And Now For Customer Stories

Cut for the bored.  It’s long… I mean, really, seriously, ridiculously long.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

One More Tuesday

I’ve lived through three weeks of this training.

What I’ve come to realize that it is useless to people with common sense- as is most training that doesn’t have to do with the actual day-to-day work of your job.  However, the people for whom the training would come in handy are not the people who are going to take any lesson from it whatsoever.

Like Myra.

One of the role-plays we were supposed to do was a follow-up with an employee about an issue you’d spoken to them about already.  An incorrect behavior on their part, to be specific.  I was the manager, and my made-up problem was cell phone being carried on the floor (and this is actually something I’ve talked to people about as a non-manager).

Myra ended up being assigned to be my employee.  I was worried, because she is one of the people talked to most in real life about carrying her phone, but I hoped she could do the session without taking it personally.

I was wrong.

And she used the same excuses and reasoning that she used when actually warned about it.  And then refused to acknowledge my presence for the rest of the day, and several subsequent days.

And then, just yesterday, I was told that not only was she claiming that I was trying to make her look bad, but she’s also furious with me because…

She found out that I’m planning on being a stay-at-home mom when Simon and I have kids.  In the next year or so.  And she’s really quite mad about the fact that I can do that, and that I have life handed to me, and everything is so easy for me, etc.

And I can’t just tell her, “Y’know, Myra, the reason that you think my life is so easy is because I work hard for my employers, and I tell them my goals and ask them how to reach those goals.  I am not a single mom because I chose to not have sex until I was married.  I will get to be a stay-at-home mom because I chose to marry a man who felt that it was important that he be the breadwinner in the family and who loves to pamper me.  The only part of this entire thing that can be chalked up to chance is the fact that the man I happened to fall in love is going to be a doctor, making the single-income part of our life a breeze.  The rest of it is all because I wanted my life that way and did what it took to make that happen.  This does not equal a silver platter.”

But oooooh…. I want to read her the riot act so very badly.

Instead, I’m doing the grown-up thing, and ignoring her tantrums over me, asking my co-workers to stop relaying the things she says about me, and being pleasant- but distant- when I work with her.

She’s still making me angry, though.

Hair Cut

For the last month or so, I’ve been having the mad urge to Chop My Hair Off Now.

Between the ages of 12 and 24, I got this urge about every two years, and would have mom cut it to my chin, and then start growing it all back.  I would spend a year loving the short hair, and a year desperate for it to Grow Out Already.

Then, when I was 23, I started with the dyes.  The lovely (some), fun (most), crazy (all) funny hair colors.  I did chop it to my shoulders when it was blue, but then I let it grow out until the week after Katie got married.

Then I got the super-short cut to get rid of all the bleached hair.  For about nine or ten months I looked kinda shaggy, like when a boy lets his hair get longer than usual, but I had bangs, so I was happy.  It was also easy, between the dyes and the short hair, to tell me and my mom apart for a while.  That was earth-shattering news right there!

By the time I got married, the hair had made it back to my chin, and it’s been left to grow ever since.  I haven’t gone three years between haircuts in as long as I can remember…

But I thought about it… I thought about how I’ve been getting more headaches lately due to the weight, I thought about the number of huge chunks of my hair that Hero has eaten off, and I figured that finally, It Was Time.

So, due to the fact that my mom basically believes that hair should always be shorter in the front and longer in the back (She has believed this always, no matter that I’ve been asking for the opposite since I was 12.  I blame the 60′s.), I enlisted the help of my husband.  He did a great job!

This Past Week

Okay, I have cleaned the entire apartment top-to-bottom, and I think I’ve rid myself of the ants. It’s amazing how energetic I tend to feel the day after I’ve been sick… it’s like my body can’t remember two days ago when it felt perfectly fine, and instead focuses on the fact that yesterday I could barely move or talk without waves of nausea and goes, “Hey! Moving is AWESOME!”

I would like to add that I broke mere days after posting my last entry and gave Simon his gift early.  It was the first season of the original Transformers on DVD.  He hadn’t even known that it was available, so yay on me for gift-giving skills!  Boo on my ability to keep secrets, though…

I have a stack of books to read, and a bunch of stuff to type, both for 7th Sea and getting my NaNoWriMo stuff from last year into digital form before I start up on this year’s.  This year I intend to have an outline ready before I start- something to guide me rather than hoping I can make a story last that long.  My outline is almost half finished at this point, so I think I’m doing well.  The amount of handwritten stuff I’ve produced in the past nine months is incredible to me, but because my poor, abused-by-the-job-of-evil wrist can only take so much, my paper journal has been all but abandoned.

I never thought that the horribleness of that job could have such far-reaching and darn well annoying consequences.  At least it payed the bills for six months…

I Like Presents

I particularly like giving people presents, but when I find the perfect one, I hate having to wait until an appropriate moment to give it.

Case in point:

I just bought Simon’s birthday present.  I’ve been thinking about my idea for several days, and I found a really good deal on the item today, so I snatched it up while it was cheap.

His birthday isn’t actually for over four months.  I’ve already had his birthday card for three months, again, because I just happened to come across a perfect card.

I am going to be antsy until December.

I give myself a month before I break and tell him that I have the present…

Famous People, I Guess

I was ripping tickets today, at our exceptionally slow theater (it’s summer and gorgeous and the only big movie is a week old!), and a couple guys came in to see Public Enemies.

I tore their tickets, gave them their directions, and went back to chatting with the cashier.

Another usher came up to me and said, “You were totally cool there with Gilbert!”

“Who?”

“Gilbert Brown.  That guy you just helped.”

I think people need to stop assuming that I’m being c0ol and awesome when I actually just have no idea who these celebrities are who walk into the theater.  Anyone who’s seen me talking to celebrities I care about knows that I am far from cool.  The fact that I didn’t melt down (entirely) in front of Neil Gaiman and Brian Jacques is a miracle.

Sports stars?  Don’t care.

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince

Overall, I liked it, but more detail under the cut…

Surprise!

We were up north for the weekend with my in-laws.  Although a bit chilly, it was a lovely couple of days.  We had a (mostly) bog-free hike, I got to watch people not catch fish, and I got a wicked sunburn over the course of two hours.

I was also entertained by the fact that Simon, Greg, and I were all content to sit at the fire and poke at it, while all the other cousins between the ages of 18 and just younger than us decided that beer pong would be a fun camping activity.  I had to laugh.  I didn’t even know what beer pong was until Simon and I got curious and looked it up on Wikipedia a few months back…

So then I went to work on Monday, trying to psych myself up for the next two weeks, wherein I had been scheduled to work eleven of the next thirteen days.  During which Harry Potter was coming out.

Halfway through the day I was approached by my general manager, who has been planning a training course designed for an even number of people (roleplaying!  yay!  not!).  One person had dropped out, and since she’d been wanting me to take the course the next time around, she asked if I could fill in.

For reasons unknown to me, I said yes.  Which bumped up my work to twelve out of thirteen days.

And then I realized!

Myra, who I have mentioned before, has been having a few weeks of drama-llamaing.  She has: stolen chips, yelled at people, and  told everyone that she’s going to be promoted to manager soon- based on the fact that she’s going to a Management Interpersonal Skills Training seminar.

People had been coming to me in a panic, desperate that she not get promoted.  I still don’t know exactly why they came to me, as I have nothing to do with promotions, but I dutifully took the laundry list of concerns to an assistant manager, who promptly assured me that Myra is not getting promoted, she’s simply getting training that the GM wants all of her Team Leaders to eventually receive.

And this is the same training course that my GM wanted me to take.

During the rest of the shift, everyone was asking me about it… things like, “But I thought that was only for managers!”  “Myra said she’s taking it because she’s getting promoted- are you getting promoted, too?”

So first I got to set everyone straight on the rumors that Myra herself had been propagating, and then when she got in for work, someone told her that I was going to join her at training.  She then proceeded to get grumpy and give me the silent treatment for the rest of the day.

And at training on Tuesday, she didn’t speak one word to me- even in response to my cheerful “good morning!” until lunchtime, when she tried with a great lack of subtlety to lead me to complain about the session being lame.

Needless to say, I didn’t take her bait.  It was really awkward and weird, though.  I’m eight years older than this girl- why is she even bothering to try to undermine me?

But the training was kinda lame.  A lot of common sense, and a lot of ridiculous roleplaying, but the kicker was the madcrazy focus on:

SELF ESTEEM!

And how we are to always build the self esteem of employees, even during disciplinary action and termination.

Yeah.

Like I care about the self esteem of a jerk who has been an hour late to every shift in the past two weeks and who pawns all his work off onto his co-workers and still complains about everything being too hard.  I think not.  Their self esteem can go die in a corner.

Three more full Tuesdays of this!  If nothing else, it will look good on a resume…

Mini Vacation!

We’re leaving in a few hours to go up north for the weekend with Simon’s folks.  It really makes me reminisce about going to Minocqua with my mom’s family, and how grandpa needed his summer sausage and cheese because we were in Wisconsin!

Simon has promised me another adventure hike, most particularly, a bog-free adventure hike.  I mean, the last hike did end up making a great story… but we were ready to just fall over and drown in the bog by the time my father-in-law happened to see us frantically waving from the far shore like a bunch of haggard refugees.

Mmmm.  Beach, fire, books, and good company.  Followed up by six days in a row of working through the first week of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

If I’m not insane by Sunday, it will be a miracle.

Also, I have had no time or money to work on my Bellatrix costume for Wednesday.  Kaylee is a sad panda.

Borrowing

Among our group of friends there is a lot of loaning of books and dvds.  We’re a sharing kinda bunch, but after a while it gets hard to keep track of which item belongs to which person.

Once upon a time, when I had the shelf space to spare, I had one shelf for library books and one shelf for other borrowed stuff, and that was where things lived unless they were actively being used.

But I no longer have that space- in fact, I have negative shelf space and am having to stack books again.

So instead I’ve decided to start putting a post-it note on every single borrowed item to ensure that it is bearing the owner’s name.  I hope this will work the way I want it to.

Now I just need to convince certain people that we’re never going to get around to watching the dvd sets they loaned us and that they should take them back.  We’ve already seen DS9, and Simon has no interest in watching the first season of Grey’s Anatomy.  I wanted to see it, and already have.  They don’t need to be here any longer than the 2+ years we’ve kept them by our tv.