Past, present, and riddles
Due to the DAoC servers going down for silly reasons (is a 3 hour downtime really necessary just to set the them up so they can accept free CDs for a few people? I think not) and I've been meaning to write an entry anyway, I figured I would go ahead and do so 
If you have not noticed (hrm 
, there is a new layout up. I created it sometime last week, and just put it up yesterday. I had originally been aiming for something more simple, though I still ended up with a code heavy site... just not as bad as version 5 was. I ended up "toning it down" by gutting about 75% of my "content," which I talked about in the site information. This layout has the pixely look I've been wanting to do for as long as I can remember. Despite the fact that it's not in-your-face, it's enough to settle my urge for it for now. For some reason I decided to move it from /chrisy to /domain as well, and it wasn't until I was deleting files from /chrisy when I realized I could have just directed the link from hooplah.org to whatever directory I wanted... but oh well Maybe I'll go through and move it again, but atm, I don't feel much like it.
All of last week I was terrified to call the employment agency. All I had to do was tell them my truck was fine and I was ready to be put back on the "active" list for incoming assignments... but I just couldn't seem to make myself. I felt so horrible about what happened 
I lied to my mother and told her I had spoken to them on Wednesday. It wasn't until Friday, with the pressure of my mother (who thought I was calling just to get an update on available assignments) that I actually did call. Of course, I didn't think to rehearse in my head what I was going to say before calling, which is almost an essential for me. I need to know exactly what to say, otherwise I panic... and it's amazing what gems go falling out of my mouth when that happens. "Hello this is Taskforce One, [soandso] speaking, how may I help you?" "Hi, this is Chrisy Toombs... I'm from there... Uhm, I mean, I guess.. Employee, would be the right word?" Heh. Yeah, I said all of that stuttering like a fool as well. If it came out that clear maybe it wouldn't have embarrassed me as much as it did. And while the rest of the conversation has been nearly whipped from my memory, I kept the same stuttering bafoon act up the whole time. The woman I was talking to (I believe she is more or less the "boss" there out of the 4 that work there) was very calm and handled my nervousness well... as in, she didn't act strange or direct anymore attention to it.
I had wanted to post something for 9/11... if for no other reason that I hardly saw anything in memory of the tragic events for it's two year anniversary. I read over my entries from that time, and I'm disappointed in how vague they are. Just for the record, I figured I should state what I was doing that day:
I was getting ready for my American Government class that was at 9. My roommate had just gotten back from a class (I think) and she was awake enough to want to hang some more pictures up on her wall. She didn't have much room left on her side except for the very top near the ceiling, but she could not reach it standing on her bed. Despite the fact that we were the same height, I had longer arms, so I offered to help. I stood on my tip toes, moving the picture slightly to the left and to the right, while my roommate told me which direction I should go. Since I did have a class shortly, I shot a glance down at her alarm clock by the window to make sure I was not late, and it read 8:45. That was exactly when the first plane hit.
I went on to my class, and as I stepped into the room, the first thing I noticed was that everyone was silent. Everyone was sitting in their chairs, staring silently at the TV in the corner of the room. It showed a picture of one of the towers, with smoke billowing out of them. I can't remember if I asked what happened or not, but my teacher soon told everyone that a plane had crashed into it. Everyone that entered the room took the same pose of sitting silently, staring at the image. At that time, they were still considering it a mistake, as planes in the past have accidently flown too close to the towers. At 9:02, my teacher turned off the TV to start our class. The second tower was hit at 9:03.
Class went fairly normal... no one seemed concerned, despite knowing of what happened. The class was an hour and 45 mins (I think... it's sad that I can no longer remember exactly) and as soon as it was over, our teacher turned the TV back on. The screen flooded with news about both towers already. From the snippets I was getting, I had thought the pentagon was only a risk, a suspected attack point... but it had already been hit. There was more talk of the plane that had crashed out in Pennsylvania that they suspected had not reached it's destination of the whitehouse. That was all that I heard as I rushed out to return to my dorm room and turned on CNN. Shortly after, Dave came to my room since he had had a class nearby. The thought of what had happened was hitting me... my breath was becoming rapid and I was feeling light headed.
Dave convinced me to walk to Muse with him for some food. We sat there, this time side by side instead of across from each other like usual, watching the TV screen. We talked and debated about what had happened, since the fact that they had been hijacked had not really been made official yet. I swore up and down that the original pilots were the ones that did it. In fact, at 11AM, the idea that this was terrorists had only slipped out of a few whispering mouths. Dave and I stayed there a while, talking and eating. I was in disbelieving shock.
After that point... I am not sure. I remember walking around the campus, and being able to hear news broadcasts from the dorm rooms. Everyone had their door open... and looking in any of them would find two more people silently staring at the TV. I was doing the same in my room, and did so for a near solid week after. I remember seeing pictures and video of people jumping from the burning towers on some sick joke site that Dave knew of. The doors on dormrooms became works of aniterrorist art. I printed out one myself and posted it on the wall by my desk.
It's confusing just what was going on during this time. I know it was the same time that I started speaking to Alan again... He mentioned something about his father, which I made the wrong answer to, and he became upset. I don't even remember where his father was, but considering it's the army, he could have been anywhere. It was also the same week that Alan told me about him fucking that girl Tabby while me and him were apart in 2000, while he had only told me he kissed her. Needless to say... it was a very emotional week for me.
It's things like this that make life valuable... it's just a shame that it has to come from such death and destruction. I'm sorry if this entry was a downer, or had alot of people going "god, not more 9/11 stuff..." because despite what other countries may think, yes, even Americans got an overdose of it and don't like hearing more about it. How would you like having the fact that you were just missed by 4 flying bombs, or your loved one was hit by one, 24/7 for a full year? I only recapped this so that when I go to tell my children or grandchildren, I will have something to show them of this time... and how quickly it seems that everyone is forgetting. Something that actually has emotion and distress... and above all, respect for those who lost their lives.
Anyway. I can move onto other things now.
For Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I participated in a contest to get a beta account from DAoC for their new expansion coming up, Trials of Atlantas. They give you a riddle in "Atlantean", and using samples of the text on their official expansion site, you decode the message and solve the riddle. The first riddle was "A scream in a storm, weightless yet anchored, a habitat for the living, a coffin for the dead, splinters, and perfection of the land and sea, a ruin for evolution." Matt guessed it was flood. It ended up being shipwreck (which I had suggested as a joke while we were brainstorming... blah . The next riddle was "Protecting the crawlers of the ocean bottom, cast away, floating like a stone flower of the sea." I asked my mother and she said coral. Good try, but it ended up being seashell. The Friday riddle was "land and sea, I crawl them both. I captured four, and stood for four. I rule dark waters." I asked my mother again, and she said the moon. I entered that answer around 7PM Friday, while the riddle was posted around 6:20. From what I could see, everyone was guessing stuff like crab, lobster, and stuff like that. Someone from Mythic posted on the forum that all those types of guesses had been way offbase. No one posted the idea that it could be moon until around Saturday morning, so hopefully they guessed it then and not anymore before that ;P If that answer is even right, that is.
*crosses her fingers, hoping that she got the right answer first!* (Edit: I didn't win it... it was some odd answer that I never could have guessed pooy).
Oh, the possibilities that stem from regret…
Lately I have been conflicted as to why I keep this around. Once upon a time it was my crutch, the only thing that gave me hope that one day I could escape... and now it is merely a $10 deduction on my credit card that makes me wonder if I am getting my money's worth. Now it is just something else that I'm not doing as much as people would like me to. Now it is just the highway to my regret and disappointment... a mockery of my once thought abilities and commitment.
It has been years since I've been satisfied with my writing. And it is only frustrating that despite my efforts to restore my "talents" that I still feel embarrassed after reading my own entries. What do you do once you can no longer fool yourself? Do you not, in a sense, become a fool when the task of comforting yourself only cripples you? While I do not believe in helplessness, I do believe in inability. Yet I am nothing else but helpless.
Why can't I ever save any money? At the present moment I have a whopping $30 in my bank account, and that is all I have left to show for the $883.65 net pay I made at Giant. Where in the world did it go? While I did do some shopping for things I have needed over the past year, they were not extreme enough to deplete all of my funds. I read other people's journals, saying how they bought the things they needed yet still had some money for later... so why can't I? Am I shopping at all the wrong places? Or is it because that whenever I get a job, it's a hard stretch to get my parents to even buy shampoo for me, let alone aiding me in purchasing any clothes so that I may go to my new office jobs and actually meet the standards of their dress codes? Possibly, maybe that's why. But who really knows.
On a side note, I only have two outfits that even come close to meeting the standards of most dress codes. Though I love doing my mother the favor, I may need to reconsider paying for her to get her nails done every 3 weeks or so.
I wish my journal was so much more than it was. Most of all, I wish it was what it was before it was all ruined. It took some time to restore whatever trust I had in this journal, but I think my comfort from it has been robbed forever. Most everyone that read my about my life religiously have all forgotten that I even existed. Does that make me less of a person? Perhaps not, but I do notice that I no longer feel as full. I feel more alone.
I doubt I have been making much sense, jumping blindly from one topic to the next. In truth, I have been attempting to write the way I wish I could everytime my hands touch the keys. Even though it is not me, even though I struggle over every sentence, I have been trying. And while I feel good about it now, I know by tomorrow it will only be one more thing I was mistaken of, one more thing that will never be as good as I had wanted, and one more thing I wish I had never done.
The moral of the story: I am no good at my own life.
I was a black cat in another life
Sometimes I wonder which is at fault... am I just utterly cursed to keep anything from going right, or am I just subconsciously fueled my by urge to just not have a job and work? Could it possibly be both? Who knows..
I went to the employment agency on Tuesday, just like I said I would. I went in the same outfit I had for my Geico interview, and made it for the 2 o'clock appointment. There was quite a bit of paperwork to fill out and that took up the majority of my 3 hour stay there. I took a typing test (which was really just typing out something in Word for a set period of time.. I thought it was rather ghetto that they didn't have a program that would automatically calculate my speed and my accuracy, but that someone would have to read through it and tally up the results by "hand"...) and then had a small interview after. I really, really liked the woman who I spoke the most to, whose name was Daisy. I even told her of my situation at Giant, and she sort of agreed, since she is a regular shopper there and said she had picked up on some sort of "vibe" of there being something wrong from the employees. She even laughed when I told her that if she wanted to call them for a recommendation to wait a week or so for everyone to cool off.
Overall, I went home feeling like a million bucks. I felt really good about my decision going there, and wasn't nervous at all about getting a job through them. I bought a second copy of DAoC before coming home, and was just in general in a great mood
The next day I got a call from them, saying they had an assignment for me. A company, Culpeper Wood, needed someone to fill a receptionist job from the 4th till the 12 with Sat and Sun off. It would be from 8-5 for $8 an hour.. I thought this was spectacular, and said ok. Usually I hate abrupt schedule adjustments (since the assignment was to start tomorrow) but I figured, this is my chance to really get where I have dreamed, so just go for it. My mother and I went into town and got our nails done and also went to the place where I would be working the next day, just so it would be easy for me to get to the following morning. When we peaked inside the office, the man that I spoke too seemed to look at me as if I was the dumbest person the world... as if I had grown three heads. Needless to say, it didn't help me get over my jitters any, but I still tried to keep a positive outlook.
The next day I woke at 6, since I had taken a shower the night before. I got ready in my nice white shirt and brown skirt, made sure my makeup was perfect, and set out at 6:45. While driving, I passed kids at their bus stops, and I remembered how I would always wonder where people driving this time in the morning were going... and now I was one of them. Just another person with their fog lights on driving to their office job in that odd phase between asleep and awake, wondering what worries the kids had for today.. whether they were fretting over tests or weren't even awake enough yet to worry. To put it simply, I felt like a different person than myself driving into work yesterday morning... I even stopped on the way in and put gas in the truck, which is more of a "responsible adult" thing than I would have ever done before. I felt ahead of the game... and I wasn't' even all that nervous. Wasn't at all, actually.
I arrived at 7:30, and sat in my car until 8AM. It wasn't until I got in the parking lot that my heart started to flutter, so I figured the time safe inside my car would do me good to get my bearings again. The time passed slow as well as fast... It was an odd area, a lumber hard with this tiny office tucked away in the corner, surrounded by a large brown fence with the trees of the property slightly hanging over it. It was cloudy and hell, and I could even smell in my car that it was going to rain soon. I checked my makeup once and walked into the office.
I didn't see anyone to speak to, so I sat in the small, but nice, office and stared at the clock that read 7:55. at 8:05, a girl named Amanda came through the door with two bags of McDonalds. She asked if I was the temp, and I said yes. She basically gave me the rundown of what I would be doing, which ended up just being answering phones. While she was explaining, the phone was ringing like mad, and just watching her handle the calls was intimidating... I was going to have to do that? To be able to answer each call, get their name, and know which buttons to press and tell one of the 6 guys who worked there that they had a call on such and such line. She was handling like up to 4 to 5 calls at once, and never messed up once. I was utterly amazed... and started to feel so nervous I could see spots.
I get so worked up over simple things. I would guess I probably have a problem with anxiety. If anything happens and I don't know exactly how to react to it, I freak out. Stupid things start stumbling out of my mouth and I feel light headed. This is why I hate even ordering food for myself, because if they say something I'm not expecting I will literally panic. And that's exactly what I was feeling as I watched her hands move in a flurry over the buttons, and her calm and collected voice that I knew I wouldn't be able to mimic.
Around 8:45, I took my first call. I found that by the time I finished finding which button I needed to press to let whoever know had a call, I would forget who the call was from, or what line they were holding on. I would get done with a call and just mash the sides of my face in my hands, not believing I was fucking up as much as I was. Everyone kept saying I was doing fine, but I didn't feel I was.
Then, the problem I had been most worried about... happened. I have a tendency to not hear things right. It's something I inherited from my father I suppose, as he suffers from the same thing, only on a much larger scale (as in, I can't say ANYTHING to my father without him asking, "what?!" right after it). This flaw of mine only gets worse when I get nervous.. as in, when I hear things, they literally sound like noise mush. It got to the point where I had to ask "what?" at least more than once on every call, and having to repeat what they said to me just to make sure I was saying it right. I felt horrible about the job I was doing, and I was so nervous about fucking up that I actually felt nauseous (which I'm actually still feeling right now... that's how bad it was, that I still physically feel ill from it). My general panic over all of this wasn't helped by the fact that even though some people were very nice to me, some people (like the same guy I had seen the day before, and even the woman I had to report to...) just looked at me as if I as a complete idiot.
But then, it wasn't all bad... Amanda did a great job at giving me the run down on everything, and Jim even came in and talked to me just about casual stuff, which really helped settle my nerves. He said I was doing fine, that they were just phone calls (since I had admitted how nervous and worked up I wads getting over them), and that any little mistakes were understandable with how much I needed to learn and get the hang of. It made me feel better somewhat, but I knew my problem wasn't that I didn't know how to do it, but that I couldn't hear anyone for shit on the phone :ehh: Turning up the volume wouldn't even have helped me... hell, having the people in the room with me whispering right in my hear wouldn't have. I was nervous and didn't know what to expect, and it was throwing me off.
When Taskforce called around 10AM, and I heard Daisy's voice, it was the best sound int he world. She complimented me on how professional I was sounding, and asked me how I was doing. There were lots of people in the room, so I had to mutter that if she could fine a replacement for me next week, then that would be great. She said that would be fine, she thanked me for telling her... and I was so relieved.
Around 12, I decided I would take my lunch hour. Luckily for me, there were NO calls from 11:35 to 12 (I had kept chanting in my head for there not to be... I was so happy that my begging seemed to work . Even though I had the option to stay at the office, and even have them pay for lunch for me, I wanted to go to the Taskforce office and apologize in person and explain my reasons for not wanting to keep doing the job. Besides the fact that it was unneedingly getting me worked up (that was my fault, anyway) I didn't feel I was doing a good enough job as that company deserved. Having a receptionist that can't hear what the callers are saying doesn't make them look good imo, and even though I needed the money, I thought they should have (at least have the chance) of getting someone who could do a better job than I. And plus, when I go to work on places like this, I'm not only representing myself but the employment agency, too... and I don't want my flaw to lessen the chance of Culpeper Wood contacting Taskforce for business in the future.
So, while it was literally pouring outside, I left for my lunch. While I was walking to the door, Jim jokingly said "You come back now."
(you'll understand why this is hear after reading the next part...)
On the way to Taskforce, which was about a 10-15 minute drive, I noticed my turning signal had stopped making noise all together. You know how it's supposed to be a steady "tick tick tick tick"? Since I had been back from Phoenix, I had noticed it was more like "tick... tick... tick"... and then as I was driving to Taskforce, it was "tick...... tick...... tick...... ..." and then nothing. I then stopped using my turning signal, since it had me worried. I drove for a bit more, and my radio started to tune in and out as if someone as turning the volume nob... but I had not touched it. I went from thinking it was just bad reception to getting worried about my car battery, so I turned the radio off and also turned the AC off. At the turn before Taskforce, I noticed my windshield whippers started to stick and creep as they went across, almost as if they didn't have all the energy to make it. I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the car. I got out without thinking anything else of it (what could I really do at that point?) and went inside.
I was happy to find that they had found a replacement for me. I asked if getting one for tomorrow would be possible at all, but Daisy politely told me that since I had only asked for next week, then that was all she got. I was totally fine with that, since it was understandable. But, before I left, I felt I should warn her that my car was acting odd... and she said if anything resulted in that, to call her by 4PM. I left the office somewhat bummed about having to go tomorrow, but knowing that I could do it if needed and would just have to try my best. I made plans to stop by Wendy's in the mall before going back to Culpeper Wood because I was starving, but when I turned the key in the truck to get going...
It would not start.
I couldn't believe it... I was going to have to walk in there and tell them that now my car is dead. "Hey Daisy, it's me again, your new worst employee... I have yet another problem to mess your day up with, and that's that my car is broke down in your parking lot. Still think I'm as promising as you thought?!" Of course, that isn't what I said, but it's how I was feeling. My day just seemed to be plummeting from bad to worse. I called my mother at Giant (since she was working at the one across the street) and told her. She told me to call my dad and have him call triple A. When I called my father, he ended up throwing a mini shit fit about calling triple A, but it ended up being that he had to call anyway, since only him and my mother are covered on the account. Actually, it really should have been either him or my mother driving the car, but they let it slide this time for us since we were in need and had never been told before.
I ended up having to get the people from Taskforce to call Culpeper Wood and basically tell them that I broke down at their office (which probably seems fishy, but I had reasons to go to Taskforce 1 which I thought were responsible of me, but they just ended up looking shitty in the long run ) and that I probably wouldn't be in the rest of today or tomorrow. I felt like shit, both physically and just about the situation in general. My mother left work early to meet me when the tow truck came, as she had to be present for him to tow it. I got us donuts from Donut Connection that was near by while we waited. The guy made it there in about an hour, and he loaded up the truck and he followed us to the repair shop. They didn't have time to look at the truck then, but from the description we gave, he assumed it was either the battery or the alternator. It ended up being a combination of both, with bill of $300-$350 or so.
I spent the rest of the day (and so far, today) sulking about it and basically still feeling nauseated 24/7. The only time it goes away is when I eat 10 crackers and guzzle some water, but it creeps back after 20 minutes. I'm also suffering from a caffeine headache since we don't have any sodas here, and because I think I nearly killed myself taking two maximum strength caffeine pills last night they're not an option for me to take now, either. So.
Given my past two years of living... yes, I think I must have been a black cat in another life. It's moments like this that I appreciate Matt's love for me even more... while I was working yesterday, I thought of how I would feel so much better if he had just been in the room with me, if even for a little while. I could really use a hug from him right now... but atm he's plvling my minstrel, and that's sort of the same difference
I have no idea where to begin…
*Sorry if any of this makes little or no sense. It's been months since I've written this much, and by the time I had finished I was no longer interested in fooling with it *
So I probably won't. I just got back from a week long trip to Matt's house in Phoenix, and naturally I wish I was still there rather than here. I also quit my two month old job as a cashier at Giant today because they kept fucking me over with my schedule.
This always happens to me. There's so much I'd like to write about now, especially since this is the first urge I've had to write in nearly two months, but I just got finished with such a wonderful week with Matt that I would love to jot down if only so I can remember all the little details.. but there's so much I'd have to say to do it justice the task just becomes so overwhelming :ehh: I'd almost rather just post the pictures from the time, maybe just write out a daily recap of everything we did and just leave it at that. My real urge to write is because I want to complain about work. That's the message I want to put out there. And although I'm disappointed in myself that I would rather complain about something than write about something that makes me happy, that is always the tone this journal has taken... skipping over the pleasantries and smashing right into the agitations. This journal's primary reason for existence was for me to vent.. and I need it to be here for that reason now. Besides... in the time it'll take me to find a new job I'll have plenty of time to jot down some precious moments with Matt before my life is sucked up in a job again, right? Most likely, yes.
I started as a cashier at Giant on July 16th. Even though I had promised myself I would not work at another grocery store (or anything on that level of employment/work for that matter) I was finding it near impossible to find a job that I would like (clerical, typist desk work) that didn't require some sort of previous training or some other qualification that I just did not have. So, I seemingly "gave up" and applied at the same grocery store that my mother has worked at for the past 5 years. I chose to go there over reapplying at Food Lion because not only does Giant pay time and 1/2 on Sundays and holidays, they were also willing to acknowledge my time working as a cashier at Food Lion as experience and pay me the equivalent of their raises for any time I could represent in pay stubs. Meaning... I turned in one pay stub from 10/99 and another from 6/01 and instead of starting me out at the regular $6.50 I was being paid $8.25. It was a nice deal. And, on top of that, I remembered and relearned all my old tricks from Food Lion soon enough and the job was decent. Physically it was killing me (which is to be expected when going from physically inactive for a full year to working 7 hour shifts standing up) but the people seemed decent enough.
Everything was relatively fine... or, as fine as it can be for being work. But then, of course, something goes wrong. And, oddly enough, it was the one thing I never had to worry with while working at Food Lion... my schedule.
When I was hired, I told them I could work "anytime." But, knowing what I know now, I suppose I should have been more specific on what I meant by anytime. I had meant that they can schedule me anytime that they want to, and I will show up for it. 4AM, 12 midnight, whatever; if they made a schedule with my name on it, I would be there. But Gaint seemed to take that statement as saying they can alter my posted schedule however and whenever they see fit, without asking me if it is ok to do so. In fact, the schedule change that originally sent me raving and almost made me walk out of the store during my shift was when they decided to turn my day off (that I was going to spend packing and cleaning the house to get ready for my trip to Phoenix) with a 8 and 1/2 hour shift. From 1 - 10:30, leaving me basically NO time to do anything I had wanted to. I was lucky anyone even told me that they changed it, as they expect all employees to check the schedule daily for any changes they felt needed to be made. There was also another time where they changed the schedule during two days off that I had, and did not bother to even call me and tell me of the change... and then, of course, I was held to blame when the senior cashier that I was supposed to be relieving had to stay an extra hour because I showed up when the original posted schedule said I was supposed to, not the hour earlier that was scribbled in without my knowing.
I even had difficulty making sure I had the days off I had requested for my trip to Phoenix. When I got hired, I told them I would be taking some time off at the end of August, and they said that was fine... so, the night after, Matt got the plane tickets and I went in on 6/18 and filled out a form to have 8/23/03 to 8/31/03 off. I asked someone what I should check, and they said vacation. A week later I got the carbon copy of the same form with "OK" written in it, meaning that the days I requested had been approved. Fine, right? No... when I checked my schedule on the 16th, I had to argue with her that I shouldn't be on the schedule for Saturday. She decided to not take the blame for it, and fussed at me, saying that if I wanted abnormal days off (as in, not the traditional Sunday to Saturday week for my vacation, but the Saturday to the next Sunday like I had requested) that I should have filled out another form and requested those days separate. She even said that when she read it, she just assumed that I had written the wrong dates and put what she thought was correct on her chart for my vacation. It was frustrating and not my fault, but I took the blame, saying I didn't know since I was new, but I still got the day off as I should of.
They kept and kept altering and picking at my schedule, almost like they were testing me, with little or no respect or concern that I may have other obligations outside of work. But, Of course... I have to be honest, I don't really have anything to worry about outside of My Job. All I do is work and play DAoC and watch TV.. nothing glamorous, but it's my life. But I started to think... what if I had a situation I could not postpone, what if I had an emergency, and I did the responsible thing and scheduled anything I needed to do according to my posted schedule... and then they just decided to change it. Something like turning another day off into a full day's shift, or switching my shifts with someone else just because it worked better for the other person's hours. I wouldn't be able to come to work, and even though I did the correct thing and planed around my schedule rather than asking for time off, I would still end up being held to blame for not being there. Maybe even having an incident put against me, when I really did nothing wrong. It began to feel like I was being punished, but I really did nothing but get hired. Just because I have low seniority doesn't mean they can just push and shove a large aspect of my LIFE around because they made little mistakes with the schedule. It's BS, and it got to the point where I couldn't take it.
I told my parents the night I found out of the full shift schedule change (I think 8/19) that I was thinking of quitting. I ended up calling in sick to work the next two days, and had planned to call out sick on Friday too, and just leave them with the note that I would not be coming back after my vacation. But, somehow or another my mother was able to talk to me and calm me down somewhat, saying to at least give a two weeks notice while i looked for another job. I already had plans to go to an employment agency after I got back, and planned on going the first available day I could fit it once back to Virginia.
Before my flight from Phoenix, I called my dad to give him the extra information for my flight. While we were talking, I asked him to call mom and ask her to just pick up my schedule before she came home. Then later in the evening, and after I had landed in Virginia and me and my father were already driving our way out of the airport's parking garage, my father told me that Giant had put me on the schedule for the 31st. He said that when my mother went up there to get my schedule and she saw that I was on there, she told them that I won't be coming in, since I had requested the day off and that my plane didn't even land until 9PM at night and I was scheduled for 2:30 to 9:30. My mother was being polite as she could (since my mother is a real sweetie, she really is, everyone at work loves her) when Loretta (the woman that does the schedule) actually started to get huffy with my mother. She yet again wouldn't take the blame for what was internally *her* mistake (because even if I didn't fill out the forms like they would have liked, since I was a new employee, the least she could do was tell how it's supposed to be done rather than just ignore the fact that I had written two additional days in on the request form and try to schedule me for them) and tried her damndest to push the blame on me. She even went as far to say that she didn't receive a form from me, or something along those lines. By the time I heard my mother's side, I was absolutely furious. And my mother knew exactly what I was going to do. She had been able to talk me down from abruptly quitting, but this was the final nail in the coffin, the straw that broke the camel's back. I said fuck it. This is ridiculous, it's not THAT hard to treat people with some amount of respect and not fuck up their schedule multiple times a week... I'm quitting.
I went into the den and sat down at my father's computer. I proceeded to write this letter:
Due to schedule conflicts and general instability, I am as of 9/01/03 quitting My Job at Giant Food as a Cashier. I am deeply sorry for the sudden and impersonal way this information is being delivered and for any inconvenience this may cause for the rest of this week and the time after. You are a great group of people and I will miss working with you.
Again, I am sorry,
Chrisy Toombs
(signed and dated)
P.S. Enclosed is my copy of my special request form for the dates of 8/23/03 to 8/31/03. I am sorry if I did not complete the form in the "correct" way, but I had only been employed for a little more than a week when I turned my vacation request in. Perhaps in the future it would be more beneficial to confront someone about abnormal information on their special request form rather than just assume that they had made mistakes.
I stapled my copy to the bottom of the letter. I had my mother photocopy the letter with the attached schedule request form at the bottom and I kept that copy, while she delivered the original. Giant called the house around 9:15, but I was asleep... my father answered the phone probably thinking it was my mother, and left a note for me when I woke up that they called. Luckily my mother had already told him that I was quitting, showed him the letter, and told him that I'd be going to the employment agency on Tuesday to find a new job. He seemed ok with the idea, since he realized that he could go to the race track/casino today and he seemingly forgot all about me quitting.
Anyway... Giant said they would call back but they never did. I would bet that when she called, she was probably either furious with me or prepared to apologize and humbly request that I stay for two weeks so they have time to find a replacement... but I seriously doubt that she was feeling anything other than anger only minutes after reading the letter. My mother thinks that Loretta either showed the letter to Donna (assistant manager) and Ray (manager) and either got in trouble (or, as I believe, just found a way to shrug any blame off of her and lay it all on me) or just hid the letter from everyone. Maybe my mother will hear the outcome through the gossip chain tomorrow, but who knows. All of this could have been avoided if they had shown me a little respect, but that was just too much for them.
For all the times that I hated working at Food Lion, I never had to worry about the schedule. If someone called out, if someone couldn't work, they would try to find a replacement... they would ask around, and if there was absolutely no one that could work it, they simply did without. Considering the way Giant handles vacancies in the schedule, they would probably see Food Lion's approach as poor customer service... but I see it as employee consideration. In comparison of the two grocery store chains, I enjoyed working at Giant more, but I felt like I had some level of respect from my bosses at Food Lion where as at Giant I felt like nothing more than a lifeless peg they could stick anywhere.
My parents believe that there's no such thing as a job you can enjoy, or at least tolerate. They believe this because they never tried to find anything better, assuming that everything out there would be just as horrible as the next. I don't have a degree to help springboard me toward my goal, but I plan on eventually proving them wrong. And soon.