Yet another affair – Christmas
German Christmas traditions have always been important to Andrea; I would have never guessed that Christmas would be up for sale to the highest bidder, especially when the bidder is Jack.
Around the 2nd week of December Andrea tells me (and, to be clear, her plans with the girls were already cast in stone) that they will be catering on Christmas Day in Sparks at the Tesla battery factory. Her message is simple: while she tries to discourage me, if I want to see the girls on Christmas I’ll need to work too. I remind her that something like this should be discussed between us before any decisions are made, but that message (which has been delivered countless times before) falls on deaf ears.
I agree to work Christmas Day. The girls are actually excited; they like Jack, they like catering, and they like making money (specific amounts are never discussed, but it’s supposed to be “a lot”).
The first texts are from Nov 30. Note the emoji here; vomiting when referencing how I might like to spend Christmas day with the girls. And Jack promising the night will end with me convinced to get a divorce.
The first reference to money; $2000 per person – of which they’ll take half of my pay, which I inadvertently circumvent the night of the catering.
Some more childish humor.
On 12/1 they hatch the plan to have separate hotel rooms for Andrea and I – no idea why.
More childish humor on the 4th…
Here the reference “he can sleep on the floor” again suggests that Jack has been given the impression that we are essentially divorced, and possibly not even sleeping in the same bed.
And again on Dec 23rd…
By now the plans have changed; instead of just working the 25th (not a big deal since we do most of our celebrations on the 24th) we will also be working the 24th (from 6PM-2AM), sleep for a few hours in our 2 different hotel rooms, then be back on the 25th for a shift from 9AM-2PM.
Jack offers Andrea some hearts Christmas Day.
The 2 days of working I spent a little time with Jack (although we were rarely alone) getting the food ready to go inside, and the rest of the time I was with Andrea and the girls serving food, cleaning up, handing out plates, etc. I was working hard as I would with any work, trying to do a good job. I explained to the girls that I absolutely disagreed with the decision to work Christmas, but here we are so let’s make the best of it.
And there were no talks with Jack about divorce (or anything else for that matter).
The only awkward moment with Jack was when he stopped by our station (there were two different cafeteria’s, so two different food stations). Andrea mentioned that she wasn’t sure if we had enough plates to last; I looked at the pile of unused plates that we had – it was huge – and thought “why would she think we might run out?”. Jack motioned to Andrea to follow him, he would show her where more plates are if needed; they walked ~100 meters away, around a corner into the serving section of the cafeteria (which was closed since we were serving food elsewhere).
Now Jack could have gotten the extra plates himself, or verbally explained to Andrea where to get them with a point of the finger, so I thought “that’s weird”. A few minutes later – yes, they had been gone a few minutes, way more than necessary – unplanned by me, an empty meat tray needed to be cleaned out which we did at the cafeteria sink which was right where Jack and Andrea were. Walking over to them around the corner, I half expected to turn the corner and see them in an embrace, but instead they were standing together talking softly until Jack saw me and nearly yelled out “So now you know where to get more plates if you need them”, and they both walked away.
That’s awkward, I thought.
Finally, as for money. Remember I hadn’t seen any of these texts by the time we were working on Christmas. However, I didn’t need the money (and since I didn’t agree that we should even be there, I concluded I’m not deserving of any money anyway) and knew that the girls (and Andrea) did so the night of Christmas Eve I told Jack not to worry about paying me, but instead to split my pay in 3rd’s and give it to Andrea and the girls. I would love to know how that message was processed in Jack’s head…
And as for money, weeks after we had worked Niki & Britta asked Andrea (absentmindedly, out of the blue) about the pay for the catering. Andrea said she deposited the money into each of their bank accounts….all $500. Is it really possible that Andrea stole money from her daughters?
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