In less than seven hours from now, I will be officially leaving home and going to Valparaiso University. Honestly I don’t have the time right now to say a whole hell of a lot, but I will say this: I am ready, simply because I am leaving very little behind: my family (obviously the toughest part about school), a few friends (many who are going to college themselves anyway), and that’s about it. I won’t lie and pretend like I miss the structure of high school, which seemed to consist of who could play the best games and who could put on the biggest show.

While I do not expect to completely escape from artificial relationships, I do expect to make more sincere friendships than before. I also expect people to act more intelligent, meaning that even the “stupid” people are still capable of carrying out intelligent conversation or at least being able to nod their heads and hide confusion.

Anyway, I am excited to learn from my fellow 2012ers and hopefully they’ll learn a few things from me, like deconstructionism, cynicism, and pure sarcasm. Of course I’ll play nice (I even shaved a few days ago), but I feel more confident that the show I put on - a show based entirely off of my own character and my own personality and absent of embellishments - will be a show worthy of attendance.

It’s amazing how actually spending time with people and working 10+ hr shifts at work prevent me from making it to the computer. I have lots to talk about, and as the title indicates, I will be discussing recent work events first.

1) A couple of weeks ago, the store director received an interesting order from corporate: ship out all clearance furniture, and ship out all clearance patio furniture to another store so that they can sell it instead of us. It took one of my coworkers and me almost our entire shifts just to load the furniture onto skids (fifteen total), pull them over to the receiving area, wrap the skids, and make sure that the receiving clerk gets everything recorded correctly.

I will say that we had a lot of both clearanced regular furniture left, and clearanced patio furniture. Still, getting rid of every single piece of furniture (excluding the displays, of course) seems like too extreme of a measure. If I were the store director, I would take that as a slap to the face. The message corporate is sending is that our store lacks the competence to sell any clearance furniture, and another store can do a much better job.

Again, this is not entirely false, but many customers were angry because of the disappearing act. It would have made more sense simply to leave a little bit of the furniture for our customers.

2) VIsit 2 recently occurred. For those who don’t know, during the last visit from the “group vice president” aka regional manager July 4, our store received a score of 3 on a 1-10 scale. In a month, the store had to improve to a seven or eight. As D-Day 2 approached, I was very confident that the store director lacked the competence necessary to raise the store’s score high enough to keep his job.

I figured that I was right. Two nights before (on the day I visited Obama actually), I worked from 12 to 10:15, almost two full hours of overtime. Then, I worked from 3:30 to 11:30, ninety minutes past my scheduled departure time (though I was prepared to stay until midnight or later). During these two days, condensing in the garden center and in toys occurred, among other things, but I figured that the store was not good enough to pass the test. Many items had the wrong shelf tags, we did not finish condensing toys (so we had to spread out items so that we had the illusion of a store without holes), and most of all, we didn’t even straighten the store. All we did Thurs night was walk the center aisles to make sure that any big messes were cleaned up and any stray merchandise in the center aisles was picked up.

Somehow, though, the store managed to receive a great review. It turned out that the VP did not look at the whole store but simply random aisles. Fortunately for my store director (unfortunately for us), one of the random aisles happened to be the straightest aisle in the entire store, the board game aisle. I have a history with this aisle: whenever I straighten toys, this is the aisle that I straighten the best (since it’s the easiest to straighten IMO), and on Thursday night, that was the only aisle that I straightened the correct way: bringing products forward, taking down topstock, etc.

Apparently the VP said that many stores have trouble with this aisle, and that’s why  he picked it. If I would have known that the board game aisle would have been randomly picked, I not only wouldn’t have straightened the aisle, but I would have made the aisle look worse, and I would have called in my ex-coworker to the store to trash the aisle just before the VP’s arrival. I still cannot believe that he somehow thought that the game board aisle reflected the entire store, because it doesn’t: it is an anomaly.

Part of me wants to call him up and let me give him a tour of the store, but another part simply says, “You have three more days; get over it.”

Yesterday I spent six hours or so at the House of Blues in Chicago listening to some great (and not so great) bands at the Summer Slaughter concert series. One of the greatest things about these concerts, besides the music, is that when guys receive their tickets, they essentially are given a license to grab, bump, grope, and hump any hot chick on the floor, and surprisingly, there were some nice-looking ones. See a chick with a nice rack moshing? Push her away by grabbing her “upper chest.” That chick in front of you with a cute face? Go ahead and attach yourself to her.

There are only two problems with these chicks: they most likely are taken, since the reason they are at the concert is because their boyfriends are into the music, and also that many of them are skanks. It made for some nice sightseeing, but after a short period of observation, a stop sign also seems to appear, indicating their assumed promiscuity.

Probably the highlight of the night came when I became involved with a crowd-surfing experience. During Vader’s performance, some hot chick came up to me and asked me to lift her up. I did (while getting a nice chunk of her ass) and launched her toward the front where security was present to confiscate the crowd surfers after they made it to the stage. Good times were had by all.

Some other observations I made:

- Death metal fans have a great sense of community. When moshing, if one of them gets knocked down, they will momentarily stop and pick the guy up before continuing. The younger kids who believe that moshing is about elbowing and punching random people are attempting to ruin the community-oriented aspect of this.

- Suprisingly my ears were just fine after the concert due to my handy ear plugs. I don’t understand why most people wouldn’t wear them; it doesn’t make them look like a hard ass, only stupid.

- The best bands there were Psycroptic and Cryptopsy. Vader was also decent, but that was partially because of the great crowd as multiple Vader chants erupted throughout their performance.

Today I had to help one of my coworkers get on the computer. He, for some reason, did not take his computer courses back when he began working in the Garden Center in March (AKA someone didn’t take his courses for him), so now he had to sit through the monotony. I decided to look at my computer courses and noticed one that was not complete: the GM CEC (Customer Experience Coordinator) training course. Even though the course is optional, I still decided to take it.

Essentially, the CEC’s job is to run the department when the managers are not there to do it themselves. As I was bored, I decided to “take” it to see if I would be a good CEC. Naturally, I briefly skimmed through every single section of the training module, but there was a ten-question quiz to complete in order to get credit for taking the course. Despite not reading about the job, I managed to get a perfect score on the quiz simply because the questions either required common sense or were easy enough that I could guess correctly, and now according to the company’s own measurements, I am now qualified to take on the first “leadership” role the store offers. And they say the education system has been fucked up by standardized testing.

I don’t take the CEC position seriously. Even though the only CEC makes about the same as I do, they treat her like a manager (which sucks sometimes since we have to work for pricks), only she doesn’t get all the cool benefits of being a manager (though, as the coworker said, she gets to smoke cigarettes all the time). To me, this seems stupid. She (supposively) has a skill that other people don’t have to use, so why she doesn’t get fairly compensated for using that skill baffles me. I would not be a CEC if it was offered to me simply because it’s more work but no more pay. Either give me a blue shirt or don’t even bother with letting me supervise the kiddies since there already is GM manager and my GM assistant manager to supervise (note: supervise, not make decisions as they are quickly learning).

In fact, I’ve already been forced to supervise without the almighty CEC credential. Recently my coworkers and I were told to work M-carts, which are basically carts where backstock is stored until enough room exists to put the product out. My boss told me to lead the effort, assigning carts to people and “making sure” that they were working the carts. The funniest part is that my assistant manager was also there that morning, but my main boss apparently did not trust her to do the supervising.

The funniest part about that day, though, was after she arrived at work (an hour late again, and this was after she tried to guarantee that she would be on time), she asked me about the progress we had made. Then, after I noticed one of my coworkers was late coming back from her lunch, she wanted me to call her and tell her to come back to toys. I said, “Isn’t that your job?” and she promptly called her.

The point of this little rant is that for me, it does take a computer course to learn the basics of supervising. It takes these things: the respect of your coworkers, skill in the required job area, basic managing skills, the illusion that you work hard, and the ability to confront problems and problem people. Having all these things are more important than some stupid class.

As I was chatting with my old AP English comrade Travis, somehow he gave me this bright idea for a topic to discuss on my blog: how two random things almost always have similarities.

We arrived at this conclusion after he claimed that phone books and the Internet are similar. While my main contribution to that discussion was that both the phonebook and the Internet can enable sexual activity, it did spawn the more interesting aforementioned idea. (It also inspired my previous post, which is randomly generated by a paragraph-generating website.)

I’ll keep this one short and end by giving you some word pairs to compare, varying by the commonness of the words:

1) keyboard and definition

2) prevention and review

3) smelling and tenderer

4) vividness and billionth

5) leopardess and cuspidor

6) downhaul and styrax

7) subconformability and nonacquiescence

I have generated this “story” of sort by using a random paragraph generator and entering two subjects: Larry and Roseanne, two fictional characters. I generated nine paragraphs total, and here they are:

The desire stirs over a local nonsense. The crucial elitist balances Larry behind the paid screw. The sacked ink rots across the differential story. Our skilled advice expands with another witch. Why won’t Larry decline under the wit?

Larry amuses the annoyed scenario around the correspondence. Roseanne whistles over the diagonal detail. A memory conforms below Roseanne. How will a stake toe the line? The node enters inside the true misuse.

How will a wisdom scream Roseanne? How does Larry relax? Can Roseanne rock? The withdrawn pain fears opposite Roseanne. Outside the awake lyric offends a tempting quest. Why can’t Larry watch the theme?

Without an opera refrains the believable novel. The bitter barrier parades past Roseanne. The mixed epic tears across the cathedral wrath. Larry pants without the overhead postcard. Will Larry behave underneath the predicted potato?

Will the scroll egg Roseanne? Larry trashes the quality bean over a campaign. With the interrupted shell dances Larry. Why can’t Roseanne pose against Larry? Roseanne treks under the average.

Her joke cries the close affect beside an approach. The dreamed ideology appalls the underlying scientist. Larry bays Roseanne against the bearing wallet. Should the participant associate with Roseanne? The long oriental dates the specialist. When can the concentrated protest sight Larry?

Roseanne projects Larry below another professional. Larry migrates behind Roseanne. An offender fusses Larry. The challenge rots. Why does Larry behave underneath the eyesight?

Larry reforms Roseanne. An initiated rain sweeps opposite the wren. Larry swallows. The attending war interferes with a havoc. Larry marries Roseanne. Roseanne arranges Larry.

Larry garbles a heresy into the heel. Larry kicks the dogma. Larry tears the worker next to a play duplicate. How will a pizza follow Larry? Roseanne demises the diagnosis near a victim. The linked afternoon shoulders Larry after the medical bucket.

Anybody else want to give this random paragraph thing a try?

My old boss had a problem. It was July of last year, and even though I had no knowledge of the promotion two of my coworkers and I would soon receive, she desperately was trying to find adequate replacements for us. Her solution was an odd one: in the next round of hires, bring in three mentally handicapped workers in addition to the plethora of ones that already exist. The rationale was that although they would not bring in as many carts as we normal-ish people, they would be more consistent which would mean more productivity in the long run.

Her strategy was doomed from the start, though. We already had our fair share of these people, and they (despite still being employed) are generally not good workers. One is the midget girl who has worked there for years (her twin works in fashions). She is lazy, as the evening utility workers complain that they have to do her job, and constantly brown-noses almost every manager in the store, perhaps to keep her job. Another, an extremely obese person, is that not handicapped, but I’ve been told that he is slightly autistic and qualifies under special needs. He tries (sometimes), but he could not push carts very well obviously because of his size. Another one only pushes in three or four carts at a time and is very limited in her intellectual functioning.

There is actually one who is worth keeping, but he is obsessed with D-Squared (my coworker w/ DDs), and one out of four is not a very good statistic.

In this round, my old boss hires five new people, three of them being mentally handicapped, one being Alicia (for readers from my HS graduating class), and the other being a friend of mine. Two of them have been fired. The first got caught stealing. He was also nerdy-looking and cornered one of my female coworkers in the utility closet and wouldn’t let her out. The second was a horrendous cart-pusher as he would only push in 2-5 carts at a time and was often panicy out on the lot.

The third, who still works here, does well for someone who has such a limited potential, but sometimes when I see him on the lot, I worry about him. When he is pushing in eight or more carts, he often has trouble and blocks traffic, which sucks on a Super Saturday in the afternoon. In addition, he is infatuated with one of our coworkers, and it creeps her out.

(On a side note, the coworker in both cases is the same girl, who has a nice body but not a pretty face. She joked today that she should be the retard magnet, so I told her to suffocate herself not to death but to cause brain damage to become “one of them.” She was very angry and offended.)

Overall, the strategy was not successful, and now it is just one more thing I can use against her whenever I get bored and walk down to her office on the clock.

Work update: yesterday and today I’ve put out every single item from the garden center in the backroom, putting it basically anywhere room exists. One example is the 120 grill lighters, all exactly the same. I asked my store director about this, and he said just to put it all out, even though maybe half will sell before the end of the season if we are lucky. Just another example of short-term thinking at work.

As anybody who has been given the privilege of dealing with me on a daily basis knows, I think very highly of myself, and I am fairly confident that this will never change. Still, after spending 200+ hours with coworkers and managers, I am now begging for someone to please just humble me.

Many workplace stories that demonstrate the stupidity and incompetence present in this corporation have already been told over the past couple of weeks, but some of the more recent events have me begging for some sort of presence that is a better merchandiser, more intelligent, or superior in at least one positive attribute. For example:

1) The weekend before last had us moving patio chairs into aisle 2 of the garden center, patio umbrella boxes by the patio furniture displays, and my assistant manager filling a large area of shelf space with tiki torch fluid. However, management fucked up, as I had to move the umbrella boxes back to where they were Monday, and the tiki torch fluid and patio chairs in aisle 2 will need to be moved very soon, as back-to-school displays must all be set by next week. Why waste labor and move all that shit in the first place when management should have known not to waste time doing that?

2) Today I received a phone call from my boss asking me to restock the 20-lb birdseed that is on sale for this week. When I looked in the backroom (the staging area is now cluttered again - big surprise), I could not find any of the 20-lb type, only 10 and 40-lb. I called my boss and told her that, and instead of trusting me and giving me further instruction, she told me that she would be down to help me look. Of course, she could not find any either, so she essentially wasted her time coming down there. But it gets better.

3) Later in the shift, I receive another phone call from my boss. At first, she asked me to blow up balloons, but then she remembered that we were out of helium, so she then asked me to go out there and tell the customer that we were out of helium but that we would get more tanks tomorrow. When I walked over to floral, my boss was standing in HBC, 10-15 steps away from the customer. When I gave her a dumbfounded look, she responded by saying, “I’m not going in that direction.”

That direction? She was much closer to the customer than I was, and I actually was trying to get something done for her - taping up the broken bags of dirt and mulch so that somebody could mark them down. She easily could have walked over to the customer herself. She is a very cool person, but sometimes I am embarassed that I have to take orders from her.

4) At work we have these stupid things called “friendly huddles.” At approximately 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. every day, one of the managers makes a page telling all available employees to meet at a certain place for our friendly huddles. First of all, the philosophy behind the friendly huddles - to remind us that we need to look around and interact with our customers whenever we are working on projects - is nice, but it’s incredibly asinine to discuss it every single day in the middle of the store in front of customers. It actually reminds me a lot of school: the manager, playing the role of teacher, teaches us workers AKA students the same thing over and over, but the students never seem to learn while the teacher pretends that progress is actually being made.

Second of all, during the friendly huddle, the second shift director - who I previously praised on this blog - discussed the July 4 walkthrough. He asked us if we knew how we did. I mumbled, “We got a three” under my breath and one of my coworkers heard me, but he didn’t hear me/ignored me and nobody else seemed to notice. He told us that he wants the team members to know how we did in a walkthrough with the group VP, but he doesn’t even mention our actual score but only gives us the Bill O’Reilly version of the story by telling us that we’ve done so well. So well? We’re at a three; we still suck!

And people wonder why I think so highly of myself.

1) Work today was hilarious. The store director from the Grape Road store stopped by today to walk through the store with our store director since. Apparently our store director called the Grape Road one up because he needed help on figuring out what to do.

Apparently a visit from his boss Thursday and a visit from his boss’s boss Friday did not give him any indication of what to work on. What a moron. This has to be the low point for our store.

2) I did enjoy seeing some old friends at work today, but not necessarily ones I saw yesterday.

3) Finally, a day goes by without me hearing anything about the attention-whore Green Bay Packer legend Brett Favre. Seriously man, make up your fucking mind: either stay retired, or unretire. He has to be one of the most selfish players I’ve ever seen put on a football jersey. “But he loves to play the game~!” Yeah, nobody loves the game quite like Brett Favre. Get over yourselves, Packer fans and Favre apologists.

I really don’t have much to say on this evening, so I will go to bed hoping that I can get eight hours in before church.

If the store doesn’t continue improving over the next thirty days, then our store director will be fired, but for now, his (and other) jobs are safe. It took a Herculean effort - two coworkers staying until 1 am and my boss staying until 2 am - to get the job done, but the rating corporate handed down to the store, a three out of ten, was good enough. (That doesn’t seem very good, but to put it in context, last month the store received a -3.)

While I am somewhat disappointed that the shakeup didn’t occur, I am not surprised. It seemed like a struggle just to get the store to a 3/10; I don’t know how the store plans to achieve a 7.

Another interesting tidbit is that there are two store director meetings in July, one on Tuesday. This makes me believes that firing season may be coming to us yet again. Last year at around this time, a fashions manager, one or two GM managers, and a third-shift manager position was cut (these are the ones I know). In addition, many received salary cuts, and an overall restructuring of management occurred, which included a new second-shift director position. This year, more cuts could occur as forecasts for the holiday season already are looking gloomy. It will be interesting to see if anybody will lose their jobs (only a couple from my store actually was fired/forced into retirement), and if so, who will not survive.