poetry in commotion...

My Manager is a Heavy Burden

In a figurative and literal sense.

It's been about two weeks now since my last post, and as you all know I've been working for about that long. To be honest there's something about work that I enjoy. It's probably because I was essentially a ne'er do-well for about 3 months, doing absolutely nothing except nominally finding a job, but really taking a break from the next phase of what promises to be a long period of humdrum monotony. However, with a job, there's a sense of purpose. I'm heading somewhere, doing something. I'm not the type of person who can accept stagnation very well. A life of turmoil and excitement is my type of life, though as I have mentioned before, it is a curse to my people, may you live in interesting times.

In the first two weeks one of the first things you do is to take stock of your fellow co workers, see what sort of people they're like. My coworkers (sales section) are a great group of people, split into a huge age gap of those who are relatively advanced in their years and married with children, or those just finished school and in a transitional phase between the last vestiges of their childhood and a new burgeoning potential of adulthood. They are also almost exclusively female, with the exception of myself and one other, and filled with their own eccentricities. When you work in an almost exclusively female workplace, you generally find out things fast, because news spread quickly. For example, Zara is a vivacious, cheery and pretty 18 year old young woman who is always a blast to work with. She has also slept with pretty much every guy working or has worked in Garden City, with the exception of myself. Blazena on the other hand is a kooky woman in her mid to late 40s working for some extra cash, as well as to inject a little variety in what is otherwise a mundane household existence. She's an immigrant from former Czechoslovakia, and once called the police to the shop to complain that the security cameras in the store were making her veins big. Great group of people though.

That said, my job is a pill. Namely because my superiors are, to the very depths of their estrogenically imbalanced souls, complete bitches. All three of my bosses are women, obese, and utterly self involved, a triumvirate of cholestrol whose existence bleakens what would no doubt be a rosy future of tequila and easy money. My immediate superior, the Garden City store manager responsible for my training (Rachael), took an instant dislike to me from the very moment she met me. Now, you're probably thinking, "don't be ridiculous, she can't have instantly disliked you, you probably did something to tick her off". It's true however. I didn't even get that trial week where you get to know someone then dislike them. From the very first day, she took an instant dislike to me. I don't know whether it's a professional dislike or a personal one, though for most women the two seem inexplicably interlinked. I gave her the benefit of the doubt for the first week that it was my imagination. But after two weeks, it has become very apparent to me that I'm not imagining things. The second is Sarah, counter manager for the Perth City store, and featured in my last post. I don't work with her anymore since I now work exclusively at Garden City, but she's stopped by a few times to help out the Garden City store due to Easter, and picks on chickenshit issues (definition:"Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called--instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit--because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously"). However, unlike Rachael she manages to still talk to me in a professional manner. The third is Emma, the business consultant for whom I will also have a important relationship with. Although she has been pretty nice to me so far, she's known by everyone to be the 'Bread Nazi", and is universally hated by everyone who works at either company stores. Hrmm. This triumvirate is also disliked by a majority of the people working with me, so it can't just be me. Still..may I live in interesting times eh?

Since graduation though, there has been a gradual awakening in me, an encroachment of personal responsibility and an urge to achieve something great has started to change me inside. A new rising maturity inside me that on a very subconscious level
permeates through to the way I think, and in certain circumstances, the way I act, though outwardly I still remain the same. I think its a good thing, though I'll still always be the goof I've been the last 8 or 9 years. Kinda makes me think though. What kind of person will I be in 5 years? or 10? I just wish I wasn't so lonely at times. I've had the same recurring dream a couple of times over the last two weeks where I'm back at Johnenemma's engagement dinner, and I'm once again at a table where everyone else is on another table while I'm at a table where I know no one, and the only guy at the table without a date, the ninth person in a table of eight others, four couples. In the last dream two of the three women I've been completely crazy about were at the same table with their boyfriends, and asked me if I'd ever date an asian over a white girl. If I get the dream again I'm going to reclassify it into "recurring nightmare".

Lastly, here are some photos!

posted by jaseypoo! @ 10:32 PM