Chapter 74
Work-a-holic

So yesterday I was wondering to myself what I would do with three days off, since I have Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off next week. I have filled up Wednesday with a job interview and going to another place with my mom to turn in an application, and Monday I am taking my mom to the doctor’s. But Tuesday, I just don’t know. I hate having that many days off because sometimes I feel like all I have is my job. This past week I worked everyday. Sure I didn’t work at the store on Monday but I worked at the school, what am I going to do with my time when that ends? Today was the day however that I decided that I am a work-a-holic. I thought that I was working 8-5, a daunting shift for me since that is 9 hours. So I slept in, not past eight but I did have to get ready for work in 10 minutes, I show up to work and find out that I wasn’t really suppose to be at work until 8:30, and you know what? It made perfect sense too because that is eight and half hours, you take off the half hour non-paid lunch and there’s you’re typical eight hour shift. So Jaq says, “I’ll tell you what, I’m not going to send you home,” here’s where I interrupted with an, “of course not I’m suppose to be here at 8:30 anyway so I wouldn’t go home.” So he had be dust the foyer, above the doors, along the wall, boring, boring, boring. I got to stretch and take time to wake-up which was nice.
While I was dusting the Firemen came in, now, I used to like the firemen. Fireman, police, E.M.T.s, we like those people because they provide services that we don’t always need but we’re glad they are there if we need them. Besides sometimes they are really cute. So, I guess I should say what happened last Wednesday first so that you know why I used to like the fireman. I had to work café and since this isn’t my favorite place to be I’m a little short in the patience department and if you cross me while I’m on the café register I remember you and may even talk smack about you behind your back. So the firemen came through my line that day and I took care of one order and then redneck Joe is next, he’s got these nasty sideburns and gives off vibe “creepy” and he is buying some peaches. I ask if they are Ukrop’s peaches and he says, “Are we in Ukrop’s?” and I say, “yeah” and he says, “Then yes.” But it doesn’t end there, he then says, “It just seemed like a stupid question to me.” I rang up his damn peaches and put them in a bag and said bon voyage to his sorry sideburn ass. Just so you know, there are several different kinds of peaches, you’ve got white peaches, California peaches, the Ukrop’s peaches, you also have about three types of nectarines and if you haven’t been a cashier for as long as I have you may mistaken them for peaches. Stupid question my ass, sure as hell beats stupid people. Sorry, I didn’t mean to go off like that, but I guess as you can tell I’m not over it. So they came in today while I was dusting and then I went back up front and Jaq has me open up a register, not that we needed one open. The firemen were in one of the lines and I wanted nothing more than to avoid having them come through my line, especially since McCreepy was with them. So I walked up to sign in very slowly, which is hard for me since I seem to do everything a little quicker then most people. I lucked out though and got a customer right away before I had to call ass-wipe and his friends over. I really need to work on my language, it’s not very lady like.
Later Gus-Gus came up to ask me to go on register two, well, actually he said that he needed someone to open up 2 and I told him that if he put me on that register I would quit right then and there…and I seriously meant it. Gus-Gus walks off and later I realize that he went on it. I have power again! I didn’t feel bad, in fact, I felt more justified in the fact that I don’t see Gus-Gus as a real manager, he’s going to let some chick boss him around? Goodness. Oh, the whole reason that I absolutely refused to go on Register 2 today was because I was on there yesterday for a good three hours. My manager (he needs a name…Bull Dog because he has a bull dog on a bike tattoo on his leg) had me close a big register to go on two and I told him that going to 2 wasn’t much incentive for me to hurry up my current order. He thought I liked 2…first common misconception of managers, they think that people like solitary confinement, second common misconception they think I like situations where I get paid to do absolutely nothing. Just because a bunch of teenagers would prefer to stand around doing nothing while earning money does not mean that I want to do that too. If they jumped off a bridge I’d rather take a picture then join them. I tell him I hate register 2 which he disputes that I am good for it because I’m so fast (that doing things a little quicker then most people thing again). I tell him I felt like I was a waste on it because I was fast. He said he didn’t think so, therefore I ended up on register two twiddling my thumbs. I think I even was able to say aloud without a single soul hearing me, “You don’t call this a waste?” During some of my slower periods of the day I was able to color in a good sized piece of register tape in with my black pen. But it didn’t end there, it never ends there. There are these coupons that some customers got some how, it certainly wasn’t because they are friendly, for $10 off when they fill a prescription at our new pharmacy. So this lady comes in and gets a $2-something prescription and a few other things. I’m reading it to make sure that the $10 is off on everything or not and she says that it is but I had read it wrong so I punch in the Plu code, (mind you this lady was already bugging me for other various reasons). Now, I’ve done one of these coupons before where I punch in the code and it didn’t seem to register but it took it off in the total so it didn’t really matter if it turned up on the screen…right? You get the $10 off so who cares if you can see where it took it from? So the lady with her little I’m a rich snob who drives an S.U.V. and plays tennis on Tuesday, go to my personal trainer on Wednesdays and really just like to bitch to Ukrop’s employees on Fridays voice starts to get an attitude with me about the damn coupon and telling me that if it isn’t taking it off of the whole order then she didn’t want to use it (mind you I am on express and she is holding up my freaking line, I just want to get back to coloring my piece of register tape). Not only is she complaining, but she is repeating herself. I can’t take it, I snap as much as possible without having to go to some review and I interrupt her banshee rant with something verbal like an, “Okay,” or “hold on” I don’t really remember what I said but I remember that my tone changed and I have never let my tone of voice change with a customer! That’s how under my skin she got. I call over a manager because I have to displace this annoying lady somehow. Another cashier has come up by this point and the manager finally comes over. The cashier says something to me which I didn’t catch, I just felt my face get hot and my eyes water up, my throat was tight and I turned to the other cashier and ask if she will go on for me for a little bit. She says “sure” and the moment that she does I run off to the bathroom trying to hide the fact that I have just lost it. My face was all contorted I’m sure so I threw my hand up over it and walked quickly to the restroom. I locked myself in a stall and just let myself cry. My friend who was eating lunch in the café had apparently seen me and came in to check up on me. It helped to have someone to talk about it to, but at the same time, I don’t like if people see me cry, it’s not really something I like happening. I pull myself together and go back out to reclaim the register that I never even wanted. So this is why I refused to go on register 2 today. However, it didn’t save me from annoying, bitchy customers. I have to wonder if the whole state of Virginia had PMS because this week has been one of the hardest weeks for me to deal with customers, so much that I really did almost quit. I would have called and cancelled my interview for Wednesday and just tried to live off of the small amount of money that I have. Did I mention that this morning I was in café because the girl over there needed a break? While there I had a customer come and tell me that we were almost out of Decaf (which I actually appreciated because it saved me from hearing that the decaf was empty) as I go over to fix it a lady who ranked up as a 7 (the highest score received today for customers and how many annoying things they do) complains about the diet sodas being out of order. This is the first I knew about it because I don’t work in café. I had already told this lady’s friend that, I even went ahead and made an executive decision telling her friend that she could go get a soda from the refrigerator (which is probably a better deal anyway). So the lady, even though the situation is under control, still feels the need to be heard and complains about it to me and says, “Shouldn’t you tell us before we buy the drink?” and I tell her that I didn’t know they weren’t working and she says, “Well you should know,” before I am even able to explain how I don’t even work there, I’m just letting someone on break. I think I said, “uh huh” or something like that as I walked away rolling my eyes to make more decaf before that became a problem too. Over by the coffee I said what I really felt about the lady. I’ll always remember that customer too. Her and sideburns should get together and make sure to sterilize themselves so there are no offspring. Seriously, I may not like people, but I don’t treat them the way that I talk about them. What good is it going to do for you to treat them like that? How can you sleep at night treating other humans like a doormat? Then there are their friends! How can you be friends with someone who treats “service people” like that? Can you imagine these people at restaurants? I would slit my wrist if I were a waitress in the West End. I couldn’t be friends with a jerk, I mean a jerk that says things out of ear shot…that’s fun, but someone who doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with treating people like that to their faces…I can’t stand by someone like that.
So…what I meant to talk about, the part where I am a work-a-holic, 5 o’clock came and went and I was still at work. I helped bag when I first got off register because it seems like they always need more people there. Then I went to clock out and I was back up front to say bye to The Motivator (that’s what I’ll call my favorite manager because she really is a motivator and I can’t think of anything cooler). She told me I couldn’t leave yet because she needed my creative eyes and hands. I don’t think she got the memo that I am creative in the sense that I write things, not creative in any area of artistic, aesthetical ways. I told her if she wanted I could clock back in, I didn’t mind. I didn’t have anything to do…which sadly, is true. So I clocked back in and helped her and Bull Dog clean out Floral (they are redoing the whole store so there’s a lot to be done). It was a lot of fun, but hard work. Before I knew it Motivator was telling me that it was almost seven o’clock. That makes for an 11 hour day at work. This, plus the fact that I don’t enjoy having a full day off, is why I think I may have a work-a-hol problem. I didn’t mind working the 11 hour shift, mostly because I could have pulled the plug at any time past the 9 hour mark, but honestly, I had nothing else to do. My roommates went to the beach, my sister and mom had already done their shopping for the day. I knew exactly where I would be tonight, in my room watching a movie, or playing around on the internet. I simply prolonged it while getting paid more and in a way having a work-out. Cleaning out floral was a lot of work! I finally left, completely exhausted but I had to buy some paper and this weekend was Virginia’s tax-free holiday for school supplies, so what a good time to buy more computer paper right? Well The Warrior told me that my printer paper wouldn’t be tax-free so I told him when I was ready to buy it I would come through his line and prove him wrong. So he asked me, again since he’d asked me a couple of times, if I wanted to stay and work his closing shift. I told him ‘no’ and he said that I should go for the 13 and half hour day. I said ‘no’ again and added that now that I had taken a moment to sit down I was tired. He asked me if I wanted him to buy me lunch, pause, sometime. I guess the pause was because he realized that lunch was over for the day. Then he threw in that it would be a steak. How could I refuse? I asked if that would be when we went on our date. He said it would and then asked when we were going to do that. The last date he went on was a bust because the movie sucked. I told him if he picked the movie then we’ll go. Who knows if we will ever, but I think it would be fun to hang out with the Warrior. At least someone wants to hang out with me.
In other news I told my mom about the trip to California in November. One of my old roommates is getting married in Sacramento….Sacramento? Yes, that’s where Sweet Pea is from, so I’ll admit I’m going out there more to see her again then to go to the wedding. But it would be cool to go to the wedding since I was her fiancé’s favorite roommate (of hers). Well, me and Sweet Pea both, he thought we were funny…tell us something that we don’t know! Elephants are the only mammal that can’t jump.
Baby Face totaled the truck! I told him I loved that truck and couldn’t believe that it was gone. He said, “You sat on that truck for 5 minutes and you’re already in love with it?” I get attached easily. I told him “yeah, I already named him Henry.” Later I was talking to him and I said that I couldn’t believe Henry…or Herbert, or whatever was gone. There’s hope for Henry-Herbert because Baby Face’s dad wants to go ahead and try to get it repaired. I still don’t know if I’ll ever get to see that truck again. Also, as much as I think that Baby Face and I are friends I am beginning to think that we will never hang out. We are supposed to go shooting sometime but our schedules really don’t coordinate. Next Saturday I work in the afternoon and it really might be an all day thing, then the Saturday after he is going out of town to help move his sister. He said that maybe we could go during the week, but I do the school thing in the mornings. I told him we could go Tuesday after I get out of school but it’s his sister’s birthday. Who knows if it is even his sister’s birthday, maybe he decided that I am fun but only at a distance and doesn’t really want to hang out. That’s cool with me, but he should just say it…not in those words though. Because I get the feeling that he thinks I’m a cool person, and he talks to me and all so I know that I’m not one sided in being his friend (which unfortunately I have run into that once or twice in my life which is why I don’t really reach out much anymore), so maybe it’s one of those friendships that you like to have just at work but you don’t want outside of work. I understand those, I have a few friends like that at the school. I think they are cool girls but I just don’t think we have enough in common to hang out outside of the school. Which is sad since that ends in two weeks. Oh well, life goes on.
Oh, also, I received some roses on my toilet this morning. That’s right, roses on the toilet. I took a picture. When I woke up late this morning it was mostly due to having to go to the bathroom so as I rushed in there I found half a dozen roses in a mason jar and a card. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to appreciate them seeing as how it was urgent to use the bathroom, so I removed them to the floor quickly. I wanted to ask my roommates who they were from because the card was not signed but it was definitely girl writing and it said something about being a good influence on the girls that lived in the house with me, so I figure it wasn’t one of them, but I didn’t have time to ask because I was late to work. I do like getting flowers though, toilet seat or not.