Workie Work

I'll tell you about my weekend at work. It wasn't too eventful. I worked Thursday instead of Friday, because I had plans for Friday. Thursday was ridiculously slow, which is wierd because usually Thursdays are as good as Fridays. Not necessarily as busy, but there are fewer servers, so you do better in the long run. Not this time.

I wanted to go home, so I could get some stuff done. But I wasn't allowed to because there is a new lady and they didn't want her to be on her own, nor did they want her to "feel like she was being kicked out on her first night alone." Ok. So I had to stay.

My frenemy wasn't there, so it wasn't too bad. One thing did make me a little angry. A customer asked about some shrimp they had ordered. Honestly, I had forgotten that they ordered food, but I did hang my ticket up. When I went back there I got it, but found that it had been 25 minutes. Oops. The lady wasn't mad, but I was. There's no reason a 2.5 minute order should take that long.

I talked to my manager, who said that it was actually my fault. I did my job. I wrote my name and number on the ticket and hung it up. It is NOT my fault that the cook didn't do his job. Yes, I should have asked about it sooner, but still. Oh yeah. To make it worse, the cook was just goofing off. I was actually working.

My manager told me to apologize and say "Usually we're not this busy..." HA! They were the only ones in my section. So I went out and said, "I'm sorry. Usually we're not this busy at this time of night. Usually we don't have any customers..." and turned around and walked away. Just kidding. But I would have liked to.

Horoscope

This is crazy! Check out my horoscope for today. I don't usually look at these, but I was playing with my igoogle page and it was something I added for fun.

"As the Moon separates from her monthly conjunction with the Sun, her light begins to grow along with yours. It's easier for you to express what's on your mind now, even if you know that you will have to stand up to a powerful person. It might take a leap of faith to start up a difficult conversation today, but once you begin there's no stopping you. It's your turn to shine."

Then read my last post. It's amazing how sometimes those things just seem so dang right.

Something Happened

Something great, and amazingly uplifting happened today. I don't want to elaborate too much because I'm not supposed to really talk about it. I know no one that reads this would know what I'm talking about, but that is totally okay. The overall point is still great.

Today I got into an argument with a professor, which happens frequently with this specific professor. For the sake of this article we'll call him Mr. B. Anyways, after class I asked Mr. B if I could use a paper I wrote for his class for another class and he said that was okay. Then I told him I didn't mean to dispute him in class, and he said he liked to argue.

The argument kind of needs just a little more explaining. But I can't. Dang. This is harder than I thought it would be. okay...

Basically, this professor, that I really respect (and who is really hard on me), told me I was the best writer he had. He told me that I deserved special attention (which I told him I felt like my professors give me) because of the kind of person I am. He told me him and another professor agreed on this, which was a double compliment.

He also said (which I resent) that the first week of class he thought I was "just another hick, maybe Christian Conservative, not willing to think or be open minded," but after about a week he "found out he was dead wrong."

I told him it was easy to judge someone you didn't know.
We talked a few more minutes as he chain smoked and I tried to hold back a small tear in my eye. But I had to wipe it away.

I didn't listen to my radio the whole way home so I could relish in my compliment. I work so hard, and it's nice that someone else notices, and thinks you're good.

There was a lot more to the conversation that I can't elaborate here, but it really made my day.

A New Look...

One thing that I love about my beau is that he is very handy. He can do pretty much anything, and if he can't he has a friend that can. He can fix cars, houses, cook, clean, paint, garden, landscape, and even decorate... like I said, just about everything.

The other day we decided to invest some of our tax refund money into fixing up the house. We have been wanting to paint the exterior of the house for awhile, so we went ahead and got some house paint and new outside lights. G's dad came up to visit on Friday and my mom took the baby to the botanical garden, which gave the boys several hours to paint while I was at school.

When I got home they had quite a bit done, however, I wasn't sure if I liked it. It's clear that we'll need a second coat, and it's hard for me to imagine it how it will look and not how it does look. Since Friday, a lot more has been painted and even some of the second coat has been applied.

The color of our house right now is dark blue. The reason we hadn't painted the house sooner is because we couldn't decide on a color. First, G wanted to point it black, then white--neither of which I liked. We settled on a blue color called Morning Glory. It's a very pale blue. At first, it looked almost white, but after the second coat it is more bluish. I think I like it now. We started on the back of the house. I can't wait to see it finished.

Since we have started painting it has effectively rained several days, which has kept us from progressing too much. :( It will get done, though.

We just finished another outdoor project, which I am really happy about. We have had this wooden outdoor patio set for over a year now. We bought it from The Shop Around the Corner, resale. When we got it we planned on weatherproofing it, but never got around to it. G finally sanded down the chairs and the table, and weatherproofed it. It looks really nice, and prompted me to get some new chair cushions (which we didn't have before) and a new umbrella.

We got the cushions and umbrella from Garden Ridge. They have really nice products for really inexpensive. We discovered this store several years ago, and if you can get past the sometimes disorganized part, it really saves money. I told G that we couldn't put the cushions or the new umbrella out until the house was painted, and it would be our reward for finishing up the job. We'll see how that goes.

I'll have to figure out how to post pictures on here, so you can see before/after pics. I didn't take a pic of the table/chairs, but you can see how nice they look without knowing what they looked like before.

Work Again!

Work...
What can I say about work?
Oh yeah! I hate it!
People ask why I don't just get another job, and the simple answer is that I'm lazy. My job is just "too easy." I can get whatever hours I want, call out without fear of repercussion, and I make a nice amount of cash even when we are slow.

And though the money is not as good as it used to be, I still feel lucky to have a job.

Now, my bitch. We got a new "head server." She is not really new, she's worked there forever and usually I like her a lot. I used to look forward to working with her, but now I dread it. If her head got any bigger, it would explode. She busts me of stuff that she herself doesn't do, and is so nitpicky. For example, on Sunday I told her I was going to leave. To be nice, I asked if I needed to do anything else.

"No, not if your floors are clean and everything," she said.
"They are," I assured her.
"If you say so," she snipped.
I should have just left...but...

After a sigh I asked her to walk me through my section and point out where it wasn't clean and she pointed to a spot on the floor of 2 crumbs. When I opened that morning, her section from the night before had more crumbs on the floor! I'm not joking.

She was going to be there another 5 hours, and she couldn't clean up a few crumbs? Thanks.

I was trying to respect her and be a good example, because I don't think everyone else does. But I can't anymore.

But I need a good reason to stay in school.

Smoking...

In my environmental journalism class we often critique other classmate's papers. On Wednesday we looked at a paper concerning a proposed smoking ban in St. Louis County. This smoker in my class and I got into a friendly fight. I really like lady, she's interesting for sure. She said that the reason non-smokers complain is "because they don't have enough to bitch about." ha!

Anyways, my teacher asked if anyone wanted to write an op-ed for our school newspaper. I offered. I'm going to post my article on here. I think it might be a little much, but I like it.
Here is my paper verbatim:

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Actually, yes, I do. I hate your nasty smelling smoke, and that you don’t care enough to blow it in the other direction when you smoke around me. There. I said it.

In my experience, smokers are just plain rude. There are a few who are considerate, but for the most part they just don’t care. For example, just last week I was at the zoo and even though there are designated smoking areas, people were smoking all over the place. Several times I got behind someone who was blowing their pollution into my face.

It wouldn’t be so bad, but smokers don’t even care that they’re not just blackening their lungs, but everyone around them. Now that I have a little baby to care for, it’s just infuriating that smokers can’t follow the rules.

The other day, parents were smoking at the park. Here I am trying to enjoy my child at the park and smoker parents are smoking us out.

The other week, I was sitting outside Sverdrup working on some homework and a smoker just plopped down next to me and lit up. I wanted to shout ‘Excuse me! Do you mind? I was here first!’ But since I’m not one to be confrontational, I kindly got up and left. Can’t you read the sign that asks that you step away from the building to smoke?

Not only that, but I have also known smokers to start fires—then leave. At my mother-in-laws graduation someone had put their butt in a smoking post, and it caught on fire! This isn’t the first time that has happened either. You would think one of the smokers would have enough courtesy to tell someone they started a fire, but of course it’s the non-smoker who got to deal with the problem.

At work, smokers constantly burn holes in seats and cups, and start fires because they don’t properly extinguish their cigarettes. They use potatoes as ashtrays, even though there is an ashtray provided on the table. Does anyone actually think there can be a “non-smoking” section in a restaurant where smoking is allowed? The partition usually consists of some smoke-filled air.

When they’re driving, without even thinking about it, smokers toss their butt out the window for someone else to deal with. As a professor of mine asks, do you think the world is your ashtray?
Why don’t smokers put their cigarettes out, and then stick the butt in their pocket? I actually know someone who does this, but when I ask others why they don’t they reply that they don’t want to smell like cigarettes. News flash: you already do! And spritzing rose scented body mist all over after every time you smoke doesn’t help. It just makes you smell like a rosy ashtray.

What’s even worse is that your smoking also makes me stink! Every time people smoke around me I can smell my disgusting scent all day. And at the end of the day, I have you to thank for the massive headache I feel from smelling my rosy, smoky hair all day long.

Smokers argue that they have “an individual right” to smoke. What about my individual right to clean air? What about my individual right to smell like powder instead of ash?

Needless to say, I can’t wait until St. Louis passes a smoking ban, and I hope it’s soon. I also hope that it spreads throughout the whole state. Then, every Friday night I won’t be forced to inhale your second hand smoke in order to make a buck.

If you’re going to smoke, at least be more courteous. Realize that everyone around you doesn’t want to inhale your smoke, or smell like smoke. Smoke in your home, and keep your lung cancer to yourself!

Friday the 13th

Friday night was Friday the 13th. Of course, I worked. At about 6:30 I was getting silverware because we were busy and out. I grabbed the tray and started to walk off. I began to slip, so I threw up my arms to try and catch my balance. I overcompensated and totally wiped out. It hurt pretty bad I caught myself with my wrist and tailbone. I hit my wrist so hard that my shoulder hurt and my tailbone hurt really bad. My manager saw, and wanted me to sit and take a break for a minute. But like I said, we were busy, so I had to just shake it off. I couldn't let the others pull my slack.

Everyone was really sweet about it and rushed over to help me get up, and pick up all of the much needed silverware I had just dumped. Now they had to be rewashed!

One day after "the fall" my wrist and shoulder feel fine. My tailbone, however, still hurts pretty bad. My back hurts a lot too from how I fell. I work again tomorrow, so hopefully I'll be feeling a little less sore. It was a pretty hard fall. Dang Friday the 13th, it had to be bad luck!

Bad Idea

This week I permed my hair. I decided to save a few dollars by going to a cosmetology school. I have friends who get their hair cut, or dyed there and it always looks cute. I guess it depends on who you get, but in my case, I think it was just a plain bad idea.

First off, it took FOREVER for the girl to get the rods in. The owner decided he wanted to close early, so two more girls came over to help roll. At this point, I began to feel rushed. This is not a good feeling for someone who is getting their hair permed for the first time. There was one girl there who I could tell how I felt, and made sure my girl was doing it correctly. The other girls were trying to give me the impression that I should feel like a queen because there are three girls working on me. One of them even said something to that extent.

Second, it smelled HORRIBLE, in caps because there's no way to describe the stench. My eyes and nostrils were burning. I could only take half a breath before it burned my throat too much to breathe. To make matters worse, the girl decided my hair was too long to use just one box. She needed 2. In order to keep the goo out of my eyes I was holding s towel pressed up to my forehead. This left my arms exposed. The girl drenched my shirt in the smelly chemicals. I'm talking every exposed part of my shirt was soaked. I found this odd, because if all of the chemicals were on my hair, I wouldn't have needed 2 boxes (For those of you who know me, I cut 8 in. off, so it's a normal length now.)

After a half hour of letting the smelly stuff in my hair it was time to rinse them. The girl had told me before we started that the reason perms sometimes smelled was because they didn't get rinsed enough before the neutralizer was put on. I wanted to be sure I didn't smell for the next 2 days that I couldn't wash my hair. My head was really heavy. There were a lot of rods in in. It was hard to lean my head back, and the girl was rinsing slowly, and it didn't feel effective. Another girl came over to help her, which sped things up a bit, but not enough. The other girl could tell I was really uncomfortable, so she had me get on my knees facing the sink and lean my head over. At this point, my hair is so tight and heavy that I can literally feel my heart pulsating through my head. The only thing I could think about was how glad I would be when they were out.

The other 2 girls came back to help unroll the rollers, to hurry me out of there so they could close. Other girls (students) are selling clothes and parading around in swimming suits modeling what they just had bought.

The girl bow dried my hair with a diffuser, which I usually don't like because it makes my hair too fluffy. But I wanted to see what it looked like, so I let her. The girl I liked could tell I wasn't happy and I told her I just needed to get used to it.

Now, it's time to pay. When I got there the girl at the front desk told me it would be $30, my stylist girl also told me $30, more than once. I was pretty convinced it was going to cost thirty dollars. However, she said $55 when I went to pay. I asked how that could be and she told me she had made a mistake. It would be $50. I asked how that could be, because I was told $30. She looked outside and told me it actually says $30 and up (I'm not sure if it actually did or not. It was raining when I left, so I didn't look closely.) Apparently the type I got was more, and they charge extra for using 2 boxes of perm. Remember, I'm drenched in stuff. I paid the $50 and left. No, I didn't tip. I felt really bad, but it was almost twice as expensive as I was told, multiple times. And never once did anyone say, 'Hey this is going to cost more.' There's no reason it should have. Plus, I gave the girl really specific details about how I wanted my hair to look, and they brought out this girl who had gotten the same perm a few weeks earlier to show me what it would look like, and it looked nothing like hers. She later informed me that the instructor had brought bigger rollers than the school had, so hers was actually different. So I felt disappointed, and worried my hair would be ugly.

As she was spilling the chemicals all over me I asked if it would stain my shirt and she said no; it would just make me smell. It was a cream colored shirt. I went home and immediately washed it, because it smelled so bad. When I got it out of the dryer, it was indeed stained. It was just a little darker where she had spilled it. It was pretty much everywhere, but my sleeves were rolled up, so there were some "dry" spots, which was the regular color of my shirt. Gary said, "Remember, it's a school." I understand that, but they need to be more careful. I was really friendly, because I remembered that they were in school and deserved a break. Oh yeah, the teacher wasn't there that day either, she had fallen or something.

A few days after the perm, my hair pretty much looks like it did before I permed it. My hair was already curly, I just wanted to have it be curly everywhere. It was straighter underneath and in certain spots. I guess it is curlier in the not curly spots. Also, I wanted it to be curly at the top. It was a little straight at the top before it curled. It still is. Overall, I suppose I like it because it made my hair more uniform and I'm hoping when it grows out, it will curl on it's own again (the problem began during my pregnancy).

I think I would perm my hair again, but I would pay the extra to go somewhere professional and not have to be accepting that they are learning. I don't think I would recommend it for perms, maybe for some other services. Or maybe I would just make sure I got someone who was about to graduate, or a teacher.

Power Outage

Sunday was quite an eventful day at work, or I suppose you could look at it as extremely uneventful if you would like. Here's what the crazy work day brought:

I got to work a little before 9am to open, as I do every Sunday morning. We opened at 10. Very shortly after we opened it started pouring rain and followed with hail. Soon, the power went out.
I've been working at the restaurant for nearly 6 years, and there has only been one time I was there where the power went off and didn't immediately come back on. Sunday was the second time. I told a coworker not to worry, the emergency lights would come on, but not surprisingly, some of them didn't.

We already had a few tables, and to bring dirty dishes back to the kitchen we had to use a flashlight. The soda machines, ice machines, grill, or heating lamps on the buffet no longer worked; the back-up battery kept the computers going. However, it wasn't long before we could not log back in to the computer.

Our manager is new, and while he is trying really hard and doing well, this is not something he was prepared for. He called another manager for help, but her family had been through a tragedy and she couldn't come right away. Meanwhile, probably 10 employees are just sitting around waiting for instructions.

After over an hour, I decided to leave. I dumped all of the tea and coffee I had just made (thinking we wouldn't reopen that day) and told everyone I was leaving. After all, I only make $3.33 an hour! Another co-worker had just had her baby the evening before, so another girl and I decided to drop in and see the new arrival.

As soon as we stepped out of the hospital I got a call saying the electricity was back on and I needed to come back to work. Dang! I was ready to go home.

I went back to work and we were still just sitting around. All of the buffet food had to be thrown away and re prepared, so we were to reopen at 2. Since I get off at 4 I didn't really see staying for just 2 hours. People were pulling into the parking lot, a lot, only to see that we weren't open. Too bad, I could have really used the cash since I only work 2 days a week. Again, I decided just to go home and call it a day. Maybe I'll do better next week...

O well. Mother Nature: you win!

I knew it wouldn't be long...

I knew it wouldn't be long before I could tell a ridiculous work story. This one is fairly mild compared to some, but it just occured, so we'll start here.

Last night, a lady asked me if the Caesar salad had vinegar in it. I told her it didn't. You may or may not be catching on, but I really wasn't thinking about it.

She looks at me and says, "Can you make, like, for positive sure?" So I went to the back and asked the buffet people if there was any reason the Caesar salad would have vinegar in it (my mistake). They said no, so I went back and reported again that it didn't have vinegar.

Lady says, "Well I don't have her Epipen shot here, so if I give this to her (referring to her maybe 2 year-old daughter) and it does we're in trouble.

I didn't know what to say, so I said "I don't think it should be a problem."

I spoke too soon because as soon as I went to the back someone came running to me to tell me that the dressing did, indeed, have vinegar in it. Crap! I ran back out and told Lady, I was sorry, but there was vinegar in the dressing.

She looks at me and says, "I know. All salad dressing does. So does ketchup, mustard, mayo. All of it; it's a preservative."

Really?! Then why did you ask me if you already knew? It's like she was testing me. I didn't know what to say, so I turned to the 2 year-old and said, "I'm glad your mommy didn't listen to me!"

My other question is, why does a 2 year-old need salad? Also, if you doubted me, why would you even consider giving it to her. There is a ton of other non-vinegar food. Ugh.
And this is part of the reason I hate my job. Pepole look for stuff to complain about all the time.

On a happier note, my family and I went to the zoo today. It was a perfect day, and for once all of the animals were awake. It really was a nice day.

Blog Naming

I have this friend, who from time to time, insists that I need a blog. I'm not really sure why I need a blog or who will read it, but I figured it would be a way for me to write, even if it's just for myself. Also, I enjoy reading her blog, so I figured 'What the Heck.'

The first item of business was naming my blog. When I was trying to help said friend name her blog I had several ideas. I didn't like any of them anymore. Today I was complaining about how much I hate my job, and "Diary of a Waitress" came to mind. Of course, I will not be a career waitress, so I thought I would add "Aspiring to Rise." That way I seem ambitious.

I have a lot of stories, but for now, I'm not exactly sure how all of this works, so you'll just have to bear with me while I figure it out. ie: How safe are blogs? What kind of info do you put on here?
I've seen blogs before where the person doesn't name their children by name... why?

Here is my first blog post.