The Great Snowman Sell Off of '06

For the past two weeks we've had these annoying talking snowmen at work. One night last week some little kids set off all 10 at once. One second apart. Then left the store. They didn't stop talking for 30 minutes. So yesterday I instigated the big talking snowman sell off of 2006. We sold all 10. I told every customer to "enjoy your snowman. Give him a great home. He'll love you and cherish you forever. NO RETURNS!" :)

And on that note...

k9

Early Morning AAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I was in bed by 8pm last night. My schedule is insane and I'm tired and it was pathetic that I had a couple hours to myself without either job on my mind or video to get off of TIVO and I didn't know what to do. I've sold nearly everything I've had to fill "leisure time" over the last year so I looked around and looked around to find something to do. I saw a bed. I saw I had 8 hours until my next shift, I was asleep by 5 after 8.

Right now I have a couple of minutes left on my first shift, an hour off, then a 3 hour shift, a few hours off (to do firewood, go to the bank and do other things), then 8 and a half hours of work. Thankfully, I think I'm off tonight. So I'm okay. For now anyway. I'll probably be back to sleep as soon as I get home.

And that's how life is going.

k9

Blahs

I guess I'm loyal to a fault sometimes.

Right now I'm still sick with a cold. My ankle swelled up to twice its normal size and I went to bed sedated on cold pills and aleve. I kept waking up and every time I saw my digital clock I thought I was checking someone out.

I'm pretty sick and tired and I'm tired of being sick and tired.

I'm already rethinking retail. It's getting obvious that I'm good at it YET there aren't a lot of rewards for putting so much of your body and your mind into it. If it were my only job, yah, I'd be happy with it, but it's not. I'm doing 33 hours at one and 40 at the other so they have to balance in a way where I'm not hurting myself by doing both. While I enjoy getting out... things are getting on my nerves lately and they are things that are going to stick with me.

I think it's also the never ending chain of things. Retail never stops. Retail is never different. What you do one day is the same as the next. It's not the easy pace of "Clerks" (though I do feel as looserish as those guys were), it's not even FUN like "Clerks" (I would kill for our own Jay & Silent Bob), and everything is building up to the point where I'm already looking for another job to replace it.

Yah, I'm a big fat loser. 3 weeks in retail and I'm giving up. But you know what? I'm also someone who just can't see myself there. Some of the people at work have been there 10 years. There's no challenge to their lives. They see having the job as a social status thing, not as a competitive thing. But it's not somewhere I can picture myself being in the future. There's just not enough mental challenge and the physical challenge isn't worth the money.

Oh well.

I'm up and I'm hurting and I'm depressed.

Welcome to miseryland.

k9

hop sniggity slop

So I'm sick. I have some sort of cold. I was fine for most of the day but about 15 minutes ago I sneezed and kept sneezing for about 15 minutes.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have the tolerance of a high school cheerleader who has never had alcohol but really wants to be "cool" and to "do it for her boyfriend." Meaning, I don't touch the stuff, never really have and since I haven't, uh, well, I get loopy from just about anything.

Tonight it's a big dose of alka-seltzer's nyquil knock off. I'm not drunk. Well not drunk in the sense where I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm going to do, I'm just sort of warm and fuzzy and wishing that the bed was closer to the computer so I could type as things fade away.

God, I need a life.

I caught this cold at work, of course. One of the many many people who came in gave it to me. I hate them all for it. Well, not really, but I've really got to start working evenings and after work hours when there are more people closer to MY age. Endless old people and yelling mothers are getting to me as well.

Today. God. Today I almost lost it.

Woman comes in all in a huff. When she comes up to my register she has a ton of towels. She says that her teenage son is doing something to them. I ask what. She volunteers that whatever it is (she thinks it's from his zit cream) it is leaving white streaks on the towels and staining them.

I didn't say a word. I just sold her new towels and told her to come again.

True, story, btw.

So I'm home and I fell asleep after work, almost missed my night job because all I really want to do is stay in bed. All I want and all I care about is sleep. Sleep and more sleep. Sleep and red headed girls who want to cuddle. Girls. Not grandmas. The grandmas are starting to freak me out just a little bit.

The nyquillish stuff is hitting me now. The world is a blur but I've stopped sneezing. This stuff works fast. No wonder people use it to get high. I just want to be happy enough to go to sleep so I stop dreaming about either work for as long as possible in order to get through the night.

Can I do it?

Probably not. I know nothing else at this point.

So scared of everything.

k9

More

I'm the only guy at my out of the house job. I am constantly reminded of this because the day AFTER I was hired, a huge sign went up in the bathroom to put the seat down. Three days later, someone added "LOOK!" to it. I've been kind of ignoring both.

I've been a zombie for slightly above minimum wage. Supposedly next year minimum wage in PA goes up to $7 an hour so I'll be getting a slight pay increase, but let's face it, for management at a crappy store, that's horrible.

I'm in it, of course, for the benefits. There are allegedly some and a better plan than Wal-mart. I almost started working there in early September, but let's face it, I wouldn't have survived unloading trucks every day from 4pm to 1am at night. It just wouldn't have worked for anyone. Especialy ME since I would have been dead.

These jobs are okay though really, I think too much for both.

Like the other day, I found a 4 pack of panties on the rack and someone had torn open them and stole a single pair from them. So I was pondering for the rest of the day about what sick freak stole a pair of dollar store panties. Let alone one who couldn't afford the reduced price of $2.50 for the pack.

We do sell lingere and sexy little panties. The trouble is, the two people who bought them were NO ONE I wanted to picture actually owning them. I seriously think one was a guy. As much as my brain did a double take at the sight of them (I go tunnel blind when I'm at cashier so I don't actually see the people I'm talking to half the time), I always regret looking at the people later.

There's nothing wrong with being old. There's nothing wrong with anyone. I just get tired of seeing the same faces day in and day out. Like there was a cute girl in the store sunday. Early 20's. Totally dateable. Probably would have been nice to have a relationship with. Until an hour later, she's long gone, but someone who could have been her in 20 years came in. 200 pounds heavier, mad at the world, and giving up on appearances for the sake of mean.

I'm quickly giving up hope.

I'm tired.

I'm getting to the point where I'm so tired that I don't want to actually date anyone. I just want someone who I can wake up next to every night and justify working myself to death for. To keep her safe. To keep her happy. To keep her from killing me as I sleep. This life is too short to be this stupid. You know?

And with that, I'm going to try to sleep.

Old people and biker dudes please keep yourself to the shop.

k9

Late or Early, I Can't Tell

I have 'The Adventures of Pete & Pete' season 1 on in the background as I'm taking 5 minutes to write this. I have work stuff loading (slowly -- my connection sucks) in the background and I'm getting a few minutes of time to myself.

I'm working two jobs now. One is an online job that one of my best friends got me and another for a local retail store. At the first, I'm a peon, at the second, I'm an Assistant Manager. I'm not sure if they're not at the same level or not.

I've been really really tired.

Why? Because I'm working about 70 to 80 hours a week and since the online job is for one of my best friends, I tend to take any shift I can on her teams to help her with coverage. There's lots of late night hours like this and I end up taking them because I think I'm helping out.

As I'm learning, a stupid thing is a stupid thing, even if it's done for good reasons.

So tonight I've had 2 and a half hours of sleep and 3 false starts. Oh, that job is on West Coast time. I'm on East Coast time. I have nightmares about it. I got up and came into the computer room, thinking up excuses for being late exactly 3 times tonight in 3 hours. Only to realize I was either way early or hallucinating.

The good news is that I'm going to be back in bed in almost a half an hour. The bad news? I'm going to be back here all day since this is my Tuesday of hell.

Oh. Yah. It's wood time of year and I haven't had any time yet to haul anything. I've just been tired.

Running on empty.

Today at my "management job" I had to turn the radio to country music. Why? Because I'm so spoiled by my mp3 player or my satellite radio that I can't stand the mix station that one of the gals at work insists on putting on the store radio. It's the same 5 songs over and over and over and they just got to the point of being painful.

Clear Channel radio is the devil.

So I changed the channel to a "MIX" station. There were different selections (more urban than anything) and... back to the same five songs the other station played. It hurt. It hurt parts of my brain that I didn't know I had.

And now, I give up.

Time to sign out and go to sleep.

Be superfantastically terrific.

k9