I have really lucked out this time.

Ya'll, I may have found the perfect job. I don't want to jinx myself, but I'm five weeks in and so far I'm still digging it. When I first saw the ad on Craiglist, I literally snorted and moved on. I figured it wouldn't be much money and it would have a long, long learning curve because I had never even set foot in the town it was in.

Then I saw it again the following week, and the week after that, and the week after that (which was when I wrote my last post). Meanwhile, there was a depressing lack of response coming in to any of my applications or resumes. So I went ahead and sent my resume in.

Oh wait, no I didn't. I fucked around for another week and still didn't send it in. Eventually I emailed it in, figuring it would just be another example of a wasted email. But I actually got a response right away, had an interview a couple of days later, and started work the next week. And that, my friends, is how I became a pizza girl.

The main thing I was worried about was not knowing the area, but it's a small town and the computer prints out directions for every order. Then I wasn't sure if it'd be worth it because of the price of gas - but for every order I get a mileage amount, paid nightly, and it's more than enough. I was also concerned that it would all be tipped employee wage like serving is, but it's not. I get minimum when I'm in the store, and tipped wage when I'm on the road. I wasn't thrilled about being in a corporate food environment again, because it always pissed me off to have people telling me what color my hair could be and checking to see if my socks were the right color. But when I got to the interview, the manager had piercings in her face.

I don't have to make pizzas, although I do box them sometimes. I take orders occasionally. Mostly, though, I just stand around talking typical restaurant smack with the other pizza bitches, until it's my turn to deliver. I spend a lot of time in my car, but I've always liked to drive and as long as I've got my music I'm happy. I interact with the customer for an average of a minute, collect payment and my tip, and head back. It's kind of ridiculously easy. I'm sure in the winter it'll suck a bit more, what with the cold and the snow, but I'm not too worried.

There are some other benefits too - there's a iPod charger in the front of the store for anyone to use, and nobody bitches if you're playing Candy Crush or whatever when it's slow. I don't have to claim my all my tips - the computer doesn't care and neither does the manager. And oh yeah - no sidework unless I'm late driver or closer, which is almost never!

And honestly, it's just such a relief to be able to go the store and get food, or a new pair of sneakers, or whatever I need, without worrying that it's coming out of my rent! So far, the only downside is that it's really amped up my dislike and boredom at my full-time job. It's been building for a while, but the contrast between jobs has really increased my dissatisfaction with it. I know in my last post I was talking about enjoying being a cubicle monkey, and sometimes I still do, but I just am not built for that kind of thing long-term.

BTW, I'm already totally sick of pizza.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

It's been a year and a half since I stopped serving. And it's been a great year and a half. Actually ... I take that back. In a lot of ways, it's been a really, really shitty year and a half. It's been the worst period of time for my family as a whole that I can remember, and it hasn't been all rainbows for me personally either.

But there have been some good things about it, things that are a direct result of leaving the restaurant. Like the fact that when I wake up in the morning, I can walk normally right away instead of hobbling because the tendons in my feet have clenched up during the night. My chronic upper back problems have lessened. My knee pain is gone. I still have cracks in my heels, because I run around barefoot all the time - but they're not as deep and they're not split open by being walked on constantly.

And of course, it's definitely comforting to know that every other Friday I have the exact same amount of money coming in (excepting overtime). It's nice to have my own desk (with a kickass view of the mountains!) and be able to store my own things there and put up my own pictures. I enjoy the fact that my manager pretty much leaves me alone as long as I do my job. Yes, there are definitely things I enjoy about being a cubicle monkey.

Problem is ... it doesn't pay enough. It pays my rent, and my basic bills, and leaves about $40 a month for food and gas. While I could work overtime, that wasn't a problem - and I milked the overtime cow for all it was worth, to the point where I was totally burnt out, actually. But now we're caught up on our backlog, and we have enough employees, and so that means no more overtime. It's frustrating because I don't even need that much more a month - I find I don't miss having cable, I can eat reasonably cheaply, my animals are doing just fine on cheaper food, my car is very fuel efficient, and there just aren't a lot of things that I want to buy.

On the other hand, I owe my cousin a thousand dollars, I owe $500 in taxes for last year, and I want to buy a house next year since I could get a mortgage for about what I pay in rent. I thought about getting a roommate, but the spare room used to be a garage or something that was very crappily walled in - so the roof leaks in one spot, the paint is growing mold and flaking off the wall in one spot, and there's no insulation so in the winter you can see your breath back there. Basically the only way I'd be able to have a roommate in this house is if it were somebody who was sleeping with me. And I looked in to moving but unless I share a room in an apartment with strangers, which would mean getting rid of all my pets, I can't find anywhere cheaper.

So what to do? Well .... it'd be nice if I could just find a replacement job that pays what I need and doesn't suck. But honestly, that's a challenge. Due to my own repeated fuck-ups, I'm a few credits short of a degree. I have no training in anything that would earn a higher wage, and I'm just not particularly good at anything that makes money. And I like my current job, most of the time. I'd like to make it at least a year from my official hire date, since right now my resume kind of looks like I'm a habitual job skipper (mostly because the first four+ months at this job were with a temp agency so I didn't officially work for this company until the last week of January).

So with all of that .... it's second job time. And as we all know, the easiest, most profitable job where I can get evening and weekend hours is going to be food service. I'm officially on the hunt for a serving job again. I wish I could go back to my old restaurant, now that CL is gone - I miss working with Work Wife and Mistress J, and even Accent Girl. I miss some of the customers. And I might put in an application, now that the new GM has had time to learn that CL was psycho and maybe he shouldn't believe her Notebook O' Bitchery she left behind. But I'm not counting on it, nice as it would be to rejoin familiar surroundings.

But hopefully I'll find something soon, because eating peanut butter sandwiches every day gets old really quick.

Just a rant.

(Please feel free to ignore. I've just been fucking deluged lately with these things and I can't rant to anybody I know in person because they act like I'm suggesting we raise Hitler as a zombie and give him a nuclear weapon.)

Everywhere I look, someone around me is getting married, is pregnant, or just popped out a kid. Jesus Christ, I am fucking sick of it. I'm removing people from my Facebook feed who used to be good friends because all they fucking post now is about this shit.

If I see once more pregnant belly picture, I'm going to puke. And the next person who tries to show me an ultrasound is getting punched. Bitch, I don't want to see the inside of your uterus! That shit is creepy! Keep your parasite and your blurry alien picture away from me. And I'm sick of the pictures of your kids doing 'cute' things. I don't want to see your baby's birth-canal squished face every time you post something. Congratulations! You created a drooling, pants-shitting, screaming small person. You made a life! Big fucking deal! It's nothing to be proud of, all you did was get sweaty with somebody and biology did the rest.

And keep the pictures of engagements rings, wedding venues, cakes, and flowery bullshit verses about love and god and the sanctity of marriage out of my fucking face too. Good job, you're going to sign papers that mean when you can't stand that other person any longer, they get half of your shit. Yay! Let's all eat cake and do the chicken dance! I think marriage is stupid - it made sense in times and societies when women weren't allowed or permitted to care for themselves. Now? Seriously? What the hell is the point? When people tell me they're getting married, I have zero reaction. They might as well have said "It's Tuesday!" So then I have to try to fake happy because otherwise people get all goddamn butthurt that rainbows aren't shooting out my ass about it.

And yeah, I'm sure there are more than a few people out there who will read this and think I'm just bitter because I'm single and childless. I get the pitying look from smug married bitches - the same ones who a year later are bitching about his pot smoking or her tv habits. The same ones who have a higher chance of divorce than not. The same ones who later ask me if I want to sleep with them/their wives because they're in an open marriage now (No. No, I'm not kidding.) until wait, we're getting divorced now. And of course people in relationships who aren't married have the same problems - but at least they haven't made a spectacle of themselves and wasted a whole bunch of money throwing an expensive party to celebrate their luuuuuuuuuuv. At least if things go sour there, they don't have to pay two attorneys to separate their lives.

I also get the "you'll change your mind when you meet the right guy!" shit when I say I don't want kids. Right. Because the 'right guy' would make me want to put my body through nine months of hell during which I would be profoundly uncomfortable and sick, and then the pain of childbirth and accompanying destruction of my vagina, then the trashing my (quite nice) breasts with the milk nonsense, and then spending the rest of my life taking care of something else? I think fucking not. Hell no. The right guy would shudder when I asked if he wanted kids and say "Fuck that noise!" Every time yet another woman tells me she's knocked up, I have to fight my urge to say "I'm sorry" or "Why'd you let that happen?" or "There's a procedure for that" because people reallllllllly don't take kindly to that last one .... c'mon, I was joking. Learn to take a joke as easily as you obviously take a dick, preggo.

I always tell my mom that when she was making me she kept all the maternal instinct to herself - she's swimming in it to the point of having raised two sets of my cousins and having adopted two kids now. I have no tolerance for any of that shit. Zero. Zip. Nada. Other short words of negation. In fact, the whole concept kind of sickens me. The idea of a living thing in me, moving and kicking and stuff? Gaaaaaaah. It's goddamn disturbing, is what it is. It's like a chest burster, only instead of killing you, it expects you take care of it forever. If I want something that's going to depend on me for the rest of it's life, I'll get another dog.

I'm just "at that age" where everybody around is "settling down" or what-the-fuck-ever, and it's pissing me off. These are important, life-changing things. I get it. But for god's sake, talk about something else every once in a while! You don't see me forcing everyone around me to listen to Norwegian pop or lecturing them on Tudor England - because I know that what's completely absorbing to me is as boring and possibly as revolting as dry dog vomit to others. There's a world around you, and people around you, who maybe don't want to talk about your wedding invitations anymore. Who maybe would like to have a conversation with you that doesn't involve the words "mucus plug" or "placenta." Who maybe wants to gossip and talk about movies and clothes and dying grandmothers and broken hearts and for god's sake even the weather -- you know, life outside your uterus and/or wedding hall.

(Let the hate roll in, I'm sure.)

Addendum: Well, I'm glad I didn't get any of the "have dare you say such things about the babies!!!1!!!!1" comments like I expected. Most of you got the point, and saw more than the hyperbole and intentionally fucked up humor.

A couple of you ... well, you need to think about the definition of 'rant': "to utter in a bombastic declamatory fashion." A couple of you took the rant portion a little too seriously and didn't pay attention to the point portion. A couple of you need to apply some common sense - do you seriously think that I tell women who have been trying to get pregnant for months that "there's a procedure for that?" Honestly, who would do that?

(Okay, those words have passed my lips once - when Dallas got shitty with me about "You don't have kids? You don't want kids? Why don't you want kids? You better hope you don't get pregnant, what would you do then?" But she wasn't pregnant at the time, and I was talking about myself. Anyway.)

Of course there were kernels of truth. I do think marriage is pointless and ultrasound pictures are creepy as fuck. I do know some people who are going way the hell over the top with this crap and I'm tired of even trying to have a normal conversation with them. But a modicum of thought should tell you that this was not a 100% honest post. Come on now. If I were that unbalanced of an individual, I wouldn't have any friends to have triggered this post in the first place.

I do think it's telling of some very deeply ingrained societal perceptions that someone would believe I need an attitude adjustment because, as a female, I dare to not be all mushy about wedded bliss and bundles of joy. If a man wrote a post complaining about his buddies settling down and being pussy-whipped, what would the reaction be to that? Or what I wrote a post in the same tone, but complaining about people constantly thrusting their religious or political views on me? Nobody would comment then about what it "says about me."

Personally, I think what this post says about me is both delightful and mature - I understand everybody's interests and joys are different, and that friendships are about both parties sharing, not about one person spewing one thing like endless projectile vomit. I respect that and want to be around people who respect it as well.

So not surprised.

I'm sure almost everybody has heard about the waitress who got fired from Applebee's because she posted a picture of a guest's receipt. If you haven't, check out the story - some religious bitch wrote "God gets 10% why do you get 18". Because I'm sure Jesus would totally stiff a server.

As to why this behavior from Applebee's doesn't surprise me .... I'll let you speculate. ;)

Merry Christmas!

Don't get too excited. That's all I have to say. I'm boring lately.

Finally, something to write about!

Yep, this job is as devoid of stories of bitchery as I predicted. On one hand ... it's totally awesome. I've been there a month and a half, and I've only been yelled at once. ONCE! In a month and a half! It's kind of shocking when you think about it. I still don't like waking up in the morning -- I fucking hate mornings - but I don't dread going to work.

Of course, the other shoe could still drop at some point. I'm not very happy that they've suddenly decided to limit overtime to only three hours a week  - I have to find a second job now because of that. But that's minor compared to not loathing the place!

Anyway, I finally do have a story of a genuine numbskull. We do stuff with credit reports, but we're not a credit bureau. This gentleman called me, all in a hurry, from a bank. He was trying to get a woman approved for a loan right the fuck now, but she had five too many open credit cards. He kept telling me he had five signed letters and asking "how do we make this happen." It took about ten minutes but eventually it turned out that he needed a complete credit report showing these cards were closed. Within a couple of hours.

Anybody who's had to do anything ever with the credit bureaus knows that shit doesn't happen.

I explained that he would have to wait for the banks to tell the credit bureaus that the accounts were closed, which would take a month or more, or use a service that would cost about $500 and would still take significantly longer than a couple of hours. He kept insisting we'd done it before. I said no, there's no way we'd done that before, but we could verify the accounts were closed and provide something to that effect. I thought we'd solved the problem, hooray ... until he mentioned again these "five signed letters" and asked how soon I could get the accounts closed.

I told him I wasn't sure what he meant about signed letters, and he went on a loud rampage about how he'd had this woman come in and sign five letters, and how did he get them to me for me to close the accounts.

"Wait," I said. "These accounts aren't even closed?"
"NO!" he screamed. "Why do you think I'm calling you! I need you to do it!"
"Um." I was actually speechless. "I can't close her accounts for her."
"Why the hell not?"
I had to take a moment to modulate my tone. "Because it's illegal."
"No! No! No it's not! Your company has done it before!"
"No, sir, we have not." I said firmly. "It would be completely illegal for us to do that. We may have verified they were closed, but we did not close them. That is against the law."
"Well this is just a bunch of bullshit! How the fuck am I supposed to get this woman her loan?" He continued ranting and raving and swearing for another five minutes, telling me I was incompetent and my company was really going down the drain, etc. etc.

I had to take my headset off and giggle for several minutes after getting off the phone.

Still a former waitress.

The new job is going well; but I'm hesitant to write much about it because the last time I wrote about something really good in my life, I lost it literally the next day. Superstitious, who, me?

On the old restaurant front, Fud got fired for doing something everybody's done for years. When we got stiffed, most of the managers were very understanding and would discount the ticket by ten percent to at least cover the tax/tip-out factor. If they'd left a card out, we'd just do it. Well, Fud got caught doing it without permission by the new manager, who informed her that was theft from the company and canned her ass.

I also have a better idea of why he wouldn't let me come back to work there. I went over to Mistress J's for margaritas the other night, and she told me that he'd been trying to get rid of her for a while too, because before Chicken Little left, she had filled half a notebook with notes about all the employees and past employees, as well as customers she did and didn't like. Since the new guy had just started when I tried to get my job back, that would have been fresh in his mind.

Of course, the company got bought out by a new corporation that is completely uptight. They're changing uniforms back to black slacks, long-sleeved button-up black shirts, no tattoos, no piercings except ONE in each ear, blah blah blah, changing all sorts of rules about how things work, took away everybody's seniority -- Mistress J has been there for six years, so she had three paid weeks of vacation a year, and the new company said that because it wasn't with them, it's gone. I think there have got to be some laws about that.

Anyway, the new job is much better, and the new company that owns the restaurant sucks, but I do still miss my friends. And the cash would have been nice. Oh well!

The new job.

I'm only three days in, but I like it a lot. The job is retardedly easy. I don't want to say too much about what it is, because it's a pretty big company and I don't think there are many that do this type of thing, though. And we all know how paranoid I am! Anyway, it's technically a call center ... but it's not a typical call center. It's not like everybody pissed off about their tv or their credit card or whatever is calling in. There are some clients that call in to check the status of their report; then there are clients of the clients who return our calls. But a lot of it is calling automated systems and pushing buttons to get information, or calling a client's client to get information -- but that person is expecting our call. The good thing about this is that I don't see myself getting pissed off a lot. The bad thing is, of course, a lack of stories for this blog!

Then there are a lot of little things about the place that I like. It's only 15 miles away (in the same town as the old restaurant, so I can see my friends, too!) instead of 50 like my job for the satellite tv company. The buildings are nice and new, bright and airy and clean, and my sinuses don't swell shut within ten minutes of getting to work like at the last place. The training class I'm in is small, only nine people, rather than the 25 or so in the others. The computer equipment is new, in good condition, and the programs are up-to-date, unlike both the other places (the most recent one we had to log into "virtual desktops" several states away, was slower than snot). The training room is glass on three sides with a beautiful view of the mountains. There are three buildings, and in between them are picnic tables, trees, grass, and generally nice landscaping.

We had a brief policy review, of course, but nothing serious. Attendance boils down to "we need you here, call if you won't be here" - none of that "if you miss more then five minutes of training you're fired" crap. 

Security is much more lax than at the last place -- there aren't five cameras in the training room, no security guards watching all the time, I don't have to swipe my badge at literally every single door except the bathrooms, we're allowed to have our cell phones and personal belongings ... even paper. *gasp* Our trainer has made calls on her cell phone in class. When I'm done with my work early, I check my phone, read on my Nook, etc. I'm sure once training is over I won't have time for that, but I also don't get the feeling someone will be riding my ass all the time -- the only expect what they call "senior processors" to finish 65 items in a day, which sounds like a lot until you realize that some of them take literally 30 seconds.

The weird thing is that the last place, with all the insane rules, was for a company a bank had hired. So they were worried about people stealing confidential information. This place has access to frankly even more sensitive information, and there's none of that crazy paranoid crap. It really surprises me.

There are break rooms in every building, on every floor. They're clean, and well-lit, and not all dingy and gross. They're all stocked with a full set of dishes -- plates, silverware, lots of glasses and coffee cups -- and each one had a dishwasher. There are of course microwaves and fridges. There are ice machines. The company provides coffee, hot tea, iced tea, and hot chocolate free. On Thursday, a local ice cream place set up in the courtyard and everybody got a big waffle cone full of free ice cream. These are little things, to be sure, but compared to what I'm used to it's amazing.

Also, it's an 8-5, Monday through Friday job. Bitches, I get the weekends off. I have never, never, never had weekends off! I didn't think I ever would! But probably the thing that made me smile the most, though, is pretty small for most people. It's simply this: I'll have my own desk. It's mine. All the time. The chair won't still be warm from somebody's ass having been in it for the last eight hours when I get there. When I leave, somebody else won't be getting my ass warmth. When I change settings on the computer, they'll stay changed. I can put up pictures of my cat or Morten Harket or whatever the fuck I feel like putting up. It's mine.

So far, I feel like I'm in work heaven. It doesn't take much to make me happy, I guess. The temp agency that hooked me up with it doesn't even have a record of where they got my resume -- I didn't submit it directly to them -- but damn, so far I'm very glad they got it!

Employed again.

It's another call center, but not general customer service, so hopefully I won't hate it too much. And at least it pays enough to cover my bills, unlike the last place. Still not much left over. But it's a start.

Time wasters.

Yesterday I got ready and drove twenty minutes one way for my "interview." It lasted literally four minutes. She didn't even have my application printed out. I was asked three generic questions and then told, "Well, I'll definitely print out your application and put my notes on it for the general manager. We just did a round of hiring so it'll be a couple of weeks at least before you hear anything."

So .... you're not actually hiring. Why the fuck did you waste my time?