Free A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison

the idea that you’re working toward some kind of career goal, a hope of advancement. These are things that I’ve been thinking about as I get older. As a manager, you’re under some kind of umbrella, protected.
    â€œWe’re looking for managers,” he tells me. “Why don’t I give you the module book and let you look it over.”
    I take the module book, the manager’s training manual, which has the whole sixty-day process outlined in extreme detail. I already know the kitchen, which is the hardest part. As part of the training, I also have to bartend and host, and wait tables for a shift or two, all things I have done before. It seems easy enough, but I’m not sure I want to deal with the hours required.
    Then the area director comes in to see me one afternoon as I am closing down the line for a lunch shift. He shakes my hand and smiles heartily.
    â€œI hear you’re going to be one of our new managers,” he says.
    These people must be desperate. I’ve never really expressed a desire to anyone, yet word is traveling up the chain that I’m driven and ambitious, looking to climb the corporate ladder, all because I failed to say no to the prospect of a promotion. It’s too late to back out now, so I do what I usually do when questioned about jobs I don’t really want. I ask for an impossible amount of money.
    â€œThirty-two thousand a year?” the area director says. He smiles. I smile. I know John is making twenty-six, and that this is probably out of the question. I’m making nine dollars an hour now, so he knows I can survive on a lot less. I figure he’ll make me an insulting counteroffer and I can go back to cooking.
    â€œI like your style,” he says. “You’re ambitious.”
    He’s actually considering my request, mistaking my desire to end the conversation quickly for business savvy. He nods. “That isn’t out of the question,” he tells me.
    It isn’t? Damn. Now I’m going to have to make a decision. Turn my life upside down for a restaurant I haven’t yet decided I like, or continue to live in poverty. Poverty has been going on too long.
    â€œWe’ll get back to you,” he says.
    So two days later, I’m wearing a tie and wandering around doing nothing. Jeff, the area director, goes over the module book with me in great detail, explaining each step, what I am supposed to learn on each day. Then he leaves and the module book is thrown out by the other managers. They are desperately understaffed and they just want a warm body to pick up slack, so I am assigned a myriad of menial chores.
    On day one, my manager training consists of cleaning the toilets and replacing air fresheners, then driving across town to pick up liquor. After that, I go back into the kitchen to make onion rings for seven hours because one of the prep cooks failed to show. On day two, the opening waitresses both fail to show, so I do all their opening side work, then make onion rings for seven hours. The kitchen manager, who is desperate to unload some responsibility, tries to get me to do the food order without explaining to me how to do it, and rather than see the restaurant run out of everything, I wind up having an argument with the guy. Then Marci, the closing night manager who only two weeks before was threatening to fire me, decides she doesn’t feel safe closing alone because she has received a prank phone call during the day, and suspects robbers or rapists might come in after the restaurant has closed. My instinct is to tell her to take her chances, but I’m supposed to be professional now. I sit at the bar for three more hours, not drinking, but waiting, watching sports highlights over and over while Marci does paperwork. By the time I leave, I’ve been there thirteen hours.
    I spend the better part of the next month mopping floors and making onion rings, working over seventy hours a week. I am now