I was Juliet, you were throwing pebbles

So how do I feel about Rebecca?  As evidenced by my blog posts, I've had a crush on her since the first time I saw her.  I thought she was very attractive, and desperately wanted to get to know her, but thought I'd never get the chance.  I thought this was like a dream come true, and I really jumped at it.  I didn't ask her right out, and it took a while for it to come out, but it eventually came out that they were still together.  I'll admit, I was a tiny bit saddened; I was really hoping we'd hook up.  I mean, I'll definitely take the oppurtunity as it presents itself, and I did.  I did let her know how I felt, and if I'm reading this right, she basically told me that she wished she had a chance to give me a chance to give us a chance.

The recurring theme that kept cropping up was that Ralph couldn't know, and I felt that was a little messed up.  We weren't doing anything wrong, what reason was there to hide it?  At least, that's a surface interpretation of the situation.  As it turned out, it's just a festering cesspool of drama (the best kind).  He's apparently crazy jealous, and constantly accuses her of cheating on him, of being with other guys.  I mean, it's to the point where he won't let her have a computer, because he thinks she'll just use it to meet guys and hook up with them.

Here's the thing about relationships.  They're built on trust.  You can argue about it being communication, passion, love, or something else, but I assert that trust is what it all boils down to.  Why would you be with someone you can't trust?  If you're in a relationship, trust is the cornerstone!  You can't stop people from doing stuff they want to do.  Why would you want to be with someone that will cheat on you given any chance, and it's your job to make sure they get no chance?  I really don't understand it.  Whatever.

So during the shakeout process, he called me twice from her phone.  I'm not really thrilled about that; I don't want to talk to him.  The first time was to tell me about how he was done with her and stuff, the second time was to tell me how much they loved each other and how they were getting married.  I should mention that he spent the time immediately afterwards calling varous members of his family to tell them what a whore she was.

Fuck him.  That's the last time I want him mentioned on this blog.

So, moving on.  Where does it go from here?  I don't know.  I talked to her briefly when she got to work today.  It sounds like she intends to go with it, at least for the moment.  It's less than twenty-four hours since the shakeout really started, so it's hard to say where this is going to go.  I want her to be happy.  If she marries some guy and we're friends, that's cool.  If she marries some douchebag out of necessity, well, that's one more failure I can hang on my head.  That's a little roundabout, but if I hadn't screwed up my school stuff, maybe I could offer her a place to live, clear the necessity out of it.  Then again, if I did, would I still be living here, working at Domino's, where she would have had the oppurtunity to come see me?  I don't know.

So I think I'm caught up for the most part; I'll probably throw out random pieces here and there as I continue coverage of this drama llama of a situation.

Taylor Swift -- Love Story

I st-st-stuttered when you asked me what I'm thinkin' about

I try not to get too caught up in ranting about work. Everyone gets frustrated with their job at times; everyone has to deal with incompetent people, and everyone hates it. I don't think my case is overly unique or special, or that I'm the first person that's had to go through things like this. But some times, I really, really need some catharsis. So, this is really just going to be a bunch of bitching about incompetent people that I have to deal with at work. If that doesn't interest you at all, stop reading.

The first thing that really annoys me is that I suspect *everyone* bitches about everyone else being incompetent. However, I find it hard to believe that everyone is incompetent. I must firmly believe that there are people who get things done, and people who fuck things up. Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but how they're handled, and further mistakes avoided, is a huge indicator of a person's worth. I'm not expecting perfection; everyone makes mistakes. However, you have to learn from them, treat them as a learning mistake, not just a pile of shit that needs to be cleaned up.

As an example of that, and my first official rant, there are several people in our franchise office. I don't like to name names, so I'll call them "M" and "J". They both handle the issues with Pulse, our new point-of-sale system. They're also handling all the issues that come up with the new products, sandwiches and pasta. There's a lot of new products that we have. Those all have to be entered in the inventory screen. They all have vendor codes, prices, inventory units, etc. It's a lot of stuff, but this is a huge paradigm shift for, much more so than anything else I've seen (other than the Pulse adoption, of course) in the three years I've worked for the company.

And they keep fucking up THE EXACT SAME THINGS.

I'll let them know that an inventory item doesn't appear on the ordering screen, or the inventory screen (I'm particularly interested in learning how they manage that in the first place), and they'll put it back on. Of course, in doing so, another item will be wrong. Or they'll erase the vendor code from another item, so we can't place any food orders until they correct that. Or they'll mess up the ideal use system, so that the automated inventory system doesn't realize that yes, every sandwich uses three full pieces of sliced provolone.

There's the same issues with HR. We submit vacation requests, and never hear back from them. We hadn't heard back about the request by the time that week started, so the employee, living paycheck to paycheck, made the decision to work that week, being unable to take a chance of messing out on an entire week's work. Of course, two weeks later, we find out he had approved it, and just not bothered to let us know. The only message we had received was something cryptic about how his start date wasn't until this next pay week, which we weren't 100% what that meant.

Then, of course, there's the referral bonus situation. That's one of my favorites. We have a referral bonus system; if you refer another person that becomes an employee and works at least 100 hours, you get a bonus (the amount varies based on the position the person you referred works in). We had three people receive referral bonuses fro four employees (one person had referred two people). However, instead of giving the bonuses to the people that did the referring, as it should have been, they gave the bonuses to the people that got referred.

What was really, really frustrating, but not surprising about the entire thing, is that when the company was late in paying out money it was supposed to, it was an incredibly long, uphill battle, but when they were owed money, they reacted to the situation immediately. Nice example to set. I'm especially sensitive to this issue, as I'm currently waiting for a referral bonus for Janelle. She hit her 100 hour mark almost a month ago. They have until our next paycheck to have it show up; after that, I'm going to raise hell. I'm also ready for them to screw up my vacation. What's really fun about that is that they're going to figure out a new way to screw it up, due to the year between the first and second times I worked for the company. It affected my service shirt, but in a hugely detrimental way. I'll give them a chance to do it right, but I'm completely prepared for them to fuck it up.

Of course, none of that matters if we don't get some new people working on the inside. We definitely couldn't handle me not working for a week. Hell, I can't even take an extra day off during the week right now (though if school gets very hectic, I might have to. At that point, it'll be an ultimatum).

Then there's commissary. I'm prepared to cut them a lot of slack, as the issues they deal with are bigger and more widespread than our franchise office. However, they also fuck a ton of shit up. On a delivery almost a month ago, they gave us a case of blue cheese instead of marinara. No big deal, everyone screws up. The issue I have is that here we are A MONTH LATER, and we're still trying to get the problem corrected. There was a case of cheese they marked as damaged that we never got, and we still haven't received a credit for it.

Miley Cyrus -- See You Again

Finally got to get into it with a customer today about the whole "You Got 30 Minutes" thing. First, I do think it's really, really dumb for them to be using that. I mean, yeah, the vast majority of our orders do get to our customers within thirty minutes, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong to play up that; the problem, however, is that we did that 30 minute guarantee in the 80's, so *anything* with Domino's and the number 30 is automatically going to make that connection in people's minds. It's pretty unfortunate. Anyway. He also got pretty mad that our drivers don't carry parmesan or crushed red peppers on them. Seriously, though. I mean, if you can't eat something without a given condiment, that condiment has ceased to be a condiment, and is instead an integral part of the dish. Well, those aren't. Deal with it. We do charge for them. Think that's ridiculous? Shop somewhere else. Customer's choice, and all that.

So the guy placed his order, and I told him at the end of the order that it'd be 35-45 minutes. The guy calls back at thirty-one minutes, almost exactly. I know this because when someone calls back that's already placed an order, when you bring up that phone line, it says when they ordered. There's that, and there's the clock right next to that, so it's pretty easy to see how long ago they ordered. So yeah, he called back right at thirty-one, thirty-two minutes. He was calling about our 30-minute guarantee, which we don't have. He kept bringing up the commercial, which just says "You've got 30 minutes". It doesn't say "You've got 30 minutes, or it's free." It definitely doesn't say "You've got 30 minutes (or it's free)". It says "You've got 30 minutes (or keep waiting)". Again, I'm not defending the fact that they're almost definitely playing to the fact that we did have one, a long, LONG time ago, and people are definitely going to make that association whenever they see the 30. Whatever. But it's there, and we're doing the best we can.

So yeah, the guy calls at 32 minutes, and I explain about it being an estimate, not a guarantee. We go through this several times.

He then calls back another twenty-ish minutes later, to make another complaint. Basically, (a) his pizza took 40 minutes, and (b) the driver didn't have any peppers or cheese on him. I would have had a little more sympathy for this complaint if we hadn't already discussed (a) when he called back ONE MINUTE after thirty minutes, and I told him that it'd be 35-45 minutes for delivery. And (b), well, there's not a lot I can do about (b). It's how our franchise operates. I can't really defend it.

Moving on.

Four of

Hmm. I got caught up playing around on Facebook, and I'm really not sure where I was going with that "Four of" thing. I'll get back to that, if possible.

Oh! I remember. Maybe. I might have been going to say something about I've done four of my eleven consecutive shifts? Probably not. I can't see me saying "Four of" as the beginning of that sentence. Anyway.

So yeah, been dealing with a lot of ex's lately, primarily through Facebook. I let it do the 'automatic friend finder thing' with my gmail inbox, and that brought up Chelsea and Lilie, got to see them. Oh, and Terri. Saw Mindy while going through some photos to upload, and Carrie, and Nikki. Ashley ordered pizza last night.

We journey over oceans, five fathoms deep

So. Good times.

I'm doing eleven 5-C shifts in a row (by choice, I'm not whining or anything, just recapping), and I just finished up #3. Eight to go.

Work's been kinda blah lately. Julianne quit, no big surprises there. She called in a *lot*. She was kinda worthless, but she could at least answer phones. Or something. I have to work with Trey a lot this week while Bill's on vacation. Good times. Oh, almost went into it with Dylan a few nights ago. So we have this dual-layer heat rack. They each have a switch to turn it off, but the one on the bottom has been redone as a master cut-off switch with an indicator light. That way, you only have to switch one switch to turn it on, and you can see the light to make sure it's on. Long story short, when you're closing, you turn off the main switch, and leave the other switch on. I keep having to tell him not to turn off the top switch. It's such a stupid little thing. Seriously. It should have just taken one "Hey, don't turn off this top switch" and that should have been the end of it. Of course, it wasn't. I've said something to him about it three times, Bill's brought it up at least once. Other than that, whatever.

Went to Wal-Mart the other night, talked to Rebecca. Turns out she's probably moving home this summer when her lease is up. Home is Rockport, a good distance away. It kind of puts an end to the whole thing. Sandra said something like "Well, you'd better make your move! Take her to lunch or something." I think she was just being nice. They do humor me. Anyway. Yeah, it's kind of depressing. Of course, I'm fully aware how pathetic it is for me to be depressed that some girl I've had a crush on for a while now is moving away. I mean, I refer to her as my 'pretend girlfriend' and everything, because it's not like there's ever a chance of something happening. I haven't lost all touch with reality. Whatever. So yeah, wa wa wa, I'm a big pathetic loser, whatever. Of course, it would be the next day that I go through facebook's friend-finder thing and end up with some slight contact with Lilie again. I mean, it's not like I'm still in love with her or anything, but she was the last person I had anything with, so when things seem kinda bad, and then to have that shoved in my face (or whatever), yeah. Good times.

Of course, it's fun to go into a negative emotion spiral, start taking things in the worst possible light. I'm twenty-five, living at home, working at a pizza place. Then start feeling as down as possible about various facets of life. I'll work on that later.

Vanessa Carlton -- Home

They don't love you like I love you

I'm in kind of a bad place right now.

I fully realize that everything I'm going to complain about in this post is, in the grand scheme of things, relatively minor. I'm completely aware that my life is pretty good - decent job, loving and supportive family, health, etc.

That being said, it's bitching time.

WORK

Work is the source of my current bad mood. Things are changing, and mostly, not for the better. First and foremost, Q. I mean, he's a great guy. But I'm starting to have some issues with him. Let's start with putting the truck up. I mean, we organize the walk-in a specific way. He just kind of throws all the shit in. I should clarify, I'm not dead-set on OUR specific way of organizing everything. If he wants to reorganize stuff and put things in different places, that's fine. But it definitely needs to have specific places, keep everything together. We're too busy, our walk-in is too small, we get three trucks a week, we can't do inventory until a little before close. Seriously, I'm not an organizational freak or anything, but I recognize that there's time when it's necessary. This is one of those times. I mean, seriously. Gina instilled it in me that we have to keep that walk-in organized, and it's true. I'm going to ask him about it tomorrow, see if there's a reason, maybe it was just the last two trucks with mitigating circumstances. Whatever.

It's kind of annoying. I came back to Domino's to work for Sergio, not for Domino's. Fuck Domino's. I mean, I'll grant that it's definitely a better gig for Sonic, but that's not saying too much amongst menial service jobs (especially when they restructure our MiT bonus plan, see below). Whatever.

Then, they're changing the MiT bonus plan structure. They're making it more of a 'pay-for-performance' thing, which I don't disagree with.

In principle.

However, there's a few things they need to point out that they're not really saying. They're presenting it as removing the current cap on the MiT bonus, and replacing it with 2% of the store's EBITDA. In principle, it's reasonable. The better the store is doing, both in sales and translating that sales to profit, the higher the bonus the assistant managers get. However, it's worth noting that we have the second highest EBITDA in the company, and it would make our new cap 180-something instead of 200. Everyone else's goes down substantially. They don't really mention that in the flyer that EVERYONE's bonus cap is going to go down. DRASTICALLY. It follows from the information presented, but you have to dig down a little to really look at it. The other caveats aren't really that big a deal - an 80 or above on your MiT eval, no criticals, and a minimum of a 4 on your WCMSC. That last one is basically just a grading of your store across a variety of metrics - labor, food, personnel, sales, etc. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll be getting a 4 any time soon. Our last one was a 2, and we need something like 20 points to raise that to a 4. 21 points, I think. I mean, the reasoning underneath all of it is sound, I guess. The idea that we influence the WCMSC and profitability is understandable, and they're trying to reflect that. Whatever. It's just annoying.

What's next, what's next? Oh, they're making that 3.99 medium 1-topping carryout special a periodic thing. It's really, really annoying. The drivers hate it. The insiders hate it. The MiTs hate it. Basically, it's only really good for boosting sales in low-sales stores. It didn't really help ours.

Hmm.

What else?

Co-workers.

Some of them are kind of annoying. I mean, hell, it'd be too easy to pick on Adam or Kyle here, but that's too easy. I'm talking about inside people. I'm really trying not to dwell on this one, because I'll start going nuts. Trey kind of reminds me of Ben from Sonic. It's frustrating. Yes, our job is simplistic, menial, entry-level, unskilled, etc. But there are specific ways to do those jobs, ways they have to be done. I hate sounding as stupid as I know it does, but you have to do things the way they're supposed to be done.

Anyway.

And Bill, the rush is so, so much easier if you MAKE PRESLAPS and PREP BREAD.

I don't mean to sound all high and mighty. I'm just venting.

Moving on.

I'm going to dye my hair pink on Tuesday. Well, Rose is going to. Very, very, very pink. That should be fun.

What else, what else?

Rebecca, I s'pose. We talk every time I'm in there. I haven't lost touch with reality or anything, I'm not getting my hopes up or anything. It's weird, we are sort of slowly becoming friends. Maybe, I guess? I'm not going to overthink this one. I overthink every single one of our interactions and encounters as it is, I'm not going to ruin the whole thing.

Moving on.

Paid off one of my student loans, that was really exciting.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs -- Maps

The dreamers get punished most

So I saw Rebecca at Wal-Mart the other day (gosh, a lot of posts are starting this way. whatever).

Actually, I'm going to come back to Rebecca, and start with school and stuff.

School's going okay so far. I was really tired yesterday (because of work), but got through school okay. The way my classes are set up, my least favorite, most boring is first, and I end with my favorite, least boring class. Here's a breakdown so far:

Chem 1341, Lippman:
This one is kinda boring. The professor is really, really old. I can't stress that enough. Extremely old. He talks a lot, and has a habit of trying to bring in anecdotes that are in NO WAY INTERESTING. We were talking about uncertainty in measurements, and he starts talking about engineers and small parts and tolerance for uncertainty as an example of applications of that principle. You'll notice I used about half a sentence to explain it. That's all it takes. Not ten minutes. Whatever.

CS 2308, Drissi
I love this guy. He has this crazy accent - we say character CARE - ick - ter. He says ka - RACK - ter. It's awesome. Just trying to follow what he's saying can at time keep me on my toes. Still don't have any idea what the assignments or tests are going to be like in this class. Oh, and it's a CS class, so there are very few actual human beings in the class, it's predominately introverted geniuses.

Math something, Discrete I, Wu
So far, this is my favorite class. It has the most class participation, the most theoretical work (Math professors don't give two shits about real-world applications), and there's this deaf guy that I usually sit behind. Now, that in and of itself has no bearing on the class, but one of the interpretors is SO cute. Not hot or anything, and she's older, probably mid-30's to early 40's, but SO CUTE. She gets her whole face into it, really expressive. SO CUTE.

So that's school so far.

On to work.

Work sucks. They just fired Sergio, so we have no GM. Additionally, if he hadn't sent me a text telling me as much, we wouldn't know, as they haven't seen fit to let us know. I don't know what's going to happen now. I really don't think it should continue as this little triad thing we're doing right now, as there's too many cracks for stuff to fall through. There needs to be one person in charge, and receiving compensation as such. I'm definitely not going to do it - the time commitment is such that it could create an issue with school, which is by far my top priority right now. Terrance definitely doesn't want it either, that leaves Bill. He's a great guy and all, and he sorta expressed some interest in doing it, although his management experience is somewhat limited. We'll see how that goes. I mean, he's light years better than the alternatives - bringing in someone from San Antonio, or hiring someone from outside, or keeping on as we are right now.

Our order dates just changed, so Monday night, we ran out of medium dough, provolone cheese, green peppers, onions, chicken kickers, and medium and large deep dish. It was fun.

Now, on to the good stuff. We hired this cute insider named Michelle. She hasn't had her first official day yet, though she did work on Monday. Taller - about 5'7"-ish, kinda chunky, blond. So cute.

Went to Wal-Mart the other night, saw Rebecca. We talked for a little while, probably fifteen minutes. It was good stuff. She's left-handed, played french horn in high school, and is possibly hispanic. I ran into her again a few nights later, she was asking me about a ladder, which I helped her find. I talked to that other girl that's really cool that used to work in softlines that I went to high school with. She asked me how my night was going, I told her 'fantastic!', she asked why, I gestured with my head to where Rebecca was, her eyes went wide with understanding. I ended up standing next to her while she checked out, we had the following conversation - "Hey, don't tell anyone about that, please." "Sure, no problem. Hey, you know she has a boyfriend, right?" "Yeah, I found out when I asked her out." "Oh, wow. Yeah, I thought I saw her smile like this (smiles) while she was helping you." "Actually, I was helping her find a ladder." Robyn was our cashier during that whole thing, which was cool.

Got my computer hooked up to output audio through my new speaker system, and video to my tv, which is cool. I can even have it do the SNES emulator to the TV, which is cool. Kind of old school.

Vanessa Carlton -- Fools Like Me

Seasons don't fear the reaper

So today was an interesting day at work. Nothing really notable until the last hour or so. Fifteen minutes. Whatever.

I get a call from Margaret in Oltorf that they got another call from the Motel 6 in San Marcos (long story). So I take the order, make it, send it out. It ends up being the last order of the night, leaves the store maybe ten minutes before close. Nick takes it out. He calls back a little bit later, saying the guy had wanted to play with his credit card. I was kind of annoyed at the whole situation (It's Motel 6's fault they got key cards from another motel, which their contract explicitly forbids doing, quite possibly for exactly this reason), so I just told Nick to give him the pizza for free.

Nothing terribly weird just yet.

I get a call a few minutes later, we're already closed. It's the front desk lady, apparently, there's a complaint about our driver banging on random doors or something. She's not sure if he's not sure where to deliver to or what, what kind of protocols we have. I'm a little confused at this point - none of our drivers, if the room they were delivering to wasn't right, would just go knocking on random doors, they'd call back to find out what's going on. This was further compounded by the fact that I had *just* talked to Nick, I knew he had found the correct room.

While I'm talking to her, trying to figure out what's going on, a second line rings. I go to tell that person we're closed, and it's the police. They're calling because they received a call from the front desk lady that some people were banging on my driver's car, they were worried about it. He asked me to call my driver by cell if possible, and see if he was okay, and that I could just put him on hold. I get back with the front desk lady, explain that no, our drivers wouldn't just go bang on random doors, and I'll talk to him and find out what's going on.

I go to call Nick, ask him what's up. By the time he picks up, he's pulling back into the store. Guess he got back okay, then. I pick the cop off of hold and let him know that the driver's back safely. That concludes that call.

Nick comes in, lets me know what happened. While he was talking to the guy he was supposed to deliver to, some other guy, drunk as hell, comes out of his room, starts yelling at Nick about if we've got any more pizzas or whatever. Nick tells him that no, we're closed. The dude starts banging on Nick's window - loud enough that it disturbs another guest, two doors down, who comes out to see what's going on (I'm guessing he's the one that called the front desk to lodge a complaint about the whole situation.

Overall, it was just kind of weird. I was picturing a huge group of people, banging on Nick's car, surrounding it and preventing him from driving off or something, like a zombie horror movie or something.

Blue Oyster Cult -- Don't Fear the Reaper

Now, that this love has overcome me

So, it's been quite a while since I've done an in-depth post about what's going on in my life, so I'm going to try to provide a brief history of what I've been up to.

So, I was working at Wal-Mart, doing overnight stocking on the grocery side of the store. I really liked it, for a few reasons. First, I didn't really have to deal with any customers at all. Well, I did occasionally, but it was stuff like "Hey dude, where's the Gatorade?" "Aisle six, right side, halfway down the aisle after the Kool-Aid." Usually, two to three of those a night, more on Fridays and Saturdays. The time period was great - 10 pm to 7 (8/9/10) am, which was fantastic. Work all night, sleep all day. I loved it. Had two days off, which didn't change from week to week. I was working with Matt, which meant we never had scheduling conflicts (at least, not work-based) for playing racquetball, and it made transportation fairly simple. There was even a cute girl, Robyn, to look at from time to time.

However, there were some definite downsides. First, we were constantly understaffed. I mean, systemically and intentionally. (In a related side-note, they've recently laid off even more people, causing massive understaffing throughout the entire store. Productivity has suffered as a result.) We were often running behind due to our lack of sufficient people. Of course, management didn't see it that way - we were "slackers" and "needed to pick up our pace." Juan constantly threatened us, saying that when the remodel was over, we were going to all be replaced by the remodel workers that they hired. That kind of frustrated me. At some point, Javi called me on my cell, asking if I still wanted to work there (in desperation, while searching for a job before Wal-Mart called, I stopped by there to see if they would hire me back. Dave waffled on it, but eventually left the option up to Javi, who called me, though by the time he did, Wal-Mart had called, so I declined.). He told me that Bubba, the former GM of Buda, was now our GM, and that things were totally different. Also, Ashley (of Domino's fame) was also an assistant there now, which was really neat. I really like working with her. We talked about it briefly, and I told him I'd call him back.

As luck would have it, a few days later, we had a ton of freight come in, a few people call in, and Juan was in particularly rare form. Ambra had started working there at this point, and Mindy was gone. Well, at that point, I decided I'd had enough. I went to the bathroom, called Ashley, confirmed that they still had a place for me, and walked out. It was fun. I clocked out, went up to Juan, and handed him my discount card that had my clock in bar code on the opposite side. He was kind of caught off-guard, as a good walk-out will always catch management. It was awesome. He told me that he'd always confirmed (excused) my absences - I had like four or so - and that he certainly wasn't referring to me when he talked about how much we suck. I wasn't going to be dissuaded, though, and I left. I kind of apologized to Ambra on the way out, because she was still there with all this terrible freight to have to deal with. On the way out, I stopped to talk to Robyn, let her know I enjoyed working with her but that I was leaving, and that I thought she was fantastically cute.

The personnel lady called me a few days later about why I left. I told her about Juan, she said something like "Well, that's certainly not true." Not the point. "Well, he shouldn't have done that." Yeah, I believe I indicated I already thought as much by leaving. She asked me if I wanted to talk to Terry (our GM), I half-heartedly accepted, but never showed up.

The next day, I was talking to Javi and Bubba at Sonic. One week after that, I walked into my first day of Sonic. That was interesting, because only Javi, Ashley, Bubba, and a few people who were still there - Larry, Cruz, Pedro - knew who I was. Everyone else just saw this new guy - goofy looking - in a shirt and tie, walking around like he knew the store like the back of his hand. Which I do. Anyway. I knew it was going to suck going in to it, but I figured, hey, Javi and Ashley are there, so how bad could it really be?

I quickly became acquainted with the new crew, which was in some ways better, some ways worse than the old crew I dealt with. Well, the old crew was probably better in most respects. I won't go too much into specifics, but there were some very constant things that really defined the new crew. Whining, for one thing. Attitude problems, for another. There were a few people I really despised, and a few people I really liked (Emily, Ashley S, Katie). Things started off pretty good. I started getting around 70 hours a week, which was nice, since it amounted to a FUCKTON of overtime, and very nice paychecks.

Then Ashley left.

That really, really, really sucked. I was really sad that she left, but I totally understand her decision to leave. She was really frustrated, since she had only wanted to be part time, and she hadn't worked less than 50 hours on any week since she started. She felt that either Bubba or upper management, whoever was responsible for it, just wasn't doing enough to get us more assistants, and Bubba kept scheduling her a ton (more on this later). That, and how frustrating and stressful of a job it is to begin with, made her leave. We didn't get another manager or anything for a quite a while, and we had a bit of a staffing crisis for a while. We got through that.

Then Javi left. That was really the beginning of the end for me, as well. Javi's last week, I worked 90 hours without a day off. Now, I was used to 70 hours a week with one day off, and that was okay. However, 90/0 wasn't really okay. Well, it would have been okay, but Bubba didn't see fit to warn me or anything. I mean, he knew about it as early as Sunday morning, possibly earlier. I wish he would have warned me or something, since he wasn't releasing the schedule for the week until Monday afternoon, which was also really frustrating. So I had to take this annoying Serv-Safe class (8 hours, 90 multiple-choice question test, test took about six and a half minutes), then go in and close afterwards. That was alright, since the early draft of the schedule had me off on Tuesday. However, I walk in around 6:30, look at the schedule, and find out I don't have a day off that week. Yeah, I was kind of upset. I mean, I know a lot of people work seven days a week, at jobs much harder than mine. I just wish Bubba would have warned me or something.

So Javi left, and it was just me, Angie, and Bubba. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Bubba took over doing the order and the schedule. We'd run out of stuff a lot more - tater tots, ranch, barbecue sauce, M&M's, spoons, bananas, sugar, you name it. That, and people would get scheduled when they weren't available, which, to be fair, stopped for the most part eventually. There were several weeks, though, where a lot of people couldn't come in when they were scheduled and it was our fault. Good times. The other fun thing about having Bubba in charge of scheduling... well, it really had nothing to do with him being in charge of scheduling, but something systemic about him managing, was that he expected every employee to be 100% devoted to the Drive-In. I'm not talking about just while they're on the clock, which I agree with, but ALL THE TIME. Every time someone called in, he'd ask people to stay late, and come in early, and come in on their only day off, and would get annoyed when they couldn't. I mean, I'm talking about people who'd already worked eight, ten hours, or had worked six days and it was their only day off. We didn't seem to be pursuing the long term solution, hiring more people so we didn't have to keep asking people to work stupid amounts of hours.

So yeah, I have a few grievances with Bubba as a GM. I think part of it might be the difference between Buda and San Marcos. Most of our crew members, at least non-cook, are college kids, who aren't looking for 40 hours a week, and will work that much if you need them to, but didn't apply for that. They're going to highly value their time outside of work, and place a greater premium on social time and interaction then on being at work, hence the frustration with always, ALWAYS being called in. Now, most of them are more than happy to help out occasionally. However, it starts to get annoying, when every other day, you're asked to stay late or come in early, when every day you "have off", you're asked to come in for a bit. There's a line between "helping out" and "being expected to be overly devoted to your job". That's one of the reasons Ashley left, as well.

So yeah, I put in my two weeks notice almost two weeks ago, on Saturday the fourth. I walked out on Friday the tenth. Almost made it. I didn't really tell anyone that I was leaving, except for Aaron, the assistant we were borrowing from Montopolis (who was a friend of Bubba's) a few days a week. That week, we finally had a new assistant start; he was an ex-GM from Round Rock or something.

Yeah, I feel pretty bad about walking out. Sort of. I mean, not really. I was really pissed off. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention, Sergio got the store, and called to offer me an MIT position. So I took that; I'll be starting there in a week. That's fun.

So that's where I am in terms of work. On to other matters.

I moved out of Les Chateaux a month or so after starting at Sonic. Moved back home instead of getting a 3-bedroom place with Ambra and David, decided to go back to school and the cheap rent offered at home would be a huge help towards that goal. I'm just now, three months later, that I'm finally starting to move in and get everything unpacked. I'm almost done there. Janelle moved out the other day, that was interesting. Not just into a dorm for the semester, but into a four bedroom apartment at University Springs with three dudes. That's cool. Spent Monday picking her up from the airport, then helping her move out. Got a decent entertainment center out of the deal, so I came out ahead.

Haven't talked to Lilie in, oh, probably two months now. I was going up to Austin every day off to play DDR and/or ITG2, and I'd usually call her before or during to see if she was around to see if she'd like to meet up, say hi, that kind of thing. The first time, I actually got a hold of her, and she didn't really seem very enthusiastic or anything. Every subsequent time, no answer whatsoever. A few weeks of that, and no reply whatsoever to any IMs/phone calls/emails, and I got the hint.

So yeah, I've already put in my application at SWT. I got re-accepted as well, so that's neat. I just have to go in for an academic advising appointment, then I'll be good to go. I'm starting in the Spring, and I'm pretty sure of what classes I'd like to take - Discrete I, Data Structures, Chem I, whatever CS course is next in my progression, and possibly Probability, depending on scheduling.

Oh, I sold my WoW account to David. Just didn't have the time working 70 hours a week, usually in 12-14 hour days. That, and the internet connection here SUCKED. It's getting better; we've upgraded our connection, and are on our third modem. So, we'll see. I'm contemplating buying it back, but I want to see how things go at Domino's first. Oh, Gina marked me down as non-rehireable, so that's fun. Eileen let Sergio rehire me anyway, so that's cool.

I think that's a sufficient return to blogging. More to come as updates warrant.

DJ Smooth -- DUI 091406

You're wasting my time; could've, should've been living my deams

I should preface this post by saying I've been fairly fortunate in the grand scheme of things. Other than a weight problem, I'm very healthy, and other than an incredible knack for making incredibly bad decisions, I'm very intelligent. I never had to go to bed hungry, except as a punishment, nor did I ever have to entertain myself with only a twig and a bit of twine. My present circumstances are entirely the result of my bad decisions, and have nothing to do with any problems in my upbringing (Well, maybe one or two things. But not really).

So, when I whine and bitch and rant, I know that in the grand scheme of things, the things I'm complaining about are relatively minor, and that there are millions of people worldwide that would gladly exchange their troubles for mine.

That being said...

SHIT.

COCK.

BALLS.

This Christmas wasn't that great. It was dominated by a truck issue, one I'm happy to report I seem to have finally cleared up within the last hour. A week (?) ago, when Ambra needed a ride home from work, my truck wouldn't start. I checked the dial, and it looked light I might have left the inside light on all night and all day (even though my internal light doesn't come on through that switch, but I was thinking maybe the circuit was open and could have drained it? Or something?), so Janelle came, gave me a jump, and it started just fine. Didn't think anything else of it, until the next day, after Ambra left, when it wouldn't start again. Not like the recurring fuel pump issue I've had, just nothing - no noise, no motion, nothing. It took a jump, leading me to believe it wasn't the starter. So, I figured the battery was probably dead. Janelle gave me a ride to work, then in the morning (Christmas Eve), I bought a new battery and went to work trying to replace it. I should mention that it was very cold and raining. Not that they bother me *that* much, but it does make the story that much better, and I was sick, and frustrated, so they didn't help. The terminals were SUPER corroded, so I couldn't get them off, and eventually gave up in frustration. Christmas... I'll talk about that in a bit.

Last night, bought a terminal replacement set - two terminals, screws, and nuts - and set to work replacing it this morning after work. Got the old battery out (eventually; the screw that holds down the rubber plug was mega-rusted). Started working on replacing the battery terminals... and I lost a nut. They hold the screws in that are holding down the plate that keeps the wires in contact with the terminals and posts, so yeah, they're pretty important, and they don't pack a spare or anything. I gave up on it for the moment, came inside, and took a nap. Woke up an hour ago, Janelle came and got me (again), brought me to Mom's house, found a new nut that worked almost as well, and replaced it.

Got everything hooked up, and yes! my truck works. I fucking rock.

Mon A Q -- It's My Turn

You never love me, anymore

It's actually going to be two weeks in review. The first was a whopping eight days (you're supposed to sign a release to work seven or more, I didn't), the second was a standard five. Both were pretty bad. Let's start with people that annoyed me:

• Paul
  Yeah, I was surprised to see his name here as well. Paul's normally a cool guy; educated, intelligent, we get along very well. He understands my curiosity about everything, and usually answers my questions to the best of his ability.
  
  However, it appears he's also a whiny bitch. Two occurrences: First, one day - I think it was a Friday? - about half of us didn't come in until midnight. Justin was off, which meant one of us had to do 01 - the water, soda, and chip aisles (2). Usually, that's Paul. Today, though, I guess he just didn't feel up to it? He was trying to have me do it, which was fine by me. However, Louis, the manager for grocery that night, came over and told him to do it, since we were already two hours behind, and that Paul needed to do 01 tonight. Paul said, and I quote, "No." Maybe it's because I've been a manager, but when they're telling you to do something that's well within the parameters of your job, "No" isn't an appropriate response. Louis just kind of looked at him and says "Yes." Paul asks him what other options are available. Louis tells him that he's doing 01.
  
  Second, this was in the middle of my eight day week. We had a few aisles left to zone, but they were all at least partly done. It was 8:30 or so. I had just taken a few carts up front after emptying them of trash, and ran across Paul finishing up 6. I get on the other end to help, and he says to me, "Hey, finish this up for me." "Um... I'm happy to help you finish up?" "Well, it's my Friday, and it's 8:30, so I'm leaving."
  
  What a fucking bitch! I mean, yeah, we're all assigned to an aisle or two, but that's an internal thing - all of grocery is responsible for every aisle. Cutting and running like that is pretty low.
  
  
• Brenda
  I could go on and on and on and on about this one, but I'll try to keep it to specific incidents. We were kept late on multiple incidents because she can't throw 9 in a reasonable amount of time, even when I have more freight on 7 and get it done like an hour earlier. She quote "Can't work with you guys" and "Can't work with guys", and can't be talked to at all. She had an open trash bag, I had a bag of pasta I needed to throw away, and the only other option was to walk to the other side of the store and throw it in the GM compactor. I ask her if I can put it in her bag, and she gets all uppity, and says that if the bag breaks, she'll know who to blame. Just stuff like this, every single day. It's getting really old, really fast. Her attendance is really, really flaky as well. I could go on, but there's no real point - it's the exact same stuff every day, and unlike being in love with Lilie, there aren't any fun parts.
  
  
• Conner
  Conner is like a cross between JPBloodreign, Uncle Freddie, and, um, someone else I can't quite think of right now. He wants to be very in-your-face, but he loves to tell you about it, instead of letting his actions speak for themselves. He'd much rather tell you about it. Repeatedly. He wants to have the "I don't give a fuck what anybody thinks" mentality, except... he does, and it's obvious, so to compensate, he tells you that's how he is, except he's not. And he's a huge Nintendo fanboy, that claims he's not. That's fun.
  
  
• Nolan
  I hate useless old people that jump to conclusions based on incomplete information, then refuse to abandon that information regardless of any new evidence that may present itself. Hell, they don't have to be old. That's one of the things most atheists pride themselves on - being willing to objectively analyze things that may contradict their current beliefs, and not simply reject them out of hand. He, like Mom, jumps to a conclusion and refuses to retreat from it. I hate that.
  
  
• Zack
  GUESS WHAT? IT TAKES MORE THAN A FEW MINUTES TO THROW 30 CARTS FULL OF TRASH, MAKES 2 BALES, SORT THE PLASTIC OUT TO TAKE IT TO GM'S COMPACTOR, BECAUSE OURS IS LOCKED OUT BECAUSE NO ONE PUSHES THEIR TRASH BACK, THEN TAKE IT ALL OVER TO GM, THEN HAVE TO TAKE SIX MORE CARTS FULL OF OTHER PEOPLE'S TRASH, BECAUSE A FUCKING MANAGER TOLD YOU TO, AND IT DOESN'T MATTER IF IT'S NOT REALLY YOUR JOB TO DO SO, YOU CAN'T REALLY JUST SAY THAT TO AN ASSISTANT MANAGER.

So that's been fun. Yeah, that eight-day work week, it was pretty painful. Had two days of dealing with everybody's trash, which I don't mind, except when Zack starts freaking out when it takes me a bit of time to deal with EVERYBODY'S TRASH FROM THE ENTIRE NIGHT. I'm going to mix in the last week as well. Two days, we didn't get out 'til 9-ish, with a ton of people helping us. One night, it was four of us, no Paul, Nolan, or Zack, and we had to blitz both 7 and 10, which really screws things up. The next night, we had to do it again, except Rosa was there, and she can't read. At all. Or speak much English. So, take her off 10, she's totally worthless. That was fun.

I could go on and on, but it's the same old shit, and it's starting to run together. So I'll move off the topic of work, and move on to somewhat more pleasant things.

D'Asha -- Another Lie

We are what everyone wants to be

I'm a mean person.

I'm a bad person.

I should clarify those two statements. Most people think of me as a really nice guy, and for the most part, they're right. But those are people I like, or friends of people I like. Or people I have to be nice - customers of my current employer, for instance. Or cute or interesting girls. Or random strangers that aren't asking me for money and/or trying to hand me a pamphlet. They haven't seen my vindictive side. Well, David has. And I'm sure Lilie and/or Rose have once or twice. There are two groups of people I'm mean and bad to - people who annoy me, which is a HUGE category, and people who mess with someone I care about.

I haven't dealt with the latter in a while now, because I haven't had much interaction with people I care about. I mean, there was Scott, who I did bear some ill will towards. Not because Lilie left me for him, which is fine, as long as it made her happy, but because he hurt her. However, she's moved on, so I'll drop the whole thing.

But people who cross me, get on my bad side? I might not do something worse than take delight in their misery or suffering, but I feel that's still fairly bad.

So: Brenda. The really annoying bitch at work. And yes, I've only been there a month, I probably shouldn't already hate someone. But I'm not going to complain about her to Mom. Or Lilie. Or Ambra. Or Rose. Or anyone else. I'm only going to vent here.

I've already chronicled some of the problems I've had with her, now I've got some additional grievances.

So last night (Monday night; it doesn't become a new day until I go to sleep), I was about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes late for work; Zack was around half an hour (late). I get there, it's just me, Devon, Ben, and Brenda. She's working the palettes near 9 and 10, they're down at the other end, so I go to my normal spot on 7 and start breaking down palettes.

At some point, she starts talking shit about how she's broken down more freight than we have. Except a) more than half of us (Mat was late too) were late, and she was doing cereal, which come in very large boxes, larges cases, and thus, there aren't nearly as many on a palette as say, canned goods.

Also, she's doing her little jumpy thing, talking about how much energy she has, she's just discovered this great new energy drink, she's pumped up and ready to go.

Except at the end of the night, she was complaining about being tired. And she's throwing stuff - onto the carts, into the aisles. I mean, actually throwing stuff. Stuff kept falling off her cart, 'cause she had it stacked all messy (ha! me ragging on someone for stacking stuff messy) 'cause she was just throwing it on there, two boxes of juice came open and their bottles were strewn about, because she had just thrown them off the cart.

Whatever.

So tonight, Zach, Devon, and Ben are off; we get Nolan, Paul, and Rosa. Brenda's still there. She starts off talking all this shit, about how she threw two aisles last night, 'cause she's so awesome.

Except she threw them both because neither one had very much freight on it, at all. Seven *easily* had more than both of them combined. I had 246 cases - I counted. On top of that, 10 is by far the easiest aisle to throw. The old hispanic lady who doesn't speak or read english usually handles 10. New people tend to start off on 10, 'cause it's so easy.

Then the second time she says it, she says that she threw 9, 10, and another aisle. 7. I call her on that. She says, "Well, one of those down there."

She didn't. Devon did 3. Mat did 4. Zack did 5. Ben did 6. I did 7. 8 is seasonal shit.

I mean, yeah, people tend to embellish their stories. Mainly small children. Most of us start outgrowing it at what, 10? That, and people who constantly feel the need to '1-up' everyone else DRIVE ME NUTS.

So the night passes without too much incident; we (Nolan, Paul, Mat, and me) blitz 3, 4, and 7, they're thrown before lunch. Nolan hits 5, Paul's on 6, while Mat and I zone 3 and 7 respectively, then move to 4. Rosa's on 10 this whole time; Brenda's on 9. They didn't have a ton of freight on either one. Second break rolls around; Mat and I are zoning 4, Nolan and Paul are finishing up their aisles. We find out Brenda is nowhere near done on 9. Nolan spends the next hour, as we jump around, finishing up the spots on our three aisles that aren't done, how ridiculous it is that she's not done yet.

So the morning walkthrough comes through, tells us that we need to get all our equipment, trash, etc., off the floor. Brenda, Rosa, and I all go to throw trash. I was first, and discover that we need to make a bale. So I'm setting it up; I get the rod to open the holes; Brenda takes it from me and tells me to get out of the way. I *was* going to help, until that point; I wasn't going to fight to help, so I left to go help Paul and Nolan finish up.

We finish up the cracker section on 7, mainly listening to Nolan talk about how slow Brenda was moving - I smiled, because I'm a bad person. Then Frances said something about 9 not being completely zoned, which really threw us for a loop, since it was past eight at this point, and Brenda only had this aisle all night. I even got the distinct pleasure of see Frances tell Brenda that she didn't know how to zone properly, and she had to sit there while Frances showed her how to. Finally, around eight-thirty, we just called it.

There was something else I wanted to blog about, but I can't remember what it was.

Jewel -- Doin' FIne

Make us feel so cold inside, but they cannot take us back

I feel like writing about work a little, since Brenda is continuing to be a major bitch.

First, some background: The first phase of each shift is getting all the stuff off the palettes. It's generally sorted by aisle, but there is some overlap, some mix-ups, and some random stuff. There's also baby food, which we don't deal with at all. We just put that to the side, some lady comes in and takes care of it. We generally use a shopping cart or two, just put all the baby food in there. We use as few carts as possible, for a few reasons.

So earlier:

I knew Brenda has a shopping cart with baby food, since she had had some earlier, and I was just getting to some on my palette, so I went over to her to ask if she was done with the baby food on her stacks, so I could start getting rid of mine. One other side note: I'm fully aware that this whole thing could just be me projecting my dislike of her onto her, and subconsciously provoking her into responding negatively, thus justifying my dislike of her. It's possible. So I've been very careful to watch the tone of my voice, the diction I use when talking to her, to make sure I'm being appropriately polite and not inciting things.

I walked over to where she was downstacking palette and asked her if she had any more baby food left, or if I could use the cart. She was really rude about telling me that no, she didn't have any left, and yes, I could use the cart.

Wait.

That wasn't the bad part.

So we got a ton of those little packets of crackers. Like, a box containing 10 little packets of maybe 8 sandwich crackers - cheese on cheese, pb on cheese, etc. We had, um, like eight cases of each. Maybe two of each will go up, so we were stacking the overflow on this cart. She walks part the cart, the turns onto the aisle with the crackers in question. I tell that there's a cart for the crackers, 'cause there's already too many on the floor; she looks at me, and kinda starts muttering under her breath.

It doesn't sound very bad in the retelling. But she was being a bitch.

That sounds like a totally unjustified attack against someone I just don't like. Hmm. I'll have to work on that.

Anyway. Moving on.

Lilie and Rose have both found some great company lately. Lilie's got a crush on some guy at work who just broke up with his girlfriend, and she wasn't the "only reason", and Rose met some guy online and they're having a great time. (I feel like I need to clarify a point here - it's not that's it's Lilie specifically that brings this up - I mean, yes, it is, because she's one of my closest friends, and someone I probably talk to more than almost anyone else, but not because she's my ex-girlfriend that I still harbor a lot of affection for. I want things to work out for her and whomever she may choose, and I don't say that in a cynical, wounded, depressed way, like I did with Sean, and to a lesser extent, Scott. More like a content, happy way, that things are going well for my best friend. Anyway.) I certainly don't begrudge either one of them that; however, it does serve to drive home my current social isolation. I mean, well... there's two aspects I'm looking at it from - general social; that is, forming friendships, establishing a community of people you network with, that kind of thing; and closer, intimate relationships - girlfriends, significant others, whatever you may wish to call them. Now, I don't really feel like whining about the second one - I've done so at great length, and even I grow fatigued by the constant, unrelenting onslaught of rhetoric that I've seen fit to spew across my digital journal. I mean, I don't have DPD - I don't *have* to be in a relationship. All things being equal, I do prefer to be in one; it's nice. The intimacy, the shared emotions, the mutual trust, support, and affection... but no. Not today. It's the first upon which I focus my concentration on this evening.

It's weird. It wasn't very bad during the months I wasn't working - I was almost completely isolated. I didn't really see anybody, besides Ambra, the occasional delivery guy, and the family on Sundays. And I didn't miss them at all, to be honest. However, now that I'm taking strides to re-enter the real world, interact with other human beings, and do so on a daily basis, I do find myself lonely, and craving more true interaction, conversation, and even friendship. I guess being back on the fringe is worse than being cut off altogether?

Anastacia -- I Do

But you were fucking that girl next door

So I'm on my weekend, I've got tonight, all day tomorrow, and the next morning off; we've already done birthday dinner, so now it's just me, playing WoW. Hanging with the guys, which is always fun; I think they're going to run me through Gnomer. Or something. Whatever.

So Bambi managed to get our hockey tickets moved to December third, which is awesome, since I usually have Sundays off, and even if I don't, I'll probably be able to get Paul or Nolan to switch with me, and even if I can't, it's at four in the afternoon, so I can go even if I have to work. I'd rather not have to work that day, though. Although, I get to bring one guest, and I'm not sure who to bring. Janelle can't go, she has a recital that day or finals the next day or something. David doesn't really care for hockey. Lilie's leaving the next day to go to California. Jarrod's next to impossible to get a hold of, and usually works Sunday afternoon anyway. Ambra doesn't really care for hockey either. Sadly, that about exhausts my list of prospects. I might try giving Cullen a call, see if he's interested in going. Other than that, I'm not sure.

My birthday was alright this year. I mean, my actual birthday sucked - I was at work when it started at 12:00:01 am, was there until around 8:30, went to Mom's for a fantastic breakfast, then went home, crashed, then went back to work at 10. Not the best of days. Today, though, was a lot better. Got off work around eight again, came home, crashed. Woke up, joined the family and David for dinner at Chili's. Had a blast all spending time together, then we went back to the house for cake and ice cream, which was also great. Well, kinda. It was weird - orange cake, orange sherbert. After that, tried to do some work on Janelle's computer, don't think I really accomplished very much - wasn't able to fix the CD drive. It's really weird - it takes in the disc, the system recognizes that a disc is in there, but it won't show any of the files on the disc. Music, data, burnt or original, all the same. However, it doesn't have a problem with DVDs. So, I don't know. I did get her set up with Firefox and Avast, though, so that's a step in the right direction.

Work's been going okay. I think I've finally started to settle in to the job, the routine. It's basically the same from day to day, though we do have a few weird days coming up with the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's definitely not something I want to be doing for very long, but for right now, it's okay. The people situation is interesting - there are people there that annoy me, but I don't have to deal with them nearly as much. I mean, yeah, we're working together and are a team, but the majority of the shift is throwing freight in an aisle, by myself. So even though Brenda annoys the fucking shit out of me, she wouldn't ever cause me to quit, like Mal did. Why does she annoy me so much? Well... I should preface it by saying that I'm a huge supporter of gender equality. I know that humanity has been very patriarchal through most of its history, in some places still is, and the traditions and 'norms' of more liberal societies are still favoring men in many areas. I can understand that. I wouldn't seek to deny women their equal rights, nor lessen the role of those who have fought for them. And certainly, we still have a ways to go. That being said...

NOT EVERY DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN IS A GENDER ISSUE.

For example: There's a palette of cooking oil. Each case has like six big containers; the palette is three or four layers deep. It's on one side of the grocery aisles; the cooking oil is going to be set up as a huge stack in this area on the other side of the grocery aisles. They told me to use a palette jack and move the whole thing over there, that way, we could just move straight from the palette to the display. I go to start doing that; Brenda freaks out. It's her stuff, and she wants to load it onto a cart first, move the cart, then move the stuff from the cart to the display. I tried explaining to her what I was trying to do, but she starts going off, saying rather loudly, "I'm a woman! I'm not afraid of a little lifting!" Which, of course, had NOTHING TO DO with anything. Another point, Nolan had asked her if she was going to get all her freight thrown in time, because she had a lot of it on her aisle; she responds with a rant about how of course she will, she's a woman, they're strong enough to give birth, then her and another female go off into a series of jokes and what-not, the gist of which was that if men gave birth, the human species would die off very, very quickly. Again, I'm not demeaning the incredible experience that is giving birth, nor denying that it takes an incredible will to go through it. It's just... this whole thing is born out of gender inequality, people reacting a certain way towards others based solely on gender; this sort of thing only perpetuates it. It really drives me nuts.

The only other person at work that really merits comment is Conner - he also annoys me, though not as much. He reminds me a lot of JP, and sort of like Uncle Freddie, but twisted in a bad way. He has the sort of "Ooh, I don't care what anyone thinks, I'm extreme and in your face, and fuck you!" mentality, but he likes to flaunt it. I mean, it's cool not to care - I sure don't, but I don't bring it up in conversation every five minutes, either. He also has a tendency to make bizarre absolute statements like "The true gamer will ALWAYS buy Nintendo", then back them up with things that either a) don't support what he just said, b) don't make any sense, or c) are wrong and/or made up. So yeah, that kind of gets on my nerves a little, but overall, he's pretty cool.



Lily Allen -- Smile

What's been done has been done

This is going to be a bitchy post. I'm going to rant about things that annoy me. If you don't want to hear that, skip it. You won't be missing anything.

First off: politics. First off on the first topic, a disclaimer. I understand several things that usually happen in politics: politicians try to spin any and every occurrence to their own, and maybe their party's, benefit; they tend to stand by their party, keep to their talking points. I understand those things. But several things have happened lately to really, really annoy me:

First, Tony Snow, the White House Press Secretary, 's reaction to John Kerry's offensive comment concerning education and the war in Iraq - something like "You can work hard and be smart, or **you can get stuck in Iraq**". The parts in **'s are direct quotes, the rest is a paraphrase. I don't condone his comment, just as an aside. However... during the press conference, which I watched live on Fox News, Snow referenced Kerry's comment that he left out the word "us". Snow said something along the lines of "I don't get it, I can't even see where you would insert the word 'us' in there - You us can get stuck in Iraq?" Now, he was mainly responding to reporters' questions, I understand that, but that one comment really, really pissed me off - it's obvious to anyone with half a brain where the word 'us' is inserted into that sentence to make sense; The Colbert Report ran that clip and mocked Snow for it.

Second, a republican pundit was talking to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, in regards to the Mark Foley incident. His assertion that the timing of the release of this information was very, very coincidental, something so damaging to a (the) republican(s) so close to some highly contested midterms. Now, I'll admit that it is a somewhat valid point, and the Democrats certainly shouldn't have sat on this information, if they had it, only to release it a highly fortuitous time. It's circumstantial, but I could understand a legitimate investigation being launched. However, the republican pundit wasn't saying it might have happened, he was saying that's what the Democrats did. Wolf asked him several times, quite directly, if he had any proof that that was the case. The pundit's response? "Do you have any proof that they didn't?" I mean, yeah! Fuck that whole "Innocent until proven guilty", "Burden of proof on the accuser" nonsense!

Third, voting. I take great umbrage at the oft-espoused idea that everyone should vote. I'm not even kidding. Now, to be clear, I certainly think everyone should be able to vote, after meeting a few basic qualifications - citizenship, age, that kind of thing. So yes, anyone can vote. However, I feel strongly that people should have at least some grasp of the issues before they vote. That's what bothers me about people who always vote along a certain party line. That, and people who impulse-vote - "Oh, I liked that guy's commercials!", that kind of thing. That's why I'm not voting in the midterms - I don't have any idea what's going on.

Finally, people assuming I'm a democrat for my constant ragging on Bush. I don't follow a party line - they're both essentially full of shit. Yes, I hate Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Snow, Rove... the whole lot of 'em. However, they're in charge, so they're the ones making the decisions, they're the obvious targets. The Daily Show went after Kerry for his comments concerning the troops and education. I mean, they didn't do the half-hour exposè about troops' education levels like Fox News did, but they did make a lot of fun of him, mocked him pretty thoroughly. So yeah.

Second topic: People at work.

Most of them are cool; well, that's not completely true - I don't interact with most of them, mainly just the ones that I stock grocery with. I also deal with the overnight GM and departmental folks during the pre-shift meeting, breaks, and various chatter.

Actually, I'm getting pretty tired, so I'm going to do the work rant later.

Also, new feature: Tags. There's a list on the right hand side, after the monthly archives, with links I've put on my posts. You can click on a link to see all posts with that link. Good stuff.

Amber G -- Why Can't You Just Be In Love With Me

No lack of sunshine, baby, I got you

Warning: This is going to be a rambling post in which I explore my views and opinions on a lot of things, though a politcal dicussion prompted this post, so there will probably be an emphasis in that area. If you don't want to read any of that, you can probably skip this post and not really miss anything.

That being said...

I feel free speech is a fundamental aspect of a non-tyrannical government. Not an absoulte - yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater, for instance, isn't something I support, but just about everything else - hateful speech, swearing, racial slurs, the worst of it. Certainly, there are times (or, in some cases, all the time) when it's inappropriate, rude, ignorant, what have you, but not illegal. Not somethng the government should monitor and hold against you.

I'm not saying that's our right as Americans, but our right as sentinent creatures.

I also firmly believe in giving everyone the right to vote. HOWEVER, I don't think everyone necessarily should vote. I think only people that have some knowledge of the issues at hand should vote. I'm not saying that there should be some kind of test to make sure they possess this knowledge or anything, just that the phrase "Everyone should vote. Period." is not something I agree with. It's not really something that you can really enforce, nor should they, just an idealogical standpoint. I get really annoyed hearing people "I'm voting for X because he's cute" or "I'm voting for X because I like his name". Should they lose the right to do so? No. Is it irresponsible and counter to the point of democracy? Yes.

Anyway.

My mom has a frustrating habit of jumping to conclusions, then hanging onto them in spite of any new evidence that may come to light. It saddens me. One of the (few) things I really like about myself is my perceived logica... logicalness? logicality? Something like that. I'm usually pretty good about listening to the facts, factoring in potential bias, holding rational discussions, and forming logically sound opinions. I fall prey to the heat of the moment, as everyone does, but I think I've really worked on realizing when I'm doing it, and just walking away.

My mother is a staunch supporter of Bush. Not a supporter of the Republican party, or the right-wing establishment, or the current administration, but of George W. Bush Jr. Fine. Why?

This came up during lunch today. I mentioned to Bambi that Clinton - yes, Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the United States - is going to be on the Daily Show tomorrow evening. Greg made a comment that he'd be in friendly waters, that they'd been going after Bush pretty hard. I responded that, well, the guy makes it so easy. That's when Mom started to provide input as well. She really, really supports Bush. That's not what frustrates me so much. I mean, I certainly disagree with her on that one, but it's her right. What really frustrates me about it is that she doesn't back it up with anything, doesn't respond to criticisms of her position at all. Even when presented with actual evidence directly contrary to her position or conclusion, she brushes it aside or ignores it. It's really frustrating.

I loathe the right-wing establishment. I don't necessarily diasgree with all of their views - blanket agreement with a party drives me nuts. But a lot of the tactics used - Coulter, O'Reilly, Hannity, they drive me nuts. I disagree with most - not all, most - of their viewpoints, but that's not the issue - the issue is the lying, distorting, misquoting, and selective editing.

Edit: That wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, a lot shorter too. Having a Naxx raid in the middle of it probably didn't help.

Faith Hill -- I Got My Baby

You gave me strength when I was weak

Had a couple really weird dreams last night. They're already starting to fade, so I'd like to get them down as soon as possible.

The first one, Usher (yes, the rapper guy) and I, along with two other guys, broke into this office building. I had a sledgehammer. I was destroying security cameras with it, and smashed a few glass doors as well. I think our objective was to make these two trains smash into each other. However, in the distance, we started to hear sirens, so we left. We snuck out through a back entrance, one of those doors that has a button that makes it open, but the cops saw my sledgehammer and stopped us, and arrested us. I think we ended up at the CSI crime lab, for whatever reason.

Crap. I've only been up for about 10 minutes, but the other ones have already started to fade.

But this really annoying thing happened at work last night. Some lady called back after we took her order (well, Rudy took it), and complained that Rudy didn't say anything back after she said "Merry Christmas." I really, really wanted to walk out there and smack her, or tell her to get a life, or something like that. Actually, I take that back. I can be more subtle. I wanted to tell her that his parents were killed in a car wreck by a drunk driver on Christmas, or he was molested as a child by a department-store Santa, or something along those lines, and is now crying in the back, thanks to the unpleasant memories she just flung in his face. But I didn't. I said, "I'm sorry, ma'am, he didn't hear you. Merry Christmas."

I'm not going to go into the myriad reasons this sort of person bothers me. I'm not trying to deny them their holiday cheer; I do, however, take major offense at their expectation that everybody is required to reciprocate it. What if the person taking her order had been Muslim? Jewish? Atheist? Again, I don't begrudge them their celebration, just don't expect everyone else to do so, and certainly don't complain about it. It's similar to a situation when these two girls were ordering, and prefaced it with "How are you?" I've taken a lot of orders over the years, and well over ninety-five percent of the time when someone starts with that, they don't listen for a response and just start ordering with two seconds. Which is good, because I really don't want to carry on conversations with people through the boards - chances are, there's other people waiting to order, or for me to make drinks or bag, and wasting time like that is only delaying other peoples' orders. However, they called back after their order was taken and demanded to know how I was doing. I wanted to go break their headlights with a baseball bat and say "Better now." Seriously, did they think they were being cute, or making the world a better place, or what? Truly, the service industry is the last refuge of the damned.

In my heart, I call out your name

Some bits and pieces I forgot:

First off, Rose called yesterday evening while I was hanging out at Lilie and Shelley's. Well, technically, she called while I was on the way back from Taco Bell, but the majority of the conversation took place over there. Apparently, I was pacing a great deal. I wasn't doing it on purpose - I just do that. I mean, I was really excited - I hadn't really had a chance to talk to Rose in a while, so catching each other up was a lot of fun. Rose is like a sister to me - sometimes she's younger, sometimes I am, but her and I are very, very close. Not in a romantic way - when we first began talking and realized how close we were growing, we briefly discussed the possibility of the two of us hooking up, but realized it wouldn't be a good idea. We're compatible, but not quite each other's type. It's just something I do - I tend to form very close relationships very quickly - Carrie, Mindy, Lilie, Rose (notice that not all of those names are of girlfriends, just of people that I've gotten very close to very quickly). But anyway. She quit her job at Dell, and her and Katie both are going back to IHOP. Katie is still with James, and the two of them are very happy. They've actually gone to Oregon until like Tuesday, so Rose and I are probably going to hang out Friday or Saturday. We were going to go play DDR - 'cause Rose has played DDR a few times, and really enjoys it - but she managed to hurt her ankle again (well, not again - this time, it's the other one, and it's not nearly as severe this time). So I'm not sure what we'll do. But we'll find something.

Speaking of Oregon, I told Rose about probably having to drive to Washington, and she really wants to come. It'll be a fun road trip. I told her she'd have to buy her own plane ticket back, so she's looking into that. I'm still not completely sure I'm going, but it'd be AWESOME if Rose went too. I'm not sure of what route we'll take - Lilie suggets going up to Colorado then cutting over; we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Man, I guess this is the day for renewing acquantinces. Carrie just IM'ed me!! It's been months since we last talked. For those of you not in the know, Carrie was a girl I met in the arcade when I went to North Carolina the last time. We only talked briefly, but exchanged AIM sn's, and started talking a lot after I got back. For a while, we were really close - had we been closer to one another (she lives in Kentucky now), we would have been going out, but neither of us really wanted to do the long distance thing.

So, Adam. I have a number of problems with him. First, he tells people to ignore the boards completely for a bit. I mean, all of the managers *sort* of do that - we'll let the boards go off for a few seconds while we catch up on bagging or making drinks, but we know we have to get them as soon as possible. Adam will leave them going and tell people to just ignore them for a while. It's almost as bad as when Rick just goes through and cancels all of them. Sunday, when he came in early, he parked himself on the dresser station. That's good, because we really need a strong dresser. However, I got a few complaints - one guy ordered two junior burgers with cheese; the first time, they went out without cheese. He called back, and we sent him two new ones out. This time, they went out without pickles - he just asked for a side of pickles. A few minutes later, someone called back, because their double cheeseburger that was supposed to have extra bacon had, in fact, no bacon. I rung it up again with a 'see me' so it would be free, and Adam asked me why I had done it that way. I explained to him that the first time, he had sent it out without bacon. He tried to retaliate with "Well, it wasn't rung up that way", but I knew that was a complete load of shit, since I took that order. I even brought the original order back up on his screen so he could see. He just got all huffy and said "Fine, whatever." Some people don't handle being wrong very well. I then told him about all the complaints I'd gotten on burgers in the past few minutes, and he said, "Fine, if you think you can do it better, you get back here and do it." There are a couple of responses I have to that. First, what does he think, that I shouldn't tell the guy dressing burgers when there's a number of complaints about burgers? Second, I could have done it better - I was a cook for over two years, and the vast, vast majority of the time when I made a burger wrong, it was rung up wrong. I've gone through this with a number of fountains, and they've learned to listen to me.

So then, he comes up and starts making drinks later. There were several orders on the screen, and instead of making the drinks on the first one to get it out, he starts making one drink on each of the first few orders. I called him on it again, and he got really defensive again. I really just wanted to smack him. I later found out he had an altercation with Tracy and told her she was fired. He got in trouble, she didn't.

The Christmas party is this Sunday. I'm contemplating going. I haven't talked to anyone else yet about if they're going, so we'll see. I've gone to two of the three parties we've had, and they're usually a decent time. A few hours of free bowling, hanging out with everybody outside of work... I'll probably go.

I've started playing FFX-2 a lot. I'm really enjoying it. They definitely dared to do something different. The static party throughout the entire game, dresspheres and garment grids... all in all, it's a fun time. Just finished Chapter One.

Just got off the phone with Lilie. I had a couple game related questions to ask her. She sort of had some answers. She (sort of) reiterated her previous invitation (we talked earlier on AIM) to come over. I passed on it. I know, it surprised me too. But we both have to work in the morning - I'm opening; she goes in at 11. There's the chance I'd oversleep, and even if I got up on time, I'd probably wake her up. That, and just because we can spend all this time together, doesn't mean we shouldn't. Let me elaborate on that one, because it sounds weird. I think it has something to do with the idea 'me' time, or time to be by yourself, or something. I don't know. I was going somewhere with this, but I don't remember. I think I was just trying to say that I know what she meant, and I agree?

Anyway.

The Long Awaited "My Ex-Intro to Phil Professor is Full of Shit" Post

Part B Five Required Textbooks for Summer 2004

Five? Five. For a five week course... an introductory five week course? That's absurd.

Reports, in outline form (3,000 to 4,000 words), are required of three of them, and the professor will comment on them in class. The other two will be read in class.

3,000 - 4,000 words on 3 books. That's 9,000 to 12,000 words for an introductory course that doesn't count as a writing-intensive course.

In addition, you're not receiving an "introduction to philosophy". That implies you're introduced to a variety of philosophies; I've talked to Bonelle, Kenny, and Beth about their class, and that's what they got. An introductory level course covering a wide variety of philosophies.

Nope.

In this course, he shoves his philosophy down your throat. There's a list of "required readings", that are in addition to the five required textbooks. 53 entries. There's one entry, two readings, about Ahimsa, the philosophy of strict non-violence. There's also a small entry about Buddhism. The rest - almost fifty entries - is about his crazy ass little metaphysical philosophy. There's excerpts from the bible, ancient philosophies, the New Thought Philosophy, Presocratic issues, and a few modern ones. That sounds good initially, until you look a little further. They're ALL covering his little philosophy thing.

Sidenote: His philosophy is some bizarre cross between metaphysics and New Thought. Basically, nothing is real except the mind; we create everything with our minds, project an illusion, if you will. It's important to not get "lost in the illusion", because then, well, you're lost. In the illusion, no less. You also have to meditate in and out of class (using the mantra "Ding Dong Do", no less), and manifest something - use the power of your mind to cause something to happen. I fully believe that you can cause things to happen, but not by sitting around and thinking about them.

He also is very liberal and constantly reminds us of that. I personally don't have a problem with either political philosophy, but I don't share either. I don't have opinions on a number of important issues, and don't align with either dominant political party. Hell, for that matter, I don't align myself with any minor political philosophies - socialism, communism, libertianism, anarchism, etc - but don't really have anything against any of them. I'll debate any of them on an issue I disagree with. However, I do take issue when he uses his position as teacher of the class to constantly re-iterate his opinion to his class. I mean, saying it once or twice, yeah, that's fine. But constantly harping on your anti-Bushism in the middle of an Intro to Philosophy class, that's just inappopriate.

Another direct quote from the course website:

After class yesterday one of the students and I discussed the notion that I have been teaching, which is central to the Perennial Philosophy, that we are God, reality is God, all that is is God. The student was having a real hard time with that idea. I can’t make it any easier. It is 180° the opposite of human common sense—but human common sense has to do only with the illusion, not with truth and reality.

To clarify, I have no problems with this philosophy. I think it's bullshit, but I don't take issue with it. Except, of course, when it's being shoved down our throats during an Intro to Philosphy class, and presented as absolute, unquestionable truth.

Mr. Sassy Pants

So I finally played City of Heroes today, over at Matt and Luke's. It's actually a lot of fun. I created a Mutant Tanker named "Mr Sassy Pants". He was huge, wore a purple suit, and a fedora. He also walked up to people and pounded the shit out of them. It's a fun game, but I won't be getting it for two reasons - first, my comp isn't quite up to spec for it; secondly, tbe fifteen dollar a month fee is annoying. I mean, it wouldn't be that burdensome or anything, just annoying.

Luke and Brett are switching to new characters, so I was over there from like 3 today until 3 just now. They both already created their prestige classes, which are fairly similiar. We went to Zooka's for a late lunch, but Katie wasn't working. Oh well...

I'm really enjoying my week off, before school starts back up Monday. It's gonna be SO ANNOYING having to go to Austin every day. And expensive, with gas as high as it is and getting higher. Speaking of things that are SO <adjective>, I went in to get my check today, and of course Rudy started doing the DUDE OH MY GOD, it was SO AWESOME thing. Beverly joined in this time, which was kind of weird. It's sad, though - Tracy left for the summer. Argh.

Speaking of annoying, Caleb really really got on my nerves last night. He rolled fairly bad for hit points, and he was whining about re-rolling his hit points. So he kept poking me in the side, and asking. I eventually just stripped his character of all his hit points, but re-instated them when he apologized. I mean, I made it quite clear that I wasn't kidding around, and everyone else realized it. I know I kid around a lot, and that it's not always easy to tell. So I was very explicit about telling Caleb, "I am NOT kidding." He seriously just doesn't fit in with this group at all. I'd like to ask him to leave the group, but I don't know if I could do that, at least without greater provocation.

Still thinking about running a second game; poaaibly on something like Saturday night. We'll see how that goes, though. I don't think it'll happen, but I'll see what I can do. While I was over there today, for whatever reason, I made a chart of what can cross-breed with what. It was... interesting, to say the least. I'll bring it back next time I'm over there and post it sometime.

Lesbians

Man, I'm tired. Worked 10 - 5 Saturday. It was both 50's day (99 cent burgers) and SWT Graduation. It wouldn't have been nearly as bad, but David and Sunny were fountaining. Both really suck. Even with both of them making drinks, they just can't keep up. David especially just atrocious. He'll make one drink at a time. Bullshit. And when I'm making drinks, doing fine, he'll come up and start to make a fountain drink. He's just getting in the way. It's really annoying when there's something else he could be doing if he wanted to help - making a sluah, some ice cream, et al. Or like, there was an order on eight that needed some drinks. But he wasn't sure about it, so instead of trying to find out what was going on with it, he just skipped it and kept going. He was wrapped completely around before I realized what was going on and stepped in. It caused a major problem, since the two orders got mixed up - which was due entirely to him leaving the order up and not dealing with it. He did it again today bagging. I called him on it, and he started mouthing off - "Shut up, motherfucker. Why don't you come up here and start talking that shit?" I wanted to reach out and pop him. And I have to fountain again with him Saturday day. Fun stuff. Oh yeah.

But it was okay, because after that, I went skating at The Zone with Caleb and my little sister. We had fun. Caleb hadn't been skating in... oh, 15 years or so. He was flailing around all willy-nilly, and just being crazy. I've gotten a little better with the more free style I practiced while skating with Katie (W). We played one game at one point in which everybody started on one wall and skated towards the other wall. At some point, the guy just dumped this gigantic amount of change all over the floor. Some people tripped over it, some rushed around trying to pick it up. It really just made no sense.

After skating, we went to Sonic to get Caleb some food and give Freddie a ride home. We then picked up Cullen and went to Austin to play DDR at Le Fun. Caleb went as well to hang out at the arcade. I max comboed "Can't Stop Falling in Love" (Speed Mix) on doubles/heavy, but I screwed up the pad a little bit (left pad, up arrow). I feel really bad. Later, I saw a pair of lesbians, but they were the spiky/pierced/tatooed variety. Not a big fan of that. Later, however, there was a pair sitting in the Metro, just petting each other. They were pretty.

So yeah, I'm still fairly sore from a few hours of skating followed by some DDR, with six hours of work before and after. Oddly enough, that then goes into a D&D/work/D&D pattern. It's a lot of fun, though, and I guess that's what counts.