Thought you would treat me right

So, been a while since my last post. It will come to no surprise that I didn't do the followup post on Lilie that I had referenced, but it really wouldn't have been worth reading anyway. Or rather, to contrast it with everything else on here, it wouldn't have been interesting at all. Wait, that's not contrast. Damn.

Anyway.

So yeah, I'm basically moved into the new place. It's pretty cool so far. Got the couch set up, got the TV hooked up with cable and the PS2. It's nice having composite input, instead of having to depend on RF adapaters. I even picked up an input box, so I won't have to depend on them anymore. I can hook up the N64 as well, whenever I have an urge to play Blast Corps or Ogre Battle 64. I still plan on hooking up my old box and having a media server, but I have to buy a hard drive to do that, and probably the center of a stereo system, so I'll be waiting a bit on that.

So yeah, the move. Came down to the last minute, as usual. Had those five days off in a row, and didn't quite put to them as efficient use as I could have. But yeah, our move-out day was Saturday. Naturally, when I left for my 5-10 shift Saturday night, I wasn't done yet. Of course, to be fair, David wasn't either. He talked to the lady in the front office, and she said that as long as the keys were in the drop box when she checked it Sunday morning, it was fine. We were guessing around eight am, that was our goal. The plan was that I'd meet up with David at the apartment after work, we'd finish up.

Of course, it didn't happen.

I ended up having to close, which wouldn't have normally been a big deal, except I was already tired, and was planning on finishing up moving after work. David came by about twelve thirty, after calling me a record *three* times. So yeah, we talked about what we were going to do; he was going to finish most of the cleaning, get all of his stuff out, and leave his keys somewhere for me - either come back by the store and drop them off, or something. It got kind of busy at close - not terribly busy, but busy enough that I couldn't really do any preclosing. I helped the drivers get out of there, did money. I just had inventory left, but I just couldn't bring myself to get up and do it. Most frustrating. *Finally* got up and did it, got out of there at like five. Yeah, I know. Shut up. Came home to change and stuff. I actually dozed for like half an hour or so. However, I came to fairly soon, ran over to mom's, grabbed the vacuum cleaner, and got back to the Cedars. I was really, really tired and frustrated by that point, just wanted to be done with the whole damn thing.

Of course, at this point, I'd like to interject that yes, I know it was my fault that I was having to scramble at the last minute to get this stuff done, that I had more than enough time to have taken care of all this at a leisurely pace during my vacation, and that the fact that I squandered that time alloted to me was completely my fault, and that the negative experience I was going through at that point can be directly attributed to the aforementioned squandering. I know that, and do not shirk from responsibility for my actions, my decisions.

Moving on.

I got everything out, got the last cleaning up taken care of, got out of there. I locked the door for the last time at 7:52 (remember, our goal was 8 am), and dropped the key in the drop box at 7:59. Last minute? Oh yeah.

Drove back to Mom's to return the vacuum cleaner, she was actually up. I sat and talked with her for a little bit. It was embarrasing, but I actually broke down in tears in front of her - I was just so tired, frustrated, etc. She understood, though - "I guess I won't be seeing you this Sunday, huh?"

I love her.

So yeah, moved in at the new place. Kinda. The stuff from that last load is still out in the back of my truck. Well, most of it - I'm slowly moving it in, one piece at a time. The lamp came in; that's now in the living room. I donated the bust of Mozart to work, since I didn't want it anymore. It's sitting in the office right now. Most of my boxes aren't unpacked; I've been pulling out what I need, when I need it. I've got two and a half days off, though, starting Monday, and I hope to make some progress on those days. I'm fairly happy with my room - there's curtains in front of the window, so it stays fairly dark even in the middle of the day, which is nice. Overhead fan, also nice. There are a few things that are less than perfect, though. My desk is in my room, which is fine, but we ended up having to put it in the corner next to the bed, so my back is facing the door. I know it's silly, but I don't like having my back to the door. Also, Ambra's room is right next to mine, so I can't play music very loud when she's asleep (I learned that one the hard way). And, I keep hearing that out pool is absolutely terrible.

Overall, though, not too bad.

Let's see, what else...? Hmm. Oh yeah, work. Work's, well, interesting. I have one closing shift this week, which starts in about nine hours. I've been working late inside shifts, mainly with Gina closing, which hasn't been terribly fun. Tuesday night, I closed with Gina; I set the till and did a deposit before I left. She calls me after close, 'cause we were a hundred and fourteen dollars short. Her exact words: "Do you want to tell me where it is?" That's highly, highly offensive. Now, certainly, that amount of money short is something to be concerned about, I don't challenge that at all. But phrasing it like that sounds *very* much like an accusation. Unintentional, I hope, but still. It ended up being a mistake Jimmy made when he checked out a driver, coupled with Jenn entering in her deposit with two digits transposed.

We had an MIT rally on Thursday at Dave & Buster's in San Antonio. Total joke. I rode down with Joe; Sergio and Jenn also went from San Marcos. Jess sent Mel and Trevor. Good times. Let's see... we split up into four groups and did the 'Domino's Cheer', which I didn't participate in. Well, to observers, I did. We sat while Jenn talked to us about various topics - the OER form, the new MIT eval form, the hiring process, leading our shifts, etc. By "talked to us", I really mean "read powerpoint slides". Joe said on the way down there that he was going to walk out if that was the case, but he didn't. They served us some lunch, but I didn't eat any, since I had some Taco Cabana that morning. Stan said we could go play in the game room as long as we were back on time. Sergio and I both did - they had PIU 7th edition. I hate PIU - I have the hardest time telling the difference between jumps and runs, since there's no color differentiation to help you, only spacing, and I have a tendency to hold my head at odd angles which makes it hard to tell when things are aligned horizontally. But yeah, came back into the meeting room all sweaty, which was kinda funny. Walked up to the bar to get some water, and all the supervisors, Jenn, and Mike were all sitting there. Speaking of which, she (Eileen) started dancing a little during the break.

Horrifying.

We played Jeopardy at one point; I got one question right - name the five guiding principles, in order. There was also an auction. Top item was an Ipod Nano, which Jenn ended up winning; there were also five pairs of tickets to Fiesta Texas. Joe, Sergio, and I won one. Not a pair each, but one pair between the three of us. Still don't know how that one's going to work out. But yeah. Murph came up and talked a little bit at the end of the meeting. Nothing terribly impressive there.

Overall... blech.

We also had a mandatory meeting - I don't quite remember what day it was, though I'm pretty sure I closed that night - at like nine. We didn't know what it was about initially, though there was a rumor going on that they had found something objectionable on the cameras. That later turned out to be false. Everyone was there for once, which suprised me. Gina brought kolaches from Shipley's, and orange juice, so it wasn't a total loss. She addressed a few store-wide conerns while we waited on Eileen (who had called Gina to tell her to hold the meeting, and was leading it), who ran about five minutes late. She then dropped one word about what the meeting was going to be about - 'Myspace'.

I couldn't help but break out into laughter. Gina asked me to make sure I didn't do that in front of Eileen. I said I'd do what I could.

So Eileen got up and started talking. Overall, she was very vague, didn't really say anything specific. She talked about employees writing derogatory things about the company, their job, and customers on personal electronic things. She never said 'myspace' directly, but I'm fairly certain that's what she was talking about. She told Ambra that she had seen her myspaec profile (Not at the meeting. I'm just throwing things in randomly, 'cause I do that). She reminded us that that was strictly against company policy, made us re-sign the electronic use agreement form, and tried to feed us some TOTAL BULLSHIT about it being for our protection - that if some customer recognized themselves, they might get angry with a gun or sue us for slander or something. At this point, Emily raised her hand, and said something along the lines of "I really don't want to be a smartass, but it's only slander if it's spoken; it's libel if it's written, and it has to be untrue." Which is true - it has to be untrue, the person saying/writing it has to know it's untrue, and they have to have some sort of malicious intent. I didn't bother arguing that with Eileen, though. She also said at one point, "If you dislike your job that much, the door's right there."

As far as Joe and I can figure, someone at the office was browsing Myspace and came across an employee's page, which set off this whole thing. And, as usual, older people are rushing into things without trying to understand what they're dealing with. It's similiar to the MPAA and RIAA dealing with p2p networking and bittorrent - for the most part, they have no idea what they're dealing with, are trying normal tactics, and it isn't working.

IT'S CALLED VENTING, YOU IGNORANT JACKASSES!

I mean, I'll concede that an employee that isn't happy at their job isn't really a great employee. Well, it's not an optimal situation. But if that employee shows up every day, works diligently, and doesn't have any problems at work, does it matter if they go home and vent on their personal space? Okay, yeah, that can be a warning sign that they might quit one day or otherwise express their disgruntledness, but when you're dealing with every store in the company being understaffed, can you afford to wait and *only* have completely optimal situations?

So anyway.

Ambra finally stepped down as GM of Seguin. That's not too suprising. What's suprising is that it took her this long to do so. I was worried about her for a long time, when she'd break down in tears in frustration over the situation. She seems happier now though, which is important.

Well, she would, if the company would stop fucking her over. It's really, really frustrating to watch, since I can't really say anything about it. They won't let her work in Seguin anymore, since they don't like former GMs working in their old stores. In general, it's a fairly understandable rule - avoiding things like power struggles and awkwardness in general. Eileen herself proved the validity of this rule when she bitched to Gina about everything they had done to 'her' store after she left. So yeah, I can kind of understand the rule. But in this situation, I think an exception would be warranted. Jess (who took over Seguin, even though she just wants to come back to San Marcos) needs another driver, Ambra's willing to drive, knows the town well, and can swing to cover shifts, line, etc., when she's needed. She never really wanted Seguin in the first place, and was glad to no longer be there, so it's not like she'd be trying to hold on to the reigns of power or subconciously undermine Jess or anything. That, and she conferred with Jess a lot even when she was GM, so it's not like the employees would be confused with them both being in the store or anything.

To complicate matters, Eileen won't let Ambra come work in San Marcos, 'cause "we're dating" - which we're not. There's nothing between us, there never has been, and I highly doubt there ever will be. I mean, if I hadn't said anything *way* back when, this never would have come up in the first place. Admittedly, I feel kind of bad about it now. I mean, like half the company thinks we're dating, including most of the upper echelons of power. I'm sure us moving in together didn't do much to help quell those rumors. I personally don't care what people think about me, what they say about me, but it does bother me when that spills over to someone I care about. From our conversations, I gather that it doesn't really bother her either, but it still irks at me. I mean, if I wanted, I could go off the deep end and say that it's Chelsea all over again.

Luckily, I'm past that.

I hope.

Jojo -- Leave