Blogger 365 Day 158 - Remember when I used to write long blog entries? Well.......

Greetings as I am live at the bus stop on the corner of 5th Avenue and Smithfield Street, though chances are you will not be reading this until well after the fact.  I am just waiting on a 61 bus (A,B,C or D) so I can head to Squirrel Hill and grab some lunch.  I have been at work for two hours now and decided that I would sneak out, grab some lunch and then come back into work.  The advantages of management I guess.  Since I haven't been to the Squirrel Cage in quite some time I believe the consuming of a Cajun chicken sandwich is called for.

Today is officially day #1 AD (after Dee) so I guess I am writing this as the only manager left at Smithfield News, save for Ed and Brian who are more along the lines of ownership than management.

If Dee was having second thoughts about leaving us, I think yesterday more than convinced her that leaving is probably a good thing.  We had one person quit, one person call off, one person go home early sick, the back office computer reset itself requiring us to call the vendor to get the password to log in again, catch a customer trying to steal around $100 in merchandise, and have a vendor forget to send us an order we had placed.  This is all on top of those things we are required to do.   Yes, Dee's last day turned out to be a fun one.  We will probably be seeing her a few times over the next couple of weeks, she isn't moving until the end of June, but she wanted some time to get her things in order before heading out.

All of this should prove most interesting, I can't speak to how much the employees liked or disliked Dee and I will not make up words to put in their mouths, but whenever they decided they were going to call off, it was always Dee they called.  I guess they felt she was the easiest to deal with in that regard, which is probably a correct assessment.  I know Brian is not looking forward to people calling him at all hours of the day just to say they aren't coming in, Ed is only around half the year and I can't see him wanting to be taking call offs while he is thousands of miles away in Florida and for me, I just don't think I am liked all that much.  Good thing I am not running for class president or something, I wouldn't stand a chance.

Anyway, like I said at the start, I am heading off to lunch.  I went to the store formerly known as Gus Millers first so I could get Esam's cigarette order and to see if he needed and help ordering lottery tickets, then made my way down to Smithfield News, where I had to fix a jam in one of the lottery machines, load a new book of tickets, take the money out of both machines, run a credit card settlement report, price and place Esam's order (as well as total the tobacco coupons he gave us), pull the booking sheet for everything that is already scheduled to come in on Monday and check the company email.  Not too shabby for two hours worth of work if I do say so myself.

I am not close to done, I still have price changes to do, orders for both Sledd and GFS to place and by the looks of things, potentially deal with a schedule issue come tomorrow morning.  Belinda decided that she would rather double on Fridays and then have the weekends off.  I have no problem with that, she has been there a long time (easily longer than myself) and if she wants to get her hours in 4 days as opposed to 5 by working 16 hours on Friday, more power to her.  That did however create a hole in the schedule on Saturday mornings, which Ed filled by putting a person in that spot, Beth, whom I have no faith in whatsoever.  Chances are I am right in that regard, as she is supposed to be in charge on Saturdays, yet today she managed to show up an hour late and is already whining and crying that she may not make it in tomorrow morning.  My own past with Beth is checkered, she used to be our rep for Coca-Cola, and was doing such a fine job that over a 12 week span she showed up once to actually do an order, the rest of the time I was forced to do them myself.  Don't get me wrong, I have no problem doing orders, I would argue I am even relatively good at it, but if I have to do all of the work then nobody else should be making a sales commission for me doing their job.  My personal assessment is just that she is lazy, and giving her a position of authority like running the store is just a mistake.  But I didn't get to make that call.

By the way, I have been off the bus for a while now, I am in the Cage, my iced tea and food are sitting in front of me and I should commence with the eating portion of my day.  Problem is, once I start rambling I find it hard to stop.  I have my electronic dog collar (i.e. cell phone) with me should anyone need to reach me but so far it has proven to be a most useless purchase.  I think I have gotten all of one phone call on it this week (I told you I wasn't liked all that much) but Ed may call to either have me address the potential schedule issue tomorrow or just ask me to work it myself.

As I am sitting here eating my French fries there is a girl at the bar who looks vaguely familiar.  I know that it isn't who I think it is, for one she is too young to be the person in question, but still the resemblance is close enough that they could probably pass as sisters.

I should also note they have someone new behind the bar today, not the lady who is normally there.  Not sure how this will affect the dispensing of the iced tea, hopefully not at all but that remains to be seen.  The cook is the same so I am confident my sandwich will still kick ass.  There are about 20 people in the bar right now, which isn't a large number but does make me wonder if maybe I chose the wrong career, sitting around a bar drinking seems like a pretty good plan for a Saturday, certainly better than the plans I usually have.

I guess I should talk a little bit about my family on here, if only because what has been going on on the home front is bothering me.  I called my mom on Wednesday, I was making my way home from work and the casino (I had $60 in free slot play I wanted to burn off) and at the bus stop I decided to call home.  I didn't expect anyone to pick up, my mom usually doesn't answer calls from numbers she doesn't know and I was calling from my new cell phone, but I figured worst case scenario I would leave a message and she would have my new number on her caller ID ( don't ask me what my phone number is, I don't know it, another sign of how unthrilled I am about having this device).  To my surprise though she did pick up, she saw the number and based on the time (it was like 9:30pm) decided whomever was calling, to call that late, it must be important.  So I proceeded to catch her up on the goings on here, hey I got a cell phone, it Dee's last week, yada, yada, yada.  Then I asked how things were going at home and that is pretty much where my heart sunk.  She told me that her and Mike (her husband) were applying for food stamps.  Now I am not foolish enough to think that they are made of money or anything, I know my mom is old enough to get Social Security, but Mike is like 17 years younger than her, and while he did have health issues in the past (long time readers will remember that he suffered a brain aneurysm a few years back) it is not like he is an invalid or anything, he is still more than capable of doing some form of work.  Prior to his health issues he was a truck driver for Wal-Mart and was making decent money, in around the $70-80 thousand a year range.  Between that money and the money my mom had gotten from my grandmother's estate when she died, they had ample opportunity to sock some money away for a rainy day.  But they didn't. Instead after the aneurysm Mike briefly went back to work for Wal-Mart and for reasons that I know nothing about they let him go.  It would be easy to say that it is another shining example of the evil of Wal-Mart, but apparently there was cause to let him go because he did not fight his termination.  Instead he went on unemployment for a while, then took another trucking job that lasted less than a year and went back to being unemployed.  Instead of saving some money while he was working, they instead bought three cars, and when he quit working they lived off of my mom's Social Security and the money from my grandmother's will until the will money dried up and they find themselves looking at food stamps as a means to get by.  It is all just sad, depressing and was probably 100% avoidable.

I am just made of different stuff I guess, not that I am all that responsible with my money, but if I am not working then I am out pounding the pavement looking for the next job, any job really, just to make sure I can pay the bills and not just spending money until the well runs dry.

Well lunch is over, I got one refill on my iced tea so my service wasn't awful, especially since the barmaid was waiting on everyone at the bar plus all of the tables that were occupied.  I suppose I could have organized an Occupy Squirrel Cage movement and got some anti corporate, anti globalization signs for my booth, pitched a tent and laid around in my own feces until another glass of tea arrived, but I do have to get back to work.  Maybe next time.

I am back to waiting for a bus.  Thankfully one is about a block away and the bus stop isn't overrun with people ( yet).  Just my luck, it wasn't my bus after all, so there is still time for the hordes to descend upon the bus stop.  I would like to get a bus where I can sit down, it is much easier to type than by standing.  Plus I am lazy, I would just rather sit.

I see another bus.  Port Authority 2, electric boogaloo.  It too is not a bus I can take, so we continue waiting for Godot, or a bus, whichever comes first.  Look at me busting out movie and literary reference like I know shit or something.  Just remember, I have more moves than Gale Sayers in his prime.

Maybe I needed that Squirrel Cage run more than I realized, I haven't been this wordy in ages.  Just when you think I am going to be all about rather brief blog entries I go and do something like this.  Sucks, doesn't it?

Well the hordes have grown, still no sign of a bus.  At least the weather is nice, it is very easy to stand outside today, sunny skies, I would guess it is probably about 80 degrees outside, just all around kind of awesome.  Just the opposite of the weather one would normally expect during the Three Rivers Arts Festival.  The Port Authority now has two buses going the very same way showing up at the very same time.  Benito Mussolini would be proud.

Typing on the bus is harder than I would have thought.  Somehow they have managed to equip this bus with shock absorbers that would make the car in The Flintstones seem like a smooth ride by comparison, and as an added feature it appears to be equipped with a GPS that not only locates every pothole, but actively seeks them out and directs the bus to drive right over/through them.  Perhaps that is a sign that I should take a break.

Brief interruption there as I logged another 6 hours at work.  Ed came in around 8pm, but I was busy so I didn't have a lot of time to talk to him.  I had my order to for Sledd to do as well as GFS.  As an added bonus, while it was at lunch I got another cigarette order to price and place.  Plus I reloaded the milkshake machine, adding another six dozen milkshakes to it, since it was almost empty.  I also put out some more desserts, there were only 4 left from the deli, so I put another 10 or so out, some molten chocolate cake and some apple caramel cheesecake.  Not sure if they will sell this weekend or not, all I know is they can't sell if they are sitting in the freezer in the basement.

At least I didn't have to wait for a bus after work, I no more than got to my bus stop and the bus was right there.  It was, dare I say, Minute Rice perfect.  Now I am going to go home, post this rather large missive, make some dinner and play some Marvel Puzzle Quest.  I am all kinds of cool in my antisocial butterflyness, aren't I?

Okay, bus is stopping and so am I.  I am outtie, like a belly button.