You may have noticed that, in the theme of this blog, a lot of bad stuff happened to me over the first 22 years of my life. There were some things I could have done differently, but a lot more stuff that I didn't have any control over. If I ever got something really good, there were usually consequences to pay later. I've had way more failures than I've had victories. This has been the pattern of my life.
So when I happened to have a series of good things come into my life following two decades of misery, I felt like I was due for a major turnaround that should carry me through the next 20 years.
For starters, I was no longer working the overnight shift. I had been working midnight to six for the past 14 months because everyone had this stigma (placed by Crad) that I was a terrible DJ. It took time for Jid the owner to notice that I had indeed improved well enough to get a better shift. (Actually, I don't think I had really improved. Tod just had him listen to my aircheck after he was no longer under the influence of Crad.)
But there was a little setback to go with the victory: Ever since I had been working for KZZO, the full-timers would usually get to work a four-hour shift on Saturday during the daytime. This helped a little considering we all had to work six days a week. For the first month, I had Saturday nights off, which I enjoyed. However, Jid decided he wanted everyone to work their usual six-hour shifts six days a week. I asked Tod if I could work Sunday nights for my sixth shift, since we ran some syndicated programs during that time. He said that Jid wouldn't allow that. I was stuck with working Saturday nights.
A couple of months later, Tod suddenly quit the station. Jid decided to split Tod's duties between two people. Our morning guy became the Program Director and I was named the Music Director. I had hoped that I would have gotten the full job because I would have gotten paid a lot more, but I was happy to have the title and responsibilities of Music Director.
Very soon after that, I got a raise. I actually found out about the raise after I had "padded" my hours during my first week on the job. I came in two hours before my shift to listen to the newest music and to figure out which songs I could put back into the "Recurrent" rotation. One night, I showed up for my shift and found that we were off the air. This was because the last engineer removed the filters at the transmitter and forgot to put them back. Co-owner Mr. W took the opportunity to yell at me for putting on extra hours when all I was doing was listening to music (which was part of my job). He said he wasn't going to pay for that especially after approving a raise for me. I told him if I had known about the raise earlier, I wouldn't have felt the need to pad my hours.
But getting a raise was definitely a good thing, even though it was only 25 cents an hour. Jid appeared to think I was doing a really good job. We had started doing a nightly pizza giveaway contest. When someone won the pizza, I would put them on the air. I was really going to town on this one guy who didn't act every excited about winning. Dod and Jid were in the studio listening to me. Dod told me later that Jid was laughing so hard, he had tears coming out of his eyes.
Another thing I had going for me was that I had friends I could hang out with, even though I kind of didn't have much in common with them. It was good to feel like I had some sort of social life. In addition, I had gotten to meet a few women who had called and talked to me at the station. (See all my posts from last week.) Pretty soon, I was able to call one of them my girlfriend. (More on her later this week.)
I was feeling like I was finally finding my place in my world and that things were just going to get better. I was riding such a high that it was easy for me not to realize that it would all come crashing to an end much sooner than I expected.
I came in to the station during the daytime on a Wednesday. The Program Director told me he had bad news. Jid was putting me back on overnights. AND the change was going to happen that very night. I was devastated. I tried to talk to Jid to get him to change his mind. He wouldn't look at me while he was talking to me, but he did say that he was going to have me start working a mid-day shift in a few months. I told him I would do it if I only had to work the shift four nights a week and work two daytime shifts on the weekend. Jid agreed to this. (But he went back on his word two months later and made me work five overnight shifts a week and I NEVER got a mid-day shift.)
And then my relationship went south. I always blamed the shift change for what happened between me and my girlfriend because I was now working the "loser" shift again. I also went into a lot of debt on my credit card in an effort to get her to keep seeing me. (Yeah, I know. Wasted money.)
I swear, if I hadn't just gotten a girlfriend, I would have quit on the spot. However, I had other reasons for staying on, including the fact that I was the Music Director, which I was really enjoying.
So, why did things change so suddenly and drastically for me? I'll be getting into that in tomorrow's post.
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