I used to work in a grocery store when I was sixteen.  After a few weeks bagging groceries, the manager moved me inside where I eventually ended up at the customer service desk answering phones and having customers berate me for six hours a shift complaining about how bad their food tasted or how some cashier didn’t give them correct change.  The customer service desk also sat out in front of the office where the shift managers would congregate in between cigarette breaks.  They were mostly miserable 40 year-old women who were in some sort of broken relationship and hated their lives.  They took this out on me on a daily basis.

Prior to the start of every shift I contemplated quitting.  One day, the general manager pulled me aside and told me he was giving me the Employee of the Month award.  I was pretty happy; this was a large store and was a nice recognition of all the crap I had put up with.  Well, until one of my co-workers came up to me in the break room and told me that he’d heard I only received the award because the GM felt sorry for me.  Happiness: crushed.

I couldn’t help but think of this story when I read the remarks surrounding Tuesday’s Gold Glove announcement.    Read the rest of this entry