The Fourth

Spent the morning up at the parents’ cabin doing my whites and dress socks. Not having a dryer sucks rocks, let me tell you. Checked on their mail at the P.O. box and ran into a lady that was trying to figure out why the place was closed. I actually had to remind her that it was the 4th with the total lack of parking and all the brouhaha out on the square. Dip wad.

Checked on my mail too, and my cable/Internet bill has gone WAY down since they took the phone service off. What kills me about the whole thing was that the actual phone service only cost me $30/month, but all the frakking taxes and 911 fees and relay for the deaf/hard of hearing fees and every other damn thing anyone could remotely tie to the phone line was almost another $25/month. What the heck? The cool thing is that the local telephone/broadband provider has recently decided if you have an existing DSL-ready phone line coming to the house from the trunk, you can get DSL service without having a phone line. Rock on! DSL is SO much better than cable for what I do with my connection.

Had lunch with Critter today. Wasn’t expecting OtherGuy to follow us out to my car. I guess he was marking his territory or something. She doesn’t think it’s going to work out between the two of them, so I’m really not sure why she’s screwing around and not just throwing him out.

Skipped the local fireworks again this year, going alone would be boring and honestly, after spending eleven years working at Disney World and seeing their holiday displays there’s no reason for me to go except to be with someone.

I’m feeling a little stressed at work. I’m being ridden hard about this stupid little metrics thing the district uses to tell me how many lanes I need open and when I need them. The reason my numbers are out of whack is I need fifteen more people, and in their infinite wisdom the PTB’s have decided that the interviewing and paperwork aspects of the hiring process were bad and had to be changed, so now instead of taking an hour and a half to two hours to get them sent out for drug tests and send out for the background check (we don’t like hiring murderers and carjackers you see) it now takes THREE DAYS. Oh yeah, they really found an efficiency there. I asked the district HR about the change, and he said it was to reduce our six-month turnover rate. I pointed out that I didn’t have a problem with my turnover, to which he replied that I had just lost two cashiers inside of three weeks and that told him there was a problem in the hiring process. I told him both those cashiers 1) had been with the company more than six months and 2) were dead. I asked how changing the interview process would keep people from dying. He did have the good grace to act embarrased and say that he would look at my turnover numbers more closely but the new process was a corporate direction and could not be ignored.

They are also trying to make me be in charge of the Breast Cancer Walk Team for the store. I’m sorry, but I don’t particularly want to be in charge of it, and there’s another manager who does the walk every year anyway and *wants* to be in charge of it. I think what put me off the most about it was when they said they would arrange the schedules so I could be off the day of the walk and not affect the coverage at the store. Um, no – you make me go and it *will* count as a work day if I have to go to the Corporate Office to get it done.

I am all for giving back to the community and helping others and all that but I *do* object to being told *what* causes I will support, *how* I will support them, and *when* I will suport them. It isn’t any of my company’s business who and what I choose to support or when, so long as I do it on *my* time. The causes I support do not care or know where I work and get the money I give them, they are just thankful for the support. I really think this whole "look what *I* do for charity" breast-beating that’s been going on the past ten or fifteen years is a crock. We’ve been bullied into it by the far-left almost communist wacko liberals because somehow we’ve allowed them to make us feel guilty for having jobs, cars, homes, and our health. I’m not going to apologize for having all those things. I have worked very hard to get and keep those things.

The people who have come upon hard times through no fault of their own, or who realize what choices led them to their situation and are trying to turn things around and get back on track I can get behind and suport. The people who went to bed every night thinking that the world owed them a living and woke up one morning to discover that the world didn’t owe them anything and are complaining about it are on their own.

There are several people on this site that I read on a regular basis, and who (I think) read me fairly regularly who are struggling with employment, but they are all out there every day pounding the pavement trying to do something about it and not sitting on their duffs at home complaining that either the Democrats, the Republicans, the Unions, or the Foreigners took their jobs away. Good for them! They all seem like well qualified people and I am sure they will all have jobs again soon, and if not, I don’t have a problem with people like that drawing unemployment for a while so they can keep feeding themselves while they look. I do have a problem with people, like the young lady who’s hearing I have to attend next week, who just stopped coming to work and acted surprised a month later when they found out we’d fired them. The state unemplotment office has decided that since we "made no effort to inform her that her job was in jepardy" we owe her unemplyment. Bull. How was I supposed to make her aware when she stopped coming to work? How many places can you just dissapear for a month and still have a job when you come back with no explanations? Seriously.

And in case you are wondering, yes, I’ve made contingency plans in case my job evaportates, but unless there is a *huge* agricultural reform in this country people are always going to need to buy groceries, so I’m pretty secure for now. I have enough money saved up to close out my lease and get moved up to my parent’s place. From there all I’ll have to buy is food and gas until I can get another job, which shouldn’t take a whole lot – I’m a certified food safety manager and fast food places are always hiring. Yeah, it would probably be a pay cut at first but I’d recover eventually. Or I could just trade sex for housing with Critter or Dirty Girl… Just Kidding! Although, strange as it may seem, if they enjoyed it enough to have me as their "kept man" I would be a little flattered. A man-whore, yes, but flattered. I’m strange that way, I know.