I need a job so badly at the moment that, if I had the money and the business know-how, I'd look into a franchise opportunity or two. It would be nice to be my own boss for a change instead of having to deal with another boss like Judge Jerk. Unfortunately, I actually thought about him last night. My mom, nephew, and I went out to eat with my mom's best friend from work. The coworkers are doing this Team Lean thing that is sponsored by the YMCA, and no one asked them to be on their team. I happened to mention that I hate New Year's resolution diets anyway, especially when the people who make them are the type who talk about nothing but their diets the rest of the year. Five seconds later, Judge Combover popped into my head.
Judge Combover was one of those diet and exercise-obsessed people. Quite personally, I don't think he needed to be on diet. If anything, he needed to eat more, not less. Anyway, he was always talking about going to the gym and what he couldn't eat. If he invited you out to lunch, he was analyze everything you ate. I couldn't ever order a french fry without him telling me how many fat grams were in it and how bad it was for me. It didn't matter that I'm a size 6. He apparently thought I needed to be a size 2. Of course, he never said the first word about fat grams to his 300-pound secretary that ended up getting gastric bypass surgery, but he had to critcize everything that I ate.
He also criticized my exercise habits. One year, I got a brand new treadmill with my income tax rebate. I was so proud of that treadmill and still am. It has a fan, auto incline, and programmable workouts. When compared to my old treadmill, which would shut off if you actually leaned on the handlebars and was missing a leg, it was a dream. After I got it, I thought, "Finally, I have something to talk to him about when he's on one of his gym kicks." Yeah, well he didn't think so. He just criticized me for not going fast enough on it. I'm a short person. Thus, my gait is also short. If I turned the treadmill to the speed he wanted me to turn it to, even if I tried to run, I'd still fall off the back.
I hope to never have a boss who criticizes me every chance he gets ever again. That's why at first blush a franchise opportunity sounds great. The only problem is most franchise opportunities involve selling something, whether it's Mary Kay cosmetics or hamburgers, and I suck at selling. When I was in grammar and middle school, the only way that I could sell enough Girl Scout cookies to go to day camp in the summer was if my grandmother and mother bought them all and froze them. I probably couldn't sell Evian to a man dying of thirst in the desert. I guess that means it's back to the online classifieds for me. Oh joy.
