Work

in recent years, i've found myself addicted to good, honest work. like a drug, like a habit, like a fetish. if it's hard, if it's messy, if it helps make someone else's life a little easier and better, i'm wrist-deep in the grease and the mud, weeding or scrubbing or organizing or shoving twelve square-feet of product into a ten-square-foot space. at the end of the day, a little weed, a drink, a cigarette, and i'm happy.

should i be seeking more from life? i'm always told to follow my own dreams, to forge my own path, perhaps it's just a cop-out to help clear the foliage for others to move more easily about; am i wasting my energy chasing down realities that others seek to build? or is that what i'm here for? i don't know. i know it feels right, but i also know it feels easy, easier than figuring out my own shit and trying to make it into something real. i don't know.

i'm glad the ether is still here, some years after i discovered it.

I had my last shift at the clothes shop I worked at yesterday - hurray for Christmas temping! It was a glorious shift, because even hough I was bumped off my normal duties and given a shitty job, I didn't care because it didn't matter anyway.

I was tidying clothes at the front of the store with another girl when a supervisor waddles over to bitch at us. I had chosen that exact moment to pause and look at a weird tag on a tshirt I'd ever seen before, so fatty supervisor starts snarking at me to hurry up and stop being so lazy. She decides we have one hour to get as much of this wall tidy as possible and if we slacked off there would be DIRE CONSEQUECES, so coworker and I hop to it and we finish the whole thing in half an hour. Supervisor looked surprised we managed to get done so fast, and by that point it was quitting time for me so I did a little dance as I went to get my coat.

Hell yeah you fat bitch, I never have to take your snarky comments or do your own job for you again!

I never thought I'd be so happy to be on the dole again, but working retail made me realise that I really just hate people. I'm going to frame my staff shirt as motivaton to get a real job.

Have to keep working. Have to keep going. Only so many hours left. I have a job to do. Can't stop now. I'll never finish if I stop now. My heartbeat sets my pace. I'll stop when it does.

So, I'm currently at work, and I'm bored out of my mind. It's 2:19 am and I have about an hour and fourty minutes left on my shift. The awesome and awful thing about this job is: I don't have to do anything accept sit at a desk and just pay attention to what's going on, welcome guests, and make sure that there aren't any creepers trying to sneak into the dorms.

It's fuckin boring as hell

Especially the late shifts, no one ever comes in or out during the late shifts. At least not yet, maybe when summer conferences come in. But, the girl who is going to be taking over for me in an hour and fourty minutes is very sweet and will have already worked 4 hours today, she worked ~10.25 hours yesterday. I find that to be crazy. I don't want to work more than 8 hours in a day for this if I don't have to. Lucky me, I may be pulling three 12 hour shifts next week to make sure that I get all my hours in and at the same time get to visit with a friend of mine who is visiting.

it'll be fun no matter what....eventually

i think it's just because the conferences haven't started yet that this is so god damn boring. Once boring people and interesting people start milling bout it should get b etter. Sadly I'll probably never see them because I'm trying to get the boring shifts so that I can sleep and go to class as well. Weee lucky me!

At least I know it could be worse. I could be pulling 36 hour shifts for FedEx in Indianapolis or I could be working for my dad....

I just started work for real today, as opposed to training. I am surrounded by beautiful, twenty-something women for superiors. This is awesome.

i hate my job and i love my job because it turns me into someone else.

when i'm there, i'm counting your money before you pull it out of your wallet. i choose to talk to you based on the brand of your shoes or how white your hair is or the snippets of eavesdropped conversation i hear as you pass by. i put a sweet smile on and look as little like a shark as i can manage and walk you deftly away from the cheap products, laugh in your face and make you trust me when i say they're not worth your time, because you're better than that. i talk about you behind your back about whether you're worth my time or whether you're buying or difficult or cute or crazy. i talk about you when you leave, cursing and laughing.

i play up my cleavage and look superior when you ask me questions. i say trust me and it's no problem and no, good question and sure, think about it, i tilt my head to the side and look interested while i'm grooming you. and i'm calculating in my head how much money i'm going to make.

they don't train us to do any of this. my boss just suggests that i look cuter, that i call the angry customers and soothe them, that i play up the fact that i'm a woman in a man's world and damn good at it too. he sends me after the housewives and the simpering old men. i make more money than most anyone i know. i take pride in my skillful manipulation.

all salespeople are evil. don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.

I despise working at a grocery store. The unhappy teenager at the counter doesn't care that you have a fuel discount of ten cents or that the weather is great outside. In fact that's just rubbing in how I'm inside doing nothing but scanning your shit. The incesant beeping are the seconds of my life bein wasted in a part-time job where I am not doing anything meaningful. I'm sorry that your groceries are not the bane of my exsistance.

Well actually I'm not sorry at all.

I can't wait to get real job where it has meaning as opposed to this shitty one that is absolutly dreadful. I feel my brain melting as I stand there. I am an AP student, I should be able to do better things then Safeway.

Also another thing, all you with the looks on your face like you must be dumb to work there are wrong. Give me the money however you please, I know how to count change. You don't have to dumb anything down. Maybe just to piss you off since I'm so dumb I'll accidentally put your fucking bread on the bottom, or better yet slam your fucking eggs down.

Next in line please.

My hours have been cut. Severely cut, in fact. How am I supposed to pay my bills without money. Granted I don't have many and there's only one that I can't really cover right now, but still. I need hours inorder to pay it back. I need to work for several more hours to get any sort of return on my next check. I've worked 6 hours and fifteen minutes in a week. I know that things are slow right now, but I only get paid about $10/hr and that's only about $60 for a week. My last pay check, the one where I worked a bunch of over time, was over $600. And you still owe me a fucking pay check! That one should pay the bills for this month but no!

It sucks working for family... my other job is only a "on need basis" and she doesn't need me much so I don't work much, but she pays me when I'm done.