MY LIFE - JANUARY

Tuesday, January 18, 2000

Ugh. I hate being sick. Especially when it's something that I should have for only a couple days, yet I have it longer because it lingers with me. Now my stomach has been deciding that it doesn't like any of the food that I've been eating lately, treating me to stomach aches and a bad habit of having to go to the bathroom frequently. It hasn't been very pretty to say the least. This after a couple weeks of constant congestion and headaches.

I didn't make it through my class today because of my stomach. It's kind of embarrassing to have to leave on the first day because you can't handle your own stomach. Yet at the same time, I find it rather amusing. Why? Hell, I don't even know. It just is. So I went home early today and rested for an hour or so before heading off to work at 2. I didn't get much better the rest of the night, but that was partially because of our district manager, who paid a visit today for several hours.

Oooh do I hate him and his micromanaging ways. Sure, Lenny has dug himself a pretty good sized hole on his own, but our DM will nitpick and find anything wrong that he can to try and offset anything good we did. For example, we spent four days cleaning up the backroom, scanning all the overstock so that we had a record of what we had, and reorganizing things only to have him come in and say that it wasn't enough. Okay, what the hell do you want us to do? Grow some more arms and do more work? We did as much as we could and it still didn't satisfy this asshole.

There were several other things that he pointed out that we did wrong, either because Lenny didn't do something the way he should have or because a crew member had a huge brain lapse and didn't help the cause. Hell, Aaron was responsible for a couple of the problems himself. He didn't put up the new ad signs very well, which our DM pointed out, plus he showed up wearing jeans and didn't have a tie, two very big no-no's with this company. Whose fault? Lenny's because he's the manager and won't take the necessary steps to correct the problem with Aaron.

The DM finally left around 7pm, but left a huge list of things for us to finish, each with its own date to be completed. The funniest thing he complained about? The lack of a til in the RX register. Excuse me? I believe that is a decision of the pharmacy, not the front store. If he has a problem with the register being empty, he can talk to us. Don't bitch to Lenny about a pharmacy issue. I just thought that to be so amusing.

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I swear I'm going to kill Aaron though. He is about as useless an employee as we have ever had, and that doesn't say a whole lot about him. About five or six times I told him to work on the cigarette inventory, which he really didn't do. When he did do something, he didn't do it right because apparently no one explained to him what to do. I eventually ended up finishing the counting and labeling since he wasn't getting anywhere with it. I did four or five sheets in the time that he would have done half a sheet, plus I had to fix his mistakes. Now tell me that isn't aggravating.

Aaron is also the same person who couldn't finish the ad signing during his 8 hour shift on Saturday. In fact, he only finished two aisles the whole day while Jeff did most of the work. When I asked Aaron at 5 if he had finished, he laughed and asked if I was kidding. I looked at him and said I wasn't. I then told him it shouldn't take more than two or three hours to put up the entire ad. He couldn't believe it.

Then again, we have dead people who move faster than he moves. No wonder he plays goalie in hockey. I just hope he doesn't break through the ice during a game. It might be hard to pull him back up.

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My mom thinks that the house she had been looking at in Chippewa/Medina was probably sold since it didn't show up again when her real estate agent ran it today. If it did sell, it would be yet another setback in what has become a very aggravating attempt at moving. We felt that the increase in our loan would make it easier. Instead, it's only gotten harder since the houses either sell quicker than we can react, or they're decent houses that have been gutted.

My mom's still holding out hope that the house is available, but it isn't looking good at this point. If it is taken, we really don't know what we'll do. It's becoming more and more frustrating each day as houses we might be able to get our snatched up from under our noses. Add to this the looming court appearance for my mom and my dad concerning his little violent spurt last month and the pressure's starting to mount.

What the hell made it so difficult to find somewhere to live though? Do people not give a shit about the house they live in so much that they let it go to hell before they move out or before it's foreclosed on? That's what it seems like. Sure, this house isn't in the best shape, but you can easily live in it. It's not like it's a complete dump or anything. It just needs a little work that someone with money could easily take care of.

I guess we'll eventually catch a break though. I sure hope so. I'm getting tired of the run around right now. I just want to move and get on with things as quickly as possible. Then again, that might be too much to ask right now.