Crappy Customer Service

It's Her Married Name

So they just opened a bakery around the corner from my house.  It's a five minute stroll away.  I KNOW, right?  Just what I've wished for all these years - the city is gradually coming to my 30-year-old boondock.  I never thought anyone would be brave enough to open a bakery in my tough neighbourhood.

I went there on Saturday. Behind the counter was the person voted Least Likely To Work In A Bakery in her high school yearbook.  She hated it there and wanted to die.  I'm serious, people.  I walked in the door, she was facing me with a thousand-yard stare, and she didn't even blink.  The door has an actual bell bell which rang and she didn't react.  I walked to the side of the counter and I probably could've emptied the cash register for all she cared.  I was starting to wonder if I should call an ambulance when a nice old lady managed to wave her hand close enough to her face to catch her attention.  She gave her such a snotty reply to her inquiry that I know that lady won't be back.

The sad part is, the bakery's actually pretty good.  They have an established branch on the south side so they're not in danger of going under for lack of support.  I just hope Miss Bakery-Bitchface doesn't drive away all the customers so they have no business.

A Letter

Dear people on my blogroll (you know who you are because I comment a LOT around the Intertubes):

If you are enrolling yourself, or attempting in any way to engage in NaBloPoMo, thank you from the bottom of my heart.  You are already good people because I read your blog and I only read the blogs of good people, naturally. I really need the distraction this month.  I am happy to see you in bold on Bloglines.

One of my classes was cancelled this month due to lack of enrollment.  They need 10 people and they got 2.  This doesn't bode well for my next course beginning at the end of November.  I feel that the course schedule was too onerous for people working full-time to sign up for this shit unless they really, really mean it.  I guess there was only one other person in all of Edmonton that was as committed as I and had the $$$.

I stopped looking for work in the last week or so because I didn't have a hope of finding a job and being in school - that's just too much at once.  Now that my class was cancelled I am back at it.  I put out three resumes today.  I am not sleeping well because the stress of finding a new job, going (or not going) to school and eating shit at my current job is causing me great anxiety.

So I am happy to read your complaints, wishes, thoughts and even (shudder) dreams.  Yes, I am desperate.

Hopefully

Carolyn

Hey, Wait A Minute....

Let me try to be as obscure about this as possible.

One of the owners of The Sporting Company won a business award on Friday.  He won a Business Guy Of The Year type thingy from a professional association.

First of all, he couldn't be bothered to show up to accept the award, so one of the other owners went.  The other guy not only accepted the award, he walked through the building thanking all the employees & telling them the award is really for them because they're worked so hard.  He also e-mailed this sentiment to make certain everyone heard it.  Now THAT's appropriate behaviour - and this guy wasn't even the guy who won.

The guy who won?  Had a major injury last November and was recuperating in Hawaii for three months.  He was in the rehab hospital for three months and at home learning to move again until this past September *coughkarmacough*, went on a two week cruise and is currently in BC.  So he was gone from the business for more than nine months of 2009.

We employees were initially pleased with the award, then we thought about it for the amount of time it took you to read this post.

Carolyn's Late Addendum to the Magna Carta

Let every pair of pants, for whatever purpose, for whichever gender or for non-gendered persons, have at least one (1) pocket sized to contain a small piece of paper or a coin.

I figure this is at least as important as the right of habeas corpus!

A Request

My spirits are low in the middle of the day.  When I look at the clock at noon, and think about spending five more hours at work with a fist-shaped lump in my gut, I am not happy.

This is how I know it's time to move on to another job. My heart is no longer in it.  My boss took it with her when she left.  I am just marking time for forty hours a week and it seems like a waste of my life.

Which is why, even though I dread the job search/interview process with the mother of all dreads, I am going through with it and I've sent out a few resumes, thus actually doing something I said I was going to do (just this once).

Soooo...if you have something funny or nice to say I'd appreciate hearing it.  Even something completely random or a link that'll make me laugh.  Cute Overload served up this cute little bugger today.

Trying Not to Tell Everyone @ Work to Fuck Off...And Succeeding (So Far)

My boss, who is a wonderful lady and the nicest, best person I've ever worked for, was forced into retirement this Friday, partly because of her health issues and partly because they're cutting back.  She was still working full-time and doing a great job but they decided they needed someone who was not telecommuting.  Fortunately she got a nice big golden parachute so she's OK.

They are not filling her job so it looks like my department is going to be left with more responsibilities without more pay.  They just laid off a number of people because we were down in sales - just like every other company in North America.  People were cutting their promotional budgets and it hurt us.  But...the business is coming back quickly.  From now until Christmas is our peak season.

Now, here's the rub:  I can't stand the owners.  Seriously, they are malicious dickbags who shouldn't be running a company.  They have no management training.  And now, with my boss's retirement, they have removed the entire management level of the company.  It's just us peons and the owners.  Have you ever tried to ask the owner of a large company for something?  I don't know about you guys but around here the answer is invariably NO.  They are cheap and stupid and if I have to face them 8 hours a day I will go so crazy that my husband will have me committed.

So I'm looking for a new job.  I hate even saying that.

I want my job back with my great boss.  Sure, I was grossly underpaid but at least I wasn't responsible for much.  I felt free to exceed expectations and look like a hero.  Now I have to go and start all over again...just like I have to do every five years.  I despise the job hunt but I've come home spitting with frustration every night for the past two weeks and I can feel my job draining my life force away.  I'm not sleeping well and my stomach is in a giant knot.

I may sound like a whiner here.  But if you saw my career path you would definitely shout WTF??  And the shit part is, it's always forces beyond my control pushing me down the road.  I never get to leave on my own terms.

We'll See Who Dies First

Lately it seems that I am bombarded by finger-shaking weirdos telling me how diet soda is going to kill me and my family.  So, finger-shaking weirdos, where is your scientific evidence to this effect?  Huh?

What's that?  You don't HAVE any proof that diet soda is dangerous to anything other than tooth enamel?  Well fuck off then!  Fuck right off and let me enjoy my ONE can a day in fucking peace. 

I don't drink coffee and my stomach can't tolerate tea in the early morning.  I don't believe in caffeinating myself up to the ceiling to make up for sleep deprivation, either.  I get 7-8 hours every night.  So, if I like to have ONE Diet Coke in the morning to help me focus on my repetitive job, there is nothing wrong with it. 

I also enjoy soda's palate-cleansing effect, which makes food more enjoyable.  Show me a calorie-free, naturally derived drink with these same properties and I'll embrace it.

What really chaps my ass is when the person shaking their finger in my face about the Diet Coke is a smoker.  There's a real champion debating move, asshole.

Wherein I Make A Controversial Statement

I hate jeans.  Hate 'em.  I know that every other person on the planet will disagree with me and I'm down with that.  You go on wearing your jeans however you like - I don't hate your jeans.  I hate mine!

I wore jeans today for the first time in a couple of months and all I could think of all day was how long it would be until I could get home and take those suckers off.  I feel like I'm being squeezed in a vise.  The best pair of jeans will never fit me as well as a lousy pair of pants.

And it's not that my jeans are too tight.  It's my various Fit Issues.  I am 4" taller than the average woman, yet I have a normal inseam length.  This means that all my height is in my torso - yes that's right, the LEAST attractive way to be tall, I managed it.  So I have a long rise as well as an actual ass.  Jean waistbands never even get within shouting distance of my waist.  And let's not even talk about low-rise jeans, which I can actually walk out of.

I'm too old to be uncomfortable in my clothes.  So no more jeans!

Maybe I Should Just Get a Long Shiny Weave.

I am in the midst of becoming a long-haired person.  It's not something I've had the opportunity to do a lot in my life.  My mom had short hair herself and didn't much care for the responsibility of a little girl's hair, especially after I got lice in school a couple of times.  Back in the 70's it was very unusual to see a little girl with short hair, so I got mistaken for a boy in spite of my unmistakably feminine face and girly clothes.  Even more asinine were the people who knew me and my mom - they'd see us together and look at my mom and say, "How's your little boy today?  HA HA".  I had short hair from the time I was five until I was nearly 30.  I spent a lot of time in a lab or in front of a 30 000 rpm machine and it was always easier to have it short.

The strange thing is that my hair isn't what it was in my youth.  I always had poker-straight hair and now it's wavy. Not curly and nice, just wavy and bunchy and strange.  I've always had strange hair but having it collarbone-length just emphasizes it.  I straightened my hair every day so I could tolerate the growing-out stage but I can't stand the heat of the iron in the summer so I'm trying something more natural.  I would hope that people would think it's tousled, can we use that word?

Not having grown up with the lessons of long hair, I don't really know what to do.  It's not long enough to braid in any way and I can't braid my own hair worth a damn anyway.  I never know when to comb it or how to keep the flyaways down.  I'm like a person who just got a weird new wig.

Fun House

The building I work in is a big shambolic crazy house.  It was originally some sort of educational admin building that The Sporting Company bought and converted for their purposes.  It's been annexed and added on to several times.  I work in the heart of the original old building. 

There's half-staircases connecting bits.  The fresh air intake is right next to the sewer gas outlet.  The A/C breaker had to be flipped every 20 minutes last summer or we all would've fried; someone with sufficient arm strength (AKA me) had to go out and flip an 18 inch breaker switch.  It's heated with steam and there's two positions:  Off and Full Blast.  Tiny bits of foil insulation occasionally drift down onto my desk. The toilets flushed full bore, 24/7 for about a month once.  Another time we sat in the dark and watched the nearest transformer set a telephone pole on fire. All in all it's a bit like working in the Poltergeist house.

But as annoying as our old building can be, we aren't ready to give it up.  A management-type passed by today with rough sketches for the new building.  They will build it on an adjacent section of land and then demolish our old building.  I think we will probably have to drag my boss out of there when it's time to go.  The new plans have our offices much closer to management, instead of on the opposite side of the building.  We like it the way it is now, though.  We want them to have to think good and hard before deciding to come and see us. 

We laugh a lot more on our end of the building.  A LOT more.  Sometimes I go to the other end and it's like someone just died.  I expect to hear quiet sobbing behind me.