RevSpork

Self-preservation vs. self-absorption

Tori's mom got through the surgery fine. Although she's missing half a leg, it's a hell of a better choice than the alternative. We're all relieved about it, but we also know my mother-in-law has a long road ahead. She basically needs to re-learn to walk with an artificial limb for a month at a rehabilitation clinic, and then...who knows.

It's been frustrating for me, because I can only worry about so many people, and my worry for my wife and mother-in-law has completely eclipsed my own anxieties about my work hell and my depression. And before you call me self-centered, keep in mind that I do not consider my own problems more important than that of my mother-in-law; it's just a lot to absorb all at once.

Although I've not been exactly prolific in my quest, I have been looking for other work. However, there's just nothing out there. But depressed as I am about it, I do have a job...and two healthy legs. Do I have a right to bitch about my cruddy job when my mother-in-law just had a large chunk of her body removed? Do I want to immerse myself in a career change when my wife might need us to fly out to the coast on a week's notice?

At what point do I concentrate on helping myself so I'm in a better position to help others? Where is that elusive line between self-preservation and self-absorption? Am I making any freaking sense?

Really, I'd rather be idling

Last Thursday I got downsized.

I have a choice:

1. go back to my previous position in the store, which became a nightmare after three years and nearly caused me to crack up, or:

2. leave. Of course, since I would have turned down option 1, I will have resigned instead of being laid off. Thus, no severance pay. And good luck applying for unemployment.

The restructuring goes into affect in six weeks. I, on the other hand, have two weeks before the aforementioned previous position is posted.

I've updated my monster and hotjobs resumes (I updated the former a couple months back; all I needed to add was the final month at my current gig), while I try to decide. I'm leaning towards the first option, but this is definitely a short-term option. I neither have the patience nor the enthusiasm to push myself into an early grave. But where to go?

Not sure. Yet.

Inside a bookstore at a Harry Potter release party

I volunteered for it two years ago, when the sixth book came out. The customers were enthusiastic, we sold a ton of books after 12:01am, and we tired but happy booksellers trudged home with our own copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We cracked open the book, fought off sleep so we could take in as much of the new Harry Potter book as possible. Some of us managed to finish the entire book with nary a break; I know I did. That's been my tradition once I picked up the latest Harry Potter book: start at page 1 and read until the end. For the release of the seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series, I signed up for my second release party and expected both similar enthusiasm from the customers and a very busy night. Not only was I not disappointed, but I (and most of my coworkers) was very nearly overwhelmed by what was far more than a release party.

Check under the car

Sometime yesterday evening, one of my sellers alerted me.

"There's cop cars in front of the store."

Just what I need. Another crime in front of the store. It's been happening a bit lately, teenage brats attacking folks, other kids. It's not been a fun year. But I walk outside and find two cop cars and a crowd gathered around this white car. Three cops are searching under the car, one with a flashlight.

At first, I thought they were looking for contraband, or worse - a bomb. But that made no sense - why would cops allow a crowd nearby if it were any of the above?

Another fellow was hovering near the car with a box. It was just then I saw what the cops were looking for: creatures that look remarkably like this.

Tuesdays

It's a quiet day. I'm home, half-naked, sitting and blogging. This is not normal: I'm rarely, if ever, at home this time (2pm) on a Tuesday. A radical makeover of my schedule by the new general manager have led to this anomaly.

I'm not used to not working Tuesdays; in my over three years at the bookstore, I can count the number of Tuesdays not on the job on one hand. Vacation, one or two illnesses - that's pretty much it. The other six days have seen my half-naked bloated living corpse under the blanket at 10am (Mondays less so, but still more often than Tuesdays), but not Tuesdays.

It's about time

I've been at my current job for three years now, and I'm at the point where I need to get the hell out of there.

I'm sick of the crazy bums that hang out there, and then I have them thrown out, they come back in, I have the cops throw them out, and then they come back in a few months later, thinking we have no idea who they are.

I'm sick of the corporation's constantly changing standards in terms of everything. The funny thing is, the changes aren't minor adjustments to current standards; they're radical changes that require, quite literally, rearranging the entire store.

I had my physical yesterday, my first in three years. As usual, my blood pressure is high and rising. This job is doing a number on my health. I sometimes come home with headaches, chest pains, and burning, focused rage. I dream about work. It's time to go.

It's wonderful that I've found a fantastic woman as my partner for life and that I have such great friends. Now it's time to make the next step: finding a job that doesn't frustrate me daily and actually does something good for people. I miss that feeling.

Okay, I'm done kvetching. Toodles.

Why do I even bother?

We're in the midst of the holiday season again, and for us in the retail sector, it's a time to contemplate the real meaning of Christmas: getting the hell out of the retail sector.

Since the holiday season began, my bookstore has been beset with shoplifters, grafitti artists, trashed restrooms, torn-up kids books, rude customers, and an old lady who left not one, not two, but three piles of poo on the second floor. Thus it was no surprise when I began to feel the Call of the Career Change and updated my Monster and hotjobs resumés.

Of course I know what will happen. It happens every time I update my resumés, which then demoralizes me, leaving me in the same retail gig until next Thanksgiving, thus keeping in motion the Circle of Career Rut. Every time I update the ol' resumé, I get hit with a flock of financial planners.

Another Friday for the bookstore supervisor

Another Friday, another incident.  Tonight was the third consecutive Friday I've had to toss someone out of the bookstore.  The latest was a kid who knows he's not supposed to be in the store because he's been thrown out in the past for theft and vandalism.  But the moron keeps coming back, and I saw him and tossed his ass out the door. 

Three hours later, while I was at lunch, a group of teenagers went upstairs to the café, pulled out their fast food, and started eating.  When one of the baristas (and my manager) told the kids they could not do this, they threatened to beat him up outside the store before they left.  My poor manager had to walk to the parking garage escorted by one of the supervisors.

My job description is pretty simple: create and maintain displays while assisting management on the sales floor and selling books, music, and movies to customers.  That's pretty much it.  More and more, however, I've had to wake up sleeping bums, toss out dozens (and I mean dozens) of obnoxious - and occasionally violent - kids, hunt down shoplifters and scammers, call the cops, call 911, get more and more disgusted with humanity, etc.

The fucked-up thing is that the bookstore in not located in the city - it's in a middle-class suburb, right next to a major college.  I spend many a lunch hour typing up incident reports instead of relaxing and shutting my mind off for a relaxing sixty minutes.  It's totally insane. 

And I won't even repeat the story about the naked guy in the restroom.  It's just too terrible to recall.

Retail sucks on the money front, but I do like the bookstore environment.  I enjoy books, love the opportunity to work with like-minded freaks and geeks, and I like adding a bit of enjoyment and knowledge to peoples' lives.  But for cryin' out loud - why does a bookstore have to attract so many thieves, bums, and crazy people?  Gimme a break: I thought that was what libraries were for.

You know you're working too hard...

...when you dream about work. I just woke up from such a dream; I was at the bookstore, trying to find a spot to display extra bargain-priced CDs. This is my second work-related dream in three days, which means it's time for me to start drinking again.

When work gets too intense for me, my brain decides to remind me of this by not allowing me to stop working. Several years back, when I worked tech support and was having a hell of a time trying to fix people's cable modem connection, I worked ten-hour shifts, but my brain worked twenty. One morning I was telling an elderly customer to load Netscape before realizing, to my horror, I was actually speaking to my then-wife. In bed. This immediately hit #2 in my Most Troubling Waking Episodes chart, barely losing out to Waking Up to Find My Mate Still on Top, which stayed at #1 until just three weeks ago, when I woke up to find myself in eye contact with the Financée and my right index finger wedged firmly in my nose.

I know my brain is trying its best to keep up with all the post-Xmas crap I have to do, such as rearranging every display, removing anything remotely holiday-like, and doing so with a store full of customers, most of whom are cranky as hell because Xmas is over and they can finally tear away the holiday cheer they've been forced to staple to their skulls for the past few weeks. Employees generally agree with them, and the result is arguments, blow-ups in the break room, and complaints to corporate headquarters over the slightest of offenses, real or imaginary. Nobody likes each other after Christmas; I'm surprised more wars don't start around the end of the year.

My little half-week vacation is in three weeks; let's hope I can make it without having to work 100-hour weeks.

Not my idea of fun

As a merchandising supervisor, my job is essentially to maintain displays, replace them when corporate HQ says so, put signs up, take them down, et cetera. I have a small staff to assist me, but for the most part, I do the majority of the work, and I don't mind a bit.

Problem is, about half of my time is spent running the sales floor; handling returns, dealing with customer complaints, assisting customers, among other engaging activities. This, of course, assumes a perfect world, which it never is. I also have to deal with obnoxious or simply crazy people, loud teenagers, and (my least favorite) shoplifters. This part of the job sucks big time, and on Saturday I had to experience it more than once.