By the summer of 2001, I had been promoted from cashier to fry bitch and Che had enough faith in me to promote me to manager (there were three or four managers). Che opened up Red Hot Lovers every morning, but a manager took over at 2pm when he went home for the day and along with an adult named John we completely ran the place on the weekends. One Saturday in August, I was scheduled to work the afternoon-evening closing shift. Problem was, I already had a ticket to a show in Toronto that day with The Plate. This was before our falling out and we were fast becoming quite good friends. I really wanted to go to this show, which was really a mini Warped Tour featuring Jimmy Eat World, New Found Glory, Good Charlotte, and Blink-182. (We suffered through GC, enjoyed NFG and JEW, and left, as planned, before Blink.) Anyhoo, I asked every single person who worked at Red Hot to sub for me; some people had good excuses, some people were simply unwilling to do it. No one would cover my shift. I explained my plight to Che and he told me that I was scheduled and it was too bad I'd have to miss the show. So, I went to the show anyway. The next Monday, I turned in my key and Che told me what I'd done was "very immature."

That's life, you pays your money and you takes your choice. Still, man, I really enjoyed working there.