Ah, at last, I’m down to just 2 jobs again. The contract at Job #3 ended a little earlier than expected. It was supposed to last 3 months, then I could potentially be hired permanently, or it could be extended, or it could just be done. Since I held onto Jobs #1 and #2 all this time, and the three altogether didn’t leave much time for anything else, all I really wanted was a decision, and thankfully, that’s what I got.
On one hand it’s obviously disappointing not to come out of it with a permanent full-time job with benefits, decent money, and friendly coworkers, but on the other, it’s quite nice not to have to drive an hour each way to do a pretty mundane job (the work wasn’t bad, but not something I wanted to do for too long), and finally have time to focus on the other jobs, catch up with friends and tv shows, and still have time to sleep. So all said and done, it averages out to indifference, roughly.
The bookstore is in the same town I went through school in, so bumping into people I knew in high school is a pretty frequent occurrence. (Though it never fails to freak me out a little.)
Tonight, as I was working there, a guy came up to ask me to help him find a book, and I was halfway through realizing he was kind of attractive, when we both simultaneously realized we knew each other.
It was a guy I graduated high school with… and actually he was in my first grade class too… We never really talked much in school, but we caught up briefly as I showed him the section he was looking for. He seemed nice. It was… surreal?
Work today was… work-ish. Mostly boring and cold and sleepy, occasionally amusing.
There’s a pair of sisters at Job #3. The younger one got hired with me, and the older one is my cube-neighbor. I rarely see the younger one, and don’t think I’ve had an actual (even brief) conversation with her in the 2+ months we’ve been working there, but every so often, she comes over to her sister’s cube and I overhear a conversation between the two of them…
First it makes me laugh.
Then it makes me feel really intelligent/superior.
Then I feel like an asshat for feeling superior.
Then it just goes back to making me laugh.
It’s not that they’re morons, but they don’t seem to be the sharpest crayons in the box either. Mostly, it’s just that their experiences, priorities, and thought processes are so foreign to me… it’s like an anthropological study. Haha.
Today, the one was telling the other about an app she found for her iProduct-of-choice… it was one of those harmonic brainwave-tuner things that uses different frequencies to affect your mood/mental state/whatever.
“…and it really works! I tried the calming one. I thought about something upsetting and listened to it, and felt better! And I put on the one that’s supposed to put you to sleep, and I got really tired…”
Something about the way she said it… it was like “Aw, how quaint, she’s trying to do science!” (Not quite as judgy as that sounds. Heck, she could be very intelligent, for all I know. But they are hilarious/fascinating to overhear.)
2011 has, thus far, continued its trend of not completely sucking. And I am [technically] keeping up with my tentative resolution to blog every day, and thus the actual resolution to blog semi-regularly.
Small victory. \o/
Church was interesting today… they finally announced that a fairly significant* change is about to start happening. The possibility has been brewing, officially-though-quietly, for a couple years now. I smelled it coming a good deal sooner than that, but didn’t realize it at the time. What is actually going to happen is yet to be determined, but things are officially set in motion now… so it will be interesting* to see what goes down in the coming months.
Entirely unrelatedly, I went to a wedding a few days ago. On Wednesday. It was a decidedly odd time for a wedding, and slightly inconvenient, being smack in the middle of the holiday week (though not according to Job #3…), but was a lovely celebration and a good excuse to take a couple days off and actually have a little time to enjoy the holidays. Initially, I thought it was far enough away that I’d have to spend the night somewhere, so I requested Thursday off too, and then it turned out it was close enough that it was easier to just drive home afterwards, so I had a legit day off on Thursday, and Friday was the official holiday for New Years, so between those and the weekend I had a nice little mini-break. (Of course, I worked at Job #1 yesterday and scattered hours for Job #2 throughout, so I wasn’t totally free, but at least I got to catch up on sleep a bit.)
Back to the normal unpleasant schedule tomorrow, bright-and-way-too-early.
I was invited to celebrate with friends in the city proper. My dad was driving the sistercreature in to the same area at about the same time I was planning to go, so I figured I may as well ride in with them, and catch a ride home with other friends I knew would be in attendance, who live near me. Great plan, except I somehow missed the memo that everyone was planning on spending the night. So, surprise sleepover. And I have to work tomorrow afternoon. (Job #1.)
But it’s cool. I’ll survive, and I adore these people. Twas a very fun evening. : D
I think my New Year’s resolution will be to blog (for my own sanity, not just the job one) on a regular basis. And to spend time with God consistently. I’m bad at both of those. Maybe that can change this year.
Haha well, clearly that “blogging consistently” thing has worked so very well these last few months. Actually, no, scratch that, I have been blogging fairly consistently, just not for me or as me or on my own blog.
See, since I last posted here, I have somehow acquired two more jobs. Job #1, as you may recall, is peddling books and beverages.
Job #2 is another part time gig, basically transcribing and editing blog posts and other chunks of wordage for a marketing consultant. So I have been posting on a blog at least once a week, just not my blog, not my ideas, only half my words, and I get paid for it.
Job #3 is mainly adding bookmarks and links to PDFs (the company is a middleman for pharmaceutical companies’ regulatory paperwork). It’s full time, but only a contact position right now, so I can’t quit the others (or even one of them) until I find out if they’re keeping me beyond that.
So, for now, I’m in a strange sort of employment-limbo. Thankfully, 3-jobs-limbo includes three paychecks, but it also keeps me absurdly busy.
Oy. What a long week! I worked 8 of the past 9 days, and this week was all long shifts. So, yay for actually getting money, but boo for sore feet and tired me.
So here’s a funny story. Not really funny, really, but a story anyway. Yesterday I was supposed to work an 8 hour shift in the middle of the day – three hours overlapping with the girl who opened, 2 hours by myself, and then 3 hours overlapping with the girl who would close. I was supposed to take my break when the closer got in, but about half an hour before the opener was to leave, I realized I had to pee, and was really hungry, and didn’t want to wait 2 and a half more hours to take my break, so I asked her if she’d mind if I took it then, I’d just take a half hour instead of the whole one, and I’d be back when she had to leave. She didn’t mind, so that’s what we did. And THANK FREAKING GOD.
Apparently, the girl who was scheduled to close had called out, but somewhere along the line the wires got crossed and that little tidbit of information never made it to the manager who was actually working then, or to me, or to anyone actually working that day, and neither she or the manager she had talked to found a sub. So, about halfway through what originally would have been my break, the manager figured this out and called a couple people, but nobody could/would come in to close, so he asked me if I’d stay to close. Luckily for them, I didn’t have any pressing plans that would warrant leaving them with an unstaffed cafe for the rest of the evening, so I said I would.
It was only an extra two hours of work, but on top of an already 8-hour shift, that’s a long time to be standing around making coffee. And instead of two hours working alone, it turned into 7, and I still had to do the food pull for the next day (normally done at the end of the middle shift, when the closer gets in, so one can wait on customers while the other’s in the back), plus do all of the closing stuff, which is a pain in the butt to begin with. Luckily for me, it was pretty slow most of the night, so I was able to get it done anyway, and they sent some people over from the book side at the very end to help me finish up. So everything crucial got done, the place got clean, and I still made it out of there reasonably soon after the store closed. It wasn’t that bad, and the manager bought me lunch today for being willing to stay.
This morning I get in, working on the book side, and the other manager mentions I had forgotten to put more iced coffee in the fridge, but he had apparently been the one who had dropped the ball in the first place in not letting anyone know the girl wasn’t coming in, so it was all good. I said, “whoops, sorry, I’ll try to remember that next time,” and life moved on. I helped some customers, shelved some books, didn’t have to work the register much, it was a good day… until 5.
Then the girl who was closing the cafe showed up. From the very beginning, I could tell she was going to be stressful to work with. The other cafe workers warned me, the cafe supervisor warned me, every time I opened, I could tell if she had been the one to close the previous night, because everything was messy and half-assed, if done at all. I tried to be polite when I saw her, but was grateful that I only had to work with her twice so far. I didn’t think I’d have to worry about it today, since I was on the other side of the store, but I was wrong. Soon after she arrived, she wanted to tell somebody something on the radio. Instead of just turning on the one we keep in the cafe, she tells me, halfway across the store, to pass on the message for her. She mumbles (rather consistently) so I couldn’t hear what she said, so I walk towards her and ask her what she said. Instead of repeating it like a normal person, she grabs the mic on my headset, while it’s still attached to me, and tells whatever to whoever herself, completely demolishing any semblance of personal space in the process. >.<
A little while later, I’m helping out on register, and she comes over and just stands there awkwardly… already I have a bad feeling about this. She rings up a couple people too, eventually the line dies down, so I try to head back out to the floor to finish the pile I was shelving, but before I can manage that, she corners me and starts going off on me about how bad I did at closing. At first I think maybe I did forget a few things, I was by myself and already tired, it’s plausible. But then she asks me how I got Sunday from Thursday (refering to the expiration stickers we stick on the food trays, everything gets either one or two days from when you pull them out of the freezer), and then tries to claim half of it didn’t have a sticker at all. I admit to her I may have missed a tray or two, but I’m pretty sure I got almost everything, and I know I didn’t put Sunday stickers on anything. (When in doubt, I just tagged it for the next day, to be on the safe side, so almost everything had Friday stickers.) It would have been one thing if she was correcting me on things I had actually done wrong, (and even then, she doesn’t actually have any authority over me, I would just have respected it since she has been there longer than I) but NONE OF IT WAS TRUE.
When I told this story to the cafe supervisor (who actually quit, effective yesterday, but we text), she confirmed that the girl has no room to talk… “A lizard could close the cafe better than her”… and both the managers who I’ve worked with lately told me I’m a good worker and doing a great job at my job(s), so I’m pretty confident that I didn’t screw up, and she’s just crazy.
Nonetheless, when she was done, I was so so so very mad… Somewhere between shock and actual restraint, I managed not to say or hit anything, but that meant it came out as tears of frustration, so I went back to the break room, but there was a guy in there, so I stood at the sink and washed my hands so I had an excuse to face the wall and steam/cry a little… but this was like, 10 minutes before the end of my shift, so when I came back in to clock out and he was still there, I still wanted to rid myself of the grime of other people’s money and dusty books and computers that everyone-and-their-mom has touched before I got my stuff and left, so he gave me a funny look and asked “didn’t you just wash your hands?” and I was still barely maintaining my composure/sanity, so I just sort of muttered “yup” and some failed summary of the above explanation and left awkwardly.
But now I’m home, showered, pajama’d, and soon will be asleeeeep. And tomorrow will involve no work, but lots of funnesses.
Settling in to life as a graduate and some new jobbage. That’s right, world, I’m employed. I was a student, now I’m a bookseller/barista. Thrilling, right?
Settling in back home. After 4 years of dealing with roommates of various types/levels of crazy, but being mostly in charge of my own living, I am now once again in my parents’ house, but with my own space. An interesting trade-off.
Settling in back at my home church. Couldn’t be very involved for the last few years, since I was gone most of the year, particularly the parts of the year when most things happenned, but I did connect with a lovely housechurch out at school. Now that I’m back in the area for the forseeable future, I’m able to finally get involved again.
Settling into great friendships. There’s a lot of overlap here with the last one, as I’m making a bunch of new friends through various church adventures, getting to know others better, and reconnecting with some old friends (both church friends and friends/acquaintances from highschool and such). Also making new friends at work!
Settling in to new perspectives and deeper faith. More on that later! For now, goodnight!
