I Need to Wash My Brain

A few years ago (6 to be exact), I put up a story about a woman I used to work with that I called TMI Lady because of her habit of telling people a lot of personal things in her life that she should’ve kept to herself.

A few weeks ago, I told you about a guy I currently work with who believes he’s an outdoorsman because a Facebook quiz told him he was a redneck and he watched hunting videos.

I’m starting to think these two people are related in some way because he’s started telling me things about himself, and his personal life, that I never wanted to know and shouldn’t be told to anyone else. Not only did he tell me, I heard him telling other people (who looked just as disturbed as I was) these things as well. Normally, I don’t believe in inflicting discomfort on others, but in this case since I had to hear this crap, I’m forwarding the TMI to you all too.

In the past few weeks, he’s told me the following:

* He and his newlywed wife haven’t had sex in over two weeks.

* When they do have sex, because they are religious and don’t believe in using condoms, their preferred method of birth control is pulling out.

* On their honeymoon, he injured his neck somehow, so he bought his wife a vibrator to use if his neck was hurting too badly to perform his duties.

* He was going to an interview for a second job straight from clocking out at our place of employment. He told me he wasn’t going to poop until after it was over because he’s a bigger guy, which means he sometimes has problems completely wiping his butt, and he didn’t want to go to his interview smelling like crap.

None of that was anything I wanted to hear. I tried walking away when he was telling me these things, but he kept following me. I’m also still new enough at my job that being openly rude to someone (by telling them to shut the hell up) could end up biting me in the behind.

New Job Update

I got my 30 day review yesterday… about a week late. Something I need to remember for my reviewer’s review.

So far, it’s going well. During my review they said they’re pleased with my performance. I’ve made a few small mistakes here and there, which is to be expected from someone who hasn’t been working there very long. Thankfully, they’re patient enough not to go ballistic about it on the few occasions I messed up. They simply brought the mistakes to my attention and gave me pointers on how to avoid making the same mistakes again.

While they’re pleased with my performance, I am satisfied with the job too. It’s certainly not the worst job I’ve ever had. The work is mostly simple. There is enough work (usually) to keep me busy all day without feeling rushed, so the days go by fairly quickly. My new coworkers are nice and mostly cool.

I’m glad I finally made the change and went with this job. Just the schedule change alone was worth it, but the fact that I’m making more money doing something that isn’t running me ragged like my last job is icing on the cake.

A New Chapter in Life

I am not a big fan of change. I prefer to stay in places and situations where I feel comfortable. Because of that, I will sometimes stay somewhere that I should be moving on from. There are a couple jobs I’ve had that I should have left long before I did, for various reasons, but I stuck with them just because I didn’t want to change.

Today was the start of something different for me, though. I started a new job today. I can’t say for sure whether I like it or not yet, because it’s hard to really tell much about a job based on an orientation meeting and a couple hours of training, but it will bring about some big changes for me. First, it’s more money than my last job. Second, and more importantly (to me, at least), is a much better schedule. Honestly, I would have taken my old salary someplace as long as they improved my schedule.

I don’t really have much negative to say about the last place I was working. They treated me well. The work, while sometimes hectic, really wasn’t all that hard most of the time. I just had two big problems with it. One: I clocked in at 3:30 a.m. That meant I had to wake up at 2:30 a.m. in order to get ready and make it to work on time. When you have to wake up that early for work, you have two choices. You can either go to bed early, and miss out on time with your family, or you can barely sleep. I chose the latter and barely slept.

Two: I had to work at least one day on the weekends. When they first instituted this policy, they made me work Saturdays. I finally got to the point to where I started refusing to work on Saturday and they let me come in on Sundays instead.

At my new job, I’ll be starting work at 7, Monday through Friday. Weekends off.

Hopefully, the work is as good as the schedule. If it’s not, that’ll suck, but I’ll deal with it to be able to work the days and hours that I need to.

I’m Too Sexy For This Post

Revis Edgewater: Father, husband, author. Model?

A few days ago I saw a new person at work. I asked who it was and they told me it was someone from the corporate safety team. Ok, sure. Don’t know why anyone like that would need to be in with the rest of us at 4 a.m., but if they say so. I go about my business and do my normal routine until an hour or so later, when my supervisor walks up to me and tells me that they want to take pictures of me working.

Ummm…. what???

Apparently they’re putting together a new safety package for people to go over during orientation and they were there to take pictures of employees working. One picture of them doing things the correct way, and another where they’re doing things the incorrect way.

I told him that I don’t care if they take my picture, but I reminded him that I was on a timer. What I do needs to be completed by certain times or we get in trouble. As long as they don’t slow me down to the point where I’m running behind, I don’t care that they take pictures of me working. He says, “Great,” and hands me a waiver that I have to sign that allows them to take my picture. I shake my head and wonder what i gotten myself into.

The answer to that question is that I got myself into a photo shoot. They didn’t take pictures of me working. They took picture of me in poses that they put me into. I had to stand there for ten minutes while the guy and his “photographer” (aka his assistant who took the pictures on his phone) moved my hand around to try to find the perfect position for my hand to be in to present the right and wrong way to hold the handle of a pallet jack. No, I’m not making that up.

Eventually, it got to the point that I had to tell them that I needed to get moving or I was going to be late with my work. They told me that they had what they needed and showed me the picture before they moved on to the next thing. It wasn’t even a picture of me. It was just a picture of my hand on the pallet jack handle.

So, I’m not a regular model. I’m a hand model.

RTotD: 21250

As I was leaving work today, they handed me a birthday card that had a gift card to a coffee place inside it. While I appreciate the gesture, there are two things wrong with it. One, my birthday was almost two months ago. Two, I don’t drink coffee.

Bathroom Poetry

A while back, some of my more immature coworkers decided to start writing/drawing on the wall above the urinal in one of the bathrooms. Some of them were easily identified as the work of the high school kids that (thankfully) no longer work there, such as the numerous depictions of penises. There were a few other different ones, like the written hope that the person standing there will, “Have a good pee!” Most of these have been covered up not long after they’re put up.

There is one thing, however, that keeps getting put back up whenever it gets painted over and it’s a poem that someone scrawled on the wall. Now, I’ll admit that I chuckled after reading it the first time, but the rest of the guys who work there go on like this poem is the best thing ever. I’ve heard more than one of them recite it from memory in the break room. Personally, I don’t think it’s as good as they’re making it out to be, but I’ll let you all decide for yourselves.

The day was bright

The sky was blue

Down the alley

The shitwagon flew

A bump was hit

A cry was heard

A lady was hit

With a flying turd

Unsung Heroes

When it comes to professions, First Responders and the military are usually the first to get praised. It makes sense. They put their lives on the line every day to keep us all safe and, in doing so, they’re forced to see the worst of humanity. I, for one, try to thank them when I can for the sacrifices that they make on our behalf.

The people that I’m thinking of don’t quite go through that, but they do have to look upon a very ugly side of humanity every day…. customer service workers.

I worked at Walmart for 11 years. In that time, I was verbally abused hundreds of times (almost always for something that I had absolutely no control over) and was forced to see things that have scarred me for life. I’m trying to think of the stupidest thing that I got yelled at for, but there’s too many to choose from. So, I’ll pick the first one that comes to mind.

I was once cussed out by a woman because I declined a tip from her. I politely explained that accepting tips was against company policy, and, since my manager was standing within sight, I couldn’t take it. She flew off the handle, cussing up a storm and telling everyone within earshot that I was horrible at my job (despite the fact that only moments ago I had done so well that she wanted to give me a gratuity). As much as I wanted to say it, I stopped myself from snapping, “I’m sorry for not taking your tip, lady, but your $3 isn’t worth me losing my fucking job!” The manager heard the commotion, came to investigate and told the lady that I was right to refuse her. She then started cussing him out and he had security escort her out of the building.

And that’s just one example… From me…. I’m sure everyone who works in customer service has at least one story just like it.

I am thankful that I don’t have to go through that on a daily basis anymore. I’m not sure I could put up with the general public for 40 hours a week now.

I still see it, though.

Any time I go into a store, there’s a chance that I’ll see some poor customer service workers get abused by asshole shoppers for things that are not their fault. Like the experience I had yesterday, for example.

A woman in front of me at the grocery store was trying to pay for her items, but the card reader wasn’t liking the chip in her credit card. So, what does she do? She starts getting really shitty with the cashier. After the third time it couldn’t read the chip, the reader went to its backup, the magnetic strip on the back of the card. This only further angered and confused the woman. “This stupid machine says to swipe my card. What does that mean?”

….

“It means to swipe your card, you dumb bitch.”

Ok, nobody actually said that. But, I wanted to. If I wasn’t so sure that the crazy woman was going to attack me if I did say it, I probably would have. Instead, I just laughed at her stupidity. She either didn’t hear me laughing or didn’t think I was laughing at her because she paid me no attention. Then again, she was still awfully busy being rude to the cashier, who has no control over the card readers or the chip in that lady’s credit card.

When it was finally my turn to pay, and the woman had walked away, I congratulated the cashier for being polite throughout the whole episode. The cashier was a young woman, either still in high school or a recent graduate (I’d say somewhere between 17-19). I don’t know how she has the patience to put up with that at her age. If someone did that to me when I was that age, I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep my mouth shut.

Now that I’m older, I’ve found that a lot of the people who throw these tantrums actually want to make the cashiers/store employees snap back at them. It gives their arguments more credence when they try to get free stuff out of the store’s management team. So, towards the end of my tenure at Walmart, whenever I got an extremely rude or obnoxious customer, I made sure to always be as polite as I could possibly be. Not because I needed to keep my job (although that factored in a little), but because being nice to them always seemed to make them even more angry.

So, please, the next time you’re at the store, make sure you are kind to the people working there… unless of course they’re rude to you first. In that case, to hell with them.