I got a second job!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The HELOC is creeeping up there, what with Ivylad’s dental surgery and the kid’s private school tuition, and although we’re keeping our heads above water, things are getting a bit snug.

I took two days off from my “real” job to enjoy a nice five day weekend, and I marched out of the house today, determined to find that second job.

As luck would have it, the first place I walked in I got an interview and hired on the spot. The manager was very cool…he asked me “Is the customer always right?” and I laughed and said, “No” and he clapped his hands and said, “Excellent!” A bit more chitchat, and I go in for my first four hours tomorrow. I mentioned a few days I would need off in January, as well as some consideration for shift hours on Sundays, and he waved his hand at me and said it was no big deal, they could work around it, no problem.

Oh, and just to make you drool…this is where I’m working and since I’ll be working evenings…I can take home $10 worth of bakery goods each night.

2

Congratulations!

Ooh, Panera Bread. I like their lunches and their breakfast souffle pastry thingies. And the fact that they deliver lunches to our office even when we don’t have a $100 order. Good place.

3

Oooh! A job AND free bread! Good for you.

4

I’m sooooo jealous! I love Panera Bread. My cousin used to work at one and they are wonderful. I know the only bad thing is that he wasn’t allowed to eat the food from there while on break, he had to go out into the mall foodcourt. His manager was evil though…

Brendon

5

I love Panera, too. Yum! Good luck, though I have no idea what HELOC is.

6

HELOC is a Home Equity Line of Credit. It’s a revolving credit line (like a credit card) but you use the equity in your house as collateral, so the interest is much lower. (My HELOC has an APR of 7.25%, for example.)

Also, if you borrow against your primary residence, the interest is tax-deductible. It’s a great way to consolidate high-interest debt and stick it to the man at the same time.

7

Congratulations. Good luck!

8

I can order food for 50% off while on shift. I didn’t see a break room during my tour, I’m assuming we eat in the dining room in some unobtrusive corner.

The manager seems way cool though…he was telling me horror stories about some of the other “associates” including one girl who did the hand thing and said, with the accompanying head shake “I’m on a break” when the customer came up to order a latte. He took her aside and fired her on the spot.

I think he’s relieved to get an (ahem) older worker with more work experience, and not a flaky high school/college student who has to be called at 11:30am to see if she’s coming in for her 11am shift, then called again at 1:30p, only to find out she wasn’t done with her laundry.

Ivylad isn’t exactly pleased, and I wish we didn’t have to do this either, but needs must.

9

Oh, we’re not using it to pay off our credit cards. I think that’s a bad way to use it. Ivylad needs massive dental surgery, and the kids are in private school due to the abysmal school district. Three more years and Ivygirl graduates, then we can heave a huge sigh of relief.

10

Hey, I have one of those! I knew it looked familiar.

11

Congrats ivylass! Second jobs can be fun (sometimes). I’m entering my third month of my second job (this one as a pharmacy tech), and while initially I hated it (almost quit the first week), it’s gradually grown on me. I work two nights a week, then one day on the weekend. On my nights off, I sometimes find myself thinking about all that I could be doing at work, or all the money I’m NOT making.

I get a 20% employee discount at my store, and thus far have managed to keep from spending a paycheck on marked down holiday candy (the Danish butter cookies keep calling my name…must resist…), but free bread? That’s cool.

12

That Crispani/pizza thing looks delicious, but I have to wonder about the prices. Got any input on that?

13

The Cripani thing is only available after 4pm, and takes 15 minutes to cook. I think the prices are a bit on the high side compared to McDonald’s, but who can pass up fresh bread, hot from the oven, Danishes as big as your head, and an Iced Cappucinno? It’s not your typical fast food, so you’re going to pay a bit more.

I mostly worked the register today…it takes a bit getting used to, but the lady training me (about my age) was very kind and said I did very well. She jumped in when I got stuck, and I warned the customers that it was my first day, and everyone was very patient.

Tomorrow I work 5p-close.

14

Well, last night was fun. Some car hit a power pole and knocked out electricity to us, another restaurant, and a nearby hotel. When I got to work the power was back up but the cash registers were not working. Because we had to do everything manually and we could only take cash, we had to turn people away because we couldn’t handle a big crowd.

Most folks were understanding, but some guy threw a fit until we took his sandwich order, and one couple picked this and that and that one over there, then after we totalled and bagged it, made us re-ring it “because he couldn’t get a receipt and wanted to make sure we’d done it right,” while there’s people standing behind him in line.

The registers would come up for about fifteen minutes and then die again. I think for the entire night they worked for maybe an hour.

The nice thing Panera Bread does is box up all the leftover goodies and give them away to homeless shelters. We had two ladies come in yesterday for the bagels and pastries. Everything you see was made that day, nothing is leftover from the previous night.

15

I love Panera. The food is wonderful, and if I go in wearing my fire department uniform, I get 50% off.
Panera rocks. :slight_smile:

16

Well, update, in case anyone’s interested.

I’m turning in my notice. Between both jobs I’m working seven days a week, I’m not seeing my family on the weekends, I’m starting to short-change my real job, and I’m getting stretched too thin. I wish I could stick with it, but we’re rearranging some of our finances and we should be okay.

I think I’m also a bit old to work in retail, with a bunch of entry level kids who think it’s great fun to regale me with stories (in front of customers!) about how they hurt their ankle because they were too drunk to drive and let their (under-aged) drunk friend drive them home, or flipping each other with towels in the dining room while we’re still open, or comparing dirty pictures on their cell phones. After working for years in a (mostly) professional setting, I don’t have the patience for such shenanigans. (Yes yes, I know, those damn kids keep running across my yard too.)

The customers are fine, but it’s not the most efficiently run place. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve run out of the most basic stuff, and we get to tell the customers, who aren’t exactly pleased. I can understand coming it at 8pm and finding out we’re out of a certain bagel, but to be out of butter?

Still, it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever done. The managers, more my age and with whom I get along fine, are great, and when one lady bitched because she thought I was rude (I wasn’t, she just couldn’t get what she wanted) the manager said he knew she was exaggerating, and teased me about my “people” skills for the rest of the shift. He told me he’d seen me in action, and if there had been anything to her complaint, he would have pulled me into the office for a chat. Which he didn’t.

So, there’s comes a point where one realizes one is high enough up the corporate ladder (ha!) that leaving at 4pm is not easily accomodated, and that one is too old and has too many other responsibilities to flit from job to job to bed to job again. In college I worked two part time jobs AND went to school full time. I think those days are done.

17

I wondered how it was going for you, ivylass, especially since I also quit my second job about three weeks ago. Like you, I had little tolerance for the immature co-workers, and even less energy to do the things at home that I needed to do (like sleep), let alone the things I wanted to do (like laundry).

18

It’s funny, it’s not the “Oh, I can work an extra 20-30 hours a week no problem.” It’s the driving back and forth, the rearranging of the sleep (I have to be there at 5am on Saturday!!), the too-pooped-to-do-anything-with-the-family when you get home. So it’s more than 20-30 hours a week. It’s more like an extra 35-40 hours a week.

Still, the kids and Ivylad like the free cookies and muffins I bring home, and when we run low on bread it’s easy to run a loaf through the slicer and bring it home.

19

Sorry to rain on the picnic, but isn’t anyone else disturbed by the fact that the OP needs a second job so they can afford dental surgery for the Ivylad*? How odd this must seem to the Canadian and European dopers.

20

Okay, look, we’re talking MAJOR dental surgery, involving several visits. This isn’t a root canal. This is repair work that will take months.

Personally, I’m glad that I can get a second job to pay for extra stuff, rather than pay higher taxes. I can always quit a second job. Higher taxes are damn near impossible to get rid of.

YMMV, Spectre. But I wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. (And I didn’t think dental work was covered by the government in Canada? Only medical.)