Yet another plea to fall on not-so-deaf ears...
... not-so-deaf because they've got cell phones stuck to them.
Not 10 minutes ago on the L, I had the pleasure of sitting next to some woman yapping away on her cell phone. Now, I've learned to tune this out, and it seemed like someone on the other end had a medical problem that she was checking up on so the fact that she was on her cell phone wasn't what bothered me. No, it's what she said loudly enough for all in the train to hear:
"Are you in the bathroom, Grandpa?... Are you on the shitter?... Oh, NICE!"
You know, there's a line between checking up on an ill relative while on the train and asking an irrelevant question which neither you nor anyone else needs or wants to know the answer to. The line's about six feet wide; it's pretty hard to miss. Please, folks, just... no. No.
In other news, due to sudden dire financial straits owing to Christmas (I only worked for the first half of December, and since we're closed the first week of January I won't be seeing a paycheck until the 22nd at the earliest) I have to go back to working at McDonald's. Only two days a week, but that's enough to drive me nuts. Eurrrggh. I don't want to deal with these people again (both coworkers and customers). I have about $72 in checking as of today. My textbooks will cost about $140, and I need a new 10-ride train ticket ($38.25). I owe my dad $80 in insurance for December and January, and I'll owe $120 more come February.
I hate being a big important older-teen now. I hate having to pay for all this shit and wondering where the hell I'm going to get the money from. Granted, the money for textbooks and train passes comes from Dad... assuming he remembers. And wouldn't you know it, I only got $50 straight cash for Christmas. That $50 brought the balance in my checking account to $19.82- I had overdrawn my account by EIGHTEEN CENTS and Bank One charged me $30 instead of letting Subway deny my card. I did, however, get $250 in gift certificates to places that do not sell gasoline. Not that I'm ungrateful, I got some dandy new clothes, CDs, and art supplies but I REALLY would have preferred to get maybe $100 cash and two $50 gift certificates from Mom and Dad than $200 that can only be spent at Hobby Lobby or Kohl's, especially since now I can buy most art supplies from school. Props to Dad for getting me new knobs for the air conditioning and heat/defrost on my car- they cost $18 each and I needed two. But, alas, my alignment is off, I'm due for an oil change, I failed emissions, and I seem to be going through tanks of gas at quite a clip considering I'm not driving as often. And these are not things Dad will pay for. I get maybe $140 every other week from Center Stage, and I'll get about $100 every other week at most from McDonald's.
I go to school four days a week, and work the three that I don't. And I can barely afford to drive to and from work and school. Now I understand why so many people never go to college- you can either do well in school or make enough money to stay out of the homeless shelter, but you can't do both. It's like what they say about college- "Work, sleep, or study. Pick two." I have allotted myself minimum time to get assignments done. It's times like these when I wish I fit the conventional definition of sexy (tall, blond and thin; I am a short brunette with a couple pounds of Christmas pudge) so rich people would pay me to go to their parties and make them look good (Yes, people do this. I think I read it in Reader's Digest or the Chicago Tribune.) My friend who is 19 and lives in an apartment with her boyfriend and works full-time has more money to spare than I do... because not going to school frees her to work 50-hour weeks. What the hell am I supposed to do? There's only so much time and so much money to be had. I don't have the time to work at Telamon (tech support place where Colin works- $11/hour to do jack shit and take a call when you're not playing video games) instead of McDonald's- McD has decently flexible scheduling and in a McDonald's uniform I am not likely to be hit on (Colin says I would be hit on nonstop when he wasn't there, and I believe it).
Whatever happens, I WILL NOT quit Center Stage. I actually get raises there, and I get more than a paycheck out of it- I'm learning to sew and how to apply stage and effects makeup, and Di took us all on a "field trip" to the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit at the Field Museum last week. In March we'll be going to a costume convention. An example of how awesome the job is: on my first day working after Halloween, I showed up two hours late because I thought we were back to opening at noon (we opened at 10 during October). And then I had to ask to get off an hour early so I could go to a concert. Even though I was two hours late and asked to get off early... SHE STILL TOOK ME OUT TO LUNCH. AND GAVE ME A RAISE. AND INCREASED MY DISCOUNT TO 20%. My coworker Erin is a makeup artist (she's done independent zombie movies) and she's gotten serious hookups from this job. She does makeup workshops with theater groups in our area. McDonald's says you can learn "skills for a lifetime of work... leadership, teamwork, blahblah yap yap yap." You can get that at any job, but it's the rare job that makes you feel as expendable as the fast food industry does. I can't transfer register skills to any other job outside fast food, but I can mend a rip in TULLE (that net-like material that little girls' dress-up tutus are made of) with thread that resembles thin fishing line more than it does anything you'd sew with. Ray Kroc, EAT MY ASS.
Unlike my situation at McDonald's, I actually have a bit of a say in what goes on in Center Stage. I can rearrange an entire wall of accessories if I jolly well feel like it, (provided that it still looks decent) whereas at Hallmark I'd get written up and/or bitched at because of Hallmark's stupid complicated-ass inventory system that doesn't work anyway; and at McDonald's there's so many people that if you move one thing, no one knows where it is. I can re-dress the mannequins as I see fit; at Hallmark redoing a display was punishable by death. I could rearrange the display under the front counter, if that wouldn't be so much of a pain in the ass because there's so many tiny things in there. I can go to thrift shops and buy things for the store (yes, I do get reimbursed, but I haven't done that in months). We get to play our own music, as opposed to Hallmark where company-sponsored brain-atrophying elevator music was the law and McDonald's where the Muzak thingy seems to be stuck on easy-listening (I know for a FACT that that thing has an 80's hits channel that plays stuff like "Tainted Love", the McDonald's where my mom works usually has that one on). We get to make fun of people on the phone after we hang up (it's too crowded at McDonald's for that, and at Hallmark you'd get ratted out and written up): [Mr. Mackey-ish voice] "... Uh, I just have, uh, a question, m'kay, and I was wondering if you could, uh, answer it for me... Do you guys sell cossttuuuuuummes?" 'Course, there's the fact that business is fairly slow at CS this time of year, but that means that after we get our stuff done, Erin and I can amuse ourselves by writing snide comments in the coloring books in the back (they depict historical dress styles) or giving ourselves free makeovers with the eight gazillion eyeshadow testers for makeup lines we don't even carry.
Bottom line: I need money, and I need to get it without quitting Center Stage. The next class is coming in, so I'm going to finish this up.
Not 10 minutes ago on the L, I had the pleasure of sitting next to some woman yapping away on her cell phone. Now, I've learned to tune this out, and it seemed like someone on the other end had a medical problem that she was checking up on so the fact that she was on her cell phone wasn't what bothered me. No, it's what she said loudly enough for all in the train to hear:
"Are you in the bathroom, Grandpa?... Are you on the shitter?... Oh, NICE!"
You know, there's a line between checking up on an ill relative while on the train and asking an irrelevant question which neither you nor anyone else needs or wants to know the answer to. The line's about six feet wide; it's pretty hard to miss. Please, folks, just... no. No.
In other news, due to sudden dire financial straits owing to Christmas (I only worked for the first half of December, and since we're closed the first week of January I won't be seeing a paycheck until the 22nd at the earliest) I have to go back to working at McDonald's. Only two days a week, but that's enough to drive me nuts. Eurrrggh. I don't want to deal with these people again (both coworkers and customers). I have about $72 in checking as of today. My textbooks will cost about $140, and I need a new 10-ride train ticket ($38.25). I owe my dad $80 in insurance for December and January, and I'll owe $120 more come February.
I hate being a big important older-teen now. I hate having to pay for all this shit and wondering where the hell I'm going to get the money from. Granted, the money for textbooks and train passes comes from Dad... assuming he remembers. And wouldn't you know it, I only got $50 straight cash for Christmas. That $50 brought the balance in my checking account to $19.82- I had overdrawn my account by EIGHTEEN CENTS and Bank One charged me $30 instead of letting Subway deny my card. I did, however, get $250 in gift certificates to places that do not sell gasoline. Not that I'm ungrateful, I got some dandy new clothes, CDs, and art supplies but I REALLY would have preferred to get maybe $100 cash and two $50 gift certificates from Mom and Dad than $200 that can only be spent at Hobby Lobby or Kohl's, especially since now I can buy most art supplies from school. Props to Dad for getting me new knobs for the air conditioning and heat/defrost on my car- they cost $18 each and I needed two. But, alas, my alignment is off, I'm due for an oil change, I failed emissions, and I seem to be going through tanks of gas at quite a clip considering I'm not driving as often. And these are not things Dad will pay for. I get maybe $140 every other week from Center Stage, and I'll get about $100 every other week at most from McDonald's.
I go to school four days a week, and work the three that I don't. And I can barely afford to drive to and from work and school. Now I understand why so many people never go to college- you can either do well in school or make enough money to stay out of the homeless shelter, but you can't do both. It's like what they say about college- "Work, sleep, or study. Pick two." I have allotted myself minimum time to get assignments done. It's times like these when I wish I fit the conventional definition of sexy (tall, blond and thin; I am a short brunette with a couple pounds of Christmas pudge) so rich people would pay me to go to their parties and make them look good (Yes, people do this. I think I read it in Reader's Digest or the Chicago Tribune.) My friend who is 19 and lives in an apartment with her boyfriend and works full-time has more money to spare than I do... because not going to school frees her to work 50-hour weeks. What the hell am I supposed to do? There's only so much time and so much money to be had. I don't have the time to work at Telamon (tech support place where Colin works- $11/hour to do jack shit and take a call when you're not playing video games) instead of McDonald's- McD has decently flexible scheduling and in a McDonald's uniform I am not likely to be hit on (Colin says I would be hit on nonstop when he wasn't there, and I believe it).
Whatever happens, I WILL NOT quit Center Stage. I actually get raises there, and I get more than a paycheck out of it- I'm learning to sew and how to apply stage and effects makeup, and Di took us all on a "field trip" to the Jacqueline Kennedy exhibit at the Field Museum last week. In March we'll be going to a costume convention. An example of how awesome the job is: on my first day working after Halloween, I showed up two hours late because I thought we were back to opening at noon (we opened at 10 during October). And then I had to ask to get off an hour early so I could go to a concert. Even though I was two hours late and asked to get off early... SHE STILL TOOK ME OUT TO LUNCH. AND GAVE ME A RAISE. AND INCREASED MY DISCOUNT TO 20%. My coworker Erin is a makeup artist (she's done independent zombie movies) and she's gotten serious hookups from this job. She does makeup workshops with theater groups in our area. McDonald's says you can learn "skills for a lifetime of work... leadership, teamwork, blahblah yap yap yap." You can get that at any job, but it's the rare job that makes you feel as expendable as the fast food industry does. I can't transfer register skills to any other job outside fast food, but I can mend a rip in TULLE (that net-like material that little girls' dress-up tutus are made of) with thread that resembles thin fishing line more than it does anything you'd sew with. Ray Kroc, EAT MY ASS.
Unlike my situation at McDonald's, I actually have a bit of a say in what goes on in Center Stage. I can rearrange an entire wall of accessories if I jolly well feel like it, (provided that it still looks decent) whereas at Hallmark I'd get written up and/or bitched at because of Hallmark's stupid complicated-ass inventory system that doesn't work anyway; and at McDonald's there's so many people that if you move one thing, no one knows where it is. I can re-dress the mannequins as I see fit; at Hallmark redoing a display was punishable by death. I could rearrange the display under the front counter, if that wouldn't be so much of a pain in the ass because there's so many tiny things in there. I can go to thrift shops and buy things for the store (yes, I do get reimbursed, but I haven't done that in months). We get to play our own music, as opposed to Hallmark where company-sponsored brain-atrophying elevator music was the law and McDonald's where the Muzak thingy seems to be stuck on easy-listening (I know for a FACT that that thing has an 80's hits channel that plays stuff like "Tainted Love", the McDonald's where my mom works usually has that one on). We get to make fun of people on the phone after we hang up (it's too crowded at McDonald's for that, and at Hallmark you'd get ratted out and written up): [Mr. Mackey-ish voice] "... Uh, I just have, uh, a question, m'kay, and I was wondering if you could, uh, answer it for me... Do you guys sell cossttuuuuuummes?" 'Course, there's the fact that business is fairly slow at CS this time of year, but that means that after we get our stuff done, Erin and I can amuse ourselves by writing snide comments in the coloring books in the back (they depict historical dress styles) or giving ourselves free makeovers with the eight gazillion eyeshadow testers for makeup lines we don't even carry.
Bottom line: I need money, and I need to get it without quitting Center Stage. The next class is coming in, so I'm going to finish this up.
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