This is what it's like:

You need money. You always need the money because you're in debt but nothing's new about that because we're all in debt and together we're in it up to our ears, but that community feeling doesn't change the fact that you really need the money. So you go back to taking shit jobs for now. Always for now because you don't want to put up with this forever, but just for the time being it'll keep clothes on your back until something better comes along. Or rather, until you find something better anyways. Strangely enough, it turns out that this something better comes in the form of this shit job. They want to promote you to shit manager. Lots of better pay. Like crazy good money. Not that you're wealthy and you'll be driving a beamer any time soon, but you're on time on bills and you don't need to worry about rent anymore. You really shouldn't be worrying about rent anymore because you're at this job something like 60-70 hours a week, but that's only humor. You need your apartment to go home to, to sleep a good eight hours before you shower brush and go back to it again.

It's weird being on the other side of the manager's pin. Everybody knows customer service jobs. We've had them since we were 16 since they were the easiest, most visible jobs to get. Everybody knows the shit that you have to put up with to work there. "This is the phrase that you have to say to every customer who walks through this door," and "I don't see enough smiling," and "no more than 4 ounces of cheese and you're taking too much time slicing the bread and you're making a mess with the mustard." But now you actually find that it's your lips that these words are issuing forth from. And you like it. Not because you give a shit about perfect mustard rings, or even making the rich assholes who came up with this not-so-novel franchize idea richer, but because you can actually excel in this environment. The rules are laid out clear. There isn't any nuance in what they want. Sell more sandwiches, spend less money doing it. You can hit the mark every time. And even if you don't have time to sleep, or time to call your friends back, it's ok because for once in a very long time you're doing something exactly right.

It's easy to understand your employees, those kids you used to be, never on time, always trying to scam a sandwich for a friend, confusing a corporate stranglehold with their own laziness. They're pretty simple, you see. The profile doesn't include much more than conceit and shortsightedness. It's this side of the pin that's much more difficult to comprehend. Because once you stop hating that hierarchy for actually making you work before they give you money you begin to see how complicated and ingenious it is. All of those silly acronyms that seemed made up to make your life more annoying before are actually intricately wrought strategies for increasing efficiency. Somehow the Byzantine layers of corporate regulation actually streamline the place. It is fascinating to see how statistics can cut waste, how a computer algorithm will be able to predict correctly 9 out of 10 times how many customers will walk in that door on any given day, down to the hour. The training program that you went through that seemed so much like brain-wash at the time is actually a device they use for manipulating their labor pool without having to change it, for spreading talent around, to make your skills reach the furthest.

And this is why it is so much easier to understand the corporate regulations towards employees. It finally makes sense to fire someone for being a minute late, or to refuse to hire someone with tattoos because it actually has so little to do with them. You're perfecting an invisible machine that only happens to require people and sandwiches to run properly.