MY LIFE - NOVEMBER

Saturday, December 2, 2000

Today was a day where things were both very good, very bad, and just okay all in the span of about an hour. We were very busy early on at work today and I pretty much typed all day like I did two weeks ago. Elizabeth kept coming up and asking me if I was doing all right, but I told her I was fine and just kept plugging along. Peggy and Jean, two techs, were filling and covering drive-thru and register at the same time while Elizabeth check what I was doing.

In one hour long span, I did 75 scripts. Nevermind that 55 of them were refills, that's still a lot of numbers to put into the computer plus the 20 new ones I had to enter in between the refills. I think it was busier than it was last weekend and the weekend before, but I kept up much better this time for some strange reason. It might have been because I didn't have as many strange scripts. I did have a lot of insurance problems and I was the one answering the phone, so the day was going by very quickly.

It was only a matter of time before Paul arrived. Let's get one thing clear about Paul before I go any further. First off, I do not dislike him. Sometimes I wonder what he's doing and what his motivation is, but for the most part he's good at what he does and he understands his role, plus that I have seniority over him, something that another tech doesn't always seem to understand. He's very smart and he's definitely dorky, but it's not annoying. It's actually a nice touch since it makes it easy to laugh at him. He's pretty good about that too.

Anyway, we just kept moving along and before you knew it, it was 4pm and Peggy was going home without ever taking a break. Jean had an hour left and I had two hours left. Jean had taken one break and I hadn't taken any yet. Linda arrived at 3:45 so she had about 10 or 15 minutes to bullshit, which she did. Evidently she had some major problems going on outside of work that she decided to drag into work. She even said that she was going to make a call at 4:30 and she didn't care if it took an hour. She didn't care what we thought or if we liked it or not. Strikes one and two against her.

Then she disappeared for 25 minutes after she was supposed to start. Apparently she was talking with someone, but Jim, who had just arrived at 4pm, wanted to know what was going on when she came back. He asked and she told him to shut up. A tech told a pharmacist to shut up. That was strike three as far as I was concerned. He then told her she shouldn't just go disappearing when she's supposed to work and she threw a fit, accusing everyone of not caring about her problems or that she was having a rough time.

That was strange when you consider that I hadn't said a thing, Jean hadn't said a thing, and Paul didn't say anything either. She then called the supervisor up and said she wanted to be taken off the clock so she could leave since no one cared. Jim told her is she left, he would write her up and she would end up being fired. She got even more upset and ended up calling Steve, who's the pharmacist in charge at my store. He evidently told her it was in her best interest to stay if she wanted to keep her job.

Now before anyone goes screaming that we mistreated her, let's thing for a minute about this. Number one, it's company policy that you don't bring your personal problems into the job with you. You leave them at home. Secondly, you don't go telling your superior to shut up if he wants to know what's going on. Third, you don't go accusing people who haven't said anything of not caring. Fourth, you don't leave everyone hanging on what you're going to do.

I'm sorry that she's having problems. The one thing I have to tell her is that when I was having the problems with my dad last year, I never brought it to work with me. If I had a chance to talk about it with someone, I did. Otherwise, I kept quiet and did my job. I didn't go and disappear for half an hour, then tell my boss to shut up when he asked me what was going on. You can't bring your problems in with you. You just can't. It's asking for too much trouble otherwise.

But I'm not her. I can't tell her what to do nor will I try to. If I tell her anything, it'll just be advice that I'd take if I was in her position. I'm not a forceful person and I'm not going to start now. I just don't want to have to put up with any more bullshit like this. It's too much to try and deal with regular work plus someone else's problems at the same time.

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Every now and then I go through some of the pictures I have and wonder about why things happened the way they happened. The older pictures of me when I was little just don't accurately convey how bad things might have been at times. That's the one thing pictures can't do for memories. They only remind you of the good times, the times when you were smiling and happy. They don't remind you about the times you spent cowering in a space between your bed and your wall hoping to god that your dad didn't walk into the room.

You don't see how much I went through, how bad things could really get. All you see is me smiling or doing something silly. You can see me playing football with my dad or him giving me all the attention in the world. You see how good things were before things to hell. There's a picture of me sound asleep in this seat that hung from the ceiling, decked out in Cleveland Browns gear. I think my mom's crazy, but she insists that I was watching the game despite still just being a baby.

There are pictures of me in the driver seat of an old car evidently thinking that I could drive even though I was still just a baby. I think I'm wearing a t-shirt and a diaper. For some strange reason, my family thought it was cute when I was just wearing a shirt and diaper or sometimes just a diaper. But I'm happy in these pictures, completely unaware of what's going to happen in a few years as things get very unstable.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped being photogenic. I stopped liking the camera and pictures of me didn't look so good. I can't really pinpoint when it happened since there are aren't a lot of pictures of me aside from school pictures once you get into elementary school. I just never was a part of pictures and I never strived to be part of pictures. My best pictures are the ones where I don't expect to have a picture taken, like when I was at work a year or so ago and my mom snapped a picture of me filling a script without me knowing what was going on.

The picture I use on my web site is probably my best picture in years. On contrast, the one taken right before that one was taken makes me look like a zombie, which I probably felt like at the time. I just don't take good pictures and I don't know if I'll ever be photogenic again.

I'm way off what I was talking about though.

The pictures don't show how bad things were when I was in elementary and middle school. You can't tell how much stress I was under in my high school pictures. You don't see things like that. The only hint is in how I smile. I don't have a great smile in my own opinion. I don't have a broad one. It's a very sad excuse for a smile, but I don't show emotion in my face very well. I've been told you can't read my features or my eyes and tell how I feel. I don't show the emotions.

Therefore, the pictures won't show them either. I'll be smiling, but it isn't a great big smile. Maybe that's the only hint of how things were going. My face doesn't hint at how I'm feeling.

It's even more so since I got glasses.

That brings me to one other thing. I wonder how different high school would have been if I had gotten these glasses when I was in high school and had the goatee as well. I know since I've had the glasses and goatee, I seem to get more attention. I just wonder if much more I would have been noticed if I had them sooner. I think I look a lot better with both than without them.

But that's dwelling on the past. Talking about the pictures is dwelling on the past. The past is done with and can't be changed. I don't want it changed either. But I can't go and continually talk about the past because then it will never leave me and the bitterness will never go away.

I don't want to grow up to be a bitter man. I don't want to be in my thirties and forties thinking about how things went. It's best to live in the now and do what I can to make sure my life is as good as I can make it.

I, and no one else, hold the key to my future. I guess I shouldn't drop it like I drop everything else.