MY LIFE - JANUARY

Wednesday, January 17, 2001

Today's the first chance I've had to write anything since Saturday. I've been working everyday up until today and just didn't have any energy to do any kind of writing, not even yesterday when I was home at 5:30pm. Then, I work all the way through at least Saturday and maybe even up until Tuesday or Wednesday before I get another day off. I don't know though. This scheduling is going to stay brutal for a while unless we get some more help in and quick.

I think next week is the last week for Velvet because she took a promotion at her day job. She worked 7-12 and allowed us to get caught up at night. So now, Linda would be the only person who'd normally work until midnight. Well, she's decided to take something personal (god only knows what it is this time) and left a note saying she does not want to work all the midnights from now on.

So that would leave it up to Paul and me to pick up the slack, right? Well, I'm not going to do it. I prefer to work no later than 10pm and I have seniority over Linda and Paul, which means Paul's going to get fucked by this deal. That's just not fair to Paul either because it seems like Linda's just doing this to make a point. Whatever it is, I don't know. She's probably pissed that Velvet's leaving, but you can never be sure with Linda.

So in any case, the mess just got even bigger at work. It's really amazing just how messed up everyone is. I don't like doing this, but I'm going to run down the list of people and mention some notable things about them, starting with the morning people and just go down the list.

Roberta is one of my favorites. She will say anything to anyone and not care what you think about what she said. She's one of the few that will stand up to Joanne and just tell her to shut up without worrying about what Joanne thinks. She's very funny too and will say things you wouldn't imagine someone her age saying. At the same time, she's very caring.

Peggy can get flustered and form opinions about things she really shouldn't, but she's a lot of fun to work with all the same and has a pretty good sense of humor too. She's one of those who gets bothered by the continuing antics of Joanne.

Darlene is very nice and isn't mean to anyone at all unless it's a complete accident. She's very capable at the register and filling station and only in her worst moments does anything really get to her. Even she's getting sick of Joanne now, so something's gotta be wrong.

Joanne is the big problem. She's incredibly fast at typing and knows a lot about what she's doing, but she gets way too hyper and way too worked up over the silliest things you can imagine. If she wasn't like that, she'd be much easier to work with. Instead, she gets everyone around her so wound up and gets pissed over the stupidest things. She takes everything upon herself and tries to boss everyone around when she can.

Swati is nice, but she really has her problems at the register. She can never find names, she talks way too much with customers when we're busy, and she misfiles everything in sight. It would be so much more amusing if it didn't make thing so much more difficult.

Linda is going to be our next problem. She has too many problems in her personal life and she brings them into the workplace with her, which is something you don't do. She talks too much on the phone and can be about as worthless as anyone I've ever worked with in my life. Somedays she shows just how good she can be, but most days we see just how bad she can be instead. There are days where she says she's not dealing with people and will refuse to help customers no matter how busy we get and that has to stop.

Paul is very smart, but he lets everything to get to him and is constantly threatening to quit when he gets an opportunity. I keep trying to tell him that he needs to calm his ass down, but he doesn't listen to me and continues on whatever rant he was on. He just needs to worry about himself and he doesn't seem capable of doing so. He's so bad, I got him worked up over a clipboard. He's another one that will get mad at you for something stupid, like when he got mad at me for taking the extra day during Christmas week. If he wasn't so amusing, I'd be deathly afraid of him.

Jean is probably the nicest out of the bunch. She gets along with everyone and is just very easy to talk to. I don't think anyone at all should have any problem with Jean and if they do, they're even worse than I thought.

Then there's this whole thing from Joanne about the night people being stupid. I still do not understand that or how she can ever base an opinion about a group of people she's never worked with at night. But that's just her making the assumption that she's the only one who does anything while at work and that's just not true. But don't try and tell her that. She's gone so far as to accuse pharmacists of things.

So all this is stupid. All this bickering over stupid things is what's helping drag us down. We can't get side projects done because we're too busy bitching about each other too each other. I've tried to figure out where this is all coming from, but no one seems to have an answer. I just can't understand it either.

I guess it would be no fun if I figured it out though.

---

I've been back in the forum I mentioned several weeks ago and just am amazed by how stupid people still are in there. They all are still attacking each other and pulling the same old shit that they were pulling a couple weeks ago. The popular thing has been to impersonate another person and make it sound like that person is a complete sex fiend or something else that's just ridiculous.

Of course, the moment I step up and defend the person, I become the focus of the attacks, which is just fine with me. I'm not exactly hurt when someone in there calls me a name because they don't know me. I just can't get over how these people can make any kind of judgement about me or anyone else if they don't anything about me? How can you impersonate anyone either?

It's just amazing to me because I don't do things like that. To these people, it's just another day at the job. They seem to get a rise out of bashing each other. It's almost like a superiority contest or something. They have to outdo each other in every way possible. The problem is, they all sound like idiots when they do this. Whether they're talking about sex or anything else, they manage to sound as juvenile as they probably are in the process.

The constant theme is fighting though. I know the forum is somewhere to communicate your opinion, but this thing gets viscious some days. Swearing, name calling, and just plain belittling seems to be the popular methods among all these people and I'm not quite sure I understand why that is.

The biggest mistake you can make with me is attempting to make fun of me to begin with because that gives me incentive to mess with whoever it is. That's exactly what I've been doing and whoever it is that's been responding has been falling right into what I'm setting up. Some of the insults are so unoriginal, if it wasn't so funny, it would be sad.

Also, how do you expect me to take you seriously when you can't even spell when what you're trying to call me? Someone tried to call me a pedophile, but they spelled it petaphile, so instead of being a devastating attack (let me tell you), it was funny. The reason they called me that? It was a 16 year old girl I was defending and the assumption had been made that I intended to have sex with her or something.

Basically, they made it really easy for me to come back with my own comments and then set themselves up again by responding with more anal responses. The best one was where they started calling me a 29 year-old woman. Where that came from, I don't know yet, but it was great. Of course they also continued their attacks on the poor girl, but I don't think it was as effective as it was earlier.

I really hate to think that in a few years, these people are going to be going to college and eventually entering their career. I'm scared because it doesn't seem like any of them really care to grow up and act a little mature, especially the guys. They don't even care to try to act mature for girls anymore. I just can't believe some of the things I read from these people.

I'm hoping they grow up soon, but I don't see that happening anytime soon at all. What they need is a good ass kicking from someone older, so maybe that'll happen and straighten some of them out.