And it was my birthday...
I used to work in a newsagent’s as a sixth former, all day Saturday, then opening up and working Sunday morning on my own. I had keys, and in fact had worked there before the new owners bought the shop, so I knew the business pretty well. On the occasion of my 17th birthday, I had a huge party Saturday night and was not working the Sunday – I was having a well-deserved lie in, the first for many months. My friend and colleague was covering for me. At about nine on the Sunday morning I get a call from my friend to say that she’s overslept. She should have had the paper rounds out by 8. I rush down there to help her out and try and get everything fixed. My boyfriend has to come with me coz he can’t get a train home for another few hours (small-town northern England on a Sunday), so he’s hanging out, helping us get everything sorted. Just as I’ve fixed it, for no pay, on my birthday lie-in Sunday, the owners ‘pop in to see how we’re getting on’, which never happened, and promptly fired my mate for ballsing it up. They told me to come back Wednesday, and they’d see about me keeping my job. I went back Wednesday, the male owner hid in the back room and let his wife talk to me. She said they’d sacked me on Sunday, for having my boyfriend in the shop, and she didn’t understand what I was doing there. I was obviously quite upset, since I’d been running their damn shop for a couple of years, and said so to my parents when I got home. My dad took me back to the shop later that day and shouted at the owners until they apologised profusely and offered me my job back, which I refused. Then they wrote me a reference. Then my dad said ‘Right, come on, we’re going home now, before I get angry’. He’s a big man, and he’d almost reduced the proprietor to tears by that stage. It was delightful.
(Silky, Fri 24 Feb 2006, 12:06, Reply)