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.

I Have Joined the Ranks of the Gainfully Underemployed, Part Two.

Here is why this job will be a doozy, requiring all of my limited social skills for a solid month:

• The manager keeps eyeballing me, like he knows that there is sarcasm welling up in my soul, and he's just waiting for the moment when that sarcasm bubbles up uncontrollably and I start shrieking one-liners laced with incredibly foul language at the customers.  Who are not customers, you know.  They are "guests."  I get the uncomfortable feeling that maybe he has seen my kind before and he does not appreciate us.
• The people who were already working there before my little gang of four got there.  More on this later in this very post.
• These words came out of the managers mouth as he explained my incredibly uncomplicated job as a cashier:  "You'll probably have to help them write a check.  Lots of these kids have never written a check before."

Please allow me to pause a moment so that you can let this soak in.

I understand not having a checking account prior to the age of 18.  Lots of banks do this, and it's not a big deal.  I myself did not have a checking account until the age of 18.  I do not consider this odd.

However. 

The check.  There are two factors at work here.  First, the check itself literally tells you what information in requires, and where to put it.  The only reason for not being able to fill out a very, very simple form, is that you do not read or write English.  This is appropriate, and it's the only possible excuse a person may have for being unable to write a check.  I have helped people write rent checks before because of their limited grasp of the English language and it is no big deal at all.  These people have an acceptable excuse.  There is no other acceptable excuse.  Excepting a total lack of hands or fingers or something.  In which case it is permissable for you to write your check using your special tool that you've been using to write on things with since whenever you lost your manual abilities.  I don't judge.

The second factor is this: even if you have never written a check in your life, you have probably received one.  Even if it was just a $5.00 check from Grandma on your birthday, you have received a check.  If you ever once looked at that check, you would see exactly what information the experienced checkwriter put in what fields.  They've laid it all out for you.  It's right there for you to learn from.  If you get a $5.00 check from Grandma every year for your birthday, you would see it at least annually for the duration of your life (or hers).  Does this not sink in?  Have you never watched your mom write a check at the grocery store?  Maybe not, considering that you were probably eight years old on 9/11 and you have no idea who the Beatles are, apart from iconic images on those posters that you're buying to decorate your dorm room.  (Semi-related: if you can't sing one single verse of a Bob Marley song and you are wearing a polo shirt tucked into your jorts, I am not selling you the Bob Marley poster.  I am not.)

Come to think of it, I actually don't mind teaching college kids how to write checks.  It's a valuable lesson I can impart to younger generations before we all devolve into vaguely sentient beings that may or may not gnaw at each other's faces when we meet on the street.

So.  The people who already worked there.  Pardon me for a second, while I dust off my fingers. I am eating puffy Cheetos right now and I have no idea why.

We seem to have several categories of people within this small group.  We have:

• The manager.  As I mentioned before, he appears to be wise to my kind and I don't think I made a favorable impression, despite my outward show of docile willingness.  Just think about it a minute, Mr. Manager.  It would have been a total lie for me to say that I'm passionate about helping other people balance the books.  Nobody is passionate about Accounting.  It's like saying that people are passionate about the Dewey Decimal system.  Not even librarians are passionate about that. 
• The "Team Lead."  He's been there for three or four years and he doesn't make eye-contact with you.  Chances are, he won't even learn your name.  Because you are one of the Faceless Warm Bodies that corporate sends in when it's Rush Time.  It's remarkably efficient if you think about it.
• The Blond Girl Who Is Also An Athletic Somethingorother Major.  She shares my name, but not my mostly good nature.  And how dare you ask her a question.  How dare you, sir.
• The Artistic Dude Who Might Be Nice or Might Just Be High.  I liked that guy.  If he was working while high, he's damned good at it, because he knew where everything was and didn't giggle once.
• The Girl Who Has Only Been Working Here Three Weeks.  She's disillusioned (probably on account of that psychology degree she has, yet she's working at a textbook store), she's grumpy, but she is a goddamn workhorse.

Speaking of which, I was a workhorse, too.  I spent an hour and a half lugging textbooks around and figuring out where to shelve them, which is an excellent way to learn what's there and where it might be.  Kudos to the manager for having us do that, even though it was probably just a matter of needing those damn books on the damn shelves as soon as damn possible.  Hilariously, he practically forbade all of us from speaking to actual customers.

You will not be surprised to hear that Over-Achieving Girl volunteered for the first shift on the cash register.  It was at that moment that not a single customer darkened our doorstep - at least not any that wanted to check out.  So, she contented herself by straightening up merchandise that didn't need straightening.  She'd been doing that all the way through the orientation, refolding shirts that were perfectly folded in the first place, and doing it very obviously, so that Mr. Manager could see that she was Taking The Initiative.

Here's the part where I tell you that I'm absolutely not bitter about doing this job.  I'm actually really glad to have the opportunity to make some money, even though it's probably only going to be for a month or so.  I've got these dreams, see, and I'm pretty much willing to do whatever to make them happen.  It doesn't matter to me that this job makes not only my head but my tired old bones ache.  I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it to the very best of my ability, for as long as it lasts.

Plus this is going to be an excellent story to tell at my fancy parties on my yacht in another ten years or so.

I Have Joined the Ranks of the Gainfully Underemployed, Part One.

So, I knew going into this that my employment was going to be kind of sketchy and weird while I went to school.  But, I have been in business for myself for the last couple of years, so I just figured I'd be scheduling clients around my school schedule.  Sadly, the economy claimed my last two clients, and I wasn't able to secure any more by the end of the Spring semester.  So, I had to find a job that would work around my school schedule.

Unfortunately, the job that found me is in retail.

I don't want to say too much specific about this job, because I sort of need it and I don't want them to fire me for writing a blog.  Not that they'll ever find my blog unless I do something stupid like friend one of the children I work with, which is about as likely as me sharing clothes with Lady Gaga.  Suffice it to say that I work at a textbook store.

The first interview was a "group" interview, at which the general manager of all the stores told us what to expect.  Which is - this is a temporary job for the Fall rush, and it's minimum wage.  This is how far I've fallen, people.  Minimum wage.  I haven't worked for minimum wage since I was sixteen.  Our situation is such that there is no room in this for pride, so I decided to suck it up.  There was no real speaking on the candidates' part in this interview, except for the part where we all told the GM our schedules.  Later that same day, I got a phone call offering me the job.

I can only imagine that I got this job based on the following:

• I showed up.
• I did not appear to be drunk.
• I did not smell bad.
• I smiled encouragingly at the GM at the appropriate times.

That last one may not have mattered. 

There was a girl in that group interview for whom I would have sworn this was her first job interview.  She asked what she clearly felt were insightful questions, and beamed at the room full of silent people as though she had just given us all a cherished gift: the gift of her obvious competence.

An example of her questions:

GM:  Textbooks represent 80% of our total sales.
Over-Achieving Girl: What represents the other 20%?
GM: (completely deadpan) The other merchandise.

I can only imagine that this girl had read every available piece of advice on the internet on How To Land A Job or How To Ace An Interview or even possibly How To Make Everyone Else's Ass Twitch.  Because she is Over-Achieving, she is succeeding in all of these things like a boss.

The first day of work comes and lo and behold, Over-Achieving Girl was hired.  And put in the same team as me.  In the same store.  Now, she's a very nice girl, but she has some things working against her for me.  To wit:

• "I used to work at the Disney Store because I love kids.  But then they were really pressuring me to sell things instead of playing with the kids.  And I just wanted to play!"
• She likes to use everybody's name a lot in a single sentence.
• She will look around on your person or in your office to find some clue about you and then ask you personal questions purely for ass-kissing purposes.  The HR guy was humming while we were filling out paperwork.  She said "HR Guy, what kind of music do you like, HR Guy?"
• She introduces herself to everyone and then beams at you like she did you a personal favor.

In short, she is perfect for this job.

They send you into this job telling you that they're hiring a huge amount of people for the Fall Rush and then they will keep the best ten percent on a permanent basis.  This is an incentive to get the best possible work out of you without actually offering you a goddamn thing.  I thought that by virtue of the fact that I will likely be one of the only people there with a solid work ethic who knows her ass from her elbow, I was a shoo-in for this.  Do I want a minimum wage job for longer than a month?  Well, no.  But I need a job, and if this is all I can get right now, I will absolutely fucking take it.

I realize now that I will be the first person to go. 

There are many reasons for this, some of which I will list for you now.

• I literally cannot stand still for an hour and a half listening to the manager of the store explain to me the incredibly simple concepts behind the cash register.  I fidgeted.  I yawned.  I briefly contemplated wilting to the floor gracefully, as though I had swooned, just so I wouldn't be standing in one place anymore.  I asked to go to the bathroom before he was finished talking.  (I've given birth to two kids.  I pee when I sneeze.  Sue me.)
• I am absolutely older than everyone in the entire corporation.  Probably including the CEO.
• They all know this and they not-so-secretly feel superior to me because of it.
• They also feel not-so-secretly superior because they go to The Big School, and I go to CCC.  I did not try to explain to them the financial advantages inherent in my plan, because then I've officially become a Geezer Who Would Rather They Save Their Money Than Spend It On Beer.

The icing on the cake came when the manager asked everybody what their major is and why.  Over-Achieving Girl said, enthusiastically, "Psychology.  Because blah blah help people blah blah blah."  The manager said "That's great!  So-and-so who has been working for us for the last three weeks just graduated with a degree in psychology."  Ooooh, burn, Over-Achieving Girl!  See what he did there?  He just intimated that you're not going to find a job other than this one, even with your fancy degree!  (No, she did not see what he did there, by the way.)  Then there was the Girl I Can Stand, Because She Seems Smart, who said "Athletic somethingorother" that appears to mean she will one day be a personal trainer, thereby undermining my original assessment that she might be smart.  The tall guy said "Music Performance" and we had a brief sidebar about it because I was a music major the first time I went to college.  He's a guitar performance major.  (WHY OH WHY do parents let their children DO that??  You're practically ensuring that your child will one day become a busker for food.)

When it got to me, I said that I was an Accounting major because I have been a bookkeeper for a number of years and the difference between having a degree and not having a degree in that particular field is the difference of several thousand dollars per year.  They all looked at me as though I had perpetrated a huge faux pas, and then the manager dropped into the silence: "Well, good luck with that."

My only guess about where I went wrong is that I did not say I want to help people.  I didn't say I want to help them with their emotional issues, personal fitness or provide them with soothing music by which to shop for high-end clothes.  Because I don't.  I want to make buckets of money doing something I like, that I'm relatively good at, and that's it.  And one day, I want to travel the world.  I don't ask for much.

Upon my pronouncement, everybody shuffled a few extra inches away from me and we got on with our day.

Coming up, Part Two.

Newsflash: I am old.

I've mentioned before that my thirty-third birthday is giving me hives.  Not literal hives, figurative ones.  And that sucks worse that the literal ones, because at least with those, take a little Benadryl and they go away.  There is no figurative Benadryl.

Usually, it's your landmark birthdays that give you grief.  For my twenty-fifth birthday, I had a small child, so that one didn't bother me.  I was suitably distracted from the implications of my thirtieth by a surprise trip to New York City.  (That trip was so surprise that the actual destination was a secret until we actually boarded the plane to Newark, NJ.  All I knew was that we were going on a trip and I needed a pretty dress.  Still the all-time favorite birthday.  Good work, Spike and Speith.)

For some reason, this one is really getting to me.  And it's not the fact that I'm officially one-third of a century old, although if you say that out loud, that's fucking daunting.  It's also not that people keep telling me it could be so much worse, I could be 40 or 50 or whatever.  I get that.  I'm not sure what it is.

The birthday itself was wonderful.  On Friday night, the birthday eve, we went out to a fancy dinner with Speith and his family, and our little family of four.  We had a fantastic time.  I got absolutely smashed.  And it's a little bit sad when your nine-year-old goes with you to the bathroom at the end of the night to make sure you don't fall into the toilet.  (Me: What would you do if I did fall into the toilet?  M1:  I would go get Dad.  He's right outside the door.)  The good part to that is that she's not witness to my drunkenness terribly often, but now I'm pretty sure she equates birthdays with drunkenness.  Or maybe just my birthdays with drunkenness.  And maybe her dad's.  As both kids noted when we walked into the restaurant: "It's Mom's turn to have wine and drinks!  It was Dad's turn last time!" (Last time being Dad's birthday.)  Although, she appears to have taken the example of my entire life as a horrible warning.  Here are the things she will never, ever do: smoke, drink alcohol (it's a drug, Mom!) and have a baby.  I may be raising a very boring adult.  Who is apparently directly from the 1940s, because she informed me this weekend that "I'm not steamed about that cat business anymore."  (Which is to say: she's no longer angry at her father for not allowing us to adopt a cat on impulse yesterday.  She did, however, punish him by crying like her heart was broken for a solid hour.  She didn't win, but never underestimate a nine-year-old's powers of manipulation.)  It's all fodder for more emotion-laced therapy sessions, but now we have to worry about the possibility that they will be emotion-laced, new-age therapy sessions, what with the possibility of past lives that has now been introduced thanks to her seventy-year-old vocabulary.

Saturday, the children gave me gifts: a bottle of Faith Hill perfume from M2 (it was all sealed up, so he couldn't smell it before he bought it for me - so he went on bottle aesthetic as his criteria) and a Happy Birthday Barbie from M1.  I think that it might have been a bit of a boomerang gift, but she insists that it's because I collect Barbies.  Really, the Holiday Barbie 2001 I have belongs to her.  The other two Barbies are Frank Sinatra-centric, and not purchased for the "Barbie" part at all.  In any case, I thanked her and put HB Barbie on the shelf with the others.  Saturday night, the kids went to Grandma's for a sleepover, and Spike and I went to eat Thai food and see movies.  We saw Your Highness, which was not as awesome as I wanted it to be, and Paul, which was more awesome than I had any right to hope for.

The day sped by, and it mostly just felt like a day.

I don't know that there are any deep-rooted reasons for feeling this way, other than the society-imposed feeling that I absolutely should not be doing all this at the age at which I'm doing this.  It seems to just be a feeling of uneasiness, like my mortality is creeping up on me like a ninja wearing an invisible suit.  I can hear him breathing, but I still can't see him.