Some jackhole mother frakker is ruining a lot of Christmases

So last night I drove a work buddy home and he asked if I had heard about the issue we had had with some X-box Kinects... I said no, what happened? apparently some asshole stole a bunch of stuff from my store, including a few Kinects... and thus no one at our store will be getting a Christmas bonus! number 1, what kind of frakking person just steals shit? your momma didn't teach you right and I hope you get raped. 2) with all the damn cameras and I'm sure extra rules you have to follow when stocking high priced merch... how was this not prevented or at the very least how do we not catch the people after the fact?
Merry Christmas people of Walmart! Imma steal yoe stuff and ruin yoe holly-day suckafish... seriously RAPED

and addition to "Pretending you Care: the Retail Worker's Guide"

So tonight I'm closing in the Deli (we start shutting down around 9 and hopefully are done by 10:30-11:00). Well around 9:45 this man comes up to the meat counter and asks a co-worker for some meat, she tells him that we are closed, and sorry but you can come in tomorrow. He cannot except this as an appropriate answer and tells her to open the slicers back up (they take 30 minutes to clean when they aren't too bad) and cut him some meat. she refuses telling him that she would have to go get the pieces from the sink that she had already cleaned and sanitized just to cut him some meat, and then re-close the slicers, and we don't want to be here all night. He asks to see her supervisor, which turns out to be me (i'm just her superior) so I walk up and ask, "is there something I can help you with?" and he says "yeah, I'd like some meat."
"I'm sorry we're closed down for the night, we close at 9 o'clock."
"I understand that but it won't take you very long to just cut me some meat."
"I'm sorry, we do have some pre-cut Sarah Lee products right over here if you want those, but we can't open the slicers back up, they are shut down and washed already."
"Look if you would just do it you'd be done by now."
"I'm sorry"
"can I see YOUR supervisor!" So I go to the phone and call the "console" (the fitting room has a radio and since our "page" button doesn't work we have to call and ask them to radio for a manager). I say, "we need any available member of management to the Deli, we have a customer waiting." and I go back to cleaning out the fryers because I don't want to get any more behind, and I don't want to deal with this guy anymore. He walks over to where I am and asks, "WELL IS ANYONE COMING? OR ARE YOU JUST THAT LAZY AROUND HERE!!" I retort with, "it's not lazy, we're busy!"
and I walk back over to him and ask, "are you sure you can't just get something out of our pre-cut section?"
"NO I want fresh stuff!" "Look the customer is right, I own my own business and if you worked for me you'd be fired!"

Oh, so you own your own business! well let me break out the secret stash of quality meats, you don't want to eat these dog scraps anyways your highness! Frankly jackass you'd be lucky to have an employee like me, but I guess your employee turnover is so high you have to hire people who are too stupid to stand up to you. Do you want to know why you can't get an employee to stay on longer that 2 months? it's because you are an unbearable prick who's head is so big it's got it's own moon!

So my manager comes over and sees this guy yelling at me, and asks "what can we do for you?"
"I'd like some meat cut." (very calm and polite I might add the SOB)
so I cut in with, "but we've already shut down the slicers and cleaned the parts!"

so of course I get told to cut this guy whatever he should desire, and without being told, I know I'm expected to apologize to this guy.

So I go get the parts, put the slicer back together (it took another 5 minutes) and in my best customer service voice I ask what it is he would like, how much, and what size cut? and without showing the slightest bit of uncomfortableness he acts like a human and asks nicely and gets just whatever it is he should want. Then I break down the slicer, and clean the pieces while my co-worker re-cleans the slicer fully, because you never know where meat particles will fly on those things. and we end up leaving a full hour late.

about half an hour after this first guy showed up another customer came up asking to get some Havarti, now this guy is a regular, he comes in and gets turkey legs and Havarti because it's all he can stomach while being on chemo, he was shaking and this guy is not looking good, I just hope it's a good sign that he can still come in and get it himself. Now for this guy, who asked like a human being, nicely, and even offered to just buy a whole log of cheese and take it home and cut it himself I would gladly have stayed another hour... but because of the first guy, a manager saw him over there and came over to take care of the situation himself, and he kept telling this guy that there was nothing we could do, you'll have to come back tomorrow. but I told this guy off, I said, "no, it's okay, I know this guy, I've got no problem getting it for him."
"but Warren (assistant manager from story 1) said we can't open the slicers"
"no it's okay" and I ended up just selling him a whole 4 pound hunk of cheese. I'm not sure what kind of cancer he's got but I hope it turns out alright for the second guy, maybe god can give his cancer to the "I'm better than you and always get what I want" guy.(who, I forgot to mention, had his son standing right there with him, way to show your son how to treat people father-of-the-year)

Shhhh....

If you walk carefully, slowly, and just listen you can hear it from a distance. slowly approach the doors, they open for you, almost magically. you feel a rush of wind, a breeze on your face, it's warm and cavernous. the inner doors lay before you, you gather yourself and take a few more steps... and you are greeted by.... the SOUNDS OF TORTURED CHILDREN!!!
Just sitting at work on a slow day, you can hear the kids crying in the toy aisle, candy aisle, frozen section, produce, near the carts, in the checkouts. Something about Walmart brings out the nasty in kids, they can't help but feel intimidated by the sheer volume of stuff they can't have. Now I've never actually seen a parent hit their crying kid, but I've had some awkward "stern-talking-to's" happen right in front of me, do I walk away, they are paying customers trying to decide what to buy?

On a separate note... if you put something in your cart and decide on a later aisle that you don't want it, don't just put it anywhere you please, you CAN take it to the checkout and tell the cashier you decided not to buy it... that makes it much easier for us to handle it than finding something on your shelves that doesn't belong and having to search the rows and rows of stuff to find where it belongs. And STOP LEAVING YOUR CARTS FULL OF STUFF ANYWHERE YOU PLEASE! every single day, without fail, there is a cart parked in between produce and deli/bakery full of stuff, that just sits there for hours on end before we finally can be sure that someone decided to be a bastard and leave all this food to spoil in the middle of the store, gee THANKS!

Walmart

So I've been working at Walmart for all of about a week and a half (that is an exact figure). I've discovered that people of Walmart.com was all photographed at Utah Walmarts... I've seen cross-dressing men, old ladies with no teeth, foreigners, and reeeeeeally fat people riding in the handicapped shopping carts.
I've had a couple douchey customers now. One guy got frustrated when I couldn't find "turkey breast" (which by the way... isn't a kind of turkey) and he stormed off after accusing me of not being able to do my job. I'm glad I got the "dude, it's my second day!" in before he shrugged his shoulders and stormed off.
I had this old lady today that yelled at me for being in the back at the fryer instead of helping her (I was left alone in the deli without knowing I was alone) so she yelled at me for having to wait for MAYBE 30 seconds, and then using her best "old lady has a tiny voice" voice to order, luckily she pointed to the left side of the hot case, and I heard "two" so I pointed at the corndogs and asked, "two corndogs?" and she nodded, and then when I pulled out a bag and started grabbing 2 corndogs she yelled, suddenly finding a voice, "I SAID SHRIMP! SHRIMP!! THAT'S THREE TIMES NOW!" and then she went back to her tiny voice and ordered one of every kind of chicken in the case, including the buffalo boneless wings, which I'm sure may have caused her at the least alot of discomfort, and at the most... death
and the other day I had this Indian chick come to the hot case and ask for "chicken roast"... so I say, "rotisseri chickens? down there" and she looks down and laughs at me and says "chicken roast" and I say, "I don't know what you want, what do you want *pointing to the hot case. so she points vaugely in the area of mozzerella sticks... success! and she says, "one" so I get a little cup and put 1 in there and ask, "just the one?" and she says, "NO!" and "*mumbling in semi English-Indian." so I say, "I don't know what you want" "do you have paper and a pen?" (asks the unhelpful gentleman behind her in line (how is she going to write her order when she can't even SPEAK English! finally she decides to actually use her words and she says, rolling her eyes, "one p*phlegm*ounde" (sound it out).
I work with a lesbian who let me know by telling me "I lick snatch"... thanks for that...
I work with 4 Iran/Iraq/some other country over there women, 1 of which is helpful and can speak fairly good English, 1 that is less helpful and speaks slightly less English, and 2 that aren't much help and don't speak much English... at least while I'm around, though I'm convinced that the younger one is just getting out of doing things.
Overall it's not a bad job, I cook all the stuff in the hotcase: fried chicken, popcorn shrim/chicken, potato wedges, mashed potatos... etc. I work with a good bunch of people, my boss isn't a dick... the only real complaint so far is that my schedule is nowhere near consistant. but for now I'm happy there...

Weekend of Awesomeness!

So I guess at least one of you wasn't aware that I was going to be in California last weekend... oh well, here's the whole story, unedited for time, but I won't post all the pictures. If you want to see the whole visual tour of the trip you'll need to see my photos on Facebook or ask me when you are over here sometime.

Me and Ridd and Thomas had decided to drive out to San Jose, California to watch the Utes play the Spartans. We don't know why or how we came to the decision that this was a good idea... Well anyway, we left Salt Lake after Ridd got off work Friday morning (he works 24 EMT shifts). We left around 10:30-ish. The plan was to stop at Wendover and Reno and then get to our hotel in Fremont, CA, and maybe stop at some other stuff on the way depending how it felt. We got to Wendover right around noon and decided to eat something there, Thomas knew a little burger joint. We all enjoyed our burgers, lightly complained about the prices, and left.

We had seen something online about "the World's Largest Stuffed Polar Bear" being in Elko, so when we stopped for gas, we had to see this thing. He's called White King and he's like 10 and a half feet tall! So we stood there for a second and decided to go ahead and put a couple bucks in a slot machine while we were there...

This is my first ever gambling winnings!

We left Elko and drove through the rest of the nothingness until we got to Reno. We all wanted to stop in Reno because none of us had done a Vegas weekend when we turned 21, so we wanted to make up for this shame and put 20 bucks on a blackjack table and find out what the fuss was all about. Well they weren't playing Blackjack at the time so we put our money into some slots. Needless to say Thomas and Ridd both lost 20 bucks a few pennies at a time (I only lost 10). At one point we thought to leave the penny slots and hit a quarter machine... that only sped up the losing.

By this time it was starting to get dark and we knew we still had about 5 hours of driving ahead of us, plus the hardest bit going through Donner Pass. I drove out of Reno and when we hit the canyon I remembered driving through it on the way to Tahoe so it was no big deal, except for the construction. We had to detour off the road a good half hour and go on this windy mountain road. When we got through the pass and to Sacramento we filled up again and Thomas took over the drive to Fremont (about 20 minutes north of San Jose). We got to our hotel, the "Good Nite Inn" which was the cheapest hotel in the San Jose area, but for 50 bucks this place was by no means a "hole" it was really a nice joint.

Now for Saturday, which we knew was going to be rough on us...

We had to get up around 6:30 and get ready to leave and hit the 7:50 BART (Bay-Area-Rapid-Transit) train, which we rode up to San Francisco using only one transfer. This is kind of a fun train ride as it goes under the bay and you can feel your ears pop. We got to San Fran early so we could get on the 9:00 Alcatraz tour and still have enough time to see the rest of the area attractions. We got off the train and we knew there was a light rail system that runs right up the Embarcadero (the street that runs North/South along the bay that all the piers jut off of). We saw a train, but we couldn't find anywhere to buy a ticket for it, like TRAX. We wandered around a little bit and decided to just walk over to the Embarcadero and maybe we'd see a ticket stand over there. We walked east and hit this big building with a farmer's market outside and a bunch of little shops inside (or more importantly, a bathroom!)

When those that needed to go...went, we started walking north up the Embarcadero. It was raining and cold in San Francisco. I had anticipated it being a little cold and maybe some fog in the morning, but I didn't even bring a jacket to California! Well we never could find a ticket stand so we just walked up the piers (it's a good 2.5 mile walk from the train to where we thought the tours left from). We pass a bunch of little "Bay Tours" and ships that take people out AROUND Alcatraz but we didn't see the one that takes you to the island and drops you off. there are shops all along there and we hit "Pier 39" which is the main touristy pier. Fisherman's Wharf is along past that in the 40s.

Once we got to Pier 39 we realized that the tours take off from a little bit back the way we came (around pier 33 I think) so we turn around and get rained on a little bit more. We finally get to this place and buy our tickets for the 10:30 tour! Plans are going smoothly so far...

This is Thomas waiting for the boat

We get over to the island and take the audio tour, walking around to all these posters they have on the walls depicting some escapes or certain memorable moments in the prison's history. The audio tour consists of 4 former inmates and 4 former guards all telling stories about the parts of the prison you are supposed to be walking through at the time. We got to see the three cells the the men depicted in the movie "Escape from Alcatraz" escaped from. There was even a tiny number 433 on the bars of the cell that Al Capone spent most of his time in.

and that's the ONLY mention of Al Capone in the tour

We ended up walking around the island for probably a good 2 hours and decided we needed to get back and eat something (if you noticed we've only eaten the one time in Wendover). On the ride back from the island I saw... Valerie Chipman? So I waved at her and said, "hey Valerie." Apparently this means, in some odd language, "Come on over and sit next to me and my two friends you don't know and we'll talk about my family and what everyone is up to these days" I guess it was okay for her to do that, it just got a little weird after the initial, "so what the hell are you doing here?"
We left the boat and walked back up to Pier 39 to visit a couple little shops along the pier. I found a cool lead-paint-tainted shot glass (so I might not be using that one mom ;) We then walked to the end of the pier which, if you don't know, is where a good thousand seals hang out on these floating docks.
for the sake of Kristine showing this to Josh, yes these seals are all alive

Bytheway seals smell like cows dipped in salt water. We left the seals (because, really what is there to do watching seals) and left pier 39 to get up to Fisherman's Wharf and some lunch. Thomas had been looking forward to getting clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl. Since I don't like any fish type anythings, and I'm not a huge fan of sourdough, I had tortellini. We ate in this little restaraunt that couldn't decide if it was a fancy place or not. By that, I mean, the waiters all wore tuxes, but the decor and plates screamed chain restaraunt like Applebees or something.

We left the Wharf and decided to take our chances on the light rails because we were on a deadline to get everthing done before kickoff at 7:30. We guess, correctly, that you just pay as you get on the car, like a bus. On the train some woman asked me if they could just ride this all the way to the end of the line... Her husband simply said, "Look at his shirt" (which was a Utah shirt with a camera around my neck)

We got back on the BART and got back to Fremont at about a quarter after 4. We had plans to drive down to San Jose and go to the Winchester Mystery House, which we knew was a 2 hour tour, so we were a little short for time. We ended up just missing the "special" tour which takes you to more rooms and behind the scenes, but we went on the regular 65 minute version which takes you to all the main attractions.

If you don't care to click the link, the Winchester Mystery House is this mansion in San Jose which was built by the widow of the Winchester rifle creator, Sarah Winchester. Legend has it that after the deaths of her daughter, and then husband, Sarah spoke to a spiritual medium in Boston. The medium apparently told her that her family had been killed by the spirits of all those killed by her husband's rifle, and the only way to ensure they wouldn't get to her was to build a house, and keep building a house. She bought an 8 room farmhouse and started adding on to it.... and adding on to it... The place was under construction 24 hours a day, 7 days a week... for 38 YEARS!! She build all sorts of crazy rooms, and stairways to the ceiling, and twists and turns to confuse the ghosties.


My camera ended up dying before the end of the tour so I didn't get a picture of some other cool stuff, like the chimney that they just didn't build all the way to the outside, or the front door that only Sarah Winchester and the men who installed in ever walked through. It really is an interesting place and I'll go back if I'm ever in San Jose agian, I'd recommend it to anyone visiting the Bay Area.

We left the Winchester at about 7:00, with a ten minute or so drive to the stadium, we were feeling pretty good about all the stuff we'd seen today. We were "Butts in Seats" 10 minutes before kickoff. You probably heard about the game, or you probably don't care, so I'll just say, the Utes didn't play particularly well, the offense couldn't sustain any momentum so the defense got a little tired but by the end we won and that's all that matters.

NOW Thomas had to be back at work by 2:00 Sunday afternoon.... This meant we had to drive ALL NIGHT to get back in time! We left the stadium and topped off the gas, and bought supplies (energy drinks, Powerade, a couple snacks). And we started the drive, Ridd first. We all agreed that one person would sleep in the back seat while the two other's stayed awake, when the driver got too tired to continue we'd stop and the passenger would take over, the sleeper would move to shotgun, and the driver would get some sleep. Ridd drove to Sacramento and we decided to get something to eat, we were all starving and WAY too tired to be driving. We eventually found a Denny's thanks to the GPS in the Prius.

After we ate we all felt great! I felt awake but it wasn't my turn to drive, I'd be sitting next to Tom. Tom got about halfway through Donner's Pass before he got too tired and pulled over. This was not really good news becuase Tom only drove about an hour... if we had to stop every hour to switch I don't think we would have made it. So I take over driving in the Pass... only it's 4 in the morning this time, and there's construction you'll remember. They have those really "too bright to be allowed to shine in tired driver's faces" lights set up, there's this concrete barrier on my left and the edge of a canyon barrier on my right... This is as terrified driving as I've ever been. Looking back, I really shouldn't have been driving.

Obviously I made it out of the canyon and I got a good 2 hours in before I had to pull over and get some sleep. I ended up not having to drive the rest of the way! Ridd drove through sunrise (I just couldn't make it even though I was trying), then Tom took over and drove the rest of the way (probably a good 4-5 hours).

Well we made it back to Salt Lake by 1, so Tom had time to even shower before going to work, the poor sap. I went home and promptly fell asleep on the couch for 4 hours. I still feel a little worn out, even after 2 whole days of normal routine and I will NEVER do that drive again! At least not until it's been a while and I forget how hard it really was...

Funny/weird Dream

So I woke up this morning at like 9:30 ish and promptly fell back asleep and woke up again about an hour later, in that time I had this dream:

So we are all going to a campground, but it's a place with cabins that looks (mostly but not exactly) like Julie and Seth's house. There's a bunch of these tiny white "cabins" lined up. We get there, we unpack, it's uneventful really... but then everyone has to leave to go work on some shirts (I don't know if we are making shirts like a queer YM/YW activity or something or if we work there or what). Well me and Stacy don't have much to do, there just isn't that much work to do, so me and her leave and go for a walk (no sign of Kali in the dream, sorry :( we go walking around this big pond area behind the cabins. While back there I decide to try some fishing.

(about the pond, it's like half-pool it's vaguley rectangular on one long side and one short side which has a diving board, but the other two walls of the pool don't have cement and aren't rectangular, make sense?

So I cast the line out into the middle of this pond and start walking back towards Stacy when I get a bite! but I try reeling it in and it's stuck, so I think I may have just snagged on some weeds, but then the line starts moving with a fish on it so I reel it in... and this good sized (about 16 inches long) fish comes out. So I have Stacy take some pictures of the fish on the line. (It looked something like the sharks in this video only less sharky, darker color more like a fish: VID

But I go to let the fish off the line and I get creeped out! I don't want to touch the thing, it's creepy looking and I hate fish, so I decide to just lay the pole down on the ground with the line in the water until I can get someone else to do it. So as I put the fish in the water another fish just like this one jumps out of the water! just behind Stacy, and it kind of crawls forward a little bit and I say "hey, I just put that other fish back in the water, go back in there!" and so the fish slowly wriggles itself back into the water...

Just then someone comes walking up with me and Stacy's shorts (I guess the rest of the family was making shorts and shirts and was done with the shorts) she goes to pick up the fishing pole but I tell her what's going on and she drops it and saunters off.

Then Dad comes walking by, and I stop him and I tell him "hey dad, I've got this fish on the line over here but I don't want to touch it to get it off, will you do it?" and he's like "cool, of course" So Dad picks up the line and starts reeling in, I look to the bottom of the water and I see a fish that looks bigger than the one I hooked but I assume it's just the water magnifying it....
Then out of no where this fish comes shooting out of the water, and it was as giant as I thought, it's like 20 feet long! and HUGE! and it almost lands on me and Dad but we get out of the way and it's sitting there with it's giant mouth. and dad looks at me "you caught a fish that big?" and then I woke up. it looked kind of like a whale shark:

EPIC! The new Disneyland...

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