Jenless

This isn't the post about the almost inevitable break-up -- I have a title for that post stashed away somewhere in my brain. This is going to be more of a post about partners-in-crime and about missing the day to day mischief Jen and I used to cause at work. Our relationship aside, Jennifer was an awesome partner-in-crime, and I've had more than a few. I'd say she ranks in the top four along with Jessica, Dan, and Shannon. I had a few accomplices in misbehavior at FMC ... like Justin, Jacquie & Casey, Krysten, Guinevere, and even Judy C ... but I never really developed a solid two-person tag team where we were in it to the wall, and would go to extreme lengths to watch each other's backs. I think if I'd stayed on first shift there that Judy C, Guinevere, and me would have been a pretty formidable unit, but that never got a chance to blossom. The closest I had there was the Clique (me, Justin, Jacquie, and Casey), who pretty much ruled the kitchen at night. I was pretty tight with Krysten, too, but she was never accepted fully into that group by the others. Dan and Shannon were both partners-in-crime in a civilian capacity, so really the only partner-in-crime that compares with what Jen and I did at LSI is Jessica, who I worked with way way back at Stop N Shop.

She was the first real case of the work environment helping me to click with someone I probably wouldn't have had the opportunity to really talk to otherwise. I'm not even sure how she and I (and Tina) clicked so well, but we did. As usual in these sorts of partnerships I was the solid quiet one and she was the fireball. She would go to crazy lengths and do just about anything, and when I had to I would hide or clean up the mess. This same pattern came into play at both FMC and LSI later on. She and I were competitive with each other, too. Jessica was the one who finally took me off the top of that cashier stat chart. And we dated briefly, too.

When we got close I was an unofficial ACDH (assistant cash department head), which is just a fancy way of saying I'd often be left in charge of the front end with the register keys, even though I didn't officially get bumped up to that job until later on. In my unofficial capacity as leader person, I was much like I would later be at FMC in that I did things my own way and totally played favorites. Jessica (and Tina) were both my favorites at the time, and on the sly I taught Jessica how to use the keys to do pretty much everything I knew how to do. She was my deputy. On the clock we never had a disagreement and we always watched each other's backs. We were in it together.

One time we took down Peggy. Richard, a CDH we both liked and respected, was transferred out, and Peggy replaced him from another store. She was a bitch. Jessica took an instant dislike to her, and in all fairness Peggy made herself very difficult to like. Where Richard had been the one who left me in charge all the time, Peggy hated to give up anything, and would only leave me the keys when absolutely necessary. Jessica, as she would do, would get me wound up and bring out my evil side, and she and I working together on a project were very formidable. We encouraged several of the others to make as many mistakes as possible. At that time, any voids over $1.00 would cause the register to lock up during the cash transaction, and the cashier would have to call for the (A)CDH to come over with the keys. Those were called 90's, as in, "Peggy, I have a 90." Once we got started there were 90's all over the place during the shift, and it was easy to see she was getting frustrated with them. Then in an awesome bit of timing Jessica and I engineered it so that all nine registers had nearly simultaneous 90's. It's at that point that Peggy had to go upstairs to decompress and left me the keys. It was rumored that she was up there in tears, but that might have just been an urban legend. At any rate, she was gone for hours.

So, Jen never created the evil that I manifested at LSI during my last six weeks there. It had always been lurking underneath. She just nudged it to the surface. And the truth is that right now I miss causing all that trouble with her. I miss the picnic table brainstorming sessions. I miss comparing notes after a flawlessly executed plan. I miss improvising on the fly through eye contact and the kind of mental telepathy that can develop between the best partners-in-crime. I miss being cult heroes for causing Sue so much consternation. I miss the Cookie and Sparky Show. I miss my girlfriend.

I did see her Tuesday night when we hung out until about 4 AM, and she called me twice yesterday, so it isn't quite a Jenless existence yet. But I still think the clock is ticking on us. In some ways, given the hot and cold nature of the way things go between us, the opposite shifts thing might be helping us. I still think things run best when I'm hanging back and letting her come to me, and when she starts to miss me. If we were everyday around the clock, there's a very good chance she and I would have self-destructed by now. We are, after all, someting of a mismatch. We've gone a month as boyfriend/girlfriend, and there've been numerous times where, despite some of the things brought up in previous posts, we somehow squeaked it out and continued on. We're still doing it now, even though we could not possibly be on more of an opposite schedule. I don't know how we're doing it, to be perfectly honest. I can't tell you how often I've been aware how tenuous and fragile this relationship is, or how often I've believed we're existing on borrowed time.

I guess it shows that Sparky isn't easy to shake off once I get into the system. I'm kind of a virus that way.