2:30 a.m. - 2003-09-01
everybody look at your pants
$$$ HEY! Lookit me! I'm a productive member of society again! Hurray! $$$
Thats right boys and girls, I am once again GAINFULLY EMPLOYED. I saw the opportunity, I reached out and plucked it, ripe, from the air and I made it my own! I am the proud aquirer of a really crappy job.
On the plus side its money, and It'll get me out of the house a few times a week. On the negative side I have to wear a uniform, and get out of the house several times a week. I may even have to talk to people. Yech.
Today was orientation and it was the most pathetic thing ever. Four hugely wasted hours of my life that I will never get back. Of the eight people there I was one of only two with any previous retail experience, three of the people could barely string two words of english together, one was clearly mentally impared, two had big hair and too much eyeliner, and were comiserating about the shiftless irresponsabilty of their many and varied "babies' daddies", and one seventeen year old girl fresh out of highschool, who appeared to be, not actually stupid, but so bovinely vapid I really expected drool to spill out of the corner of her mouth any minute. These are very uncharitable first impressions, but it was 8:20am and I hadnt slept at all. Also I'm a bitch.
As part of introducing ourselves we had to say what our favorite movie was. I said mine was "Cyrano De Bergerac" (the old black and white one with Jose Ferrer absolutely kills me) and got the usual "Ooooh" and a nod which means "I have no idea what youre talking about but it sounds very impressive." The other girls said movies like "Titanic" and "Moulin Rouge" and then they gushed about how much they love romantic movies. And yet they have never heard of Cyrano???? Fucking shameful. I hated them, I pitied them, I tried so very very hard not to let myself feel "superior" or "better than" because thats just not the kind of person I am, but so far my co-workers seem to be the dregs of the employment world, and theres a desperate drowning feeling I get when I realize I'm being grouped in with them.
We watched a loss prevention video that kept using the word "safeness" and instead of paying attention I spent most of the rest of the day going back and forth in my head about whether thats really a word. Eventually I decided its one of those bullshit peices of corporate jargon, like "synergy" and therefore had no validity, only to get home and check the dictionary and discover that BOTH words are in there. Damnit.
And then came the saftey video!!!! YAAAYYY!!!! I LOVE these things. This one was pretty bad. It even had a fire represented by red and yellow lights beign shimmered onto the actors. The best bit was a sort of "Red pavement" of the workplace where people with gouged out eyes and missing fingers and fractured skulls share with future generations what has to be their worst and stupidest moment so you dont end up as sad as them. Gold. At one point it adresses the correct procedure when climbing a ladder, such as the "three point rule" which states that you "must keep one hand and at least two feet on the ladder at all times."
....at least two feet.....
This necissarilly implies that one person putting more than two feet on the ladder is an option. Is this some sort of legal non-exclusionary maneuver in case they hire conjoined twins or mutants? Couldnt they just say "both feet?" No one else even batted an eye. I was wondering If I shouldnt ask for the contact info of the company who made the video. I think I've been talking to Judah too much.
The best saftey video EVER was for a shop class I took one semester. It was made during the 80's and had all the big hair and hideous clothes, and I swear on my comic book collection that in between the acted scences, the background and intro music was "Safety dance" by Men Without Hats. I was like, rocking out and singing along. Yet I still found a shop partner.
This episode has been brought to you by working class malaise and severe sleep deprivation, and I strongly suspect I'll go over it again tomorrow and suck out some of the poison. In the meantime enjoy this "unedited version."
(Oooooh, how Indie...)
