I Quit (Again)

I swore I would never come back to Freedom Frontier RV Supercenter.

Freedom Frontier is not just a dealership.

It’s an ecosystem.

Derek is the general manager. He believes every problem can be solved with confidence and, if necessary, louder confidence. He only calls me when something is on fire. Sometimes literally. Frequently spiritually. Occasionally both.

Max runs service. He is calm in a way that feels engineered. If something explodes, Max will blink once and ask for torque specs like we’re in a lab and not a building that smells faintly of propane.

Retail Rob runs retail. Obviously. He turns bright red whenever a conversation becomes direct, which is unfortunate in retail. He has the face of a choir boy and the internal monologue of someone who has seen things. Customers find him disarming. I find him mildly unpredictable.

Warranty Sara handles claims. We call her the Squawker. Her voice lands somewhere between a fire alarm and a moral accusation. If a warranty is denied, she does not deliver the news — she detonates it. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard — permanently irritated, perpetually offended, and somehow still clocking in every single day. I have, on more than one occasion, whipped my head around thinking she was yelling at me, only to realize it was just a bird aggressively squeaking at another bird over custody of a half-eaten dumpster bagel

Nico runs parts. Nico believes in scarcity as a belief system. If you ask him for something, he will first inform you it was discontinued in 2003, even if it is currently in his hand and labeled with today’s date. He does not deny parts. He withholds them.

Sales hands them a fantasy. We see it when reality interrupts. We don’t sell the dream — we repair it. And there’s nothing dreamy about a $100,000 investment that won’t cooperate… especially when the final straw is a screw that doesn’t match the others.

People don’t come here serene. They come here furious — and I get cussed out more times before lunch than most people do in a lifetime.

I told myself I was above the chaos. In reality, I was probably just overstimulated and sick of playing firefighter in every sense of the word

I quit loudly. Publicly. With witnesses. I handed in my key card like evidence and left behind a desk plant that felt symbolic.

And yet.

I hesitated to leave. I sat in my car for a moment,

Watching a man argue with a technician in the parking lot about whether his RV batteries should charge without being plugged in.

“I shouldn’t have to hook it up every time,” the customer says, offended by electricity.

“Sir,” the technician replies, hollow, “that’s how batteries work.”

The man folds his arms like gravity personally betrayed him.

I thought for a second about getting out and putting out the fire but ultimately decided I should just leave.

I found a new job quickly.

I got to sit in a glass office downtown.

It was nice.

Exposed brick. Real coffee. A printer that never needed emotional support. When someone said they’d “circle back,” they did.

My coworkers were calm. Thoughtful. Regulated.

They did not throw staplers.

They did not accuse physics of being made-up bullshit.

They didn’t threaten manufacturers at a volume that competed with power tools.

They did not shrug and say, “That’s the way she goes,” when the receptionist left by ambulance at 10 a.m. Drunk.

Because that would never happen here.

For the first month, I thought this was growth.

Then I noticed no one panicked.

No one argued.

No one needed stabilization.

During my quarterly review, my manager called me “a stabilizing presence.”

He meant it as praise.

I realized nothing there required stabilizing.

Spreadsheets did not yell.

Emails did not escalate.

Nothing in that building required negotiation.

No one needed to win.

And I am very good at winning.

There was nothing testing me. I didn’t trust a life that required no strength.

Nothing this flawless survives reality. The calm energy unsettled me. How ironic.

In a moment of weakness (boredom), I returned to Freedom Frontier.

The bell rings as I step inside like it remembers me. I didn't warn them I was coming. Freedom Frontier is a dysfunctional family. The kind that hugs you with one arm and mocks your outfit with the other. I knew I’d be welcomed back — and absolutely destroyed for wearing corporate clothes.

“Hey,” Derek says. “You’re late.” As if I had been there the last six months, working.

“What’s the emergency?” I ask, noticing a very red faced man with an angry expression at the service counter.

“He says the batteries don’t work,” Max says.

“They don’t,” the customer snaps. “They won’t charge.”

“Have you plugged it in?” I ask.

“I shouldn’t have to.”

“It’s a battery,” I say. “It requires electricity. That’s the arrangement.”

Silence.

“How much?” he asks.

There it is.

This is the part I understand.

Not batteries.

People.

“It depends,” I say.

Hook set.

“Your lithium bank is in protection mode because it’s cold. Lithium is efficient. Also dramatic. We install a heater system, upgrade your controller, and this never happens again.”

“So it’s not broken.”

“No. It’s proactive.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“You buying new batteries in two winters and blaming weather.”

He studies the estimate.

“That’s high.”

“It is. So is lithium. That’s why you bought it.”

Max looks at the floor.

“Can you do better?”

Now we dance.

I shave ninety-five dollars. Enough for pride. Not enough to hurt.

“I’ll include a full system check and wash.”

He hesitates.

I let silence do its job.

“Fine.”

Signature.

Ink.

Deal.

Derek claps once like we’ve secured trade negotiations.

Somewhere in the back, Sara detonates.

“THAT IS NOT A MANUFACTURER DEFECT, THAT IS USER ENTHUSIASM.”

The entire building pauses.

“She’s fine,” Derek says calmly, while making a flapping bird motion with his arms, as we all do when this happens.

The Squawker continues.

Behind us, a printer begins screaming.

“Is it jammed?” I ask.

“No,” Rob says softly. “It’s choosing violence.”

The printer spits out thirty-seven blank pages.

A customer walks in holding a sewer hose at arm’s length like it betrayed him.

“It’s dirty,” he says.

“It’s a sewer hose,” I reply.

“Yes,” he says slowly. “But it’s dirty.”

Max inhales deeply.

Derek steps forward with leadership energy.

“When did you use it?”

“Yesterday.”

“For what?”

“For sewer.”

We all stand there.

Retail Rob nods sympathetically.

“That tracks.”

The man points at it.

“I’d like a clean one.”

Nico appears from nowhere.

“They’re all dirty eventually,” he says.

Sara detonates again.

“IT IS A CONTAINMENT SYSTEM, NOT A LIFESTYLE.”

The man leaves with the same hose.

He holds it like it wronged him.

Then someone yells from the service bay:

“He got baptized!”

Silence.

A tech emerges.

Wet.

Not fully soaked.

But spiritually altered.

Black tank water drips from the brim of his hat.

He removes it carefully.

“What happened?” Derek asks.

“I misjudged pressure,” the tech says quietly.

Max hands him paper towels without blinking.

A customer whispers, “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be stronger for it,” Nico replies.

Sara’s voice echoes:

“THAT IS NOT COVERED.”

The tech spits into a trash can with dignity.

“I saw my ancestors,” he says.

The phones begin ringing in unison.

Corporate never had this.

Corporate had ergonomic chairs.

Here, we have evolution.

Max looks at me.

“You staying?”

“I absolutely will not be here next year.”

“That’s what you said in 2019,” Derek says.

“And 2021.”

“And when you left for corporate,” Nico adds.

I grab a blank name tag.

The marker squeaks.

Retail Rob is explaining surge protectors.

“It prevents catastrophic failure,” he says softly.

“Of what?” the customer asks.

Rob smiles.

“Everything.”

A woman storms in holding a surge protector.

“It says reverse polarity,” she says. “Is that political?”

Derek slowly turns to me.

Peace is admirable.

But chaos listens.

I clip the name tag on.

I chose this.

That’s how I ended up back here.

After everything — the corporate exile, the philosophical awakening, the baptismal sewer incident, the lithium lecture, the moral indictment of electricity itself —

the man at the counter blinked at me and said,

“Uh. Okay. But my battery still doesn’t stay charged.”