B365V2.25 - Passing hope

.    So birthday month is in full effect (holla!) and it seems likeeverydaynowanother someone I know is having a birthday as well.  Stop hogging my spotlight you greedy bastards, this is my time.

     Anyway birthday month is in full effect.  Ed is back from Florida and he and I have butted heads once already, I swear at some places I would have been fired for insubordination at this point, but apparently my value outweighs my negatives.  Or at least I think, I was told today that tomorrow is my employee evaluation.  I could be a stickler and say when I first took my current job I was promised one at 6 months,but since I am getting the company baseball tickets Saturday night, no sense in being too greedy.  Too greedy if for the annual Christmas list anyway.

    But Friday I get my evaluation for the "How's my driving?"  of the store after 12 months.  Hey we kept the doors open, that is always a plus.  I have had my good days and bad ones, though I would like to think more good than bad.  We caught another thief at work this week.  It all started when I went to do our order, I am going up and down the aisles scanning the shelf tags for items I need.  When you do this long enough, you get a feel for what sells quickly and what moves slower, but is what I call a just in case item, that being just in cases done needs it.  Laundry detergent would be such an item, anyone who does planning would go to the grocery store, or wal mart or even Cvs if it is on sale, before they would buy it from us, but some people do wait until the last minute, and we are the only place open they can get to, so we carry laundry detergent.  Except as I get to that section of the store I see that a bunch of bottles are gone.  Which is odd, because they were there the last time I did an order, so unless we had a run on the stuff, it obviously was stolen.

     So I start rolling our camera on the aisle back, the last time I recalled seeing it their was Monday when the grocery order came in late and I helped Sammy put it away.  So I have a starting point, 3 pm Monday and an ending point, 12 pm on Wednesday when I noticed it was missing.  I start at 3 pm Monday and move the cameras ahead, one hour at a time.  3 pm  - good, 4 pm - good, 5 pm - good, 6 pm - gone.  It's like playing the Clock Game on the Price is Right, not I have my hour down I can cut it into half hours. Then 15 minute increments, until I find the quarter hour I need, and then I can just start the cameras rolling in fast forward.  Sure enough at 5:07pn, their is a lady ( that is me being politically correct, I should have said fatblack crack whore) stuffing a personal bag full of bottles of laundry detergent, probably so she could go sell them on the street to buy her next fucking crack hit.

      I get a picture of her, save it to my flash drive and print off a copy of it so everyone upstairs can see what she looks like should she come back in.  Not more than an hour later she was back in the store, stealing more shit and asking for a job application.  Steve recognized her from the picture and because he was also working on Monday, so he and Ed chased her down, while I was pulling up her latest and greatest caper in the cameras.  I catch up to the whole party of them four blocks down Smithfield Street, and there are two bicycle cops there as well. Of course the cops do t do anything that doesn't involve eating a donut and drinking coffee, so despite us Catching this person with stolen merchandise from our store, they do nothing.  It is one of the complaints I have about my job, the cops never do anything.  I wish I could get me one of those cushy ass government jobs where I let criminals walk at the taxpayers expense.

     As I was saying about birthday month though, there have been a few things of note that have happened or will happen.  I saw Hope the other day, she was driving by the store, taking her niece to the Three Rivers Arts Festival, so we didn't get to chat for long, more like a wave and yelled hellos bak and forth while she was at the stop light.  It wasn't one of those cinema type reunions after 20 plus years, where people go bounding towards each other in slow motion, but those of you long time readers would realize how cool a moment that was for me.

     And a couple of my friends from high school are going to be back in the area this weekend, hoping to hook up with them since the only chatting we have done recently has been via Facebook, which I why I asked for the company baseball tix for Saturday.  So it looks like my social calendar just got a little more occupied.  And hey, no zoo pics this weekend.