Sunday August 9

The close in books last night went pretty smoothly. Saturday nights can sometimes be a strange thing down at the store, we usually aren't as busy as we are on Friday night, rather, it's steadier through the whole day. However, the crowd on Saturday is always a really late one. Especially in my magazine section. They come in around 10-10:30 and seem to forget where they picked up a magazine just two minutes before and simply put it wherever they were standing at the time. Nice. Thanks.

I decided to chance my approach this time around. The way I usually close the department is doing magazines last, but I always end up in a grumpy mood that way. I decided this time, however, to do the super tedious stuff, and the stuff that is usually in the worst shape, first. It didn't really make any time difference, as I got out the same time I usually do, but saving the easiest stuff for last is probably the best way to do it.

That, and I decided I don't really care anymore how good my close is. That's always been part of my problem, I let perfect be the enemy of good. I figure if the book manager is going to have a problem with my close regardless of how good it is, what's the point of even trying to do it perfect?

I watched one movie yesterday, The Counterfeiters, the 2007 Best Foreign Picture winner at the Oscars. I walked right into this trap. I didn't really read the description before I got it and when I started to watch it I found out that it was......... wait for it......... a Nazi movie. The fact that Nazi movies, almost regardless of quality, are considered serious Oscar contenders right out of the gate is one of the most annoying things the Academy does. The Reader? Best Picture? Yuck. Anyway, this one wasn't too bad, certainly an interesting piece of history and an interesting moral dilemma... you are a Jewish counterfeiter, a master, and the only way to stay alive is by counterfeiting foreign currency, which also finances the Nazi war effort. What do you do? The movie was alright as far as it goes, but I somehow doubt that is the best foreign film they could have come up with.

I'm about to go to work again. Those close then open can be a bitch and by 12 or 1 I'm a total crab. All of my epic customer service fails, in fact, have been after I had opened that day after closing the previous. Crossing fingers for a smooth day today. But then again, I still don't care, so I don't foresee any problems.

Saurday August 8

Garage sales are an interesting cultural phenomenon aren't they? Why do people have them? Rarely do they ever make any sort of meaningful dent in their junk piles, nor do they ever make any money. They take lots of time and effort, not to mention you always have to get up freaking early in the morning. They also have a way of irritating your neighbors, espeically when the people who go to the garage sales think it's a good idea to park in front of the neighbor's driveway or in the middle of the street.

Another question is why people actually go to garage sales. I guess the idea is to save money, but I figure if you needed the item badly enough, you would buy it retail anyway and you wouldn't have bought it at all if you hadn't seen it at the garage sale. Sounds like that would waste more money than save it. Mabye 1% of the time is there truely something worth having a garage sale, most of the time, it's just a transfer of junk from one garage to another.

I had Friday off, which was nice because I rarely do. This will change once school starts again, though, when I will have way more days off than I will on, including Friday. But this summer it has been a novelty. I didn't really do anything interesting, most just sat around and watched movies. I watched REC, which is a Spanish original of the American movie Quarantine. I was undecided which one I actually was going to see, but I figure, go with the original, right? I liked it, and since I heard they are almost exactly the same, I see no real need to see the American. I also watched The Hudsucker Proxy by the Cohen Brothers. Strange flick, but good. Very much a Cohen Brothers movie.

Friday August 7

Friday Friday Friday. Usually, Friday doesn't mean much to me because I work weekends, but today, I actually have a Friday off. Well, I didn't technically, but somebody wanted my shift, so I happily gave it to them... good times. I guess I shouldn't say usually. When I'm in school I always have weekends off, if I wanted them off, that is. I usually had something to do on the weekends, so I guess it wasn't really off, was it?

It looks like Vanessa Hudgens has another naked picture on the internet scandal. That's the second one in 2 years now. You would think somebody who likes being naked, as she obviously does, would be a little more careful. I guess her Blackberry got hacked or something this time and the naked pictures got sent out. Seriously? What kind of person, especially one whose privacy is constantly under attack, would keep naked pictures of themselves on their phone. Strange, strange girl.

Yesterday I watched Revolution, the train wreck of a movie that nearly cost Al Pacino his career back in 1985. The interesting part about this was they did an interview afterward with Pacino and the director (I forget who, some hack) and they still didn't see anything fundamentally wrong with the movie. They still thought it was good, just lacking in certain areas they couldn't fix because it was so rushed by the studio. Lame man. The movie was bad in a lot of areas, particularly the story. It was all over the place and had NO consistency at all. Oh Al, you make such great movies, but why must you torture your fans with crap like this?

Thursday August 6

Went in to work last night to help somebody out who needed the night off. The shift started out ok, but I'm such a ditz and a social retard that the night quickly went to hell. Part of the problem is the fact that corporate is putting the squeeze on us too much and we just can't do the job that they expect us to do in the time they expect us to do it with the amount of people they expect us to do it with. It is simple math.

I also worked with this certain team leader that I always seem to screw up in front of. Actually, I screw up regardless of who it is anymore. I used to be good at my job and go several shifts without screwing up, but not anymore. I don't even really know how valuable an asset I am to this company anymore.

But the bottom line is this, I'm ready to move on again. I liked the job before, but not now and I think the only thing I'm going to miss about it is all the friends I'm going to leave behind.

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Watched the movie Cinemania yesterday. It's a documentary about really, really intense movie buffs. They have no jobs, no friends (besides the other people like themselves) and they basically plan their lives around going to see movies and they can see almost 1,000 a year. That's more than Roger Ebert and he's paid to see a bunch of movies! What a horrible life that would be, to have such a compulsion.

Morning pages August 5, 2009

I closed in the books department last night. I hate doing that. Something about closing shifts always makes me cranky and if I'm already in a bad mood about something, watch out. Part of it is just the utter tediousness of it, every single book in the store, and there are thousands, has not only a section, but a sub-section, and often times a row. An exact spot. Nice when you are trying to find something fast, but pure 100% torture when you are trying to put them away. It's not so much an issue of just stocking, you eventually learn right where the big name authors (Steven King, Janet Evanovich, John Grisham, etc) go, even where some of their specific books go, but its the fact that you can find stacks of books that have been misplaced by customers in the wrong place that can get really, really unnerving.

Magazines are even worse. I don't know how in the hell there can be a market for such a thing, but we have at least 15 tattoo magazines and people always (and I do mean ALWAYS) put them where they don't belong. Then there are other magazines, magazines on subjects you couldn't possibly imagine. The teen magazines with the same 4 people on every cover (Hillary Duff, Miley Cyrus, Kristen Stewart and the horrible Robert Pattinson). Recently I've also noticed a new face popping up everywhere, Selena Gomez. Who is she? What does she even do? Magazines are the absolute bane of my existence at Hastings.

Closing books is such a huge job. I could start at 8:30 and still not be done until 11:30. It's almost too big of a job for one person to alone, so naturally, they only have one person doing it. I try to be efficient and not have it take quite so long, but every little thing I miss gets found and I get called out on. It's easy to be a department manager and criticize the work of the closers, they never have to actually do it. Neither do the guys who work at corporate office.

There is one universal truth to retail, though. It is hard to make people who earn 8 dollars an hour care about anything.

Tuesday August 4th

Sometimes I'm not sure what it is that I feel anymore. I must be bi-polar because I'm all over the place. One minute I'm mad the next I'm depressed and the next I'm level. It's an exhausing cycle. Often times I find myself wishing I could just go numb to the world, a Don Draper or Dexteresqe level of escape. I know that's probably not the best way to do it, and I'm not sure how it would be done, but this sort of basketcase existence doesn't work for me anymore.

For a while I thought it was the job, retail can be a frustrating as hell environment, but I'm starting to realize that it might just be a symptom of some bigger life issue. This cloud seems to follow me wherever I go.

I'm way too open about myself. I'm often prone to going on these incredibly emotional and sometimes passive aggressively angry rants to people I don't even know. THAT IS NOT HEALTHY. People are nice about it, but I know deep down it irritates them. I know it certainly would me. I can't do that anymore. I feel a little too much.

Sunday August 2

Things happen in your life. Sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad and they always, even if it is slight, leave an impact on your life. When dealing with your personal past, you can do one of two things, face it or run from it. I've been doing nothing but facing it for the last few years and it really hasn't gotten me much, maybe it is time to run.

Part of my problem is that I'm too open. I leave no room for mystery or the imagination. That needs to change.