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Hazing

March 30, 2026
Experience, Work
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I got hired at Port of Subs because Bobby and I had this strange form of recognition between us before I ever applied. I was just a regular who came in after class, but we talked like coworkers who hadn’t been hired together yet. We both had identity-through-work, the sense that being good at a job could stand in for having a self. And in a college town where the store got flooded with applicants every quarter, he brought me in on culture fit. It actually meant something. At that age, being chosen for anything felt like proof I was doing something right.

Once I started, the dynamic shifted fast. Bobby presented himself as the dedicated, service obsessed lead, the person who knew every quirk of the store and all the procedural trivia that made him feel important. Underneath that, he ran small power games that never stopped. Like most shifts, we worked in pairs, so writing the schedule gave him full control of who got along, who clashed, and who absorbed the burden of whatever he didn’t feel like doing. He avoided actual labor by assigning himself higher level tasks, though those tasks changed depending on what he didn’t want to touch that day.

One time he gave me the “Pepperoni test.” He just said everyone does it, you just have to slice ten pieces to an exact weight. He handed me the stack. I didn’t know it wasn’t real. I did what he asked and hit the number on the first try. Visibly baffled, he recalibrated the scale and told me to do it again. I hit it again. He didn’t react, no acknowledgement or recognition. He just shut down whatever he thought he was doing and never mentioned it again.

Jake was another issue. He had been there forever and treated that as an achievement. Right before I started, he got blackout drunk and broke his hand, so he couldn’t do anything except the register. He still outranked me because the owner liked him. He hated me immediately. Decided I was too confident on my first shift and turned that into some great character deficit. He complained to Bobby constantly. He started throwing pieces of meat at me instead of handing them over, waiting for me to drop one. I caught every piece. But he kept doing it, irritated each time I didn’t give him the result he wanted. But if I ever dropped one, it would be his fault. He would gain nothing if he was successful.

When the new girl was hired, everyone disliked her immediately. Too slow, too awkward, too much work to deal with. So Bobby assigned her to me. I mistook it for trust. It wasn’t. It was punishment. I treated her respectfully anyway, explained things clearly, and she adjusted fast. We became a solid team. When he asked how she was doing, I told him exactly that. He never put us on a shift together again. At the time I didn’t understand it, but looking back it’s obvious. Helping someone everyone else had written off was a kind of power, and I wasn’t allowed to have any.

Eventually I quit. I had worked hard in a place that rewarded nothing, and there was nothing left to push against. The dynamics weren’t special. The work wasn’t meaningful. And even when I excelled under impossible conditions, none of it mattered.

Sometimes you just lose, and that’s all there is to it.

The Last Straw

February 1, 2026
Addiction
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For years I told the story like it was a deliberate arc of redemption.

The “last straw” wasn’t some spectacular unraveling of my life. I didn’t get a DUI. No partner staged an intervention. My friends and family weren’t delivering ultimatums. I had a good job, a strong work ethic, the appearance of stability. I was what they call a “high functioning alcoholic,” though I wasn’t functioning highly in any other area of my life.

In my version, the turning point was simple: I missed my coworker’s Fourth of July barbecue, someone I respected, someone I wanted to network with, a relationship I wanted to build. Out of all the things I had skipped or sabotaged because of drinking, this one was minor. But for whatever reason, that was the moment I decided to stop. I tell people that, and it happened in July 2017.

Only, that’s not what happened.

The barbecue was real. The thought, I don’t want to miss things like this anymore, was real. But nothing changed. Two months later, in September, I was sitting in a doctor’s office for something completely unrelated when the appointment took a hard left turn. Somehow the staff knew I was an alcoholic. Instead of running through the standard checklist, they brought in a social worker. No warning. She picked up the phone, called an outpatient clinic, and handed it to me. That was it. I was too hungover to argue.

It is a curious example of how memory reshapes itself. I carried the shame of being caught, of being “forced,” but wanted the dignity of self-selection, the cleaner narrative of redemption. So over time, the timeline shifted. The barbecue became the moment. The ambush at the clinic faded away.

I was already at Amazon then, working as a contractor. At the time, it was my foothold, the one piece of my life that still looked stable from the outside. I could feel everything else slipping, but if I could turn that contract into a full-time role, I could convince myself I was not really in free fall.

That is why I really went to rehab. Not because I had hit bottom, but because I thought it might save my job. In my head, the equation was simple: fix the drinking, nail the interview, land the FTE. Rehab was not about healing; it was about salvaging the only thing I still valued, my work.

When the interview came, I was sober, but too fragmented to perform. The whole thing was a trainwreck from the first question. I watched myself blow it in real time. When the rejection email came, it merely confirmed: rehab did not work, and neither did I.

I quit the program before finishing. And then I drank for another two years.

Interviewing While Manic

November 9, 2025
Work
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I have had job interviews in every mental state you can imagine, but nothing compares to the ones I did while manic.

Sometimes it worked in my favor. I would walk in, connecting dots faster than they could ask questions, charming them with half formed but somehow compelling ideas. They would lean forward and I would think, I could land this before they even finish explaining the role.

Other times it went the other way. I would start answering questions I had not even been asked yet, following tangents into three other tangents, then circling back like nothing happened. I would pick up on every micro-expression and over interpret them in real time. Half the time I would forget the original question entirely.

And then there were the arrogant days. Like I am doing you a favor. I would sit there listening to their pitch and think, this is a waste of my talent. I would answer questions like they were beneath me or explain exactly what was wrong with their hiring process, their leadership, or their business model. By the end, I was not so much interviewing as explaining why I would never work for their shitty company.

Once in a while I landed in that sweet spot, charismatic enough to intrigue them and qualified enough to make them think twice. That is when I would get the bait and switch offers. Not a flat out no, but, we would like to bring you on as a consultant. Or, we can do a contract to hire arrangement. A yes with a leash attached.

In my head these were moral assaults. I refused them every time, because I told myself I would not take a job where they were betting against me from the start. In reality, those offers would have really helped me, even if they came with invisible strings.

But overwhelmingly, interviewing while manic does not end with a job offer. It ends with a look people give when they are not sure what just happened but they know they will never forget it.

My Shot at Redemption

October 12, 2025
Work
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It was the same agency I had walked into a decade earlier and stumbled out of just over two months later. Back then I was drinking too much to keep my footing. This time I came in sober, lucid, desperate, and hungry.

The pitch had not changed: we are an elite boutique, we work only high-fee searches. I saw only dollar signs. Commission only did not matter. It was all anyone was offering me, and this place carried a different weight. I had failed here once. This was my shot at redemption.

The invitation back felt like recognition, like someone had noticed the distance I had traveled and decided I had earned another chance.

For a while I believed it. I found the rhythm fast, calls, pitches, the slow burn of turning strangers into clients. Every small win was proof I was not the same person who had left years ago. I could see the arc taking shape, the clean ending I had been chasing.

Then the floor shifted. I was working on niche, impossible job orders, and I had already contacted every single viable candidate there was. Everything that had made the agency appealing – high fee, niche searches – was in reality reasons you could not succeed there. I just did not see it that way at first.

I had told myself I would not walk away again. This time I would be successful here. Earn the respect of the owner, a god tier recruiter who billed one million dollars running his own desk while also managing the company.

But there is a difference between proving you can win and proving you will not quit. The first is victory. The second is erosion.

When I left, it was not because I could not do it. It was because I could, and that was no longer the point.

The day after I quit they posted an ad for a salaried position. They had the budget all along. The truth was simple and ugly. They had been betting against me from the start. This was never a redemption arc. It was a rigged game, and I had played it to the end.

The Austin Weekend

September 7, 2025
Romance, Work
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In 2020 at a major tech company, I met someone who changed everything in the span of about six weeks.

We were both remote recruiters on the same team. The chemistry was instant and relentless. We would have two conversations running simultaneously, one over Slack for work and another over text for everything else. Hours would disappear into these layered discussions about recruiting, life, random observations, whatever. It was limitless.

I remember scrolling through her Instagram photos for the first time when I discovered she was a lesbian. I guess the math didn’t work out for me, after all. Or so I thought.

After several more weeks of constant texting, she asked me something unusual.

“Would you ever date me?”

“Yes.”

I didn’t even think about my reply. It was simply true, and I just said it. I felt no fear or vulnerability, no risk of rejection. She was unavailable to me; therefore, this must be some kind of hypothetical, intellectual exercise.

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

That’s approximately how it started.

We immediately went into planning & logistics. Eventually I would relocate to Austin. For now, I would come to visit in four weeks. If we could keep the intensity for that long, we’d have a strong foundation.

We maintained it with plenty to spare. The month flew by with the same dual-conversation energy. I booked the flight.

Austin exceeded every expectation. The chemistry translated perfectly to in-person interaction. We talked the same way face-to-face as we had through screens. The physical connection worked. We had sex and it was excellent. Everything about the weekend was clicking exactly as we’d hoped.

Then I did something incredibly dumb.

Before heading out the second day, I took a small hit from my weed vape. She took one too, in solidarity. It seemed harmless. I’ve done this thousands of times in my life. Here we had a tiny, shared moment before exploring the city.

Except, we both got ridiculously high.

I became weird and uncoordinated. She got paranoid and uncomfortable. What should have been a fun day out turned into an awkward nightmare where we were both trapped inside altered versions of ourselves.

When we got back to the hotel room, she quietly collected her things and left. I bought a ticket home that night.

It was over like that.

The smallest possible miscalculation at the worst possible moment. Everything that mattered had worked perfectly; the emotional connection, the physical compatibility, the practical logistics.

Six weeks of building something rare, a perfect weekend confirming it was real, then thirty minutes of being the wrong versions of ourselves when first impressions were everything.

Thirty minutes that undid everything we’d built and everything we could have been.

The Craigslist Job

September 1, 2025
Work
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I don’t remember the ad, just the phone call. A dog was barking in the background. Her voice cut through the noise. “Yes, when can you come in?” she asked, already moving on to the next thing. She didn’t need to see my resume.

That moment set the tone for everything that followed.

Her house was chaos. Papers everywhere, dogs barking, phone always ringing. If you could handle it, you could work there.

My first job was reposting the ad and scheduling interviews with other candidates. But at the end of that first day, she said, “When can you come tomorrow?” And the next day it was the same. It wasn’t until the first year passed that it was understood I got the job. She didn’t particularly like me, but she couldn’t find anyone better than me.

At first, I was just helping, like printing things, carrying things, assembling things. But eventually I had become her secretary, marketing department, and professional voice.

What I learned was how to sound professional when you had no idea what you were doing. How to write emails that sounded like they came from someone who knew things, when really I was just mimicking patterns I’d seen online. Sandy would hand me tasks that required experience I didn’t have.

She sold therapy certifications. Expensive ones, $3,000 for a weekend workshop that would supposedly teach you her proprietary method. My job was finding people to buy them. I’d harvest email addresses from her mailing lists and send them copy about “life-changing breakthrough techniques” and “limited-time certification opportunities.”

The people who emailed back sounded desperate. They wanted to know about whether this would actually let them practice therapy. I learned to deflect those questions. To focus on the transformation they’d experience, the tools they’d gain, the community they’d join.

Sandy believed in what she was selling, which made it worse somehow. She wasn’t a scammer because she genuinely thought her method worked. But she was underwater financially and couldn’t stop pushing. Every interaction became a sales opportunity. Every conversation ended with a pitch.

I stayed because I needed the work. I stayed because the chaos felt familiar. And I stayed because, despite everything, I was learning. Not from her, she had nothing to teach me about professionalism or ethics or how to run a business. But I was learning from the necessity of filling gaps she couldn’t see. From having to sound competent when I felt like a fraud. From watching what happened when passion wasn’t backed by substance.

She never made me prove I was useful. She just handed me something and trusted that I’d figure it out. For that, despite everything else, I am grateful to her.

The Office Alcoholic

August 17, 2025
Addiction, Work
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I don’t know what fucking genius in management thought putting a fully stocked liquor fridge in the office kitchen was a good idea. This was 2016, peak startup culture, where “work hard, play hard” meant having beer on tap and calling alcoholism “company culture.”

The fridge appeared one Monday morning like some kind of corporate honey trap. Vodka, the good stuff, not bottom-shelf swill. Ostensibly for “company events” and “team building.” In reality, it was like putting a loaded gun in a room full of depressed people.

I wasn’t the only one with a drinking problem at that company. But I was the known quantity. The guy who reeked of booze at 9 AM meetings. The one who got a little too animated at happy hours and stayed too late at company parties.

So when I started taking little sips here and there. Just a shot of vodka to get through the afternoon slump, I thought I was being discrete.

But apparently everyone was doing it. The bottles emptied faster than management expected. The vodka simply disappeared. It became obvious that employees were treating the company liquor like their personal stash.

The difference was, when management started having meetings about the missing alcohol, only one name came up. Mine.

I wasn’t invited to these meetings, obviously. But I could read the room. The way conversations stopped when I walked by. The knowing looks. The careful avoidance of eye contact. I could piece together exactly what was being discussed in those closed-door sessions with everyone who wasn’t me.

Everyone thought it was me. Every missing bottle. The office alcoholic had struck again.

The reality was probably that I’d taken maybe twenty percent of what disappeared. But once you’re labeled “the person with the drinking problem,” every missing drop gets attributed to you.

That’s when I realized how visible my drinking had become. I thought it was a secret, but actually I’d become a workplace character: the guy with the problem. Everyone knew.

I went to my first AA meeting that week.

Not because I was ready to get sober. Even though the humiliation of being the office alcoholic felt unbearable, I continued to drink myself to sleep every night.

The liquor fridge disappeared shortly after that. Management probably realized it wasn’t the brilliant culture-building move they’d imagined.

But the damage was done. I was the alcoholic. And once that label sticks, it follows you into every interaction, every meeting, every performance review.

The worst part is, they weren’t wrong.