The Closer

Jul 03, 2007 02:14

"I haven't posted a while due to a lame excuse that doesn't really account for my absence from livejournal"

It came to my attention, via Lillen, that my entry is long. Not long by *my* standards for length, but it would have, quite possibly, dwarfed the friendspage of a very, very unpopular person (or a person with friends who aren't talkative). The remainder of my post is placed under a cut.

Yeah.

I've been back working at Kroger since June 4th. I'm in the Deli, again, though most of the other people who were there aren't there anymore. *sigh* Crystal, the young woman whom I trained last year, is now basically the assistant manager of the deli. The Deli has a new manager, and the store has a new manager.

Apparently, everyone got depressed after I left. Or, possibly, they just got better jobs.

Anyway, I am, apparently, the "best closer" (in terms of cleaning up the deli when it closes at 9pm and making sure that everything is ready for the morning shift). A new coworker who I was training told me that he had heard people talking about it.

Though I do expect myself to be the very best at everything that I make a genuine attempt to accomplish, I can't say that I take a huge amount of pride in my ability to do the job thuroughly. Being more fastidious than my coworkers just means that I don't take short-cuts or leave jobs undone or half-done, so I only look good at it because no one else, apparently, is willing to do the job for which they were hired.

Then again, this is my summer job, not my career. That is not the case with everyone, so I suppose that I can understand apathy and resignation. It wouldn't be my choice, even if I were to have this job until I died, but whatever.

Lillen: There's this totally hot Chapel Hill student who's working there for the summer, and Simon's training him, and I think--

About one thing, primarily. And, for the record, he's only coworker-hot. There's a scale of hotness, with lowered standards as the list goes on, though, obviously, if you are a friend or coworker of Keira Knightley, she still falls under category 1, not category 3 or 4. It goes like this:

1)Celebrity hot
2)Unattainable Classmate/Neighbor/Peer hot
3)Friend hot
4)Coworker hot
5)Trapped-With-On-A-Desert-Island hot

Number 5 primarily applies to Lord of the Flies.

Being on my feet for eight-to-ten hours a day makes me a bit physically tired, but I'm mostly *emotionally* tired from being around people for that period of time. If it isn't customers, it's coworkers. Mind you, I got a job that is less than a mile from my house, that requires very little heavy lifting, has air conditioning, involves only a few truly disgusting activities, and has a much-used-by-me walk-in freezer, so I'm not complaining. I'm just saying that I'm pretty worn out, so that I don't even want to turn on my computer when I get home--I just watch a DVD, eat a snack (I don't really eat during the day), and read. Goodness, having so little uninterrupted time had made me forget how fast of a reader I am.

I mean, I knew that I was fast, so it could be just because I move quickly in bed, and I often *read* in bed.

Lillen: "Some people might want to eat in the future."

Not I. I've lost ten pounds in the last couple of weeks. I have done this without eating any more healthily than I usually do, and while working in the Kroger deli/bakery where we make cakes, cookies, doughnuts, and many different cheeses. Is it weird that the cheeses are more tempting than anything else?

I walk there and I walk home. The walk there is hell on toast, as (in the middle of the day) the air is several million degrees and the humidity makes the process better resemble swimming than walking. The walk home, usually at 10 or 11 pm, is quite peaceful (though it might not be if I weren't more than six feet tall and male, as Ms. Chappell pointed out a couple of years ago). I like to listen to my iPod as I walk home. Last year, I was listening to Wheel of Time audiobooks on my iPod, every day on the way to and from work, and then before I would go to bed. I had read the series four times before, so it was very nice to listen to it. Now, I mostly listen to music, particularly to songs my Mika. If anyone looked out a bedroom window at 11pm to see a hulking, six-foot-something twenty-year-old guy walking in a careful but distracted sort of way down the dark streets of my neighborhood, they would almost certainly not imagine that he might be listening to "Lollipop," "Grace Kelly," "Love Today," "Big Girl, You Are Beautiful," or "Relax, Take It Easy".

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I miss people, but in an intentionally distant way. If I let myself dwell upon the people whose companies I enjoy, I will simply go insane. On the other hand, I don't actually *forget* them, so I've created this weird balance between missing everyone (this means YOU) to the point of tears and completely dismissing them. This is basically what I did last summer, and work helps me to focus. Seriously. My first day on the job:

Hilda (new deli-manager): "The main thing is to keep everything clean."
Simon: "They hired me last year because I'm a compulsive cleaner."
Hilda: "I like you already!"

On the other hand, cleaning is something that I do automatically, and not very psychologically engaging. I think about the darling people from Enloe (many of whom having now moved on to other schools) and from ASU. I mostly think about Lillen's books, drafting chapters almost word-for-word in my head, and then I get home . . . and go to sleep. I'm getting pretty frustrated with the whole "loss-of-momentum" process of going through the day. I need a desk job that requires no conversations (at least, not two-way conversations) and minimal human contact. Or, better yet, a throne job.

Lillen is about to suggest a number of other types of jobs that she believes that I "need." I am not sure about a number of them, but I'm surprisingly okay with that.

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y_fish, who is an absolute darling, picked me up (along with a friend of hers) on my very first day of work and took me to see Harry and the Potters. We ran into chartreusebird and urania_dragon while we were there, and urania_dragon definitely squealed louder than either HatP *or* the crowd, which made me feel very fuzzy/embarassed. I saw many people whom I recognized, including Betty and mojo64, though I had seen the latter more frequently as she did, in fact, live in East Hall this past year. I owe Emma $20 for a "Save Ginny Weasley" t-shirt.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Harry and the Potters are bad. Really, really bad. That said, in a very campy sort of way that an essay that I read in Suppository Writing would suggest is condescending but not necessarily negative, everyone enjoyed it much more than the music merited. Draco and the Malfoys are better.

That said, I loved going there and seeing multiple people who I knew. I also loved that they said, at one point, "give it up for the Weasley twins!"

Of course. You've got to give it up at some point, and the Weasley twins seem pretty promising for the job. At least, according to smutfic.

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Katie (sister, almost 15) got knee surgery a week ago on both knees. Her boyfriend, of whom I totally approve (he recognized One-Winged Angel when I was listening to it in the shower today!), has been over to visit her several times, which is totally sweet. Also, my sister is a prude, if only by my standards, in that she thinks that smutfic is icky and that the very idea of oral sex is disgusting.

And yet, somehow, she's my sister. I, Fellatrix Lestrange, cannot understand this. But, whatever. My parents are being totally overprotective of her. They weren't like that with me, but I didn't so much *date* as . . . happen to make out with the other members of my English project, or, say, get highly inappropriate massages during SciFi Club. 0_o I am The Fastest Ship In The Fleet, but Katie is the one who can't be alone in the house with her boyfriend unless there's an adult present. I don't count, because I'd likely send them up to her room, tell them to close the door, and turn up some music while printing out some helpful fanfic for them to use as a guide (not, say, slashfic or really inaccurate, written-by-a-preteen smutfic). *sigh* I do what I can, but they'd probably just talk and kiss even if I *did* leave them in a room alone together. Geez, that's what *friends* do.

Possibly without the kissing, though, unless it's really, really platonic.

I tease her by referring to her as various puritans from literature, and by telling her that we don't live in a "city on the hill" and that no one is going to make her wear a scarlet "S" (for skankbag). At that point, she usually glares at me and tells me that she hates me.

This would be more intimidating if she weren't lying on a couch with both of her knees in what appear to be extra parts from mobile suits, and if she were capable of moving across the room in under five minutes--or unaided.

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I've commented on a couple of the "most recent entries," but there are a bunch, and I have a *lot* (a lot a lot a lot a lot -- HUGE amounts, if anyone gets the reference) of entries upon which to catch. Or something. More update soon, along with, you know, more comments. Because, surely, people *live* for comments from me. Surely.

PS: I'm not *SURE* yet, but I may very possibly be having a Harry Potter party on the day of or the day after the OotP's release. If you are on my friendslist, or if you are my friend in *real* life but not on livejournal, then you are invited in a very general sort of way. Specific people who actually are in the Wake County area are more specifically invited . . . if that makes sense.

Lillen: "It does not."

Right. I'll post an *actual* party invitation, and probably use facebook, email, and even (*gasp*) telephone technology. If there is some huge, local thing planned that has not come to my attention due to my recent . . . inattention towards the internet, then I will defer to that. If no one loves me, then that's understandable, too. If you were at my last Harry Potter Party, then this one will be basically like that one, except that I will probably have more control over the set-up, it will be for the movie, not the book, and my dad and youngest sister will be in California. If you did not come to the last one, then you have a second chance to atone for your previous failure.

Lillen: "But some of them didn't know you, then--"

I will hear no excuses!

~That Is All~

PPS: I have decided to learn Ancient Egyptian. This has been an idea of mine for a while, but it was probably subconsciously promoted further by Greg's own studies of a semi-obscure language. Mine is a bit more obscure.

Ancient Egyptian is fucking hard. commie_squirrel, I do not recommend this for you, since you, too, are a natural expert at *making* things hard. I am teaching myself, and even Egyptologists aren't *entirely* sure about some hieroglyphics, and different symbols have *totally* different meanings if they are placed in conjunction with certain other symbols. Oh, well. I know how to write, like, three symbols in Ancient Egyptian. It is most likely, though not guaranteed, that that is three more Ancient Egyptian words than you can write at this very moment.

egyptian, harry potter, kroger, recap

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