Looking Forward

My vacation is just over two weeks away. Don't think that I'm just going to be lazing around for eight or nine days either. There are plans in the works. See, Julia and I are going to get a chance to meet and hang out with Mark for a week. Which is pretty freaking sweet. Up until this point I wasn't letting myself get excited about vacation or the meet up because I didn't want to get all excited out with months to go. Now, however, I am definitely entering a little realm called Totally Stoked.

It should be lots of fun. I get to do the driving (to Ontario, Canada), which pleases me because I like driving. I've only been to Canada once, and that was years and years ago, and we only went to Niagara Falls, which is not really into Canada. We're going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Halloweekends at Cedar Point (Roller coasters meets Halloween), neither of which I've been too. I mean, I've been to Cedar Point during the summer, but never for Halloweekends. There's other stuff we'll be doing, and probably just hanging out in BG. (I believe there's some sort of half baked plan to be double fisting amaretto sours at eighties night, yes?)

Oh, and you know, expanding our horizons by interacting with someone from another part of the world, and introducing them to a truly Midwestern American cultural experience. *snort*

So it should be an all around interesting experience. :)

Breaking All The Rules

So what's the first rule of blogging then? Don't talk about your job, right?

I hardly think that's fair. Jobs are the source of so much of what goes on in our lives. Many people spend more time at work than with their families. It's hard to avoid blogging about work. Still, I've avoided talking about my job, not that it brings anything intellectually stimulating to the table. Although, I do come home sometimes with wildly amusing tales that occasionally plumb the depths of human stupidity. I suppose I've been wary of skating into that arena because my job is neither as cool nor impressive as many that other bloggers possess. And while I'm certainly not ashamed of what I do, there is sometimes a lingering sense that there are going to be people who think I should be. Like I said before, it puts food on the table and pays the rent, and I don't plan on doing it forever.

So, I'm a restaurant manager.

If you didn't know already. Sure, it may be menial, but there's always something going on and you get to meet new people, even if there are the occasional physical hazards (I electrocuted myself yesterday, lightly). And there's all the HR-esque stuff I get to do: interviewing wackos, hiring the least weird of the weirdos, firing people, sorting out employee squabbles, and having the occasional Come To Jesus Talk (a CTJT if you will) with people who need it.

It's not a bad gig. We get to do all kinds of stuff you can't get away with in 'professional' work environments, like the time they retaliated against one guy by putting his street clothes in a bucket of water in the freezer. Or the time a couple of the guys sharpened a broken broom handle into a spear and were throwing past the office into a stack of boxes. Stuff like that. Or one time I made a series of little snowmen, doing the Y.M.C.A., on a window ledge. When I came back five minutes later they were all decapitated (and splattered with meat blood for effect [Sorry vegetarians]).

Oh, then there's the high school students. Oh, those silly, silly people. They're making the transition from the sheltered world their parents and teachers have kept them in to the real world with (for some) their first tentative steps into the job market. (Okay, some aren't that sheltered, but a lot of them are.) Of course, a few of them don't seem to understand that I'm not their parent or teacher. I don't have to be their friend or even like them. I'm their boss, and I'm not going to coddle them, and I'm not here to make sure everything is going to be all right. Okay, that sounded kind of jerkish, but it's true. I will be friendly and helpful and supportive, but I'm not going to hold anybody's hand.

The point of all this? I'm not entirely sure, but now I can regale you with work stories, past and present, with out having to give a lengthy back story. I guess.

Moving Right Along Then

*Late last week we received a note from the landlord informing us that they would be replacing the roof on our building. I live on the third and top floor, so it has been very noisy. At seven in the A.M. which is totally sleep time in my Big Book o' Life. It's not the hammering that keeps waking me up, it's the sound of stuff falling. The hopper that they're throwing all the stuff in is almost directly below my window, and they just slide the stuff over the edge. Also, these fellows have no rhythm. It sounds like the ceiling is being attacked by retarded woodpeckers.

*In less than three weeks I will be on vacation. Holy crap dudes! I haven't had more than four consecutive days off in over six years. Looking forward to it much? Hells yes. Of course, I have about 1000 things that need to be done by then, and I'm on...mmmm...number eight.

*I had to run an errand for work yesterday, and in twenty miles I almost got into four accidents. In no particular order, I was almost hit by a jeep, a pick-up, a semi-truck, and a cement-mixer.

I think I need a hug

I have had a very bad week.

I am quite depressed about the whole thing.

No time to mope though, there's a shit-ton of things that I need to get done.

Weird

Colonel Eggroll, her husband, and I went out to partake of some chinese buffet for lunch yesterday.

At the end of our meal they brought us our check and fortune cookies. We split them up and when I opened mine there was no fortune inside. Weird.

Erasure

So Wednesday night I went to the post office to get the mail from my post office box. I hadn't been to pick my crap up in a couple weeks, which is one of the reasons I have the box, the other being I've moved seven times in seven years and never had to change my address. I immediately noticed that my box had a shiny new lock. Perplexed, but stupidly optimistic, I tried my key anyway. It didn't work.

I was thoroughly confused. I had paid my box rent back at the beginning of August (on my birthday, in fact), meaning I was paid up through January. I thought that it had been a while since I'd picked up my mail, but they'd never changed my lock before no matter how long I went. Since it was after hours I had to wait until the next day (yesterday) to find out what was going on. Perhaps the postal employees, driven by the monotany of their work, decided to play a cruel practical joke on me, I thought. "Haha, we changed your lock, just wanted to see how long it would take you to notice. Just kidding."

I went in to the post office yesterday. I ended up getting the one woman who has worked there for years, and knows me, at least by sight. I told her about my problem. She seemed confused and went to the back to check their files. The other guy said he thought my box rent had lapsed. Exasperated, I told them I had just paid in August, showed them my carbon copy of the check, that I had even come into the post office and not mailed my check. The woman came back from the back with the paperwork showing that I had paid and my box should have been renewed. The manager (or some sort of manager) was standing right there and as soon as this was discovered he said, "Who was supposed to take care of this?" in that "manager voice" that implies some one is in trouuuuuble. Then he quickly says, "We'll figure that out later, take care of fixing the problem now." Well done, guy. I hope none of the clerks get in trouble, because they've always been nice and helpful to me. They gave me a new key and I have my box back. I guess somebody's going over my 'file' and may or may not call me because they took my phone number.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the other problem. They sent all my mail back. Return to Sender-ed all of my mail for the last two weeks or so. My credit card bills, my bank statements, my magazines, everything. What the hell am I supposed to do about that? There's no precedent I can think of for this situation. Should I just start calling places and saying something like, "Hey, just wanted to let you know my address is still the same, even if all my shit got sent back. Yeah, yeah, totally the same."? I pay all my bills online, so nothing will be late, but it's damn inconvenient.

I've never had any problems with the post office people before. How could they do this to me? It's so mean! It's like being friends with some one for seven years and then one day they just punch you in the ovaries (or kick you in the nuts, you know, whatever you're packing), really hard, for no reason.

I don't ask for much...

...and boy do I get it.

You know, I try not to be a hard ass at work. All I ask is that you show up and do your damn work. This job is not that hard, trust me. Apparently this is too much to ask from some people as one of our new hires decided to never come in (or call) on Sunday.

Look, I realize that this is not a glamorous job (although at times it can be exciting, like, oh say, when things are on fire! And sometimes it is quite fun). It's not the kind of job eight-year-olds draw pictures of themselves doing and declaring it what they "want to be when they grow up". It's not the kind of job you want to do forever. I don't want to do it forever, but dammit, it's my job right now so I'm going to do it right. It pays the rent, puts ramen on the table and beer in the fridge, okay? I have a plan. Right now we're on step two: keep working at crap job and pay off debt. Sometime next year we'll move into step three.

I know that for most people working under me this job is simply a stepping stone to the next thing. It's the thing that gives them money to buy their first car. It's something to do while in college for beer money. For some, it's an island rising out of a sea of welfare money, briefly visited. For others, it's the last stop before falling into the snare of geriatric wal-mart greeter, and once you start down that path forever will it be your destiny, consume you it will.

However, just because it's not a job you brag about having doesn't mean you should do it as shittily as possible. There's a bare minimum there that has to be met. I shouldn't have to beat your ass every time a minor task needs done. I'm going to end up with carpal tunnel and you're going to have ass calluses (not hot).

I think how you handle the little jobs and the shit jobs in life says a lot about you. If you think you're too good to do the work here, maybe you ought to find something that is more suited to your station, your highness. This job is below plenty of us in terms of intelligence and ability. We still did it, we even screwed around ten times as much as the lot of you now, and still got more work done.

...

You'll have to excuse me now, I have to go put on my anti-whining armor and my ass beating gloves.




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Coming soon maybe: A List of the Transgressions of Number One Foe