Last week my Dunkin’ branch was named the top store of the Southeast Region. To understand this, the Southeast Region consists the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. There are approximately 1,609 stores in these states.
To remind you, mine is number 1 out of these 1,609 stores.
How does one get named this honor? Hitting all sales goals (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) Having a high average ticket variation by up-selling products organically. Ensuring that your team is in dress code and always has a positive attitude. Which then in turn makes your customer satisfaction skyrocket. Making sure that you follow all drive thru and front counter time goals to serve the customer efficiently. And lastly, that you are able to improve your average Profit and Loss (I have cut my P&L by exactly 9%).
It was an incredible honor. But I didn’t accept it.
When I received that email informing me of this wonderful news, I immediately felt guilt. Regret even. You see, I sacrificed a lot to achieve this. As anyone would of course! If you want to focus one one area of your life, you’ll need to exchange your time to achieve that focus. Relationships, God, school, trips, money, really the list is endless.
To be completely raw with you, this job made the perfect excuse for me to practice my superb skill at avoidance. Which is funny, because I was once a Squad Leader who taught others how healthy it is to face your woes. When you begin to face these sufferings, then you will acquire redemption quicker. It’s like when you leave all of your vegetables for last. It’s awful once you run out of eating everything else because then you have to go through the long act of eating every one of your bitters at once.
Once I made this realization that I am currently going around my vegetables, I thought to myself, “Hunter. You can still do so many things to avoid your problems. Move to Nebraska, delete your social media, make a fake life – no one will find you!“ But then I reeled Huntress in and realized how awful that would be.
I realized how unhealthy I have been behaving when I noticed that some of my best friends were leaving. They are LITERALLY flying out of the country to lead a World Race squad tomorrow and it’s killing me. This might sound confusing because I just talked about avoiding others like I avoid those awful La Croix “sodas.”
These friends were 2 of maybe 6 people that I’ve actually made an effort in seeing. Numbers 3, 4, and 5 are my roommates and number 6 is my BFFF. Imagine the fact that the 2/3 people that you see outside of work + home are leaving you. Grief. That’s literally how I feel.
Woah. Grief? Yes, grief. This word is defined as deep sorrow. It’s not about someone dying. You see, the loss of something unintended is the trigger that brings humans such deep sorrow. Your favorite tiger-bear, the end of a TV show, your virginity, discontinuation of your favorite snacks (Mr. T cereal anyone?), Toys R Us, etc. I am in such deep sorrow for this loss. And I’m not announcing this asking for pity. But to bring light to what I’m feeling.
Being me, I began to look into a fallback plan so I don’t have to feel this way. Nebraska was Plan A. Replacing my two best friends was Plan B. Becoming the next CEO of Dunkin’ was Plan C. All the way to Plan X which was to confront my problems. It honestly took until this day to decide to make the right decision. And the right decision is to confront everything I’ve been avoiding.
It’s going to hurt.
And it’s going to hurt worse because I’ve been avoiding this pain for so long. I’m out of practice of embracing my pain to achieve the Lord’s redemption. And that’s the key right there. I forgot about redemption. The beauty of the Lord bringing something broken together, and mending it. My entire life is breathtakingly gorgeous because of the redemption that has been brought. I’m just now looking at myself and seeing the decay that is festering because I chose so hard to look up instead of down.
And because of that, I want to confront even harder. Honestly, if I was you I would be so confused as to what the point of this blog is. This is basically a journal entry making myself chuckle silently as I speak over my woes. But the point of this is to ask for accountability + even more for forgiveness. I want to apologize to those I’ve avoided so boldly. Whether it was a text back or a complete drop out of your life, I want to humbly ask for forgiveness. We all go through tribulation. This isn’t an excuse, but a request for grace.
Moving on, I have no idea what my plan to confrontation looks like. Celebrating the fact that my store is better than all of yours should be a start. But after, I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m ready to be transparent again. I’m ready to push for love. I’m ready for that overwhelming feeling of beauty to be present in my life. And I don’t know how to end this. So, I’ll just have Michael Scott say in one sentence exactly how I’m feeling.
