was summoned to the managing office, and was notified that my employment had been terminated. The symmetry of the whole thing was what I most admired. The Governor, for whatever you might think about him, oversaw the poisoning of an American city and held on to his job despite demonstrating gross incompetency and multilateral failure. Alternatively, I had poisoned my own self just one too many times and was given the boot.

Draw your own conclusions. You may think I am alcoholic that needs Jesus. You may believe I demonstrated poor judgement when I went to the bar instead of my bed. And you may even think that I deserved to be on the street without a job. Here’s what I think: much of my life is going to be in the service of others, so it was good to learn early on that I cannot be a drunkard and act like it’s all good. The kind of jobs I have had require high output with low reward, they need a body on the floor and not a mind at work. Yet, it is clear to see that the people at ‘the top’ have a concept of responsibility that is slim to none. Governor Snyder declared the City of Flint to be an emergency situation nearly two years after the fact. Senator Rubio was running for President so long, that he actually forgot to go to the U.S. Senate and do his job. Secretary Clinton didn’t want to be bothered by federal regulations, set to the tune of multiple investigations and crooked dimensions. Those at the top, which is to say the bourgeoisie capitalist class, require so much of the working poor that we begin to fill with resentment and allow ourselves to be victim to substance. I get drunk because I don’t appreciate being barked at all day. I smoke myself a joint because it is the only thing that keeps me from telling the boss man how I really feel. What’s more, this instills in me a work ethic. That determination of hard work, the one that the almighty capitalist said I could not live without, is now on course to demolish the very notion of such an existence. I will stop showing up late, and I will learn to live without the liquor. I am willing to stand up and take responsibility for what I have done, both good and bad. Why is it hypocrisy to demand the exact same of the people whom call themselves our leaders?

Cheers,

Daniel J. Neebes