Eggzackly. When you look up today’s new listings for administrative jobs, and there are pages and pages of them, you gotta know that $12 an hours just isn’t going to cut it any more (what a whole lot of jobs are offering) - especially when you can make more working at a donut shop (or just about anywhere).
At this place, you had to get a fill-in person to take your place. They never had enough fill-in people to take care of the whole store, so you’d often ask for a break and have to wait for an hour until someone was available to take over for you. I quickly learned to ask for a break if I thought I *might *have to pee soon.
I was only sixteen when I started working there. According to our state laws, if an minor works a six hour shift, they are supposed to have a half-hour break. Not only were we not getting that break, but we weren’t even being allowed to leave our stations to go pee or get a drink. (There was a very strict rule that we were never allowed to consume fluid if a customer might be able to see it.) I remember a manager saying to me once, “It’s only two hours until you go home. Can’t you wait to use the bathroom until then?”
This went on for a while until a girl who worked with me finally went up to one of the managers and informed him that her father was a lawyer and would be very happy to sue the place for a blatant violation of our state-mandated rights.
Especially since if I wear shorts, you’ll then start nagging at me that my legs are too pasty and I need to get out into the sun more, and furthermore, they’re too skinny and I apparently don’t eat enough.
You’ll also ask me where I got all of these bruises. Well, I’m clumsy and I bruise easily, but you won’t believe that explanation. No, I don’t remember how I got that specific bruise, because I bash into so many things that a single injury doesn’t stick in my memory, but you won’t believe that, either. You’ll either assume that I’m lying because I’m being abused, or you’ll tell me to go to the doctor because “unexplained” bruising can be a sign of lukemia.
To add to this: stop ragging on me for being skinny! It’s a constant irritation. Yes, I know I’m skinny. I have a mirror. No, I don’t have an eating disorder. I eat a very high-fat diet, actually. (While typing this, I’m putting away a double cheeseburger and fries. Last night, I had half of a pizza for supper.)
It seems to be socially acceptable to blame the metabolism for being heavy, but the same excuse doesn’t work for being thin. It’s not socially acceptable to nag a person constantly about being heavy, but it does seem to be acceptable to rag on a person for being thin. “Oh, I wish I had your problem!” people will say, rolling their eyes when I complain about my weight being a constant source of discussion.
It’s just as rude to make jokes about me being skinny as it is to make jokes about someone being fat. You say you never see me wat. You wanna know why? It’s because if I start eating in front of you, you’re going to make a big deal over it, and try to push more food at me. If I decide to have a salad for lunch (because I like salad) you’re going to jump all over it and demand to know why I’m “dieting.” God help me if you catch me drinking a SlimFast* because you’re going to assume it’s another symptom of an eating disorder.
Don’t nag me to get out into the sun. Yes, I’m pale, pasty even. I don’t tan. I have my reasons. Firstly, my skin will thank me for it in a few years. You complain about all of your wrinkles. Guess where they came from?** Secondly, I don’t like lying around in the sun. It’s hot and uncomfortable and there are bugs. Lastly, I just don’t want to do it. Shouldn’t that last one be reason enough in of itself?
Stop nagging me to quit smoking. I’m very considerate with it. I go to a remote outdoor area to smoke while I’m at work or around non-smokers, and I always pick up my butts. Yes, I know I’m setting myself up for an early death from lung cancer. I’ve read the warning lables, and I’ve seen what lung cancer does to people. However, it’s my body and I’ll do to it what I please. In no way am I inconveniencing you, or even polluting your air with my foul exhalations, so frankly, it’s none of your fucking business. I don’t bitch at you while you’re drinking diet soda about the potential dangers of aspertame or tell you you’re in danger of heart disease from all of those artery-clogging fats you’re eating. You’re not my doctor or my mother. Expressing to me once your concern was thoughtful. Doing it every day is just fucking annoying.
- Which I drink to give me extra calories and the vitamins.
** I went to highschool with a girl who was addicted to tanning. She had several memberships to different tanning salons, because of the limits on how much you can tan at one time. She’d go tan at one salon and then go to another and tan there in the same day. She was only 18 years old, but her skin already looked like old leather. She was as wrinkled as a 40-year-old woman. If she’s not dead yet of skin cancer, I’d be surprised.
CNN Headline News:
The whole Middle East is going up in flames, and you’ve got Nancy Grace blithering on about the Natalee Holloway case. What part of “headline” are y’all not getting here? Hell, I don’t think there have even been any Shocking New Developments in the Natalee Holloway case, have there?
G-d, I hate that woman. Screaming attorney making points who cares about the facts I’m right. I don’t watch that stuff anymore. I wish she would get a job at Fox News.
I had the exact same thought this
very night.
[ChevyChase] In other news, Natalee Holloway is still dead. Again, Natalie Holloway, still dead.[/CC]
Tangental peeve: My Canadian cable company, in Canada, has CNN headline news on channel 37 with the real channels, while CTV Hoser Headline news is up in the UHF equivalent of the cable box, with french language educational stuff and the live broadcasts of the legislature. Where’re those Canadian Content rules when we need them?
I would like to make a tiny rant to Israel, but that would probably make a much better Pit thread. I in no way understand the situation there and what is going on, but from what I’ve heard, Israel’s response is waaaaay out of line for the offense.
Anybody who knows better, feel free to educate me (as long as you can do it in three paragraphs or less - I’m not interested in reading any theses.)
I can’t listen to her based on her hair. It’s the equivalent of a missing front tooth. I just automatically think she’s an idiot.
Let me sum the Natalee Holloway case up for everyone: Pretty white girl goes on an expensive senior trip, drinks way too much, trusts the wrong guy, gets murdered and/or dies by misadventure. Her obnoxious mother and stepfather barrel in, piss off the locals, and hamper the investigation, thus assuring the case will not be solved. END OF STORY.
SHUT UP, NANCY GRACE.
You’re now my boss. You just got moved. Are you going to do anything? Or just pass the buck, you fucking asshole. You’re such an idiot and a pussy. Grow a pair - I’ve got a bigger set than you and I’m a girl.
She looks like she’s been playing in her Mother’s make up. 
My dad, who (along with Google) is my source of all knowledge on things car-related, says that bird shit will chemically react with the paint on your car and leave a permanent discoloration. I have not personally confirmed or debunked this.
Germophobes: You’re going to get sick sometimes. Unless you’ve got AIDS or something, a cold or something minor like that isn’t likely to kill you. In fact, having the occasional cold or whatever is likely to take less time out of your life than your ridiculously elaborate precautions against germs do. Don’t be so fucking prissy.
The weather here yesterday (and supposed to be the same today): It was hotter here than it was in Alice Springs, in the Australian outback, when we went there last November. I expect the Australian outback to be hotter than hell. I don’t expect that to happen in the Bay Area.
To one specific resident of my house: Stop putting the toy mice in the water bowl, you freaking moron. It’s a cheap toy stuffed with sawdust. It doesn’t react well to being saturated. Don’t bring it to me, split open down one side, trailing sawdust and plop it at my feet with big sad eyes and say, “Miraow?” as if I can fix it.
I can’t fix it. I’m going to dump it in the trash can. Don’t try to get in the trash can to ‘save’ your poor dead mousie, either. Don’t sit by the trash can and paw at it as if I just threw away your best friend. It’s a piece of water-logged fake fur and sawdust.
I don’t know what you hoped to accomplish by putting it in the water bowl, you pea-brained idiot - the thing was never alive in the first place. Drowning it was never an option.
The next time I find a toy mouse in the water bowl, I’m throwing them all away and never buying any more, okay?
Aw, man.
Oh, but this whole post is really cute. He thinks you’re his hero, and can fix anything.
Oh, stop. I’ll give in and buy some more. They’re those cheapy 6-for $1.99 things in the pet food aisle at the grocery store. The damn cat is wandering around right now, looking for more. I think there’s a few under the fridge and the stove, and there’s probably a couple under the hutch in the dining room. They turn up in the strangest places.
I think the damn things reproduce in the night.
Now, if you were a really nice mommy, you would keep some real ones in the freezer to toss to him. They tend to fall apa…may be TMI.
Oh, we had a time last fall when some real ones invaded the house and ran around. Itty-bitty cute little field mice. Damn moron cat thought they were playthings and just ran around chasing them and playing catch-and-release.
The other cat, the real cat, caught and disemboweled them. Waaaay too gross to find first thing in the morning.
I like to think of my germophobia not as a mental state but more of as a hobby.
Back on Topic: If I haven’t mini ranted about this already, my truck needed a new engine at 97K/13 years of age. To say that this was not well received is an understatement.
The pressure is on me now to somehow magically find a job in the real world when the kidlets are back in school starting Sept. 5.
I knew this was coming, but the engine has not helped at all.
Dear annoying co-worker:
I’m doing my gol-durndest not to hate you. But you make it very hard for me when you lean over my shoulder to show me something, putting your face only inches from mine, and proceed to slurp and chomp and gulp as you work away on that friggin cough drop or whatever it is. Did the barely-concealed gagging not tip you off? This is one of the many times I’m glad I have no sense of smell because having just a fraction more intimacy with whatever you are slobbering on would have caused me to vomit.
BTW, don’t lean over and make a big production of showing me something when you could have just told me about it in a simple sentence while standing way over there. We are not fooled; we realize that you don’t know dick.