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Monday, April 29, 2013
Faith. By Cesar Reyes Torres
When it comes to faith, I don't always have answers. In fact a lot of times I don't have them, and I have more questions myself sometimes. But I have faith that God knows what he's doing and why he does things. That just as I have questions, God has answers that come hand in hand with lessons that he wants me to learn. The world as it exists today is very fast paced and people want a 100% clear answer right now immediately or else. But faith in God has never been about quick solutions and easy answers. It has always been about the ability to endure when everyone around you tells you that you are wrong, it's about keeping your faith even when the easiest thing to do at the moment is to lose it. It's about choosing to believe in something that is powerful beyond measure, but also peaceful beyond earthly grasps. A love so overwhelming it towers human comprehension, and a bond so strong that you can almost see it if you gently close your eyes.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Facebook life is Wonderful? By Cesar Reyes Torres
Most of my friends lives look absolutely wonderful on Facebook. So if your scrolling through your newsfeed and it so happens that your having a bad day or bad week, you can get kind of bummed out. But just know that no ones life is perfect and their full story is yet to be told. few people will ever post their tears, or take pictures of their sad faces. Very few people will take pictures of their credit card bills and put them on Instagram. Just because you see a mother with her daughter and they are all smiles on Facebook, it doesn't make her the greatest mother. Just because you see a guy post bible quotes every day it doesn't make him a saint. Just because you see a couple posing together, it doesn't mean that either of them is loyal to each other. All I'm saying is "don't judge" either in a good way or bad way.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Subway: Stories from behind the counter(Part 4) A Job with a knife in your hand. By Cesar Reyes Torres
When you're surrounded by a certain environment, you tend to pick up on certain things. Whether you like it or not, the places that you are around and the people that surround you have an effect on you. So in my case when I started working with thugs, ex-cons, and tweakers, I either had to adapt or let them walk all over me. Now if my mentality or my actions sound immature to you, thats because I was only 18 at the time. And I thought that I knew it all. I did some very fucked up things to people and I know that I will pay for them someday, if I haven't already.
John was a hothead and an ex con. But he had a good sense of humor and he liked gangster movies like I did, and we generally got along. I considered him a buddy. Most of my friends in high school were girls and so he was probably my only guy friend. The same thing goes for Gary, he was a pothead, but he showed up on time, he was a Lakers fan, and he was easy-going. We got along well also. These were my boys; these were the guys that became my buddies. Michelle wasn't a friend but we could work together and it was like whatever with her.
But Espi was a different story. I didn't like her and she didn't like me. So few months after the store was sold to the new owners I set her up to get fired. I turned the staff against her. I constantly told them to complain about her. I pointed out every single thing I could about her. And I was able to finally get her fired when I commented to the owner that she paid for three cookies but in reality she really took five. He walked out to the front of the store and asked her to open up the cookie bag, and he pointed it out. That same day he cut her hours from 20 a week to 3 a week. She came back crying and said that she couldn't feed her kids or pay her rent on three hours a week, and when the owner pretty much shrugged his shoulders, she started to curse him out, and that's when the police were called, she was asked to leave the store. She was a pain in my ass, but on the other hand she had three kids and they were barely making do inside the garage they were living in. If I would have kept my mouth shut about $.50 worth of cookies, then, There lives might not have been made worse. But their lives were, and it was my fault. I never heard or saw Espi again in my life.
In the coming months, the stores went through some radical changes. In a short 10 months or so, we went through six different manager changes. The old owner had managers that worked for him for almost 10 years, and this owner hired people that couldn't stay on for more than one or two months sometimes. Joleene the tweaker girl with green teeth, simply walked off the job one day and got in a car in the middle of the lunch rush. Nobody ever heard from her again. She didn't even pick up her last check. Samantha was hired next, but she did not work well under the kind of pressure that the owner put on her and she ended up going to work down the street at Quiznos and she even try to get some of the employees to follow her. Effrain was hired after her, but he was a pothead, and he sometimes would come in an hour late, and just said he overslept, and justified the whole thing by saying that he was okay and that he just wouldn't eat lunch that day so it would be fine. He got fired. Marie was the next manager and she was a good manager, so good that they took her to the other store on Broadway, to help get it back into shape. Apparently as bad as I thought my store was doing, that store was worse. It's across the street from the library, and apparently the guy that they hired to run the night shift thought it would be okay to take all of the bread that we didn't use at the end of the night, make sandwiches, and go give it to the homeless guys across the street. Eventually the homeless we're just coming into the store at the end of the night to eat for free. And since the owner had put in security cameras, he was able to witness all of it . Not to mention that the store now smelled like piss and cigarettes. And if that wasn't enough, he even caught the employees making their own pizza with the dough, cheese ,marinara sauce and pepperoni. To replace Marie they hired a guy named Javier, who brought his wife Vanessa to work with him, and the owners didn't say anything about it, because her last name was different on her application and they never noticed that she was his wife. Javier eventually stole about $200 from the store and went to Vegas with it. He was the one making the deposits to the bank, but eventually they caught on to him and they fired him, they didn't fire his wife, but she didn't show up after that day anyways. The last guy they hired while I was still there was my friend Kevin, but we all called him Kay. Kevin is not his real name, and for legal reasons and my own protection from what I am about to say about "Kevin", I have changed his name. Kevin was probably the....
To be continued
John was a hothead and an ex con. But he had a good sense of humor and he liked gangster movies like I did, and we generally got along. I considered him a buddy. Most of my friends in high school were girls and so he was probably my only guy friend. The same thing goes for Gary, he was a pothead, but he showed up on time, he was a Lakers fan, and he was easy-going. We got along well also. These were my boys; these were the guys that became my buddies. Michelle wasn't a friend but we could work together and it was like whatever with her.
But Espi was a different story. I didn't like her and she didn't like me. So few months after the store was sold to the new owners I set her up to get fired. I turned the staff against her. I constantly told them to complain about her. I pointed out every single thing I could about her. And I was able to finally get her fired when I commented to the owner that she paid for three cookies but in reality she really took five. He walked out to the front of the store and asked her to open up the cookie bag, and he pointed it out. That same day he cut her hours from 20 a week to 3 a week. She came back crying and said that she couldn't feed her kids or pay her rent on three hours a week, and when the owner pretty much shrugged his shoulders, she started to curse him out, and that's when the police were called, she was asked to leave the store. She was a pain in my ass, but on the other hand she had three kids and they were barely making do inside the garage they were living in. If I would have kept my mouth shut about $.50 worth of cookies, then, There lives might not have been made worse. But their lives were, and it was my fault. I never heard or saw Espi again in my life.
In the coming months, the stores went through some radical changes. In a short 10 months or so, we went through six different manager changes. The old owner had managers that worked for him for almost 10 years, and this owner hired people that couldn't stay on for more than one or two months sometimes. Joleene the tweaker girl with green teeth, simply walked off the job one day and got in a car in the middle of the lunch rush. Nobody ever heard from her again. She didn't even pick up her last check. Samantha was hired next, but she did not work well under the kind of pressure that the owner put on her and she ended up going to work down the street at Quiznos and she even try to get some of the employees to follow her. Effrain was hired after her, but he was a pothead, and he sometimes would come in an hour late, and just said he overslept, and justified the whole thing by saying that he was okay and that he just wouldn't eat lunch that day so it would be fine. He got fired. Marie was the next manager and she was a good manager, so good that they took her to the other store on Broadway, to help get it back into shape. Apparently as bad as I thought my store was doing, that store was worse. It's across the street from the library, and apparently the guy that they hired to run the night shift thought it would be okay to take all of the bread that we didn't use at the end of the night, make sandwiches, and go give it to the homeless guys across the street. Eventually the homeless we're just coming into the store at the end of the night to eat for free. And since the owner had put in security cameras, he was able to witness all of it . Not to mention that the store now smelled like piss and cigarettes. And if that wasn't enough, he even caught the employees making their own pizza with the dough, cheese ,marinara sauce and pepperoni. To replace Marie they hired a guy named Javier, who brought his wife Vanessa to work with him, and the owners didn't say anything about it, because her last name was different on her application and they never noticed that she was his wife. Javier eventually stole about $200 from the store and went to Vegas with it. He was the one making the deposits to the bank, but eventually they caught on to him and they fired him, they didn't fire his wife, but she didn't show up after that day anyways. The last guy they hired while I was still there was my friend Kevin, but we all called him Kay. Kevin is not his real name, and for legal reasons and my own protection from what I am about to say about "Kevin", I have changed his name. Kevin was probably the....
To be continued
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