Chapter 101
Teenagers

So I went to see the movie "Flushed Away", now this movie was not on my must see list, but my cousins had the day off from school so my sister and I decided that we would do something nice for them, and besides, movie theater popcorn from the actual movie theater is the best there ever was. The movie was okay, I found myself oddly smiling near the end and I quickly made myself stop. There were funny parts and then there were parts that I totally disapproved of for a children's movie. Like the rat saying, "How the hell do you expect to do that?" My cousins are like the rest of my family and like to quote movies, I don't want my 8 and 6 year old cousins saying 'hell'. Then there was an incredibly inappropriate joke at the end which kids wouldn't get, not now at least. Because someday a kid out there is going to have had this for their favorite movie all of their childhood, but they hadn't watched it in a while and they are going to pull it out when they are 20 years old and realize that maybe the source of all their problems lay in the hidden dirty jokes of their youth. Maybe not, I've always been an over reactor, but it's happened to me. There have been movies that I loved as a child and then I watch them again and I don't remember that one part or that line, because when I was a kid I just didn't get it, and I wish I still didn't, it just kind of ruins things.
Also, what is so funny about a guy getting hit in the family jewels over and over again? That seemed to come up a lot in this movie, I don't find it funny. It's like America's Funniest Home Videos. What is so funny about people getting hurt? Yes, I know, I'm the girl who laughs when you tell her your dog got run over by a car…but come on, how cliché. But if I saw your dog get hit by a car I would be far from laughing. I don't really delight in the pain of others, I can't say I never do, but I don't enjoy all forms of people getting hurt. Especially in sensitive spots, and if something falls on someone, oh, I cringe at that. So the Jessica rating for this movie: Kind of cute, I liked the slugs, but I wouldn't own it.
Work-wise: I began my week with the trainees from hell. I had been excited because I remembered training one of the guys to be a courtesy clerk and I remember that he had been a lot of fun. Well, paired with the other guy he wasn’t all that fun anymore, he was just the spawn of Satan. I think I said aloud that I would be quitting that night maybe three times (To which on of them says, “You’d be the second person I made quit their job”.
The first part of training we are just in a room and we talk about the check cashing policy for the company, even that was a struggle to get through. They kept trying to get me to go off the subject, which normally people can do, but when I can sense that they are doing it intentionally the stubborn side of me refuses. They did ask if I trained Shameless Flirt, I said I had and he behaved a lot better then them, they said that’s only because they weren’t with him. Well thank goodness for that. I finally finished with that and had them take their test. One of their cell phones goes off while he’s taking the test and he actually asks me if he can answer it! I told him ‘no’, but when he finished his test his break would begin so as soon as he finished his test he could. P.S. my kids can only have a cell phone if they pay for it 100%. After they finished their test and Kid 1 finished his phone call I told them they had 15 minutes for break and they could meet me at customer service when they got back. Kid 1 asks if they could hang out with me in the training room, I told them ‘no’ then Kid 2 said, “But you’ll be coming to eat with us right?” Suddenly they are attached, sweet, and friendly? I don’t think so. I told him ‘no’, and added that they were bugging me so they should just go on break.
Silly me for thinking that 15 minutes could do the trick and make the rest of the night better. The moment I started to talk about the register it was like working with chimpanzees. They were all over the place, getting into everything, and even when I put my foot down or threatened them they wouldn't behave. Kid 2 stood too close to me the whole evening and I kept pushing him back saying that I had a bubble and he needed to respect that. Then he would come in close again and rest his arm on the part of the register behind me. Turns out that the whole time he was feeding the receipt tape through to make the world’s longest receipt. I stood at an angle from then on to make sure that he couldn’t do it anymore. Unfortunately part of the training is to show them the phone and tell them how to use it. Which they did. They called over a manager once, but didn’t even call them over, just said, “Manager” into the phone. Luckily I was at my usual training store and not Short Pump where they hate me so they just took it in stride.
Near the end they finally calmed down as I told them several different ways I could kill them and make it look like an accident. I'm so glad I had an emphasis in Criminology in school; it's really come in handy in my career. After going over ways to use a wire hanger, dry ice, and anti-freeze Kid 1 sat there with his mouth open and finally said, “You’re creepy”. Thank you. Finally it was about 4 minutes before they were scheduled to leave so I told them it was 9 o'clock and they could go home and they said, "Oh it's not 9 o'clock yet". They enjoyed torturing me, which is why I'll take great pleasure in finding where they live and sticking that wire hanger into the soft spot behind their ears while they are sleeping. They helped me bag my pretend groceries, if you want to call what they did help, and then they wanted to help more but I told them they could go put the produce back and they decided it was 9 o'clock. Then kid 2 came over and gave me a hug…I didn't trust him so I didn't hug back and I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Then he stood really close to me after the hug and I waited ready for an attack, seriously, that's how I felt with them the whole day, just waiting for the next attack. I was so glad when they finally walked away.
Then I had two days of training at Short Pump and things actually went well. No major problems but I’m still pretty sure they hate me. These people hold grudges. I never even did anything to them, one of my trainees messed up and they are going to hold it over my head. One of the days that fell between me working at my usual training store I went into my store, the one I work at when I’m not training and I just went in there to get my paycheck. There is a kid there who I trained but I can’t stand. However, there was no real reason to fail him, he knows his stuff, but he’s just aggravating. Every time I go into that store he says something to me like we are friends or something. “Oh, JSD girl, where’s your black shirt?” Up yours. So this past Friday when I was in there he says something to me, but I don’t hear it and I ask him to repeat it, but just then something gets his attention. I’m watching him for a second trying to figure out what his problem is and I realize that he is looking into his pocket. The only reason someone looks into the pocket of their work pants so intensely is because they have a cell phone in there. So I take the opportunity to let out a little frustration. I say, “Excuse me, but in your training you were told no cell phones on the sales floor.” He’s been outed. Why do these idiots think that I can’t tell they have their cell phone on them? It’s not that hard to tell. People don’t just randomly look at their pant pocket. So he says something about how I’m not in uniform. I tell him that I love my job, and uniform or not I do my job. (I don’t really love my job, and I usually let people slide on a lot, but I really don’t like this kid). I wish I had the power to fire people. Then maybe I’d have more clout and people would listen to me, they wouldn’t treat me so badly if they knew I had the authority to ex their asses. Sorry, I was going to work on my profanity, I think I’ve been doing really well lately.
Oh and just an update, I’m doing better with my road rage.
So on Saturday I go back to main training store. So far this week they have seen me get overtaken by two chimpanzees and I’m all nervous for what could go wrong that day. I was relieved to have a group of mostly girls because they are a bit more mature and if they act the way that those two boys did then they are considered words which I am trying to refrain from saying. See…we are not equal, men and women are called different names for the same action, and most actions that men do are seen as out of the ordinary, if not improper, for girls. Which I’m okay with, I just felt the need to point that out. Needless to say I still had butterflies in my stomach that morning. First off I was supposed to have four trainees and I got five. One girl had cancelled her training but then said that on Monday she told her manager that she could still train. So they told her to come and see if she could train. I called TDH (I pretty much just call him every time I don't know what to do) but he was training so I couldn't get a hold of him. I decided that since she was officially cancelled on the JSD website that I would send her home. I felt bad, but I figured it wasn't my call to add her.
Then I was back to four trainees. First part went well and then we went downstairs to look at the register. We were all looking at the register but the boy in the group seemed a little distracted so I moved the screen so that maybe he could see it better, but that didn't get his attention. I moved on to the ever exciting coupon menu and the kid asks to go get some water. So I say that's fine and pause the training while he goes and gets a sip. I’m off in my own world for 1.3 seconds and I hear a loud thump! We all turn in the direction of the rest rooms and there’s a kid lying face down on the ground…but not any kid, the kid I just sent to get some water. He wasn’t even near the water fountain, I assume because where he was near was where they are at in his store but not that store. At first I thought he had just fallen and I was waiting for him to get up. But you know, some people when they fall just decide to lay there for a bit, you see it a lot in Rexburg in the winter. But I noticed that his hands were down at his side, usually your hands would be up in some way to show that you tried to stop yourself from falling. This kid didn’t look as though he had tried to stop himself. By this point one of the managers was running over telling people not to move him and someone else was yelling out to call 911. He seemed to be conscious at first, though a little disoriented but he wasn’t responding to the manager talking to him. Then (what I am told because I went to call his mom) he lost consciousness.
I called his mom and told her what I thought was going on to the best of my knowledge and that we were on the phone with 911 (who by the way don't know the first thing about emergencies I could get a pizza delivered to the store faster then they could dispatch the EMS workers and the dispatcher kept asking the lady at customer service questions about the kid (questions that he would have to answer first) and the lady kept telling the dispatcher that he wasn't responding, so how was she suppose to be able to answer that question? Finally the firemen showed up. The mom and I kept exchanging phone calls as she called the store from her cell phone and I called her cell phone.
The firemen told me to tell her what hospital they were going to take him to and then she got there but the ambulance wasn't there yet (and she was coming from further away) so she called to make sure that it was the right one. It was insane.
I came back to my little group of trainees, now dwindled down to 3 and wasn’t sure what to do. I felt extremely weird continuing training, but I talked to the other three trainees and asked them if they would think I was a heartless person if I kept going, they said that they wouldn't and I figured that if they had just been working on the front end they would have had to keep working, you don't just shut down the store right? And since there were no ethical dilemmas I went on. Of course two of the girls asked me if they could go to the bathroom when we started back up, I don't know if it was just a coincidence or if it was a side effect of the craziness they just witnessed. The strange thing is, we finished everything in a timely manner, even with all the craziness that had happened. At the 30 minutes break one girl left (she was scheduled to leave then and finish training a different day). So I started with five trainees and ended the day with two (but only one was taken away on a gurney to the hospital.)
TDH and I were exchanging e-mails by the end of the day. He had read my e-mail about this kid passing out and e-mailed back that that was the kind of training he liked to see, where I pushed them to the point of exhaustion. I e-mailed back saying I would lose sleep over pushing the kid too hard, but then said that all I was doing was talking about register. He also said that I would be branded from this time on as the trainer who caused a trainee to blackout. Curses and dirty words.
I told my trainees about the time that Sweet Pea went for a job interview at Arby’s and passed out. I even told them the part where the interviewer asked her something about why she needed the job. For food, but she was okay right now. Then she passes out? Yeah, the interviewer believed her story. But she got the job, so sometimes blacking out does the trick. All I can say is, thank goodness next week is my vacation and I get to go to California! Arnold Schwarzenegger here I come!