"Excuse YOU, Asshole, Don't Fucking Walk Away From Those Clothes!" Or, How Monday OFFICIALLY Became Misanthropy Day

So. I worked 14 hours today.

That's right, folks, count them. Fourteen.

This was not all at one job, though, because today was my first day of substituting for at my high school. That was definitely the highlight of the day. I was subbing for a teacher who teaches both freshman Spanish and junior high Civics. First period was the Spanish class. I had to go over homework and give them a quiz. This one girl gave me shit after I called role and introduced myself.

"Hi. I'm Bridget. I used to go here. Now I'm in college."
"Ohh, that's SOOOOO interesting," said the girl loudly.

I was slightly taken aback, because that is so unlike the students at our high school. Even if people hate a sub, they aren't genereally rude or sarcastic to their face. But then I thought smugly, "You know what? My life is about sixty times better than yours because I am not a high school freshman, so I won't even dignify that with a response." The rest of the class was uneventful.

I went to Monday Morning Meeting for shits and giggles--for those of you who don't know what this, it's the weekly assembly in which announcements are... announced. I sat with my senior buddies; it's kind of funny, actually, that I'm subbing at a high school in which there are students that I actually attended high school with. Oh well. It was mildly entertaining, in a nostalgic sense. I guess that's why I went.

Then I had the junior high classes to sub. They just had to do research in the computer lab, so that wasn't all that interesting. I checked out my favorite book of the library's collection. It's called "What If the Moon Didn't Exist?" and is a book full of theories of what the earth would be like in given situations, such as if the moon didn't exist, if the earth were bigger, if it were tilted on its axis like Uranus, etc. I am thoroughly enjoying it, once again.

Dork? Check.

The best part about subbing for the junior high was when I got to feel like a real teacher. A couple of the kids needed help on their research; I taught them both how to do more effective searches on the internet, as well as helping them figure out what their topics really meant (Voter IDs and the Midwifery Act, both current things going on in the Georgia legislature). I also ended up explaining the Green Party from a Democrat's point of view, and why Nader sucked.

I felt really good doing it. This bodes well for future planned professorship.

Anyway, none of this relates to why Monday is OFFICIALLY Misanthropy Day.

If I didn't manage to explain it before, Monday is Half Price Day. This means that people actually go INSANE. Any form of etiquette or kindness is obliterated by the GREED.

Today was nuts. I showed up at 2:50, and got straight to work putting clothes back on hangers, cleaning up after people, and doing returns from the dressing room. It only took fifteen minutes for a ten-foot-long rack to FILL UP full of clothes. This was not enough time to have finished putting away the clothes from the last ten foot rack, especially as I was the only goddamned person on the floor (everyone else was cashiering).

I don't know if I've explained how big this store is. It used to be a grocery store.

So anyway... it's all crazy and bad and stuff, and this little girl lost her sweatshirt. Losing your sweatshirt at this thrift store is a Very Bad Idea, as it is next to impossible to find. However, another of my coworkers spotted something blue in a woman's cart who was checking out, and it turned out the girl had put her sweatshirt in that woman's cart by mistake. Aww for mistakes of children.

However, there is no aww for stupid children pushing each other up and down aisles in a wheelchair, and tugging on clothes to make them fall off the hangers that I JUST PUT THEM BACK ON, or hiding in the clothing racks. I yelled at a kid, then felt sort of bad about it. I don't like yelling at kids.

Let's see... then there were the people who kept messing up everything I fixed TEN SECONDS after I fixed it... the women who refuse to control their children... the fact that the store is in shambles by the end, and therefore takes an hour and a half to only minimally clean up. I want to do a photo post, next Monday, just to show you all how horrible this all is. Also, the people who ask you stupid shit like "EXCUSE ME THERE BUT WHERE ARE THE SKIRTS!?!!" when you are standing right in front of them... the women who come up to you desperate for the bathroom and shout "MA'AM WHERE ARE YOUR BATHROOMS?!" and jiggle in your face, and when you tell them, they just walk away calmly and keep looking at clothes. I seriously don't get that.

Also... when you are going through clothing on a rack... how much force do you really need? Why are you using enough force to cause EVERY DAMN PAIR OF PANTS to fall off its hanger, at least by one side so it lists crazily to the side on the rack? And why can't you fix it? It doesn't take long, when it's just a few, but when I have to fix almost every pair of pants, it takes FOREVER when I just want to go home.

Is it just that people feel sneaky because they don't have to fix it themselves? "Ooh, it's like having a servant! Let's see how big a mess I can make!!"

Oh, and Mystery Carts piss me off too. People will literally fill their carts and then leave them in weird places in the store. What the hell, folks? This is not an isolated occurance, either. There are at least ten every Monday. Is it so hard to even put your clothing on the returns rack? Why are you getting so many clothes that you A) can't try all of them on or B) can't even begin to afford them?

However, the worst thing today, the one that made me hate everyone and everything... was one person. Tiffany.

Now, you will rarely hear me make fun of people's weight. I don't really take issue with what people weigh, as long as they are happy about it.

But Tiffany is a fatass cowcunt. With her name tattooed on her arm.

WHO THE FUCK TATTOOS THEIR NAME ON THEIR ARM?!! Are you going to forget it?? Want other people to remember the next morning when they wake up next to you? Not that Tiffany Fatass Cowcunt will ever experience that.

She DOESN'T WORK. It's not fair. Mondays are AWFUL, but if she's let out on the floor, she'll follow around other people and talk to them. Not people like me, but people like Ashley or whatever that woman's name is. The rest of us are all putting stuff away, furiously trying to get out of the damn store already, as it's an hour after closing, but no. She just wanders around like the cowcunt she is. She even had the gall to suggest, "You might want to clean from the middle and let Neela clean that area herself."

I sneered at her.

I'm sorry, Cowcunt, but you don't get to tell me where to clean up when YOU DON'T DO A GODDAMNED THING.

Also, Neela and I had a system going, and we were finishing really fast. We did about three times the area and number of clothes that Tiffany did in that time period. BOTH of us did.

And when I sweetly told her, "There's still a lot to do over there, in the men's pants section," she said "I know." Then she walked in the opposite direction to where Ashley (since I can't remember if that's actually her name or not) was cleaning, and started cackling about an ugly shirt.

NONONO.

Then she put her coat on and LEFT. When there was still stuff to do!

I swear, here and now:

Tiffany Fatass Cowcunt will find things unpleasant wherever she has to go that I have already been. I don't know how I will achieve this, but she has made my eternal shit list.

This is not easy to do. I'm generally pretty forgiving. But not of her. Oh, no. Never.

It's over, bitch. You shouldn't make me mad, because I've already told both the managers that you suck. Oh, I'm not above being a tattletale, if it makes my day shorter.

Bring it! You can't move fast enough to catch me, anyway.

Oh, Lord, here we go.

You know, Alfonso, when Alan told me to check the blog in January and see what you'd done, I knew it was a terrible idea. Noble to protect your friend, or attempt to take some of the flak for her; stupid just to go around offending people. Perhaps it's your style, but I disagree with it.

Good luck responding to everyone. It's gonna be a doozy. You're lucky no one has gotten all frothy at the mouth yet, but I'll bet they will.

You know, I was going to post about my night at the lesbian bar, and all the people I danced with and all the people I had to watch my friend make out with, but I don't really feel like it anymore. It was fun, but I was pretty much angry by the end of it, for reasons I suppose I ought to examine further. Also, my ears are still ringing and I HATE that; any loss of hearing freaks me out.

I was also going to post some more work stories, but I think instead I'm just going to sleep.

First day of work

Actually, the title is a lie--my first day of work at the thrift store was yesterday. Today I spent filing and moving old insurance files to a new cabinet in a chiropractor's office.

But yesterday was my first day at the thrift store. Since Alan wants blogfodder, I'll give what I've got.

For some background, I've spent the last two months searching, unsuccessfully, for a job. For a while I thought I was going to work at my favorite coffeeshop in Decatur--also walking/biking distance from Carl's house. That fell through, as did another coffeeshop job, several waitress applications, a job working in a building-health-inspection-and-culture-the-bacteria-or-fungus-that-grows-in-them lab (I can't recall what this is actually called), and, most recently, a job driving an animal cremator's truck (I would go pick up dead kitties and puppies from clinics. I was actually looking forward to this because... what stories I would have! But I digress).

Finally, I took an out-of-town guest to this thrift store right before he had to go to the airport, and this girl I worked with in an icecream store in senior year of highschool was working. I asked for an application, and she gave me one and told me to come back Monday to talk to the hiring manager.

Yesterday, I walked in at 3 PM, handed her my application, and told her I knew Stephanie. She didn't look at my application, just asked when I could start. "Today," I responded.

"Really? Want to?"

So I did.

It was also Half-Price Monday, which means UTTER AND EXTREME CHAOS. Seriously, people form a line fifteen to thirty minutes before the store opens, and run each other over with their shopping carts in order to get to whatever they had their eye on Sunday night. There are regulars that come every week, religiously. There are also regulars that come every day. I have yet to make their acquaintance; this is just what I've heard.

There isn't really training involved--all I do is pick up clothes where people drop them from their nerveless fingers, rearrange clothing that people stick in weird places, find the odd hiding places where people have stashed things (a toy dump truck stuffed with several ladies shirts under the dresses?), and generally keep the store clean and functioning. Not hard, especially since I know that store like the back of my hand. Do I buy too much clothing? Absolutely.

Well, now I'll get it for cheap-or-free.

Three things of note happened:

1. I made a better friend of Stephanie, and made a friend in this girl Courtney. We went out for food after work (at 11 o'clock).

2. As I was hanging up sweaters that had fallen from their hangers, I overheard a woman say to her friend, "It just seems like the store is falling apart this week!" After she said this, she threw a couple of sweaters on top of the rack. Hmm, I wonder WHY the store is falling apart?

3. I spied on two transwomen (m2f) while they were trying on shoes. They were very convincing; had I not had a fair amount of experience with trans people, I might not have guessed. It took me about ten minutes to feel assured that they were. They were both had just slightly off build, and both had Adam's apples, and strong features. Also, they had trouble finding shoes that fit. If anyone finds it odd that I spent so much time trying to figure it out, even though I'm sure they'd prefer that no one be able to tell, well... what can I say? I like figuring things out. Analytical scientist girl to the rescue!

So, that was my first day. Tomorrow I go in at 12 and try to stay until close. Huzzah for needing tons of money in Japan!

And so, the circle grows ever-wider.

Hello, everyone. Bridget Lough at your service. Really, though, I suppose it's at my own; blogging is a fairly masturbatory habit. To self-indulgence, then!

I just checked my email to find an invite from one Alan Orlanski to join the suite's blog. I wasn't expecting anything this early; Alan promised me a spot in the blog when I went to Japan, so as to log my far-off travels, but that doesn't begin for another month yet. The Japanese semester system is weird, compared to ours; they begin their year in April, and then go until the end of July. They have a short break, and then start again in September, and go until December. Winter break happens, and then they have a final term from January to March. Seems a bit uneven to me, but there you have it. So essentially I'll be having my first semester of junior year all over again.

There is a slip of paper sticky-tacked to the wall of my bedroom; I'm staring at it right now. It says, placed carefully above a glow-in-the-dark sticker of Neptune, "Remember the osmosing volume." This was originally placed as a reminder to myself, whenever I felt too analytical, to harken back to a conversation that Alan and I had at the beginning of my senior year in high school. Instead of ripping apart every topic that came to mind, dissecting things, I was to osmose them instead, imbibe and just let things be as they are.

I put bits of that conversation as a quote on my senior page. People (who noticed it) were shocked; Alan wasn't exactly seen as a person who would say such things, and the quote sounded really guru-like.

Anyway, all of this is to say that I suppose now, instead of remembering the osmosing volume, I ought choose to know it. I should already have become it.

It's interesting, though, that this should come to mind; I never look at that slip of paper anymore, but just the other day someone saw it and asked me what it meant. I smiled and the expression on my face must have been so nostalgic; I said only, "Oh... it's just something I put up in high school, to remind me to be a fuller person."

At any rate. It's now 5 AM and I worked all day on my feet, hanging clothes up after cow-like people who think that being in a thrift store means "STREW EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE AND LEAVE SHOPPING CARTS FULL OF CRAP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STORE! WOOHOO!"