MY LIFE - OCTOBER

Tuesday, October 17, 2000

At some point I intend to go and work on updating the archives for My Life as I've found at least three months that need to be worked on. I was reading through those and noticed a few things about them that I'm not all that proud of in retrospect. I don't know what my problem might have been, but I seem to be aggravated most of the time and irritated towards certain people.

It was either Mike or Lenny who had me pissy, but it seemed to be Mike most of the time. I know why that was the case. Mike was in a stage where he was trying too hard to do too much and he was taking it out on the rest of us. He was trying to enact CVS policy in a store ill-suited towards that and with employees who were accustomed to something else.

I had also grown tired of his continually complaining about Lenny and how messy he felt Lenny was. I felt that both were messy and I thought that the two should've gotten together and worked out their problems before things got way out of hand. I felt that things would only get worse otherwise.

Over a year after that, Mike is now at #4054 in Middleburg Heights while Lenny's still trying to get his bases covered. I'm on the verge of transferring over to Berea. Most of the crew at the time is no longer working with us anymore. In fact, no one aside from me, Debbie, Tom, and Lenny.

Crystal, a cashier then, moved on with her life. I haven't really talked to her, but she had initially moved out of her parent's house to live on her own before moving back home recently. Jenny, who still helps when she's home, went to college that fall. Aaron, another cashier, quit. Mike Shumacher, a cashier, well, I don't know what his deal was. He was just flat out weird.

Steve, as I've repeatedly said, is the pharmacist in charge over at Berea. Keith, who was an intern last year, is now at his own store and still talks to Tom regularly. I can't remember if there were anymore employees at the time, but they aren't with us anymore. It seems that things are constantly changing at my store and will probably continue to do so after I leave.

I can't really say how long anyone will ever last. Anyone who I've wanted to have stick around quit and went somewhere else to work, or in some cases, moved to different parts of the state. Those who have bothered me stick around longer it seems, but eventually quit as well. There isn't an area of work that's more tempermental than retail. It extends from associates up to pharmacists, managers, and even district managers.

Managers and pharmacists quit all the time, more so than anyone can remember. District managers are either fired or promoted. I've had three of them in three years. I worked with four different assistant managers before they took that job away from our store. I've worked with a countless number of pharmacists since January alone. It never seems to end either. Tomorrow night I work with another newcomer to our store.

I have to continue training tomorrow as well. I hope that this fill in understands that and is as patient as the other fill ins have been. All this and I have to make sure that I help Carol get the closing down thing done right. I'll be the only one with a code tomorrow night for the alarm.

I'm not even supposed to have the code or a key.

But I do. And through all this, there's a chance I'll be out of the store in two weeks. Lenny told me yesterday that Tom was thinking of cutting me out in either the first or second week of November. Then Lenny asked me today if the manager over there was aware of me intending to transfer. I told him he was and Lenny said he should probably get in contact with the manager over there and talk this over.

So there are steps in the right direction. But will it lead to anything soon? I just don't know. The one thing that's been plaguing this situation from the start was a lack of information and speed. Steve himself though this transfer was moving along quickly, then all of a sudden, it stalled. No apparent reason has been given to either of us.

But such is the nature of this job. You don't find out about anything until the last minute, then you have to scramble to make sure it works out on your end. I made a comment about that on the most recent employee survey, as well as some other comments about the pay and our district manager. Neither pleases me too much. People working at McDonald's are making more than me to start.

I'm filling prescriptions to help keep people healthy. They're flipping burgers to keep people from being overly hungry when rushed. There's something wrong when you're making $6.35 an hour and your helping keep someone alive and well.

Yet I keep on doing it. I'm very satisfied with what I do right now. It's why I want to go into pharmacy as a profession and not just as a sideshow on my way to something else. I like filling prescriptions and the occasional interaction. I don't like some aspects, but I like enough of it to enjoy it. Some people have made fun of me for this too. But they don't know what I feel when I'm doing my job. I'm good at it too. I've even learned a lot on what certain drugs do and what to take over the counter in some situations.

The real question is if I want to do it for CVS. The survey asked how likely it would be for you to still be with the company six months, a year, three years, and six years from now. It started off as likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, to uncertain. I'll be with the company in six months, but in a year I might be headed off to a larger college. Three and six years is just too far out in the future for me to say with any kind of confidence. I might, but I might not.

It's an interesting dilema, but one I don't want to deal with much longer than I have to. I don't like making decisions, especially ones that could affect my life in either good or bad ways. If this company is serious about its employees, I'll be finding out in the future.

Until that point, only the short-term is certain for me.

---

I was tired last night when I got home from work, and I'm sure it shows in what I wrote. I got a good amount of sleep and was alert today, but right now I'm tired again and wondering if my knees are going to hold up again. I had some minor pain in my left knee almost the entire day, not quite enough to bring on a limp, but very close to it. Crouching down to clean shelves certainly didn't help my cause today, but I'm stupid like that.

I hope they hold up though because I have a lot more shelves to clean and we're only cleaning the bottom three shelves in each section because those are the dirtiest. The reason why those are so much dirtier than the rest? Tom, the mad sweeper. He sweeps when he works and every time, he gets really carried away. With each sweep, he kicks up a pile of dust that shoots into the air and settles along the shelves that are on the bottom.

The worst areas are where he stops, because the dust settles in their and doesn't get cleaned out because he's done pushing the pile. We finally got him to go the other way, where there aren't any shelves for dust to settle down on, but the shelves were so bad we deemed it necessary. So who's the dumbass who does it? Me, of course. I told Debbie I'd get it, and instead of using the feather duster (which was grey instead of yellow to begin with from the dust), I used paper towels and window cleaner.

The bottom shelf was the worst to reach because it was the only one where I couldn't sit down on the stool and clean. I had to crouch on my knees to do the bottom shelf, bringing on some harsh pain when I would stand back up. Then, later in the day, I've got employees who come up to me and like to push me down. Only after I get a little snappy do they stop.

Then, when I'm not cleaning, I get hit every few minutes by someone. I have to ask this based on what happened: what is it with people and hitting me? I mean, it's nothing hard or life threatening, but just what the hell is it about me that makes people hit me? Crystal used to hit and poke me all the time. Jenny used to try and murder me with either kicks or punches. Heather, a tech who worked at the store until early 1998, used me as a punching bag. Carol likes to bean me every now and then. Angela, who's been working all of a week, is hitting me.

Granted, sometimes I deserve it. But most of the time, it's just out of the blue. I'll be standing, looking something up in the computer or looking at something that came via e-mail from the company and I'll get whacked. Other times I'll just be standing there, thinking, and someone will bop me one. Does it look like I'm filled with air? I just don't get it. I mean, it doesn't really get to me, but I'd like to know what it is that compels people to beat me up.

That's probably it though. I don't hit back most of the time, unless it was Mike, who was fair game whenever he tried anything with me. I don't always say anything either. That's probably it though. People think that I like being beat up. Hell, Tabatha at Berea, who's just slightly younger than me, was walking by and hitting me in the back. Maybe I'm too laid back when I work.

Maybe if I walked around with this psychotic look on my face and a couple pairs of scissors poking through my tech jacket people would stop. Not that I'm going to do that, but it's a thought. Or here's an idea, ask them why they like to hit me. On the other hand, I've tried that and don't usually get much more of an answer other than because I was there.

In defense of Tabatha, she did apologize after the second time, even though I told her it wasn't something that she had to apologize over. But I'll take it.

---

It's been a while since I've done this, so it's time to take another pot shot at Dick Feagler, columnist for The Plain Dealer. This time he's pissy that people don't like dress codes and that people should just be happy that dress codes still exist. He uses a school in the area that's come under fire over it's inclusion of a dress code this year, something that didn't exist last year. As always, he portrays those who don't think the way he does as wrong and lacking discipline.

I just love this guy. Like most columnists (me included), for every good column he writes, he puts out about three or four really bad ones. Like when he was on the whole "entertainment industry should be ashamed" kick that he was on for a while. I think just the other day he wrote a good column, but he's come back with this and it makes me wonder if he really understands younger generations at all.

In it, he defends strict dress codes as a way for people to learn discipline and some other mumbo jumbo. He says that the conformity made you look at yourself less a person and more of a piece of a larger puzzle. That's great and all, but I like the concept of individualism personally. He was talking about the army though, and that included talking about buzz cuts.

Then he goes and trashes a 15 year old girl to no end, mocking everything from the way she talked to the way she felt about dress codes.

Now let's ease up a little bit, now won't we? I'm not exactly impressed by her choice of words either, but for God's sake, it's on a dress code that's really not necessary except for some minimum standards. The dress code at my high school was just fine. You knew what you could wear (just about anything), and what you couldn't wear (anything that was explicit or overly sexual). Tank tops and shorts were fine, as were most miniskirts. But the more revealing the outfit became on a girl, the better chance you had of going to the office to get a change of clothes.

That's really all you need too. You don't need to conform to the same kind of clothes for guys and girls. You don't need to shame a fifteen year old girl who doesn't talk like you do. I don't talk like that either, except when I'm joking around, but I won't go around and mock her either. Different generations talk the same. Hell, I can't figure out what people my age are saying half the time.

He also trashes the parents who complained. He feels they should be quiet and conform. That would be difficult to do if a parent is strapped for cash and has already bought their kid's clothes for the school year before this dress code was announced. That's the real complaint, the timing of the dress code. In fact, in most letters that parents showed, the school that this involves was listed with schools without dress codes.

But then again, Feagler can just be an idiot sometimes. He doesn't understand what he sees, and that reduces him to attacks on those he doesn't like.

But it also gives me ammunition to fire back and remind him that not all of us are exactly stupid. Like when he ranted about kids not being able to give correct change without a calculator. He then went on to assume that all kids are like that. Well, we're not. Some of us are more capable than others and shouldn't be grouped with the few who are a few brain cells shy a full bucket.

Not all of us are dumb and incapable of thinking. I hope people like Feagler remember that. I won't let you forget anyway.