In absentia

I’ve been mad busy.

I got myself a little part-time job for the holidays, taking kids’ portraits at a higher-end photo studio. It’s a smallish chain so you may not have heard of it, and I wouldn’t mention the name of the company anyway. They decided to torture me last week and scheduled me for 25 hours spread over six days, and no day has ever ended with me getting out of there exactly on time so I put in closer to 30 hours. Whew.

It’s a fun job. The kids are cute, and the parents are mostly sane. The management leaves something to be desired but it’s not horrendous either. The manager, seeing the MBA on my application, mentioned he was looking for an assistant manager and that maybe it was something we could talk about after the holiday season. Definitely not looking for a full-time gig… but if it’s something I could do working mostly weekends I might be interested. The place definitely needs help. I’m mostly doing it now, though, for fun. The paycheck will be nice and all, but mostly I just wanted to get into an official photo studio and see how they do things, and do some learnin’.

Anyway, there are lots of little things I could write about, but they are all lost in the swirl of busyness of the last couple weeks. So mostly I’m just remembering the kick-ass sweet potatoes I made for T-day, running back and forth in the photo studio, and being outside with the kids today putting up Christmas lights and seeing the cool display of the crescent moon, Jupiter, and Venus all hanging out in the evening sky together.

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I’ll stop telling you how to do your job when you figure out how to do it correctly

Now, I know.  You’re like 17, and working the cash register at ShopRite is, like totally not your life’s ambition.  You’re waiting for bigger and better things to come your way, like working the cash register at Auto Zone.  I get it.  But, dude, right now, you’re a cashier at ShopRite.  So let’s get a few things straight right now.

1)  First, I apologize for not having my shopper’s club card with me.  Your system allows me to recite my phone number in substitution for the actual presence of the card.  I know swiping the card over the scanner is like way totally easier than typing in a ten-digit phone number.  I’m sorry for that.  But I really do not appreciate having to tell you my phone number FOUR TIMES because you lack the manual dexterity or attention span to type it in correctly the first three times.  And your idiocy is only funny to you.

2)  I guess, thanks, for not proofing me when I bought my six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.  Your register requires you enter my birth date to appease the UPC gods or something, so I told you my birth date by saying the month, day and year.  (Like “February 17, 1974” — though that is not REALLY my birth date, internet stalker people.)  Do you really lack the mental fortitude to convert from “February” to “02”?  Did you REALLY need to ask me what number month February is?  Because, let me tell you dude, the problems don’t get any easier as you get older.

3)  Maybe you haven’t taken biology yet.  Or maybe you spent all of it scratching your name into the lab tables.  But seriously, don’t bag my strawberries and bananas with my raw chicken.  And seriously, SERIOUSLY, don’t make me explain why doing so is A Really Bad Idea.  I guess ShopRite doesn’t do much training for you on cell biology and epidemiology and infectious diseases, but the short answer to your stunned “why?” should have been “because I don’t want to shit my ass off” instead of the kinder, gentler, “Because it’s not a good idea to bag raw meat with produce.  In fact, don’t ever bag raw meat with anything other than raw meat, ever.”  You’re lucky my kids were there.

Now please, go grow a brain.