How goes it? I’ll tell you!

[Persona mood at time of entry: annoyed, frustrated, creeped out, and who knows what else]

CausingChaos asked me more than a month ago how my new jobs was going. I have been meaning to come back to let her know, but I’ve been ‘meaning’ to do a lot of things for ages. It was all a matter of getting around to doing them.

Truth be told, I’ve written plenty of tales concerning how the new job’s been coming along, just not anywhere online. I’ve stuck to my offline journal for just about all of my writings as of late. I simply haven’t felt up to tackling my crippling writer’s block. There’s also the fact that I worked just about every single day in December and I didn’t have continuous access to the Internet, as the college closed down for the holidays. Bah humbug, I say to that.

I am all for holiday cheer, no matter what the named festivity is, but I can’t stand it when stores and the like close on those days. After all of the merrymaking and family bonding suffering is done, I like to get out of the house. True, I didn’t really bond with family this year, and in fact spent my holidays mostly alone, but I still wanted to go places. As I hadn’t had access to the Internet, I hadn’t saved myself anything to read. Since I didn’t have anything to read and I don’t watch loads of television, I was effectively bored.

There are a few shows that I get downright giddy about the airings of, but for the most part, I always think of television as, “Awww, there’s nothing to do! I’ll have to watch TV. . . GUH!!!!!!”

Get the point?

So I rediscovered the never-ending joy that is Half Priced Books and spent a small fortune on novels and old shows and movies in their $1 VHS formats and a planner that I simply didn’t need. I truly couldn’t help myself at the time either. I knew that I needed to find a cheap planner to tide me over, but I spotted this breathtakingly gorgeous Leonardo da Vinci planner that features more than a hundred of his drawings. It cost me $7.50 plus tax, but I can’t help but be in awe of it.

Sure, I could have found something else and the planner is larger and heavier and has much more flare than I had envisioned for my 2007 planner, but who hasn’t run into something that they simply had to have right then. There was also the fact that it was the very last day in 2006 and I had put off getting a new planner for weeks at that point.

But on the topic of my got-to-have-it-nows, I tend to be like that. I impulse buy like there is no tomorrow and I have never had a dollar to my name to spend. Some days, I just can’t make myself rein it in, but on this paycheck that I just received, I made myself stay away from most every impulse product I wanted to buy. Okay, so I stayed away from a lot of them, but the ones that I did buy weren’t outrageously priced, which is a step in the right direction.

Okay, so, it’s merely justification for my weak-willed actions, but it’s still a step in the non-crazy spending direction.

As for the work itself, it’s not all bad. Some days are definitely worse than others, but that is always the case with all things in life. Checks and balances and karma and what have you. Even so, some days have sent me to the LSR (Lone Star Room) or other quiet-ish place and rubbed me down to tears. I mean, ‘loud sobs that I’ve made myself swallow’ tears. Sure, it was only that one night that I slipped and was that loud, but some of the crap that’s happened has hurt.

And even though some nights I want to go home and quit and give up on my household’s needs and myself, I know that I just can’t. It took me too long to find a job to merely throw it away. I am sore every single day and I have a hard time moving about. You see, it seems that standing on my feet for 8-12 hours a day for anywhere from two to seven+ consecutive days does not go so well with all of the walking I must do because I do not own a car.

Then, there are some of the world’s most ‘interesting’ customers. I am sure that people can be much worse, myself included in that god awful number, but things just happen that remind me why I hate people so much. There are the snotty sorts that get pissed when we’re on a wait (Read: have a wait list), and they have to stand around while a table frees up. There are the folks that turn the restrooms into disaster areas by throwing around used pads and unused toilet paper and scrunched up wet paper towels. There are the sorts that lean in too close when they speak to you, which is always a bit of a peeve for me. There are the folks that lean in and try to read my wait list, when it is clearly a violation of personal and professional space. I don’t come to their jobs and lean over their desks and read whatever they are working on.

Of course, there are the truly odd sorts that have left me lost for things to say in the face of their sometimes eerily psychotic comments. Case in point: as I sat a family of four composed of a mom, a dad, a teenage son, and a nine/ten-year-old boy, the nine/ten-year-old whispered in my ear that he was planning to kill them all. “Them all” being his family. I seriously had nothing professional to say to this. Don’t get me wrong, I could have said a lot of things, but people are funny about their family members and other folks that they are close to.

True, the family members might have believed me and would have been forewarned about their impending doom, but the fact of the matter is that this was a White family being seated by a Black Hostess. I don’t care what anyone says, racism is alive and well, and I truly didn’t think that the suburbanites would have taken it so well if I told them that their darling little boy was already making plans to become a murderer. They just wouldn’t have taken too well to that bit of information at all. So, I did the next best thing that I could think to do, I kept a smile on my face, nodded my head with forced jerks, and told the child that his statement was “interesting.”

When the parents and the older sibling repeatedly asked me what he told me, I just smiled, nodded some more, and patted the mom on the shoulder while I told her to ‘sleep lightly’. I thought of informing a manager to talk to the parents or perhaps pulling the mom or dad to the side for a little one-on-one chat, but that damned creepy kid was there. That, and I was soon cut for the day after I stiffly walked away from the table to seat someone else.

Meh. What could a girl do?

As for my other work stories, I am terribly behind on sharing them, but I have plenty saved up. I’d just have to transfer some of them over from my offline journal or write them down for a first time somewhere.

As for the pay, it’s not so bad. I’ve been able to make a cheap eye appointment for later on today and pay cash up front for it (only $30!), purchase small holiday gifts, send out holiday cards, go on muted shopping sprees at Half Priced Books, buy plenty of tasty, bad for me foods, eat at my favorite Chinese restaurant three days in a row just before they closed down forever (Yes, that is another entry.), and take care of a number of other issues.

In fact, on yesterday’s (Friday, January5, 2007) paycheck alone, I finally got around to buying myself a new cell phone so that I will actually be able to call people and have them call me, paying my super low water and electric bills in full, replacing my brother’s PS2 controller, picking up a few groceries, mentally sectioning off money to pay on my medical bills, giving my mom some general spending money, and still have something left over.

This is quite good, as it looks like I won’t be working nearly as many days at my current job, with leads me to my half-assed search for Job Number Two. I just need one. I could be paying off my medical bills faster, buy more of the things that I want, cover all of my current bills without having to squeeze the money for somewhere, and truly begin saving up for my dream laptop and some of the classes that I want to take. There’s also the fact that I want to move into a new apartment. I have been living in my current home since I was three. It would be great to finally get out of this sort-of horrid neighborhood. It would be great to finally own a car. I am truly at the stage where I can hardly get by without one.

Before now, I could just make do with the public transportation system, but that’s all going to hell in February when there’s a ridiculous rate hike so that Metro can bring in more money. I’ve been riding the bus my entire life, and now I have to pay so much more just to get to the places that I need to be.

Have I mentioned that people suck?

I hope that everyone is well and that you all had a wonderful holiday season, whatever holiday you took joy in. = D

As always,

Danielle