Month: December 2005

I know it’s the last day of the year and I should do what every other retarded publication and news organization does and run down the top whatever of 2005 and point out useless shit that we all forgot but honestly, how lame is that? Instead, I would rather do what I do best and end the year out right by bitching about something.

We had another major meltdown at work this week. Our main register cacked out on us at some point on Wednesday night, and since I do pricing, the main register is a little bit important to me. See, all of the pricing that is sent to me that I make tags off of gets sent up to the main registers and that is how the stuff rings up at the registers. Do you see the predicament I was in? None of my price changes or ad items were going up front meaning that nothing was ringing up correctly if it came to my computer on Thursday or Friday. Stop, I know what you’re thinking; but Dave, if the problem happened on Wednesday, why were you still having problems on Friday. Well, that’s just what makes the story that much better to end the year on. Thursday morning when I get to work at 4am I check out this note left saying all this has happened and it says that it should all be repaired by Thursday by noon.

Thursday noon rolled around and guess what, no fixed system. I got a hold of someone at my office who told me that no one would be there until after four in the afternoon, so I just took off for the day. I figured that if they were going in on Thursday afternoon we’d be rolling by Friday morning. Wrong again.

Enter the snowstorm; Friday morning rolls around and I’m all ready to go into work and send all of Thursday’s stuff to the main register and I look outside and there is about 2” of snow outside. That’s just great, now I have an 18 mile drive to work on shitty roads. I finally get to work in the lovely weather and find out that the problem still wasn’t fixed and worse yet there are notes telling us if something was wrong or even if they are coming back on Friday. I had gone in at four in the morning again so there was nobody I could call that early, I had to wait until 6 in the morning. Once I got a hold of them I learned that they knew nothing more than I did, so it was back to the waiting game. Eventually I found out that they installed the new hard drive but they didn’t know how to partition it so they just left and they would be back before noon on Friday. Apparently in their world before noon equals noon because that is when they showed up to fix this bullshit. I asked how long it would take and he said about 45 minutes. I thought hot shit I’ll just stick around and wait. I mention that my office said it would be around 5 hours for this to get done and he goes… well yeah, it’ll take me about 45 minutes to get the hard drive set up but it will take around 4 hours to load everything into it. Well, fuck that noise, I decided to go home and come back later. I told them to call me when everything was working correctly and I could come in and finish everything up. I got the call around four telling me that the guy left and it would take about two more hours for everything to load up so I figured around six I’d leave and go finish up. I took off around six which was just in time for round two of the snowstorm and some more glorious driving. I get there and I see that the register is working just fine so I go into the back to do my thing and I find out that there is still some sort of connection error for this goddamn thing. I end up calling retail tech and letting them know what’s going on and about an hour and three phone calls later I ask if there’s any point in me sticking around for this shit. I was told that nothing would be resolved anytime soon so I might as well head out. Great, now I get to drive for the third time in shitty weather on roads covered with snow and slush.

This morning although I never got any phone calls from anyone at tech support, who I gave my cell phone number to) I found out through work that the connection was fixed and working. Around 11 this morning I went in and did my thing which took a good hour and a half and finally put all of this bullshit behind me. What a shitty way to end off the old year.

Everyone knows that Christmas is a religious holiday even though non religious people like me celebrate it every year. Now when I say non religious all I’m really saying is I don’t bother with that whole church thing. I’ve never really understood the whole going to church thing myself since I think if you are a truly religious person you don’t need the church. The church only wants your money, plus it’s really hard to pick up chicks in church, although on the plus side, they have a lot of practice screaming ‘oh God’.
As I was saying, I now know why that Christmas is a religious holiday. It’s because taking part in the holiday exposes you to the Seven Deadly Sins and what is more Christian than that? Let’s get to it shall we.
GREED: Come on people, this one is a no brainer here. Every time you are asking for a present you are showing your greed. Yeah, you say you don’t ask for a present but you sure as hell drop hints here and there don’t you. You’re shopping in the store and you see stuff you like and you say, wow… my friend Jerry has that new I Pod over there, that’s really a cool thing, wish I had one too. In fact doing that you just committed a second sin too, but we’ll get to that one next.
ENVY: This is what you get when you are looking at shit that other people have and are thinking about how bad you want what they have. The fact that you’re pining over Jerry’s I Pod makes you envious of him and his stuff and makes you a sinner. This shit even happens at the Christmas parties. You open your shitty sweater and Tom opens up his new set of golf clubs and you stew in the corner with your new attire… that’s envy; sinner.
LUST: I know what you’re thinking, how can lust work into Christmas, unless of course the women like fat guys with white beards and red clothing. Well, aside from that there are other things. First there are the skimpy Santa-like outfits for women at the stores. You know the lingerie type stuff that is hanging on the rack and you walk by and start thinking about who you’d like to see in it? Yeah, lust.
PRIDE: Pride is all over during Christmas. Usually it comes from you putting out enough Christmas lights on your house and in your yard to drain the local power company and cost you enough to feed a homeless family for a month. Once you’re done you stand back with pride and look at your decorated yard… as small planes mistake your yard for a landing strip. That’s pride and you’re a sinner.
WRATH: Wrath comes in many forms at Christmas. The first is the people that don’t get what they want for Christmas. Sure these days you can take back the present the day after Christmas but that means you stand in line for hours which can really bring out wrath. That is another large bringer of wrath; trying to shop in the stores at Christmas time. Anyone who has had to wait in line at the store during the Christmas season definitely has experienced wrath.
SLOTH: Sloth is usually attributed to being a lazy bastard, and many people are during Christmas. However, sloth means more than that, it also means apathy and apathy means you stop caring. Personally I can’t blame people for not caring because after trying to cram all of that fake niceness into a couple weeks around Christmas you really get sick and tired of all of these charities begging for your hard earned money. Just think if you dropped money into the bucket for the needy every time you walked by and the person ringing the bell gave you the guilt trip look… you’d be broke; so you stop caring. You damn sloth.
GLUTTONY: I saved this one for last because I feel it is the most obvious of all sins this time of year. Let’s face it, this time of year we become human vacuum cleaners, eating everything in site. Oh look a new kind of candy, let’s eat it. Oh wow, I didn’t know they made chocolate pumpkin pie, let’s eat that too. It’s so bad that you have to swear for a new year’s resolution that you will go on a diet… you fucking glutton.
See, as great as Christmas is and as many presents as you’ll get, you’re still nothing more than a sinner… seven times over.
Merry Christmas Everyone!

I’m still not done with my Christmas shopping yet. I know it’s probably a sin but I do truly think that I will be done after tomorrow. I only have one more person to buy for and I actually have a good idea of what I’m buying, so we’ll see. Once I get done with that then I will have to wrap the presents. That’s one thing I never really understood was the whole wrapping ordeal. I buy you something, something you probably won’t even like by the way, and then I have to conceal this item with colorful paper when I give it to you. Once I give you the present, you will then rip the pretty paper off of the present with no second thoughts. Then again, there is the other type of person, and sorry ladies, but usually it’s a woman; this person will carefully remove the paper from the package like she’s working a crime scene and try and save it. Why are you saving it, the paper only costs about $1 for 50 feet of it, and you know if I own it my cheap ass bought it last year after Christmas for only 50¢. I don’t know why some people have to save it but regardless if they save it or destroy it I already know that the present is probably going back… why you ask, because after spending 10 minutes on the paper, the present only gets about a 10 second look and a quick thanks then it’s onto the next one.
We had our first major snowstorm of the year yesterday. I still left for work at 4:30 in the morning and drove in the shit Wednesday. The prediction was that we would get anywhere from 9” to a foot of snow and it would really pick up midday Wednesday. I went in early and ended up leaving around 7am and I took today off. I think I should have worked because I ended up retiling a bathroom. Luckily it was vinyl tiles and not ceramic tiles because even I’m not up for that kind of shit. My body is sore in places I didn’t know it could be sore in. I think I’ll be up for a little pain tomorrow because I’m sure after I sleep on it it’ll hurt even more in the morning. Hey, I was talking about snow wasn’t I? The one think that was nice about the snow is that my snow blower started up right away yesterday and I was able to go out and take care of that shit right away. If you’ve ever been in a snowstorm and you’ve just snow blown, then you know what comes next. I would say roughly five minutes after I did the driveway the snowplow drove by and filled the end of it. Bastards.

Well, it’s already the fourth of December and I haven’t even started my Christmas shopping yet. I know what your thinking, but Dave, you’ve got a good 19 and a half days to finish that shit, don’t sweat it. Well, I don’t know but I think it would be nice just one year to actually finish my shopping early. Sure the selections are less and the shopping is easier the longer you wait, because hey if the store is out of half of the shit then you’ve got that many less decisions you have to make… sounds simpler to me. Maybe my Christmas spirit is coming back, you never know stranger things have happened. If it is coming back it’s because I don’t have to deal with the stupidity of Christmas merchandising this year. If there was one thing I always hated it was being in charge of putting out the holiday shit every year. Every year it was the same shit, I’d put out Halloween around the first or second week of September and then I would mark all of the shit that didn’t sell down around the 20th of October and then after Halloween I would mark that shit even farther down. Of course right after Halloween was done I’d start setting up Christmas. I know what you’re thinking, what about Thanksgiving? Well you know what, fuck Thanksgiving because that was more of a grocery than a GM holiday anyway. Sure you’ve got your cheap ass turkey/meth making pans you put out for under $1 and you’ve got the baster tubes and lacers but those are all second fiddle to the turkey and stuffing really. As the GM manager I had to worry about all of the lame Christmas trinkets that nobody was going to buy from me anyway and know that everyone was going to wait until after Christmas to buy everything because they expected the half off sales to come. Now all I have to worry about is whether or not there is a sign or a tag on all of that bullshit. It sure would suck to still be stuck in the HBC/GM department… I feel sorry for anyone that is.
I just ordered myself a shitload of DVD’s again. I think I just did that a few weeks ago and got myself set up with all the George Carlin DVD’s and a few others. This time I ordered ten more on Saturday and then I had to spend my Fun Cash before the end of the year so I just ordered five more from that today. I have kept track of everything I’ve spent on movies through Columbia House since I started in the club and they do actually save you money if you are willing to buy more than one DVD at a time. My average cost for DVD’s is under $11, which you have to remember includes all of the 4 Aqua Teen sets and my two George Carlin sets that would have cost me over $60 a piece at the store. Merry Christmas to me indeed.