Change of Heart

           Working as a rental agent with my boss, Alex, wasn’t always fun and games. In fact, I used to despise this man. He’s a fast talking Guatemalan in his mid-thirties with a, “I’m never wrong,” attitude. Because of his broken English, it made understating him very difficult at times. This is where we butted heads. His relatively quick speech approach would often land him in trouble with customers, which led to me having to take the heat upon their return. It wasn’t until I moved to a different location that I realized, Alex wasn’t really all that bad.

             Bob, my new manager, was an easygoing Middle Eastern man. He would allow me to choose my breaks and their duration. For example, if I wanted to take a two-hour break, he didn’t have a problem with it. At first, the work place seemed stress-free, but my mood was soon to change. Since I didn’t have seniority here, I was forced to start at the bottom; consequently making less than my original wage.  Even though I only agreed to maintain the rental vehicles, he would sneak in managerial duties such as printing reports or opening and closing the store. He was trying to get me to do more work at a low wage, which infuriated me.

            Three months had gone by, and the paychecks were scraps compared to what I was making with Alex. Aside from pay, Bob decided to cut my hours, because business was slow. I was barely making enough to pay for my necessities. A financial strain was becoming more stressful than customer attacks used to be at Alex’s location. I started to reevaluate my decisions at this point.

            Come to think of it, Alex did a lot for me such as buy breakfast and lunch everyday, provided pay advances when I need it, and worked around my school schedule. We had a powwow and settled our differences. Alex no longer makes promises to customers that he can’t keep. Him and I are communicating more with final decision making, which leaves no room for misunderstanding. He still talks fast, but I no longer have to stress the return of an unsatisfied customer, and we get along much better as a result.