This was going to be short, but it turned into a big dump of all the things I hate about my job right now. I think I'll put it behind a cut to spare you all. But if you stick it through to my footnote at the end, you'll be rewarded with a big basket of WTF that I just recalled from my training. So, there's that.

( I HATE MY JOB SO MUCH YOU GUYS )

It is COLD in Colorado right now! I kind of forgot what Colorado winters are like after all those Virginia winters. Also, before college, I was homeschooled for seven years, which meant I was free to pretty much spend the entire winter inside with a book or my computer. So, I was like, "Hey, winter's not so bad!" Sure, it's not, if you spend the whole thing indoors!

But now . . . I have a job. And a car. And winter? Winter makes everything more complicated. Winter driving? God, winter driving sucks. It's not just having to scrape ice off my windshield BOTH before AND after work, or waiting for the rear defrost to kick in. It's also taking detours because that road I usually take is icy, and my little Corolla can barely handle the hill when it's dry, so I'd better find another way around.

It snowed a bunch yesterday. It's still on the ground everywhere--cold as it is, I don't see it melting any time soon. The roads are still icy. So you know what, mizujada, and all you other snow lovers from states with mild winters? You can suck it. Personally, I don't like feeling like I'm living inside somebody's freezer. I don't like having to watch my footing everywhere I step so I don't break my neck. I don't like having to knock snow off of my shoes every time I step in a door or get into my car. And I really don't like how hard it is to drive with it all piled up along the roads and icing up parking lots and scraping the undercarriage of my car.

It is pretty, though. I will grant that. A winter day with snow on the ground is much less depressing to look at than a winter day with no snow on the ground. At least, until you realize you have to go out in it.

And I don't even live in a cold part of the state! For Colorado, my county has very mild winters! That's one of the reasons I like it here.

I mean, I'm a knitter--I like having winter, because without it, I couldn't wear almost anything I knit. I get a sincere satisfaction from pulling on something I made and knowing I can count on it to keep me warm. I even like a nice brisk cold once in a while. I'm not tired of winter yet by any means. (But, by the end of January, you can be damn sure I will be. It's not that I mind the cold so much, but as I've indicated, winter is just a HASSLE.)

In less ranty news, I just got my work schedule, and discovered I don't have to work on Christmas! I am so excited! I have to work on Christmas Eve, but it's a short shift. I'm a little annoyed at Walmart, because I'm part-time, but they keep scheduling for a bunch of 4.5 hour shifts, which means I still only get two days off a week (and one of those days is the day I work my other job), and half the time even those aren't consecutive. But, right now, I'm just excited about getting to spend Christmas at home with my family.

With the whole H1N1 drama, Walmart's absence policy has come under some criticism. Since I'm sick right now, I think I'm going to talk about it. I feel like a lot of the anti-Walmart movements on the Internet come off as alarmist, and criticize the wrong sorts of things, leaving themselves open to attack. So, here's how I see it.

Walmart's absence policy is a little complex, so bear with me while I break it down. Employees get three absence "occurrences" in a rolling six month period. An "occurrence" can be up to three consecutive days off, if they're for the same reason. What Walmart doesn't advertise (my supervisor had to tell me) is that if those three days fall over a break in the work week (the Walmart week ends on Friday and begins on Saturday), it counts as two occurrences.

So, if I called in on Sunday and Monday, that would be one occurrence, but if I called in on Friday and Saturday, it would be two. Remember, I only get three in a rolling six month period--by having the misfortune to fall ill on a Friday, I've just used two of those three. (As a matter of fact, I did get sick yesterday, a Friday, and went to work anyway for that very reason.)

And it's a rolling six month period. That means that the three months I've already worked without a single absence doesn't mean anything to Walmart; my six months begins today. I could work without an absence for a year, it wouldn't matter--the six months begins the day of the first absence.

After those three "occurrences", any absence bumps you onto Walmart's "coaching" circuit. It has two levels--verbal coaching, and written coaching. If you manage to work through those, you get to a "decision day", which basically puts you on probation while Walmart decides whether or not to fire you. And you can get coached for a lot more things than just absences. (My former supervisor got coached for swearing.) It doesn't matter what you're being coached for--you're still on the road to a decision day.

I've had two higher-ups at my store tell me that Walmart's absence policy is extremely lenient--after all, assuming you haven't been in trouble for anything else, you can miss up to seven days before they fire you! I can't speak for other retail companies--I don't imagine Target is much better, for example--but I can say that there's a lot about this policy that strikes me as arbitrary and unfair. (Why should Friday/Saturday count as two absences if Saturday/Sunday only counts as one? It's not like we get a day off at the end of the week!)

And of course, all of these days are unpaid. That's one bit of criticism I don't quite understand--the very nature of hourly work is that you don't get paid for hours you don't work. I honestly don't expect Walmart to pay me if I'm not working.

But, that doesn't mean it's not devastating for me to lose a couple day's work. I make just under $69 for a day's work (8-hour shift). To give you some scale, I've budgeted $50 a week for groceries, and I pay around $200 a month in rent. I am barely making enough to maintain this (very frugal!) lifestyle (and still save a little money) if I work every day I'm scheduled. If I start missing days, I start having to cut things . . . I can't even imagine how someone with a family does it.

Which is why, although it's pretty tempting to go ahead and call in to work again tomorrow, since it won't count against me, I probably will go to work anyway. Because December is going to be a bad month, bill-wise (doctor bills stacking up against student loans coming due), and I need all the money I can get. Besides, I get paid a dollar extra when I work on Sundays.

But, all of this is why I would recommend washing your hands thoroughly next time you leave a Walmart. Or, better yet, don't shop there at all.

(I'm sort of waiting to see how long I can keep being candid on the Internet before I get in trouble with Walmart. It's a fun game!)

Someday, when I'm grown and have plenty of money (hahaha), I'm going to go to a local Walmart store and pick some really obscure item and buy their entire stock (like coconut milk, or canned artichoke hearts, or something) (probably over a couple days so they don't try to stop me), and keep doing that for several weeks, so they're all like, "Geez, why can't we keep this in stock?"

And when their computer system finally decides to start sending them more to meet with demand . . . I'll stop. And then they'll be like, "Oh geez, what do we do with all these obscure items?"

Yes, my money will be going to Walmart, but it will SO be worth it for the hassle and consternation. And then my revenge will be complete. *puts fingertips together and cackles*

Walmart publishes this newsletter for its employees. There are a bunch of copies in the breakroom, and the other night, I was really bored, because the book I've been reading at work (The Gangster We Are All Looking For, by lê thi diem thúy*) was boring and pretentious. And, on the cover of this particular newsletter, there was a photograph of a store manager, standing with his hands on his hips and his head held high in a field of solar panels. The article was supposed to be about Walmart and green energy, but I didn't bother opening the newsletter to read it.

Instead, I took out a ballpoint pen (all I had) and drew big feathery wings on the guy, and added the headline, "THE X-FACTOR: Mutants among us!"** I giggled, and went back to work.

Two hours later when I came back for my break, somebody had filled in my scribblings with a Sharpie, which made them look much better. They also drew over the guy's body to give him a big muscle-y chest and glowing eyes (and horns? I don't remember), and had added the headline, "We da mutants!"

I can't even tell you how happy this made me. Seriously, it was the ONE bright point of work that evening, to see that somebody else was somewhere near my own state of mind. From now on, I'm carrying a Sharpie in my purse so that I can more effectively graffiti the asinine newsletters in the break room.

I'm also sort of playing this game where I see how long I can keep talking openly about Walmart on my blogs and Twitter before I get in trouble. It's fun!***


* Who apparently is too good for capital letters in her name. And yes, I did just copy it from Wikipedia; I don't like the book well enough to figure out how to type Vietnamese diacritical marks. Even though the software I use to type in Greek can probably do it pretty easily.

** Earlier that evening, I'd been amusing myself by trying to read the French parts of a flier about pomegranates, even though I don't know French. So, this was a step up as far as entertainment went.

*** I have lots of games I play to keep myself from going crazy at Walmart. Like, I make up sordid backstories for my customers. Also, when we change watch batteries, we set them on the base of the lamp at the changing station, and then drop them into the recycling box later. So, I wait until things are really slow to put the batteries away, and then I have to recite a line of poetry for every battery I drop into the box. (It was going to be a line of Shakespeare, but I didn't like being limited to just one poet.) Also, when things are REALLY slow, I play the alphabet game. I have to find every letter in the alphabet consecutively on signs without moving around. ("Quartz" really saves my butt in this game. Also, "Timex".)

. . . yeah, basically, it's only been a month and my job is already destroying my will to live. It's gonna be a long couple of months.

I was going to come home and tell you guys a story about the old man from Texas I helped this afternoon, and how he wanted a small watch but his wife told him that when he wears women's watches he looks "like a homosexual", and how he also told me that he doesn't want to wear a gold band because he "sweats like a negro". And about how it's funny, because he was very clearly the sort of person who has a strong set of values--for example, I could tell he'd never have dreamed of swearing in front of me, since I'm a lady, even if he would casually drop the phrase "sweat like a negro". And about how weird it is to encounter someone whose value system is so jarringly different than mine.

I was going to, but the last hour or so at work was incredibly stressful. I had a customer who had to wait on me for the LONGEST time because first I couldn't quite help her right, so she's going to have to come back so somebody else can sort out the mess, and second, it took me FOREVER to finish taking a link out of the band of her watch (which she only bought because of the first thing I couldn't fix), and she had people waiting; and that took so long that I couldn't finish the other major project I was supposed to get done this evening, and I'm a little worried my supervisor will think I slacked off (which I didn't!), and I still had to rush to clock out in time (you get in trouble if you go over your time), and by the time I left the store, I was a big bundle of stress and run-on sentences.

Also, I yelled at my mom earlier (in public) because she said she'd go pick up my Peace Corps paperwork at my doctors for me, and didn't because she thought they wouldn't let her (because she didn't know I'd called them). Came home to find the paperwork on my desk because she went back to get it--which is a pretty significant inconvenience for her. Only, she couldn't have known but the office didn't give her the most important form, so I'm going to have to go back and get it anyway, which drives home the point that I should have just gone myself, and makes me feel like even more of a cad.

. . . so, basically, I'm ending the day feeling like a pretty horrible person. It's a terrible way to be going to bed.

Thesis: Customers are assholes.

Evidence: This afternoon, I was concentrating on some inventory task, when a very fat man in one of those motorized carts whistled at me to get my attention. (This already flustered and irritated me: I am not a dog.) I asked if I could help him, and he started gesturing, making a squeezing motion with his hands, then pointing at his ears and shaking his head.

At first I assumed he couldn't speak English (he was dark enough to be Hispanic), but it gradually dawned on me that he must be deaf, and I grew steadily more flustered as I tried to understand his sign language. I even asked him if he could fingerspell, since I have sort of an understanding of the ASL alphabet. He just kept pointing at his ears and gesturing.

Finally, he mimed writing. Lightbulb! I grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and watched, very earnestly attentive, as he painstakingly began to write--veeeery sloooowly. "C a n . . . y o u . . . t a l k."

"Uh . . . yes, I can talk." He points at his ears. Maybe he needs to find hearing aid batteries? Louder--and more confused--I say, "Yes, I can talk!"

And then he bursts out laughing. "So can I! I was just kidding with ya." And he continued to ask me where he might find a ketchup squeeze bottle.

So, I ask you, Livejournal: Where does confusing and embarrassing someone who is trying to help you, and wasting her time and energy, get funny? I was humiliated, and furious, and frustrated, and when he showed up later to pay for his damn ketchup bottle, I wanted to refuse to speak to him.

He pissed me off so much, I thought it would be worth the time to write a LJ post about it before collapsing into bed after an unexpected 16 hour workday. (Not Walmart's fault, for the record.)

In honor of Banned Book Week, I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye at work this week. I wasn't forced to read it in high school the way a lot of people my age were, and now that I'm out of college, I'm sort of trying to catch up on some of the important works of fiction that I somehow missed during my formal education.

Anyway, today one of the men who works in maintenance told me that after I read it, I can go shoot somebody, because loads of assassins have been obsessed with it. "The guy who killed Kennedy was really into it, and the guy who killed Lennon was really into it, and . . ."

. . . sigh. I was hoping that by reading it in the break room, I could explain to people about Banned Book Week and the importance of avoiding censorship . . . but he was too interested in what he had to say about the association between the book and murderers to hear anything I said about censorship.

Ah well.

Actually, I guess I'm not much better. I associate The Catcher in the Rye with the Five Iron Frenzy song "Superpowers" (which has the line, "I sometimes feel like Holden Caulfield").*


* This song has even more complex associations, because a month or two ago, I was in Goodwill, and was shocked to hear it on the radio. Usually the Goodwill radio plays oldies--lots of Beach Boys and Elvis, that sort of thing. So, it was really damned weird to hear FIF in there. REALLY.