Multiply 365 Day 218 - Addition by subtraction

 

Let's start by getting a little housecleaning out of the way first. It has been better than a month since I did anything with the change meter. Part of that has been just other things getting in the way, and part has been that the change meter really hasn't been all that productive for me. But at some point I guess I have to add to the total, and there is no time like the present. So without further ado the newest add to the total is $2.95 bringing the grand total to $306.70. I guess the next benchmark will be the $400 plateau, but I don't see that happening before the end of the year. Hell I will be lucky to get there by this time next year.

I did pass the 1/3^rd point on my quest to get the 8 GB MP3 player on mycokerewards. The prize is at 1500 points, I am in the ballpark of 540 or so, and while I have maxed out in any one week, I have been adding decent amounts of points every week, despite the fact I don't even drink Coke. I just keep finding caps or twelve pack codes, usually I find at least one a day and I haven't taken a walk to go look for them in ages. They are just on my normal path going between work and wherever else I end up going.

I even picked up a new freebie this past week. I had signed up for something on Facebook a while back, a chance to be a product tester for discountofficeitems.com. I really expected nothing from it, the idea they were going to give away free stuff I am sure brought people in droves. Of course the freebies don 't come without a stipulation, that being you have to use the item and write a review of it in order to continue to receive more freebies. When I hadn't heard anything (not that I was anxiously awaiting anything) I had all but forgotten about it, until I opened the mailbox the other day and found a free dry erase marker in there. Now me being all about things that are free, I went ahead and took the marker to work (where there are a few different dry erase boards I actually do use, so it has a practical application) and have since wrote a review on it, though there really isn't much to say about a solitary marker. Unless it sucks and is all dried out when you get it, but this wasn't and it seems to work okay, so I went ahead and wrote my review and will now wait patiently for my next freebie offer.

I am still tinkering with mysurvey.com too. Not that I am anywhere close to cashing out there, I am sitting on about $2.75 right now and need $11 before I can get anything from the prize catalog. But that application is more a matter of patience, you never get a bunch of surveys to do all at once, but you can pick up a few bucks here and there, and unlike some services you do get paid for every survey, even if many of them are only a nickel or dime. I still have managed to get over $400 dollars worth of stuff from them since I first signed up many moons ago.

And lastly of course we know that I recently got another $5 Amazon gift card from Swagbucks that I gave away on the page. I am pretty close to cashing out for another one, I only need maybe 10 points or so, which I should have by tomorrow night at the very latest. Check that last statement, after doing a couple of searches I did get the last remaining points for my next gift card. And unlike the last one I am keeping this one for myself, after all I am only about $40 from a Kindle, which would make a decent Christmas present for someone, just not sure who yet. Maybe me, lol.

Okay, I think all of the requisite house cleaning is out of the way, Pandora is fired up and it is time to get to the real blogging portion of today's episode.

Today marked day #14 in a row at work, I am starting to again see the light at the end of the tunnel (though I thought the same thing last week until Thursday) but at least I was handed another nugget of wholesome goodness that made my work life a little more tolerable.

One of the guys on my crew was a guy named Curtis. The thing is, I didn't work with Curtis all that much, usually he was on the evening shift (3pm-11pm) whereas I am there from 7am-3pm most days. And on those days when Ed would put Curtis on my shift, we would almost always send him to our other store (Universal), if for no other reason that to get him out of our way. See Ed would put him on my shift in case I needed help, but in my eyes Curtis really wasn't much help. So it was far easier to send him to our other store than to have to deal with him. Because despite the fact that Universal is a small store (5 coolers, and almost no product stocking on the shelves) somehow Curtis would find a way to turn what should be a relatively simple project into an all day adventure.

Some examples of how inept Curtis is, I mentioned earlier this year that our store was reset, that is the grocery provider came in, reorganized the shelving and retagged everything. Part of my job for those three days was to help with the reorganization of the store and make sure everything went back in a manner that would meet Ed's approval. Because of the size of the task, Ed asked me if I needed any additional help, besides Sammy who is always on the same shift as me. I said not really, I was pretty sure we could manage, but he scheduled Curtis for those three days as well. Curtis spent all three days building one shelf. That, my friend's, is government work. If that were the only example I could site I am sure many people would say that I am just being too hard on him. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. On Wednesday we got paid, and as is the case usually people from Universal will be sent down to our location one at a time so that they can get their check and not short hand that store by having all of the employees show up at once. Since Ed had Curtis on the morning shift again and I had once again sent him to Universal to be rid of him, he came back up to get his check. He left for Universal around 8:30am. He came back to our store to get his check at 1:30pm, and when he picked up his check he tells John in the office that he is working on the coolers at Universal. Mind you, he has now been there 5 hours and Universal has all of 5 coolers. A fact that was not lost on John and he made mention of that very fact. And on Friday we received a couple of deliveries from outside vendors that Ed sometimes deals with, CB Distributors and Pricemaster. Well I brought both orders into the office to be checked in, the CB Distributor order I got checked in pretty quickly but while I had opened the Pricemaster order, Ed told me not to worry about it yet, he still had to get the prices for some of the items and we would do it on Monday. So I take the CB Distributor order out to be put away until it was needed upstairs and come back into the office. Curtis comes in (back from another 5 hour tour of the coolers at Universal, no doubt) and Ed mentions that some of the stuff that was in the CB order needs to go upstairs right away and he starts mentioning items to go up and here is Curtis pulling stuff out of the Pricemaster box instead. I say, “That's not the right order, I have already checked the CB order in” but Curtis just continues to pull stuff out of the wrong box. Ed mentions some things he needs, Curtis is busy pulling out the wrong shit (because it was the wrong box) when finally I look at him and say, “Do you fucking listen?” I suppose it was one of those what you would call professional moments on my part, but if it was over the top nobody said anything, other than Dee who said “Way to tell him Matt!” Hey, at least it stopped him from grabbing the wrong stuff, so I proceed to go and grab the things Ed actually asked for and take them upstairs, and since it was near the end of my shift, went back to the office to pack up my laptop and get ready to head out for the day. I get upstairs and Curtis starts this spiel about how he didn't like how I talked to him, to which I said well if he would fucking listen that wouldn't be a problem, would it?

Enter Saturday, where Curtis was scheduled from 3pm-11pm and I guess at some point Ed came in the store and wanted to work on a few projects and asked for Curtis's assistance. Now I don't know how it all played out but apparently Curtis said something smart to Ed and Ed just fired him. I have a phrase for such a firing, it is addition by subtraction. But when I came in this morning I hear how Curtis got fired and I look in our charge book (the book where we keep our store purchases to be against our paycheck) and right on the front is a note saying that Curtis is no longer allowed to charge anything in the store. Yes, it did warm the cockles of my heart. Then, after I get the bank squared away and everything that needs done for being a primary (think shift manager) the phone rings and it is Curtis asking if his charge sheet has been pulled yet and I say yes it has. Maybe he was hoping to sneak in some purchases before word of his demise got out, I don't know but that was not an issue since his sheet was already gone. So our conversation ends and about a half hour later the phone rings again and again it is Curtis, calling to tell me he didn't want to get anything, he just wanted to know if Ed pulled his sheet, because that's the way Ed is and all. And then he starts in again about how I talked to him in the office the other day and I just said, “Listen, I am working here and this isn't helping me get anything done” and hung up the phone. Other than that little bit of nonsense though it was a pretty good day, at least by me being the de facto babysitter standards. I worked with one of our newer employees, Nicholas, and he seems to be decent enough. All of the bank numbers came out okay, which is huge because any shortages fall on me for that shift, and I didn't even have too many asshole customers, at least by our standards. At one point I had a couple that Nicholas looked at me and said I had the patience of a saint for dealing with them, but that was about as hard as it got all day. I have to go over one accounting issue with John in the morning, but other than that it was all good. Curtis being gone just made it better.

Now it is time for a nap, 14 days down, 6 to go. Let's hope the last 6 were as good as today.