Good Job, Good Pay

They're promoting me at work to "keyholder." I began training two days ago, and there's very little difference in the actual tasks assigned to me. It means that I get there at 5:30 AM instead of 6 for the three or four mornings out of the week that I open the store. I unlock the door, set out the muffins after checking in the deliveries, occasionally do a supply order, make a dollar more an hour that I used to, and my name is listed on the company circulars of "staff," right under the assistant manager's.

I couldn't help but feel a little filthy about moving up the ladder of corporate inconsequentiality; this is probably due to residual postadolescent distrust of authority and fear of somehow losing my underdog street cred to those I now "outranked." This is probably also why I ended up listening to four different Pink Floyd albums before noon. Five if you count The Wall as two, which I don't really.

One of my friends' creative writing professors told her that he used to work at Taco Bell for several summers as a teen, but when they started talking to him about moving into upper management, he knew it was time to find another job. I used to mock my boss at TB (the second boss I had, that is), because he was a cocky little shit about being the manager of a measly link in the fast food chain. Part of me scorns the apparent injustice of having authority over someone just because of a few extra responsibilities, or a month extra seniority, or a few more kisses on the ass. I can't shake my bitterness over how arbitrary some advantages in life are, and how some people can be comparable in intelligence and work ethic, but one is given the leg up because they were born into money or had better connections--and gets an overinflated ego about something of miniscule consequence.

Part of me likes the extra responsibility even more because it caters to my inner control nut who will savor the hell out of the half hour of solitude that I'll have to make sure everything is convenient, stocked, and perfect, and the full confidence that this will be done because I will have done it myself. I'm worried that these tendencies will reveal that I'm more suited for upper management than I ever thought, or wanted to be, possible.