Tag Archives: Work

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

Unique Observations

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I saw a black t-shirt this morning with a message in old English font that said, Assholes Live Forever. Where did she buy that shirt? And is it true? The assholes do live long if you were to ask me.

I sit in torment over tomorrow. Work will start again, and I still haven’t heard from the doctor about my hand. I have to keep calling him until he sets an appointment. My job is making me work on commission. They pay me only fifty-five percent of my salary once a month, and then the total of my salary plus the commission is on the next payslip. It’s not enough to get by.

My right leg still itches with some sort of sore on my calf. I hope it isn’t from a bed bug. The last thing I need is another infestation. I’ve been through that hell enough times already and now isn’t the right time. The right time is never.

But anyway, I’m facing a wall right now and can see the rest of the shop through the glass reflection of a picture frame. My head is full of residue. I don’t feel motivated and haven’t felt motivated for quite some weeks. I’ll have to practice patience until the motivation sparks. I vegetated all of yesterday, but today I’ll get exercise. I was using the elliptical machine the other day along with the stair stepper for almost an hour. I burned a lot of calories, and I counted them with my watch. It’s the only way to know if I’ve made any progress. I don’t feel like going to the gym after I’ve just joined, but maybe my motivation will change.

There’s a woman wearing a cowboy hat high on top of her head, with most of her blonde hair showing on top. And then she left with her man.

It’s cold in here. I wish they would turn down the AC. They always turn this place into a freezer. I’m the only one here. There are people sitting outside on the patio, but I don’t want to be near those folks. I’m doing just fine where I am.

Someone posted on my blog yesterday that I should subscribe to theirs. I didn’t, and I didn’t understand why they would post such a comment. It was something I didn’t approve of either. I’m not subscribing to someone’s blog just because of what they told me to do. As it were, they didn’t subscribe to mine, so I didn’t see the point.

I’m lost for words. It wasn’t this difficult a month ago. Now writer’s block has put me in handcuffs. I belong to a Facebook group about writers helping other writers. It’s mostly bitter people bashing other bitter people about their writing. But once in a while, someone will post that they’re a new writer who’s facing writer’s block. They can’t think of any new ideas, so they’re seeking advice from someone who might know the answers. The answer is that it’s everyone’s plight. No one is immune to this illness. We get trapped in it because of life’s difficulties. And that’s my answer: that everyone has to deal with the same shit no matter how experienced they are. It’s about continuing writing, even if it’s bullshit. In some ways, that’s the beauty if that’s the way you’re looking. But so many of us stop where we are and wait for our thoughts to come rather than keep our hands moving with time. And then the thoughts emerge as best as they can. I often stop where I am but that’s not good. Anyway, what’s the use? This will go down as another wasted post in a long line of others. I sit and wonder why I’m doing this.

Non-fiction

Why Bother?

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I had a nightmare where a snake was chasing me down the street. It had legs from what I can remember. I awoke around 1:30 and couldn’t go back to sleep. All I thought about was the snake and my job. They correlate. So now I can’t focus on what’s in front. I wander like a zombie and feel like one too.

I applied for another position yesterday but doubted I was qualified. These companies want experience, yet they’re not willing to train. How is anyone going to learn anything when all they’re looking for is someone who has learned already? Where does one start when beginning a new job? This is the worst that life has to offer: searching for a job. I wish it was over, but I have no choice. I’m not making enough money to live. You would think full-time employment these days would support anyone but such isn’t the case. They wave their flag of diversity yet pay someone scraps. It doesn’t make much sense. These job sites offer nothing but positions in which I have experience, but I don’t want that experience any longer.

I’m going back to work today after taking three days off because of my left hand and how I can barely pull my cell phone out of my pocket. That’s how they expect me to work. The doctor still hasn’t called me back to set an appointment. I have a feeling he won’t. Maybe it’s because of the possibility of worker’s comp, and he wouldn’t want to get involved. I don’t know. It’s just a guess. I could be negative, and he will call to set one up.

All I do know is this isn’t the way I can function. They’ve dumped a bunch of work on me after I was gone for three days. It isn’t right because other employees had been off for about a week, and everyone had to work their cases. Yet I took a few days off because of a medical emergency, and my cases were untouched. The amount of work has grown and left me buried. Where’s the sense in that?

And then there’s the pay, which makes the least sense of all. They promised me a certain salary but I saw from the last two paychecks that I was being paid significantly lower than before. Now it’s below living standards. Call me cynical, but I don’t subscribe to people’s words when they say that I have to find my calling, or that I need to go soul-searching. I can look for those things for the rest of my life and still come up short. Why, I’ve been doing that already for many years and have never come close to finding any semblance of a soul, and I can look for my calling all I want but may never find it for the rest of my life when all that’s left is a job that overworks and underpays. I thought I was getting a promotion, but not even close.

Non-fiction

The Annual Compliance Harassment Video

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I journal every morning as part of my morning routine. Paper isn’t my friend and never was. I’ve never enjoyed journaling, but it’s necessary like getting a checkup. You might get what I’m saying.

I journal to get my thoughts on paper like anyone does for the same reason. It’s better to do it that way than not to do it at all. Why am I sitting at this table and writing at six in the morning? Am I insane? Shouldn’t I be asleep right now? Maybe I should. But life doesn’t work that way. I woke up at one and then close to four in the morning before my alarm eventually went off at five in the morning. If I set my alarm for six, I could get more rest, but it doesn’t work that way as I said. I have too many worries.

My job, for instance, is a big stressor in my life. I worry about whom I have to call, and if they’re going to yell at me. I never know whom I’m going to get.

I had to watch a harassment training video yesterday brought to me by the HR department. It’s an annual compliance video they make me watch, full of bad actors who portray abusive employees at a company. The days are gone when you could date your coworkers. I guess I see the point from human resources. They want people to come to work without complications, but it doesn’t stop people from breaking the rules.

There was one scene where a transgender person posted a video on social media complaining that their coworker called them the wrong name because it was gender-specific. The training video said that what the transgender person did was right, posting the video on social media. I had to disagree. They should’ve complained to human resources instead of doing what they did, but that’s just me.

Every example, from sexual misconduct to racial insensitivity, ended up with the answer of reporting it to human resources. That was the big lesson learned through the hour-and-a-half-long video.

In one scene, a coworker told a joke involving a priest, a pregnant woman, and a Hispanic person to two other coworkers. A Hispanic lady walked by the room in the middle of the joke. The scene paused so that the voiceover person could explain that what the joke-teller was doing was wrong.

They continued the video right where the joke-teller delivered the punchline, “So the priest says, ‘What’s that speed bump doing there?'”

Everyone laughed except the Hispanic woman who walked by, rolling her eyes. I never got to hear the full joke, but speed bumps are typically funny. I laugh inside whenever I see a car hop one.

In another scene, a woman in her thirties, I would guess, showed an old man how to use the internet at work. After she helped him, she walked away and posted on social media that she was tired of helping old folks with technology and that they should retire already.

The video cut to the next scene, where the old man read what she’d posted and shook his head in offense. It was hard to believe that she would post something like that if she knew the old man followed her on there. I doubt he would’ve done anything anyway.

I felt guilty after watching it, even though I work remotely, not in the office, and I never even did anything wrong. I answered the questions to a quiz at the end of every scene correctly. They awarded me with a certificate at the end. It was painful to watch, but at least I didn’t have to do any work for an hour and a half.

Non-fiction

The First Monday Back

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I’m sitting in the corner of the coffee shop observing everyone. There are one, two, three, four, five other customers sitting at their tables. Every one one of them is absorbed in their smartphones. We have come to this point. I used to predict how the future would look and got some of it right. One of those things was something like Youtube. I believed every person would have his/her/their own channel. For the most part, it ended up being correct. Except I don’t have a channel and I doubt I ever will.

Another prediction was that the cars would be rounder than before. They were too boxy in the eighties and nineties. The manufacturers decided, “Hey, it’s the future. Let’s make everything round.” Lo and behold, I saw them on the streets, these older models, round and futuristic. Some of them came out ugly, others improved.

Anyway, it’s a growing concern to me how everyone is stuck to their phones. I’m guilty as well except for now. The phone will distract me from emptiness later today. I’ll keep checking for new emails without a clue of what I’m looking for.

How will this Monday unfold? There’s a lot of anxiety about going back to work. I don’t know what emails I’ll have to deal with or how much work is in front of me.

My birthday was yesterday. Mom and Dad showed up to my door in the middle of the afternoon after a long drive back in town, anxious to see how my air conditioner was working. It impressed them how cold it was in my apartment.

After a few hours of chatting, we went to a restaurant called Lulu’s for dinner. The heat was one-hundred-and-eleven degrees. It was a slow, painful walk there, as if we were walking in mud, hot mud. Lulu’s was cool inside. The manager sat us in the middle of the dining area. Mom asked if the patio was comfortable enough to sit in. I thought she’d gone insane. We whined at the fact that they served Pepsi, not Coke. I ordered a Pepsi anyway, even if it’s far too inferior.

Our waiter didn’t have much of a personality. My father commented on that when she wasn’t around. She was more of a Flo from Flo’s diner, the type of waiter who would carry a pencil on her ear to take down our orders on a small pad.

Dad ordered the strawberry salad with shrimp. Not only did I wonder what the hell a strawberry salad would be, but who would eat shrimp with strawberries?

I ordered the swiss and mushroom burger, medium rare, while my mother ordered the chicken sandwich. The burger was charbroiled, which I don’t prefer, with romaine as its lettuce when it’s usually iceberg. It took up over thirty percent of the burger. I deleafed most of the lettuce to where there was only one slice. The cheeseburger wasn’t as much as a job as it was before.

My mother became fascinated by the tables because some of them had hooks on the underside of them, not all of them. Ours didn’t. She could’ve hung her purse on the hook. I could’ve hung my hat there since I wasn’t wearing it indoors.

We left Lulu’s and came back to my apartment for carrot cake and red velvet cake to celebrate my birthday. I ate only a few bites because I had eaten too much. They left after eating the cake to drive home and unpack. I still had to go grocery shopping to my chagrin.

Now it’s Monday. I’ll face the music at work. At least Thursday will be July Fourth. Only a four-day work week is ahead of me.