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I'm the smartest, prettiest, funniest girl you ever saw, you just don't know it yet.
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20Q
A Twisted Day In The Life Of...
Anenigma
Danielle
Geek In Black
Glibbertysmidgeon
Go Fug Yourself
The Invincible Revenge Of Mr. Brick
The Marj Memoirs
Mark Pickerel
Waiter Rant
Warren Ellis
Weetabix
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I started training in the video department today and everything went well. I learn by doing things, so it took me pointing this out to the woman training me for me to get any hands-on action. Tomorrow should be better.
I got my W-2 from Safeway today, so I can do my taxes. I was anticipating a nice $750 return, but I had forgotten that I was on unemployment for a few months at the beginning of 2005 and no taxes were taken out of those checks. I was hoping to buy a new computer with my tax refund, but $500 isn't going to get the Averatec 3500T60 that I want. Instead of the new computer I think I'm just going to donate my Palm M505 to someone less fortunate and spring for a Palm Treo 650 smartphone. It's such a cool device that it will be almost like having a new computer, only better because I can take it everywhere with me. PLUS, it's got RealPlayer and an SD expansion port, so I can use it to listen to MP3s.
I've been obsessing about this for at least a week, so I hope that the IRS is quick with the direct deposit. I've thought about putting the $500 in my Orange savings account for a few weeks and letting it collect 4.75% interest, but I'm not sure I can be patient for that long!
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: King Of The Ants
2: American Psycho
3: Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
I wrote an entry for my blog while I was at work last night, but I left the piece of paper in my apron pocket, and my apron is downstairs, and I'm oh-so-lazy today.
Who am I kidding? I'm lazy every day.
Anyway, the whole idea of my entry was that I now understand how people can develop homocidal tendencies after being in close proximity too often and for too long. My boss still writes over my customer counts, even though there's nothing wrong with my handwriting, and I'm starting to feel harrassed. She wrote another cutesy note at the bottom of the sheet, requesting that 'If you cant write nice, neat, & readable, dont bother doing the customer counts. I will do them.' It appalls me that someone thought she was capable of managing an entire fuel station by herself when she doesn't even know to put apostrophes in her contractions, and can't use an adverb to save her life. She once wrote 'recipiet' on a note she taped to a pump. I had several customers ridicule her spelling that week by asking if they could have a 'recipiet'.
I felt a little bit better about hating her when I went in the store to clock out and saw the new schedule. Each department has a different page on the schedule, and at the top of the page is the head of that department. The rest of the employees are listed in descending order based on seniority, and since there's only one person in the fuel station who started working there after I did, I'm always near the bottom. When I looked at where my portion of the schedule usually is, it wasn't there.
"Okay," I thought. "I've been promoted, so maybe my schedule is on the office page even though I won't be trained in the office for another two weeks."
I started to flip over to the office page when I saw my name on the fuel page. Can we guess where it was? For some unknown reason, it was right at the top, above my despicable manager. I don't know why names printed out of order can make me feel so giddy, but they do. I even made a photocopy of it. Call me simple-minded if you like.
And since I've already written here that I was supposed to be trained in the store next week, I'll have to explain why I now have to wait an extra week or two. Basically, they figure they need to hire someone to replace me in the fuel station before they can bring me in the store. I don't see why this is necessary, since I only work 20 hours a week and that wouldn't be too difficult to spread around to other employees. This idea kind of scares me though, because nobody ever wants to work in the fuel station and I have this horrible idea in my head that they'll never find anyone to take my place and I'll be stuck out there forever. They can't do that, can they?
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Shaolin Soccer
2: King Of The Ants
3: Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer
My queue on Netflix is up to 232 movies. Some of you may be impressed, since I only signed up for the service ten days ago, but do you know how easy it is to add movies to your queue?
Every time you add a movie, it generates 20 more that you might like, based on that one movie. And if you rate movies you've already seen, they recommend films based on that. Sometimes I spend hours mindlessly reading summaries and adding them to my list; it can be quite therapeutic.
Anyway, I'll keep up with my links at the bottom of my posts, and hopefully they will inspire someone to see a movie they've forgotten they want to see, or maybe something they've never heard of but strikes a certain chord with them.
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: The Tao Of Steve
2: Shaolin Soccer
3: King Of The Ants
It's been a week since I found out that I got the new job, and I still haven't told my mom.
Most of the time my mother and I are very open with each other, but since she got back together with idiot boyfriend (for about the 15th time in a year) she once again can't find time for me and I don't push it.
I started out not telling her because I get some kind of guilty pleasure from knowing that she's missing out on important tidbits about my life because she'd rather spend her waking moments with the beer-swiller. At this point I feel bad for intentionally keeping her out of the loop, but there's really only one way to tell her without her feelings being hurt, and that is to casually mention that I start training next week and then cover it up by saying I told her last Thursday, doesn't she remember? And then she will probably assume that she doesn't remember because she was drunk for most of last week.
I'm not really sure how I'll choose to get out of this one, but the right answer is probably to never have been a stubborn bitch in the first place. After all, I'm the grown-up here, and between me withholding information to spite her and her being too co-dependent to show any interest in my life, I will probably be hurt less in the long run.
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Hell House
2: The Girl Next Door
3: The Tao Of Steve
I bought a box of those silver-pouched juice thingies today and I know I brought one upstairs with me earlier, but for the life of me I cannot find the damned thing.
I'm losing my mind.
**EDIT**
I found it. I drank it earlier and forgot, and when I was done with it I threw the mylar pouch on the floor next to the bed. My memory is getting really bad.
Last night I set my alarm and I checked three times to make sure that it was set; I even looked to see if the little red dot was on, indicating that the alarm would go off at 8:40 AM. That little dot was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep last night, but I swear it was there. At 8:42 this morning I woke up, panicked because I was sure that I was late for work. The dot was gone and I had no recollection of being awoken by any loud beeping only two minutes before. And, no, switching off the alarm is not something the cat knows how to do.
A couple weeks ago at work, a regular came up to pay for his gas. Now, this kid always prepays and I know this. I remember saying 'hi' to him, and asking about his new car, but the next thing I knew there was a $15 sale on the till and I didn't remember setting it for him. "Wow!" I said. "Not prepaying today?" He looked at me funny and I clumsily joked that I was getting old. I don't think he bought it.
Juice boxes, alarm clocks, my job--where will my cognitive impairment interfere next?
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Bend It Like Beckham
2: Hell House
3: The Girl Next Door
For her birthday on Sunday, I bought my mom a copy of The Skeleton Key. Since the first time she watched it, she hasn't been able to stop talking about it. When we see people in the video section at Safeway, she'll tell them what an excellent movie it is.
I tried peeling off the price sticker, but the big "$9.99" just wouldn't come off. I didn't even bother wrapping it. I gave it to her and said 'happy birthday', and her reaction was really not what I expected.
"I told you what I wanted for my birthday!" She slurred. She got her unemployment check in the mail today, so she spent the afternoon and evening at the Eagles club. Of course.
"What did you want for your birthday?" I asked. I was a little taken aback that she didn't even bother to say, 'Thank you', or 'I love this movie', or even to acknowledge that I'd given her something.
"I wanted new sheets!" She kind of stomped her feet a little for added emphasis. I'm looking at $500 pay for the entire month here, and she's upset that I didn't spend $50+ on her birthday present? When she brags that her idiot boyfriend makes $700 a week and just bought a $250 TV on a fucking whim?
Right now part of me is hoping that there is a God, because I'm going to need some kind of divine guidance to get through the next year with her.
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Boxing Helena
2: Bend It Like Beckham
3: Hell House
You know that job that I interviewed for? The one I was bitching about because I was sure I wouldn't get it? Well, I got it. When I got home from Radio Shack there was a message on the answering machine, asking for me to call the store when I got home.
It turns out that they hired both me and the other girl, so I guess she wasn't competition at all; she's just on my team.
Sorry, Kev. You'll have to wait another year before I can move in with you.
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Secretary
2: Happy Endings
3: Boxing Helena
This last week has been pretty uninspiring, hence the lack of posts. I signed up for Netflix and received my first three movies. I interviewed for the office position and was feeling pretty confident until I found out that there was a third applicant I was not aware of.
The other girl that I thought was my only competition was really no competition at all, but this third girl is already trained as a checker and in video. Part of the office job is to provide backup to those areas when needed, and I've already been told flat-out by management that, faced with the choice, they will always choose the person that doesn't need as much training. So I'm not holding my breath about that job, and I will probably not stay at Safeway much longer. Maybe through April, just to make it a nice, solid year.
Yesterday was my sister's birthday, and she seems to think that because she's 14 she now has license to be a snotty bitch all the time, whereas before she was just a snotty bitch 2 out of 7 days.
Nothing much else is going on, and I feel like this is forced and boring, so I will just go add more movies to my Netflix queue. Oh, and maybe I'll change my little "Don't forget to see what's new on my photo blog!" thingy at the bottom of each entry to show what movies are currently at the top of my list. Since I never add pictures to my photo blog anymore.
The next three movies I will be watching, courtesy of Netflix:
1: Secretary
2: Happy Endings
3: Boxing Helena
I don't believe that your life flashes before your eyes when you become aware that you are going to die. I simply don't think there is time.
I was driving to Ellensburg today and hit a patch of slush. Despite my best efforts to direct my car away from the concrete barrier at the side of the road, that mess was not letting me go until I ricocheted off of the guardrail and across three lanes of freeway. If some twist of fate hadn't kept there from being a large truck in my path, I would not have had time to even say, "Oh, fuck", let alone hold a private viewing of highlights from the last 24 years.
Luck had it that a stranger saw me hit the guardrail and spin across the road, and he stopped to see if I was ok. Of course, aside from a severe case of the shakes I was ok--hell, don't ask how it happened, but there's barely a scratch in my paint--but my car had flipped around so that I was stalled out facing westbound on the narrow shoulder of an eastbound highway. The lull in traffic had passed, and getting back into the mix was seeming like a very impossible feat. The stranger offered to get my car turned around, and he did it without backing off the enbankment (which I surely would have done), or driving into traffic (which I didn't dare do. Fate wouldn't keep that semi out of my path twice in one day.). In my frazzled state all I could think to do was to thank him, and now I wish I'd shaken his hand and asked his name.
Don't forget to see what's new on my photo blog!
So, after all of my bitching about what I do and don't get out of my job, I had a chat with the union rep today. She told me that the union contract mandates that our wage be no lower than $0.10 higher than minimum wage, and a solution was finally reached as to our insurance.
Before, the union figured that since were were just lowly fuel clerks, we didn't need insurance right away, but someone managed to convince them that we deserve the same priveleges as everyone else. As soon as they get me enrolled, I will have health insurance (provided by the healthcare company I worked for during my one year of college), prescription coverage, and vision care. All for the low, low price of $7 a week. I was hoping for dental, but you have to be an employee for two years to get that.
It's not much, but it's a start in the right direction.
Don't forget to see what's new on my photo blog!
The more I work at my job, the more disgruntled I get. I lose respect for my manager every single day, and the union is just a joke.
Minimum wage just went up from $7.35 an hour to $7.63. I was making $7.55 before, so you would think that now I'd be making $7.83, right? Not a chance. Since my previous wage was lower than the new minimum all they did was bump me up to $7.63. Now, since everything I was promised at hire turned out to be just a big lie, the only thing this job had left to offer was a wage higher than all the rest. Now that I could get the same wage anywhere else in town, I don't feel like there's much keeping me there, aside from a little bit of seniority and a lot of really short gigs on my resume.
The entire fuel staff has been reprimanded in the "employee notebook" for bitching about other employees who don't do their jobs. Our manager asked us to just "not pay attention to what other people are doing" and take care of ourselves. I'm sorry, but there is only one person that I work with who does everything she's supposed to every single day. Everyone else leaves me a load of shit to take care of that I already have to do, and it just makes twice as much work when they leave theirs for me, and if what I'm doing is clean up after lazy bitches who lie about how much work they've done, you can bet I'm going to be steamed about it.
The fuel manager also took it upon herself to re-write my numbers on the customer count, commenting in the margin that "If you can't write neatly, don't bother writing at all!" My handwriting hasn't been the same since I lost some of my sensation and motor skills to the massive attack I had two summers ago, but my writing is definitely legible and I think that her remark was pretty immature. I've resolved to just ignore it until she stops being so passive-agressive and decides to address me directly.
With a little bit of encouragment from one of the management-level employees who actually likes me and thinks I'm good at my job, I've applied for yet another position in the store. This position is an office clerk position, and if I were given this job, I would be responsible for counting all of the money in the store, and for backing up all of the departments if they need help. This is more along the lines of what I excel at, and apparently, on the word of the woman who talked me into it, the assistant manager agrees that I could be good for the position. We'll see how far that gets me, since every attempt I've made to be put in the store in the last eight months has been pretty effectively squashed.
I'm just grumpy today, and I probably should focus more of my energy on enjoying my day off. I hope everyone had a happy New Year!
Don't forget to see what's new on my photo blog!
