So That's Why They Call It 'The Fall Rush'

I have been at work every day this week.  While it's supposed to be a part-time job, the completely predictable phenomenon of "The Fall Rush" has rendered my week completely to My Corporate Overlords at the textbook store.

There's a lot to say about this.

First, I am not a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old.  Working at a textbook store means endless walking, standing, bending, squatting, cartwheeling, somersaulting and other gyrations that make my body ache right down to my very bones.  Last night, after six hours standing at a cash register, trying to work my way through the line of customers that wrapped around the entire store and threatened to escape the front door (no kidding - it was really that bad), I left at about 9:45 (forty-five minutes past when I was supposed to leave).  My lower back was absolutely killing me, for about the fourth day in a row.   Improbably for Texas, my car has seat-warmers in it.  I'm not sure why it has seat-warmers, but I really, really appreciated them last night, because I used them like a heating pad while I drove home.  This could be applicable for senior citizens as well, so tell your grandma.

The main negative of this job, other than the minimum wage, is the body pain.  Since The Rush is all rush-y, I haven't had much in the way of boredom, so that's good.  I tried to explain to the manager that the body pain was a consequence of being a) elderly and b) fat, and he told me these were not valid excuses and to quit leaning.  No, just kidding, he let me get a stool.  Which then made my ass go numb.  But numb is better than hurting so much that I want to pass out, so that was good.

There are other positives to my week-long stint at this job:

• I can now find a textbook, any textbook, for any class, faster than I can find a pair of matching shoes in my home.  (I don't want to examine too closely what this means for my home.)
• I totally had a conversation with a literature grad student about literature and held my own in the discussion.  I am as well-read as that particular literature grad student, possibly as well-read as most literature grad students on the planet.  That somehow makes me awesome, though it's a very difficult awesomeness to define.  And yes.  The grad student was ten years younger than me.
• I keep getting compliments on how I follow through on projects, which I have discerned to mean that I don't just give it a half-assed try and then throw the list in the trash like other people.  This is positive and negative.  Positive in that: go me!  My Puritanical work ethic can be good sometimes!  And negative because: I weep for the species.
  
  And here's my favorite positive:
• Over-Achieving Girl hates me.

Well, I think she also hates this job, but not with a fiery passion.  More like she hates this job with a soul-crushing whimper, because not only has she completely stopped speaking or smiling at work, but she got into an argument with our manager because he scheduled us all so many damn hours this week (I'm working an almost full-time week this week, for instance).  Turns out she would prefer to work the four to five hour shifts that she was promised when they lured us all in here.  She left early one day because her soul is a delicate snowflake that is slowly melting in the heat of her disappointment with this job (not to be confused with the heat of our unrelenting Texas summer), and you can tell she's hanging on by a thread.  There are no children to play with here!  There is nothing remotely creative about this place!  She hates this job.  But she also hates me. 

I know this because she has given me two big clues.  Both of these clues happened within a four-hour window of time yesterday, which was the worst day of The Rush so far. 

First, she called me jolly.

Well, specifically, she said to me "Your jolliness is contagious!"  This was said to me without any trace of a jolly smile, so clearly it was not contagious.

You may think this is not an insult.  And if you think that, you are skinny.  Fat girls know, instinctively, that "jolly," when used in connection with us and not, say, with an elfish-looking man dressed all in red with a sack of fucking toys, is in fact an insult.  If you don't understand this, I'm not actually sure I can explain this to you.  Apart from the fat-girl dig, this was also a passive-aggressive way of saying that my interaction with customers (I'm sorry, "guests") was loud and annoying.  Now, I have to say, nobody likes standing at a cash register for hours on end.  So I make my own fun.  I try to make sure people have a smile on their faces when they leave the store.  Sometimes, this is impossible.  But I always try.  And I have a loud laugh.  I may have mentioned this before.  Once, my brother echo-located me in a big, crowded convention center using only my laugh as his guide.  True story.

So, the second insult was more blatant.  I mean, a lot more blatant.  The manager asked me to help her sort some receipts and file them.  She looked right at him and said "Is there nothing else she can do right now?"  In point of fact, I could have gone home at that point, because it was already half an hour past the time I was scheduled to go home, but I was trying to do my part to help close the store and everything.  Being a team player and whatnot.  Over-Achieving Girl apparently hates team players.

I go back there this afternoon, and then again tomorrow, and then I have Sunday off!  I am looking forward to that more than I can actually say, which is funny because I'll probably end up spending Sunday doing homework.

This brings us to the new semester, which brings us to a new post.