What’s More Important?

When I was in high school (about 10 years ago), I worked part-time at
an Old Navy endlessly folding tee-shirts and avoiding our credit
card-crazed manger. She was a new mom and constantly wanted to talk
about her baby (understandably) but also threatened to not let us
leave if we didn’t get a certain amount of credit card applications
during our shift.

I had only been working there for a few weeks and I was scheduled as
“on-call” for a Saturday which meant I was supposed to call that
morning and see if I needed to come in. Friday night I got some bad
news about my family and we had to leave town for the weekend.

I called the manager that night and told her and she said,
“You’re on-call, so I need you to call me tomorrow and we can
discuss if you can come in or not.”

“I won’t be able to come in, even if you need me, because I’ll
be out of town,” I said.

“Well, what’s more important to you, your job or your family?”

Upset, confused and 16, I told her my family would come first. She
responded, ”Looks like you just quit.”