Mortified.

Ok, time for me to 'fess up. I'm going to tell you the real reason why I didn't make it in management, back in the day when I was on my way up and the future looked promising.

This afternoon was exceptionally busy at the restaurant. Corporate has been coming down hard lately on the local managers to bring numbers up. Tension and stress has spread throughout the store, conflicts are rising, and morale is falling.

It's one of those situations where corporate executives are completely incapable of grasping a basic principle of production theory from Economics 101. I'm referring of course to the "law of diminishing returns," which basically says that there always comes a point where pushing harder and faster isn't always better, and the production process suffers if that threshold is exceeded.

In layman's terms: "haste makes waste."

In any case, we're all going bonkers as a result, and everyone in the crew argued all morning. The grill man gave me all sorts of flack, and the customers were all in a real pissy mood. Right in the middle of lunch rush, right behind the register, I got struck by an anxiety attack to end all anxiety attacks. The walls were caving in, and I felt like I wanted to die. When the rush was over I begged to go home, blaming my allergies and sinuses. I was too ashamed to tell them the real reason.

At home it took me all afternoon and lots of medication to work my way down from feeling like I'm crawling the ceiling.

There are always the nay-sayers who will tell me to buck up and deal with it, pull myself together and get on with things. That only adds to my embarassment. I only wish it were that simple. I'd give the world for it to be that simple. They should thank God that they never have to deal with being totally debilitated like that, in the middle of public.

"He jests at scars that never felt a wound" -- Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2

More than once I have lost a promising position because of it. Daily I deal with the shame of professional failure, as well as the shame of being totally helpless to cope when these things strike.