"It's like being in college again!"

I went to my company's 401(k) meeting today.

One hour.

One hour filled with a barrage of financial information--a power point presentation, a packet of paperwork, and the sudden need to know how to do something.

It was very confusing.

It was like being in college again, only I was being paid to be there.

Seriously--I walked into the meeting room, (set classroom style, of course) sat down, looked over my packet and was suddenly blasted into the "I really need to pay attention to this but my god is it boring" frame of mind. You would look away from the presenters for what seemed to be a millisecond, to readjust your spot in your seat, get a different piece of paper from the packet, something--and suddenly, you are no longer on the same page as the rest of the 'class'. They've switched topics! I missed the lead-in! I'm confused!

It was funny, in a "my financial future is riding on this" sort of way.

***************************************

I am tired. So what else is new.

All I want to do is sleep, read, eat things that will make me fat. This is not a good thing.

Anyway.....yeah. I think I am off to bed, to worry about my financial future. (But I have a 401(k) now! I are a grow-ed up!)

Your Space

I, along with the rest of America, have a myspace profile.

I started this profile when I moved back to this part of the country--and good things have come of it. For instance:

I met T again.

I was reconnected with A, who I then introduced to F, and now they are married. (Hooray!)

I have unending amounts of gossip and/or updates about coworkers, exboyfriends, exfriends and the like.

I also have a way of showing the aforementioned group (in a very passive aggressive way, mind) that I am doing better than they are, so there. (aside from the coworkers. They know everything about me anyway.)

Anyway.

Sometime early this morning, my site was 'phished'. Typically, you have to give out your password for this to happen,and I have no recollection of doing this, but whatever. (maybe I have taken to sleepdrinking again. who knows.)

So I woke up this morning, lit a cigarette, made coffee. Checked my email, then wandered over to myspace.

There was a sub-sonic BOOM as I did so.

Messages from almost all of my friends--mostly telling me that I had been phished and had been hurling spam comments at them since the early hours. (I even attempted to comment on my own page, apparently, which is something I'm rather proud of as I didn't know it was possible.)

Also, there were a few replies to a bulletin "I" had posted, with the title, "I'm easy! Let's hook up tonight!" Most of these were to inform me I had been phished.

Several, however, were not.

It would seem that there are people I know that like that idea--When told I was easy and would love to hook up with all 50-some odd people I know, they took this as the gospel and basically just wanted to know when.

As flattered as I am, I had to send replies to these messages and inform them that, well, I'm not that easy.

There are some embarrassed people in the world right now, my friends. Embarrassed.

I am quietly giggling to myself. (does that make me a bad person?)

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Let's talk about Thanksgiving.

We all know my feelings on the holidays. We all know my feelings on the general public as a whole. With that in mind....

It was less of a clusterfuck than I thought it would be. It was not as easy as I had hoped.

Basically, I have a question.

If you decide to eat out on Thanksgiving, which I understand (no cooking, no dishes), one would think that you would understand/expect that you are not going to get the private, intimate family dinner that you normally would at home. Right?

We had some pissed off people. Pissed off that they were eating in a room with 20 strangers. Pissed off that the stuffing had mushrooms, not sausage, which is how their mother made it. Pissed off that the party of 30 was being noisy, pissed off that the four course meal did not include macaroni and cheese.

I'm sorry, America, but I am not a member of your family. I don't know your grandmother's stuffing recipe--and neither does the chef. I don't know, or care, about your family dynamic, and won't readjust restaurant seating so you aren't within ten feet of your sister. What I do know is this:

You elected to come to a restaurant for a special holiday meal. I will do everything in my power to ensure that it is enjoyable for you, within reason. I know that I am tired, hot, starving, and in dire need of a bathroom break. I will take pictures of your family, I will refill your martini 14 times, I will smile and nod and laugh at your jokes. I am a server, and this is my job.

My job, however, is not to babysit your children or drunk aunt. It is not to pass messages between you and whichever family member you are not speaking to. Sorry.

I had a woman ask me why I was working on thanksgiving. I told her that, well, in the restaurant business, that's how things go sometimes. She then said to me...And I'm serious, here, "What, you would rather make money than be with your family?"

I looked at her and said, "Ma'am, I don't have any family. It's this or sit at home in my apartment."

(Now, this is a lie. I have family. I have friends. I had about 5 places I could have gone to eat dinner. But I was working. But she doesn't need to know that.)

Could she just leave it there? No.

"No family! But you're so young! No one?"

"Well, the family I do have lives far away and we are pretty much estranged." (true.)

"No wonder you became a waitress, then."

I really, really love my job sometimes.

Hooray!

It's my 100th Post!

I bought a car!

For real this time, I hope. I pick it up Saturday.

And I am officially BROKE. Like, BROKEBROKE.

It's going to be a lean christmas.

But here it is!



It has such low mileage and was so amazingly taken care of...its still under warranty for 2 years or 35,000 miles and still has the new car smell.

I. Love. It.

So, to all those close to me.....

I'm sorry. It's going to be a lean, lean christmas, mostly because I bought myself a really great present.

I hope you understand. Please wish me luck! (I'm terrified of this not working out. Terrified. But I do love to second guess myself.)

Round the Table

Every year at thanksgiving dinner, my mother would force the practice of telling everyone what you are/were thankful for the previous year to everyone else.

I hated this.

I really, really hated this when I was about 13-17 years of age. I'm sure you can all understand.

But now that I am an adult, and facing the first thanksgiving without the opportunity to see my family (there have been t-days in the past where I CHOSE to not see them, this time there is no choice involved, as I am working all day tomorrow, which causes me a sort of irritation and mental crabbiness that I can't really articulate--but at least I don't have to cook. And I am thankful for that, baby), I have been thinking about what I am thankful for.

In attempts to keep this post from being some trite piece of crap that babbles on about how much I love my family and friends, how thankful I am to have a home, and heat, and food and shoes and all that--Well, all that stuff is true, but I'm not going there. (But I am very thankful for those things.)

I am thankful for large parties in my restaurant that don't want separate checks.

I am thankful for polar fleece sheets, and which ever genius that invented them.

I am thankful for the opportunities that I have in this day and age.

I am thankful for the fact that I live somewhere where it is NOT SNOWING RIGHT NOW.

I am thankful for coffee, shokinag drinking chocolate, splenda and cool whip.

I am thankful for hydrogen peroxide.

I am thankful for people that know when to listen, know when to speak up, and know when to just pretend.

I am thankful for my ability to lose 50 pounds this year (F and A--Twenty since you wed! 20! We need to digitally re-touch your wedding photos!)

Mostly, I am thankful that every morning I wake up, and know, (no matter how horrible I'm feeling) that someone in my life is thinking of me and hopes that I am happy today. Someone. May be the strange man that comes into the restaurant and just eats oyster crackers and watches women's volleyball, but still.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

*Insert Sexual Purring Sound Here*

Welcome, Googlers. It gives me great pleasure to have titles and/or content that I know will bring forth the strangest google-search results, like, ever.

Anyway.

Thanksgiving.

It's this week, as we all know. I, thankfully, am working all the live long day, and therefore get to miss any strangeness that my family has to offer.

This will be the first holiday celebrated without my father being alive. This will be the first holiday ever spent without either of my parents in attendance. I'm kind of glad to be spending it with a bunch of people that are too lazy or rich to cook for themselves, lest I fall into a deep, introspective depression.

As you all may remember from my Christmas post from last year (Go look it up yourselves. Sorry.), my family is not well known for their "sharing of the love", come the holidays. Thanksgiving usually involves me doing a whole lot of cooking, followed by 13 minutes of eating, and then an argument about dishes. Oh, and we mustn't forget the back seat driving.

Back Seat Driving is a familial trait on my father's side that runs rampant like freaking wildfire through all of us. It applies to any or all activities usually done alone. Driving, of course, but solitaire, crossword puzzles,jigsaw puzzles, cooking, cleaning, knitting, reading,.....anything is game. Someone attempts to do one of the aforementioned activities in the same city block as any member of my family, and suddenly.....You have an audience. Just, well, just standing there. Periodically offering a grunt, point of a finger, or sigh of direction. It annoys everyone to NO END--but we all do it. I like to think that long, long ago, in the home country, someone did this, and out of revenge, it was done back, and back again. And the retaliation continued, across the mighty Atlantic, through the generations. We are teaching it to the younger generations now--Not because it's annoying, but because we take pride in our heritage!

My father was Grand Freaking Master of the Back Seat Drive. (I would love to see the sash that comes with that title.) From the very earliest dregs of memory I have, he was doing this, and far, far better than the rest of us.

My mother, an overly opinionated woman herself, was a complete stranger to the BSD. My father did this to her nearly daily twenty years ago, and she still, STILL talks about it.

And here is a little example.

My father loved Rachel Ray. Loved her. Watched her three times a week while he was at dialysis, owned her cookbooks, and demanded that I make her recipes on a regular basis. Sure.

He decided that after watching a particularly enthralling episode of "Thirty Minute Meals", wherein Ms.Ray creates Moroccan Lamb with Cous Cous that I would reenact this meal for him in our own kitchen.

(Aside:Whoever designed the kitchen in my house was an idiot who had never cooked a meal or done a dish in their lives. It is the smallest, most strangely laid out kitchen I have ever had in my life. You can't get to the garbage if the dishwasher is open, can't get to the sink if the fridge is open, can't get to the cabinets if anyone else is even considering being in the kitchen at all--This is truly, truly a one-butt kitchen. And therefore, prime BSD real estate. Not only are you driving the person mad simply with your presence, you are COMPLETELY IN THE FREAKING WAY AT ALL TIMES. Oh yes.)

So I take a leg of lamb, and am preparing to debone it. This isn't a big deal to me, as I lived in a state where you kill your food or starve, and have dressed out and butchered and packaged plenty of animals. Deboning a lamb leg is nothing.

I get the knives out, the bowl for the cubes of meat I will finish with, the plastic cutting board. The Lamb.

I make the first cut. Suddenly, my father is standing over my shoulder. (For an old guy, he was quick there till the very end. Especially if he needed to be.) I peer back at him, he declines to make eye contact. (This is an important part of the BSD. If you make eye contact, you are opening yourself up to being asked to leave. If you pretend you just happened to be passing through, and aren't conscious of what you are doing as horribly, horribly annoying, you're free.)

The deboning continues. I make a small pile of detritus next to the cutting board, continue to add cubes of lamb to the bowl.

I finish.

My father suddenly claps a hand on my shoulder, nearly causing me to stab myself. "Good job, Babe! Well done!", he says.

"Thanks, dad. I appreciate the help."

(This is something you must always say at the end of a particularly long BSD. You are passive-aggressively acknowledging the annoyance factor, and letting the person know that you are ready for them to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM YOU!)

This particular BSD is very important. This was the first, and only, time my father took part in a BSD and kept his mouth shut. Didn't grunt, offer advice, sigh, cough, or groan. Nothing. He just stood behind me and watched me debone the lamb.

I was annoyed then. Kind of tickled when he told me I had done well, as he was a man sparse with compliments.

As much as now I wish I could have him stand behind me and berate me, even, just to have him back, I know I cannot. He lives on through the memories, and the sharing of the stories I have about him.

But how hilariously wonderful would it be for me to serve a thanksgiving dinner and then BSD the table? Family Pride, baby. Family Pride.

Call Now! Operators are standing by!

Know how I keep mentioning how much I loathe my job? How it wears on me, the gossip, the in fighting, the drama? The seemingly bottomless immaturity?

I got a promotion.

No, excuse me, a "promotion". Air quotes, as it were. No increase in pay. No real benefit, at all, really. But I got a title. Sigh.

I got this title because no one wants to work banquets, because no one makes money on banquets anymore since the gratuity policy has been changed. Management is proposing a new banquet gratuity policy, wherein people with titles are required to be at both restaurants at all times to facilitate the implementation of the new policies.

Therefore, as the current title holder at the other restaurant wishes to have a life.....I come in. I am currently the holder of this title one day a week at the restaurant I normally work in, and now will be firmly clasping this title to my chest 3 out of the four days I work.

Fucking kill me.

I didn't really get asked if I wanted this title. The options were me or the girl that hasn't read a book since the third grade--Management went with me, thereby going against all patterns in their decision making history up to this point.

Pretty much what happened was I was told that I was going to do this so that everyone can make more money. Not me, however. I cannot get an increase in pay, even though the other holders of this title did. No, I will not be given the same responsibilities that they have--so I will continue to make minimum wage. (Plus tips.) I'm the relief pitcher. The lesser of 24 evils. The most competent incompetent in the house, as it were. Someone needs to do this, so that everyone else will be happy, so that the bitching will cease.

And under the bus I go.

Can you tell I'm not thrilled? I mean, a job is a job. But I hate the other restaurant. I don't want to waltz in there, and have the girls that have been there for so long resent the fact that I now hold this title and they don't. Whatever.

I'm in it for the benefits package. Shhh, don't tell. :)

Not really worth the wait

Yeah, so I was away from the computer for about ten days.

No really good reason. Staying with T. There is no internet there. Working too much. No internet there, either.

I just ate almost half of a container of coolwhip with a spoon for dinner.

Disgusted? I am.

The "ladies" (I use that term loosely) I work with have invited me (ME! GRANDMA!) out to the bar tonight. I think I may go, just to assuage some of the rumors that have been going around work. But I can't help but think they have nebulous plans.

Will I ever trust people again? Mah.

All I really want to do is sleep and watch COPS. And eat more coolwhip. (Still gross.)

Depressin' and Stressin'

Happy Not Halloween.

I worked, in costume, as the "Ghost of the restaurant where I work Past"--I wore my old work uniform that everyone hated.

No one got it that didn't work for the company a year ago.

Whatever.

Work is becoming more arduous as time passes. But that's any job, isn't it?

The in-fighting, the gossip, the not being able to trust anyone, the high school mentality. I hate it. Really. Being stabbed in the back just because you are there is not good.

On my day to be "in charge" (not that I get paid any more to do this, of course, like all the other 'in charge' people) I worked a double shift, and we got HOSED we were so busy during happy hour. My least favorite employee is supposed to be coming in to cover the shift of my favorite employee at 5 pm.

She didn't show until almost 6:30.

When she did, I had not opened the upstairs section of the restaurant nor had I been able to send the lunch crew home, because that would entail leaving one server alone in a bar FULL of people. Not acceptable.

Now, this person, who is my least favorite....She really, really is my least favorite. She is a bitch. Really. Like, this is not my humble opinion--she's a bitch. Two faced. Openly admits to talking shit behind people's backs, because she can. Refuses to adhere to any work ethic on days when I'm in charge--because it's me. (Granted, she has been there longer than I. But still. It's not like I'm marching around barking orders at people. If shit goes down, it's my ass. That's pretty much it.) I don't love it.

Anyway, she rolls in, and in front of the restaurant manager, pulls me aside and says, "I need to leave early. {policy states that the first one in the door is the first one out--Me.} I'm sick, I have class tomorrow, and I'm leaving at eight. I don't care if you work upstairs or down, but I am leaving."

To which I responded?

"Least Favorite? I have ten tables. I don't give a shit where you work--just get your ass in the game. There are six people upstairs waiting to be seated--either get up there and take care of them or take my ten tables. But do it now."

She then stands there for ten minutes, doing nothing.

Finally, she says to me, "Did you decide where you wanted to work?"

I nearly killed her.

"Just go upstairs!"

Things slow down rapidly after happy hour ends. I send the lunch crew home, after nearly weeping at them for how wonderful they are. I get the other server squared away and caught up, and then made an executive decision.

I walk upstairs, to least favorite.

She's sitting in the wait station, on the phone.

I start talking to her, even though she is obviously busy. Ha, ha.

"Hey, since you're so sick, go home."

"What?"

"If you are as sick as you say you are, and as exhausted with your other job--I appreciate you being willing to cover for Favorite, but Other Server and I have it under control. Just go. I will take your table."

"I don't want you to be mad at me! But, you know, you do owe me, after all."

Thank god I didn't have anything sharp near me.

"Just. Go. Home."

So she did. Twenty minutes later.

She was on the clock for less than thirty minutes. WHY EVEN SHOW THE FUCK UP????

Sigh.

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There are aspects of my life that I don't discuss on the blog. Hell, I don't really discuss them, period. But especially not on the blog. And these things are really, really bad right now. And so I am stressed and depressed.

Sorry for that little teaser.