Author: David

So I spent a few days in Minnesota last week. Tuesday morning I woke up about 4 am and I picked up a coworker and headed off to our corporate headquarters for three days worth of meetings. Like I mentioned last time I was here, I am going to take over in pricing in the store. On Tuesday of next week our new computer and new program will be installed and I will pretty much be the only person in the store that knows it.

The ride to the cities wasn’t bad; traffic was what traffic is in Minnesota of course. When we were almost there we ran into a shitload of rain. Rain and slow moving vehicles which makes me wonder why they call it rush hour… certainly no one here seems in a rush. Once we get to the corporate office, then the fun begins. Everyone else that was training for this new program from the stores were old timers in the pricing department; some in the area of doing it for 10 years. Of course as they go around the table on the first day asking us to introduce ourselves and tell them how long we’ve been doing pricing. I of course say I’m Dave and this is my first day. The one lady had to put me through 20 questions then asking why I was here and why someone so fresh would be in pricing etc…

When day one was finally done it was great because I had already picked up the ins and outs of the program, even finding a few glitches in it. After that we went back to the hotel and I got up to my room and flipped the TV on to check out the weather. Well I see on the news that there is a supposed tornado on the ground back in my hometown and they are basically yelling at people in the area to take shelter immediately. Wow, that’s fucked up, so now I gotta make a few phone calls. I decide to use my cell phone because even though I’m roaming, it’s still cheaper than using the room phone. I make a few calls and find out that my family is fine so then it’s time to go out for dinner. We end up going to the Macaroni Grill. That place was pretty good, especially if you like Italian Food. I’m not used to being in restaurants that don’t have paper napkins, that’s for sure. The size of the place was huge compared to places in my town and the food I had was great. Now it was time to go back to the hotel and most likely fall asleep. Around three in the morning I was woke up to the sound of thunder in the distance. Actually the thunder was right outside, but with the air conditioner going full blast I couldn’t hear it. I flipped on the TV and watched the live coverage as they were talking about all this high winds and hail, but I decided as long as they weren’t saying the T word I would just go back to sleep.

Ahh, day two. By the start of day two I am beginning to notice that the person that is supposed to be training us really doesn’t know the program that well. Later that day she lets us know that they still have the old program at their store. Well what the fuck is with that? That’s like asking a blind person to teach me how to play horseshoes. Well I was there to learn and I think I found about 4 shortcuts to the stuff we were being taught mostly because the new program is a Windows based and I’m very familiar with that. After another very long boring day it was time to get out of there again. Wednesday’s weather was much better than Tuesday’s. This time we went out to The Cheesecake Factory for supper. I had a double bacon barbeque burger and fries because all the really cool stuff didn’t really appeal to me. Even though I was stuffed, I was at the Cheesecake Factory and it’s a felony to not have some cheesecake while you’re there. So I ordered some peanut butter chocolate cookie dough thing. It was damn good. It was worth it being up most of the night somewhat sick because it tasted damn good. I can’t believe a piece of cheesecake costs almost $8 but then again I wasn’t paying for it… my company was.

Day three was supposed to be a short day for us. I was learning pricing and next Tuesday I was supposed to come back down for a day long meeting to learn DSD. Well they suddenly decided that we were going to be going live with our new system on Tuesday so that put me in a predicament. I can’t really go to Minneapolis and learn DSD when I am going to be the only one that works at the store that knows the new system… I’m thinking I should probably be there. They decided that I should be there as well and thought that I could just learn the DSD stuff in a few hours on Thursday. The morning classes we had were basically just showing us how to use the email program at work so which we already have and I actually showed my former manager how to use when we got it at the store. So we get to skip that stuff and go learn the DSD stuff. Apparently I learn this computer stuff rather fast because after being kind of squawked at on my first day and getting 20 questions, the main trainer lady (not the one that didn’t know her stuff) asked me if I wanted to be a trainer. I THINK she was just kidding because I laughed her off, but I think I knew the program better than the one that is supposed to be teaching us.

We got out of there around 3 on Thursday and I was home right around 5 so it wasn’t so bad. Friday was a different story though, because I got to come to work and everyone wants to know about the new system and how is this going to work and all this other whiny shit which I don’t really have time for since it’s fucking inventory time. I managed to get my entire inventory counted on Friday and I was able to label it all so that tomorrow I won’t have to do much. Besides, I’m already doing books tomorrow and I don’t want to be interrupted by those fucking inventory people. My next day off isn’t until next Saturday either. I work at 7 am every day this week and then apparently starting in July our prices are going to automatically update at 6am every day and the tags will have to be hung by that time. We open at 7 so the tags will need to be up by then. That means that I will be getting a front door key and a pass code to the security system so I can come in every morning around 4 or so and get stuff done before the store opens. Ahh, imagine that, working in aisles and not being bothered by customers. It sounds like a dream come true.

So in case this is the first time you’ve ever read something on this page, let me bring you up to speed on my past three years of this computer technology called “blogging.” Here are the facts we’ve established: 1) My job sucks. 2) Weather in Wisconsin sucks. 3) Customers Suck. 4) I love to revamp my web pages and I am now taking classes to make my sites even better and hopefully launch a career in web design. 5) My job still sucks.

So you get the idea… After being an HBC manager for the past 10 years at my current job and being railroaded into doing books on some weekends, I think it’s all coming to an end. As much as I want to quit the store, a unique opportunity came along in the last few days.

Our full time pricing manager is leaving in the next month or so. That leaves a full time void for one job. Let me stress that part again: ONE JOB. See, right now I am the HBC/GM manager, I am the only back up to bookkeeping and I also fill in at the service counter when needed, and like this past Monday I also get to do some cashiering. Unless I sniffed too much gasoline this afternoon while I was mowing the lawn; that makes four different jobs I’m doing at the moment. That’s three too many; or four however you look at it. Anyway whatever I had planned to do next week is down the toilet now. We are implementing a brand new pricing system at our store and will have new computers and new programs to run. Since our current pricing manager is leaving and the training sessions are next week, it’s been decided that I should learn to do the job now instead of her learning and then teaching me when she leaves.

Part one of this is good… I get off from work tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. The bad part is I’ll be stuck in the Twin Cities somewhere next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for 8 hour meetings each day. Of course I come back on Friday and I have to prep up for inventory and then Saturday and Sunday I have to do books. I’m hoping that job will end quickly soon so I can have my weekends back again.

Did I mention that part of it? I won’t have to work every other weekend anymore. I will have to work one Saturday a month for roughly 45 minutes. I think I can swing that.
What about school you ask? Well I’m still doing that as well and if a web design job comes along, even a very green entry level position, I’m still gone. My only plan where I’m at now is to make my time there a little easier, but when my train comes along, I’m damn sure getting on it.

I’ve been working away doing the whole school thing lately and have been somewhat ignoring all other aspects of the net. It seems like Flash and Fireworks are consuming most of my time. That is a good thing though, since I’m hoping I will be able to find a job somewhere working on websites.

The weather sure does suck ass lately. I could have sworn that June was less than a week away, but I’ll be damned if we are getting into the 70’s at all. It’s like we hit 70 and then a day later we’re lucky to hit 60. It’s a pain in the ass. Of course I turn the weather on tonight and they are talking about 80’s starting next week. Now most people would say that sucks since it’s Memorial Day weekend coming up and it should be nice for that. However, it is my weekend to work and therefore it can be cold, crappy and rainy all weekend if it wants to. I did manage to get next Friday off, which coincides with my weekend off and gives me a three day weekend a week later. In case you’re not paying attention, that means when I’m off three days, it will be nice and warm. Suck on that everyone that has the holiday weekend off.

Speaking of work, it still sucks. I’m still looking for another job even with the school thing going on. Like I said, my hope is to find a web design job after this, but if that doesn’t work out right away it would be nice to just get the fuck out of there. Hey, maybe I’ll win the 215 million dollar Powerball and I won’t have to work ever again.

Have you ever noticed what a pain in the ass it is to shit at work? No I’m not talking constipation or even hemorrhoids. I’m just talking about the process of having to shit at work.
I don’t know how the women’s bathrooms are set up, although I’m sure they are complete with fountains and couches and golden tampon dispensers. My bathroom however consists of a toilet surrounded by less light weight metal than my fucking bike, a urinal and a sink. That’s all there is in my bathroom at work. Now I attempt to avoid shitting at work whenever possible, but sometimes even I have to make exceptions; like that time I mistook that bottle of magnesium citrate for 7 UP. Ah, who am I kidding, 7 UP will make anyone sick.

I hate having to shit at work. The biggest problem is that in the men’s bathroom if the door gets swung open everyone that is standing outside of it can see in. We don’t have that lovely rat maze of a fucking hallway that you women have. They put that in there so men don’t peer into the women’s bathrooms; what are we all perverts? Anyway, I see the rat maze thing when I’m out and about peering into the lady’s room and wonder why we can’t have that. Nope, we are totally exposed, and in most cases without as much as a fucking lock on the door.

Forgetting the whole people outside the restroom that can see you and not to mention hear you… oh yeah, that’s another thing, if you’re extremely gaseous that day everyone’s going to know. That door may be steel out there, but it sure the hell isn’t soundproof. But let’s just forget about those people standing outside because honestly, if they could smell what the Rock is cooking… well they wouldn’t be standing there now would they? Now let’s get to the poor bastards that make the mistake of actually walking into the bathroom while I’m trying to do my business. Of course when they walk in you stop. You have to stop, even if you’re in mid shit because you can’t have the noise of farts or water splashing going on… then they might think you’re taking a shit. So obviously you have to be extra quiet, which includes no grunting or groaning. You also have to watch the shadows to make sure everyone is clear before you resume doing your dirty deed.

That’s the big disadvantage to taking a shit at work. You’re behind this mini wall, but the bottom 12 inches are totally open. That means that you can’t see who is coming into the bathroom, but those fuckers can see your shoes. That’s the first thing I do when I go into the bathroom to take a piss or wash my hands is check out the shoes of the person in the stall. I need to know who that is so I can avoid having to shake their hand at a later time. Hell, if something that bad smelling came out of your ass and you obviously and hopefully wiped it and I don’t know which hand you use to wipe… well let’s just nod at one another.

So when you’re the one stuck in the stall shitting and those fuckers are out there looking at your shoes, it’s to your disadvantage. That’s why I always bring along a change of shoes. That’s right; I bring a second pair to throw on when I go to the shitter, then after my business is done and I’m sure no one else is in the bathroom I slip my regular ones on and throw the old ones back above the ceiling tiles. You can’t be too careful these days. That way if someone walks in the bathroom while you’re washing your hands you can say… “Who was the guy with the ratty old Adidas shoes on stinking up the place? Well, me and my Nikes are going to get back to work now.” If you don’t take that precaution then you wind up walking around work and someone comes up to you and says “Hey there, nice shoes… you stinky bastard.” You know you can’t be having that now.

Now that Johnnie Cochran has died and gone to wherever it is that your religion says dead people go to, Michael Jackson may be in a bit of a bind. I think if one person could have gotten him off on the charges it would have to be Johnnie. Of course most courts don’t allow zombie defense, so Michael is going to have to take another route.

I think I could get him off. Well, off the charges, not actually get him off. Hell I’m 31 for Christ’s sake, way too old for Michael. Shit, your honor, strike that last statement from the records, the one I said. See, I’m learning this law stuff rather quick. Anyway, the way I see it, Michael didn’t molest any of the boys. Here’s what happened, now listen closely. The one boy that was claiming molestation is a little special. You see, he only has one hand, and on the other hand he only has four fingers. Mr. Jackson was merely trying to play “This Little Piggy” with the boy and simply ran out of piggies. Sure this little piggy went to market and this little piggy stayed home and this little piggy had roast beef, and this little piggy had none and this… damn, no more fingers. Of course my client found a fifth little piggy to go wee wee wee all the way home. Now some of you may be thinking why not go for the feet, but let’s be honest, if he did that there would be four extra piggies that wouldn’t be part of the story. Another thing, if the little piggy missing goes wee wee wee, what better piggy than the wee wee? He made Thriller dammit! Your honor, the defense rests.

I guess you can tell why I’m going to school for web page design and not for law. If I was Jackson’s lawyer he’d already be in prison. Of course that’s what I’m all ready for is to start learning tomorrow. I’m hoping it stays as a fun thing for me and doesn’t become a pain in the ass. I do enjoy creating web pages so it would be nice to get better at it and eventually get paid to do it.

I think the nice weather may finally be here although I’m not sure because obviously this is Wisconsin. We had snow flurries in May, which I don’t really remember happening in the past and just the other day we had an extremely hard frost. That’s too much shit for me especially when we have a few nice days in the mid 70’s close to 80. Hell, I haven’t even gone golfing yet, not even to a driving range. I did get to go out fishing on one of the days that managed to creep above 65 degrees. Of course now I don’t know how much my school will take up of my time so therefore I don’t know how the golfing and fishing is going to go.

Well, this Wednesday is the start of it all. I am signed up for two online courses. One is for Macromedia Flash MX and the other is for Macromedia Fireworks MX. There is also a course for Dreamweaver MX but I’m pretty sure I’ve got that one under control. Did I mention I bought a copy of Macromdedia Studio MX? Let’s just say that it cost more than my first car did. My first car was a 1978 Chevy Camaro Rally Sport and I paid $850 for it. My big hope is that I can do something positive with this… I think I can.

I added an article to my site that I found in my closet. It was a paper I wrote back in either middle school or high school. I put it on the site because I think it reflects what my writing would become. I am by no means an excellent writer and am not thinking that, but I’m more or less talking about my style. The way this is written is more of a story type than the articles I normally write. Oh, did I mention that I hid it on the site? It’s not a clickable link from any menu in the site, but there is a place to click somewhere in the site to view it. I am thinking of doing more hidden stuff on the site in the future. I’ve got a bunch of drawings that I did back when I was younger that I’d like to put up on the site as well. I actually have an entire notebook filled with stories I wrote back when I was in 9th grade as a required writing. I don’t think they are good whatsoever but I might throw them up on the site just for shits and giggles (hidden of course).

Now the only thing I really have to do on here is get Lisa’s blog to look a little more appealing. Once I get online when she’s online and can chat with her a little bit I think we’ll be able to come up with something.

Why is it that the possibility that some ex contestant screwed Paula Abdul newsworthy? I’m sure there is more important news to be worried about anyway. There is no reason to be reporting stupid shit like this. My thought is maybe there should be a separate channel just for stupid news like this and we could keep all the real news on the news channels. I don’t need ABC or whoever the fuck it was giving us this exclusive news report about some guy claiming he was banging Abdul. Of course she is denying the whole thing. I am reading shit now saying that she should be removed from the show as a judge and a bunch of shit like that. Why not do America a favor and just cancel the show? Just curiously, why is Paula Abdul selected to be a judge of other peoples singing talent? Didn’t she sing a duet with a rapping cartoon cat back in the early 90’s? Oh I think so. So that song and maybe two others were hits. Now you can’t tell me that she is worthy of telling anyone else that they suck… of course she knows what it’s like to suck; apparently in more ways than one.

I’m not a big Star Wars fan, but it’s getting obvious that the new movie is coming out soon. I notice because there is Star Wars crap all over the stores, it’s all over the Pepsi and Frito shit and anywhere else you can image. Life size cut outs of Darth Vader and Chewbacca and things of that nature. I’m sure somewhere there are a bunch of people that are wasting all of their vacation time, or are currently unemployed sitting outside a theater somewhere waiting for this film to open up. I’ve never understood that. Hey, let’s sit outside a theater for a month waiting for this movie to open. I wouldn’t even wait that long to get laid. So we’ve got all this Star Wars shit loitering in our store that I’d chuck down the chute if I had the chance since all it is doing is cluttering up aisles. In case you didn’t notice it already, I’m not a fan of Star Wars. When you say that people look at you funny like you’ve said something bad about God in church. I get the same looks when I tell people I really don’t like the song Hotel California. Yeah, I’ll listen to it if it’s on, but I surely don’t sing along; maybe you have to be high to like the song, I don’t know.

I got to go to the dentist last Friday. Of course of the three days ending today, Friday was the nicest. I left work at 9am and went there and got back to work around 11am. I hadn’t been to the dentist since 1998 if I remember correctly. I’ve only had two dentists that I remember and both of them I completely hated. The first one was the one that I went through braces hell with. He was an asshole among assholes. The second one I went to because I despised the first one so much and this one ended up being something like the Doc in Back to the Future. Extremely spaced out and no time machine. Trust me, if he had a time machine I would have went back in time and cancelled that fucking appointment. So after the second sucky dentist I stopped going. For about the last year I would keep thinking that it might be a good idea to go to the dentist and get the gross shit off my teeth. It wasn’t living on the street bad, but it wasn’t exactly pretty either. So I finally broke down on my day off last week and started calling around to the dentist’s around town and got an appointment two days later. I went in, got the scraping from hell and was told I had no cavities. I was also commended on having great teeth by the dentist. Honestly, on my paperwork I put down it had been a while since I went to the dentist and had they wanted to be crooked they could have lied and told me I had a few cavities and made a quick buck. It’s nice to have found a good dentist finally. I think I’ll back for another cleaning in six months.

Oh yeah, I finally finished the redesign on my main site last night. I think I should be happy with that for at least another month or two. The nice thing about the CSS layout this time is if I decide to change a few things, I can probably update the entire site in about a half hour unlike before when any site redesign took me a fucking eternity. Now to work on that 3rd Bass site.

So this last weekend I was watching the news and they were talking about the missing bride on all the channels. Jennifer Wilbanks decided a couple days before her big wedding in front of over 500 people that she didn’t want to go through with it so she took off. Of course not telling anyone made everyone in her family freak out and start the searching process; wasting precious police resources community service. Well of course Saturday morning when I got up to go to work I flip on the TV and they are saying that she was found down in Albuquerque, saying she was kidnapped. By the time I got home from work Saturday the tune had changed. Now they were saying she made the whole story up. I do love it when my gut feelings are correct. I hadn’t really been following the story from the start, but when I saw the report of her being found Saturday Morning I called bullshit on her abduction story right away. Now for all her fun she might end up facing some legal woes. This should be a warning to all of you crazy kids out there thinking of imitating this type of behavior. If you do all of this and then you’re found and you claim to have been kidnapped and you’re stringing the family along with the nation along… get a hold of Ashton Kutcher. That’s right, no matter what you do wrong, if Ashton comes out at the end, it’s OK. He just runs out and lets you know that your ass got Punk’d and then everyone has a chuckle and you move on. No charges filed or anything. Ah, the beautiful magic blur of television.

As far as my site CSS redesign goes, I think it will start tomorrow night. I don’t know if it will be uploaded, it will depend on how much of the new stuff I polish off and put on the site. I think I have 4 new articles that will be going on the site; all into the humor section. Although I have done most of my text on my sites in the past with CSS, this will be my first CSS layout page I’ve done. So far I can say I really like working with CSS.

Family Guy was awesome last night. The opening part was on point with Peter naming off all of the shows that have come and gone since Family Guy was last on Fox. The Pinocchio part cracked me up. You could probably lie, I wouldn’t even know. Sadly, I think the first episode of Family Guy was funnier than the entire first half of the season of South Park this year. Then again I could just be forgetting the funny stuff from those episodes too. Well since I don’t do church, I now have something to look forward to on Sundays too.

It looks like starting Wednesday we are going to actually have some decent weather. It fucking snowed again today. I can’t believe it is snowing in May still. We are supposed to be having temps in the mid 70’s by the end of the week though. All I can say is we better have nice weather on its way, because I’m sick and tired of this winter bullshit. I would graciously accept temperatures in the 50’s or 60’s this time of year, but when you have to struggle to hit 35… well I think we’re getting Punk’d.

It’s the first day of May; today I had to get up extremely early to go to a job I hate. I had to look outside and watch it snow on the first day of May… the first day of May I say. It’s a great day though isn’t it? Why is it such a great day? Because the new season of Family Guy started tonight. I’ve loved that show since it made its first run on TV back in the late 90’s. Unfortunately in its first run they bounced it around so much I missed a lot of the shows. That’s why I was so glad to find the DVD’s when they came out, and then when the news followed that a resurrection was coming with new episodes and a possible movie, I turned into one of those Star Wars geeks… except it was about Family Guy since I don’t really like Star Wars.

As you can tell, there is a new design in town. It’s a pretty radical change from what I used to have, and it’s a good indication of what the rest of my site is going to look like. I’ve also changed the page title from Blog of a Disgruntled Human to Musings of a Disgruntled Human because… well because I like the sound of it better.

Speaking of things like blogs, I did a new install of Movable type so Lisa could do some blogging. The main reason I set it up for her was so I could constantly harass her to get a new blog up. Payback’s a bitch. Lisa’s Blog is here. That is another sub domain of mine, and I figured since I get 15 subs and I’m really only using one for my blog, one for my 3rd Bass site, one for my 3rd Bass message boards and one for my Cartman site, I might as well use another one. So enjoy the blog Lisa; and oh yeah… post something new already!

Ok, let’s figure this out shall we? It is April 26th and it’s snowing out. Did I miss some sort of meeting here or something? It’s almost May and there are white flakes and I highly doubt my extremely tall neighbor is shaking his dandruff out in front of my window. If you bitch at all about this whole snow thing, people tell you to accept it because you live in Wisconsin. Well you know what, that’s not good enough for me. Gee, maybe I should kick back with a brick of cheese and a 24 pack of Old Milwaukee too, since I am in Wisconsin and all. Maybe I can go cow tipping too. It’ll work really good since it’s all snowy out and the big fuckers will tip easier that way.

I’ve been working feverishly on making a new look for my website, but I’m kind of coming up dry. I’m also going to debut a couple new articles on the site whenever it is that I get it up… the site that is. One article that is completed is Customers Suck 3, the other one that is nearing completion is called Porn & Toons. I’ll have to let that one explain itself when you read it, and no it has nothing to do with pornographic cartoons. A few other things I’m working on but haven’t completed yet is things we will say to our kids, a spiel on the criminal justice system in our country, a few of the charities I’m part of and some things that make me happy. Of course on the other end of the spectrum, I’m trying to make some major changes to my 3rd Bass page. When I first set it up I thought it looked pretty cool, but now I’m deciding that I really hate the white and colored letters on the black background. It’s probably a minor bitch on my part but when I figure out this CSS shit, and believe me I will, I will most likely revamp the entire 3rd Bass site as well. I’m already working on a new banner for the site and I’ll hopefully be going through some of the lyrics and changing those and other things of that nature. Damn, who has time to work when you have shit like this to do?

Speaking of doing fun stuff like building web pages and all, I think I’m going to be signing up for some online courses for web design. There are a bunch of online courses specifically for what I want that start in the near future. I think I will sign up for those even though they are non credit courses just so I can get the experience I need to either make my sites better and hopefully land a good job that I might actually enjoy. In case I’ve never made it clear, my current job; don’t enjoy it too much.

Shake Zula, not Slim Shady. I finally got my Aqua Teen Hunger Force DVD’s almost two weeks ago and I’ve watched every episode at least once. The first few episodes weren’t quite as good as the newer ones, but they are still funny. Besides, whenever a show is trying to find their niche, it takes a while. I’ve got three shelves above my TV and entertainment equipment and when I first put those up I didn’t even have the bottom shelf filled with DVD’s. I had almost two shelves full, but the majority of items were old VHS tapes that I never watched. Now I’ve got both the bottom shelves filled up with DVD’s and I think I have about 4 DVD’s that have spilled over to the top shelf. My newest addition was Meet the Fockers which I picked up yesterday since I saw it in the theaters and knew I’d end up buying it.

I’ve been extremely busy doing shit at work and not doing some shit at work. Last Monday as you may have read, I kinda sorta blew up the master register. No big loss really, it was sick, it needed to be put down. Well, two days after that some big shots showed up in our store and since it was my day off I didn’t have to see them. They did however leave a nice long list of shit they wanted changed. Now I’ve bitched about Dollar Days before, but I’ll do a short review again. My gross profit is budgeted at 35% to 45% and the dollar shit is only getting me about a 25% margin. Now if I only have my little 20′ section it’s really not a problem is it? Well, on my notes I am told that I should get rid of my kitchen gadget section and replace it with dollar items. I am supposed to get rid of all my Rubbermaid containers and foil ware and replace those with dollar equivalents. All of my toys need to go away and I can replace them with dollar toys. My last remaining section of make-up which is Cover Girl has been given the axe. I was also told that I need to cut my light bulb section in half, as well as my pet section. Honestly, what in the fuck are they thinking? Gee, we’re not making nearly enough money here, let’s cut all the sections in half and see what happens.

The other fun I had is I quit doing price checks for my store. Here’s the skinny on that fun. Every week I would do a one page check. Once a month there would be a bigger list that I would have to go do, not to mention a monthly milk and bread check; these were all at competitors stores. Well, the monthly one was coming up on being due and I had asked our assistant twice when it was due, once on Friday and again on the following Tuesday. Both times I was told she didn’t know. Then on Wednesday, which just happened to be my day off mind you, I get an email from the assistant telling me that the list is due today and would I be able to do it. Well first off, I had asked when it was due and I never was told when it would be so if it was suddenly due today, too fucking bad. Second, it’s my fucking day off and there is no reason to even think to ask me to do anything for that bullshit store when I’m not on the clock; ever. I was extremely busy last Wednesday, doing yard work and doing some minor customizing on my car. Because I was actually busy I didn’t check my emails after I sent back the one to work telling her I wouldn’t be able to do that. Around 8 that night I did get back into the house and I checked the computer and there was an email from work. In the email it was telling me that someone else was sent up there and told me I needed to be responsible in the future and wanted to know if I could do that. Hmm, I’ll have to think about that later because I’m a little busy at the moment saying every swear word I can think of directed at my job. The first thing I did was print up the email and then Thursday I took it into work and showed it to my boss and told him there was no way in hell I was ever doing price checks for the store again. Then yesterday I was asked by the assistant if I did the price check for the week. I just looked at her and said I didn’t have any time for that. A little later the store manager asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to do price checks anymore and I said, yeah, I’m pretty sure and just walked away.

Today I went around and put in some applications. If they spaz that bad because I stopped doing price checks, what are they going to do when I tell them I’m quitting? Sure as shit if I don’t walk off the job immediately the most they will get out of me is two weeks. So if they fell apart because I quit doing price checks, what will happen when I abandon two departments, stop backing up the bookkeeper and am no longer available to give the service counter breaks? I can only hope I find out really soon.

Every night at work the closing manager is supposed to run a report that pulls all of that day’s information so the computer work is correct the next day. Well, in the last couple weeks, the register we run those reports on has been acting up and at some point during the night when those reports are being run, the printer jams up. In the past all you would have to do is hit the clear button and the error would go away and the reports would keep on printing. Well, apparently last night that all came to an end. When I got to work today the reports had still not ran. Now mind you, I wasn’t doing books today, I was doing my normal shift so I got there at 8am and the reports hadn’t finished running. I was asked to look at the machine and see if I could get them to run, because apparently I’m good at that or something.

I go up to the office and look at the master register. There is a printer error on the screen and when you hit clear you can see the print head lift up but not quite make it as far as it is supposed to. Much like a 50 year old man reading a Penthouse, it was trying to get it up, but it just couldn’t. Well, I looked at it, and it appeared that the spring that lifted the contraption up wasn’t lifting it far enough up. So I stuck my finger in there and helped it lift and it started printing. I thought hot damn, I fixed the machine. Of course the machine had a different plan altogether. After printing about 10 more lines it decided to stop and throw the stupid printer error code back up. I thought shit, just lift the spring up again and we’ll be back in business. Only problem there was I lifted the spring up the second time and it kind of snapped off the top and hit a part inside of the register. We’ll call that part a “circuit board.” Anyway, the spring hit the circuit board and the other end came off and must have hit something that wasn’t supposed to touch the circuit board and that’s when the sparks flew, followed by the master register going dead. Yes, I killed the master register at work, or so it would seem.

I quickly looked at the situation and turned the master off at the main power switch. Then we get the spring restrung in the spot where it belongs and turn the power back on. Everything looks like it’s up and running because when everything is back up the printer error code comes up again. Well that’s good, because that’s where we were before the sparks flew. Of course when I hit the clear button this time, instead of the gears turning and trying to lift something, it just made a real grinding noise… think an electric pencil sharpener when you shove a pencil in too far and fast. So now we’re sitting there, the bookkeeper needs her reports ran so she can get all of the paperwork done for the day and it makes the drawer balancing easier. At that point I think, hey why not take the printing unit off another register and put it on the master register and then the reports will finish printing and we’ll be back in business.

Just a word of warning… if you’re ever working with outdated NCR equipment and you swap out a printer, don’t forget this little important nugget of information. Turn the damn machine off before you plug the new printer into it. I know that now, unfortunately I did not know that at 9am this morning. So I go over to one of our check lanes and I pull the printer unit off of that register and drag it into the office. I pull the plug on the printer on the master and I put the new printer unit into place and go to plug the unit into the back. I did not turn the unit off first, but when I plugged it in, the unit did shut off. I turned it back on thinking that it would just reset like it did before and with the new printer we’d be good to go. Well, shit doesn’t quite work like that on a Monday. I’d say this was roughly five minutes before the pharmacy informed us that the registers wouldn’t let customers use credit cards.

It was about that time that I realized I was in a little over my head and I wasn’t going to touch anything else. It was time to call the helpless desk. I called in and told them about our master register and then mentioned about the credit card machines not working. Well, that was a mistake because when I went back to the conversation about the master register I was told that the problem with that has been sent to NCR and we weren’t talking about that anymore. Now I was being told that the credit card problems were a separate problem and we were dealing with that.

At the same time as I’m on the phone not getting anywhere, our pricing people are on the phone with another person from the helpless desk because their computers are screwed up too. Well, the person they’re talking to apparently thinks their problem is related to the master register’s problem. After talking to my yahoo for almost an hour the pricing girl comes back and says her yahoo wants to do a master reset on the master register. I mention this to my yahoo and he says… yeah, that might solve your problems. What the fuck? He talks to me over an hour going as far as getting the credit card company people on the line with us and then says the reset might just fix everything… Now that’s fucked up.

After all this we were told that NCR would be coming out to fix our one printer that from my best guess had a fried circuit board. Before hanging up we were told if NCR didn’t show up within the next four hours to call and they would see where they were. This was somewhere around 9:30 am. At 2pm they called back because some of the reports didn’t pull through because of all the problems and they needed to dial in to take them. I mentioned that NCR hadn’t shown up yet and they said there was nothing they could do about it. Luckily they showed up about a half hour later and fixed it and everything was right again.

Fuckin’ Mondays.