If there is one thing that I can tell you first hand it’s that in retail when it comes to employees, you tend to get what you pay for. Generally speaking, if you have made it into management (either through schooling, or through several years of climbing the ladder and kissing ass), you are typically paid pretty well for the job that you perform. 98% of my co-workers either have degrees, or they have 2-4 years of a collage education, all are high school graduates.
I’d rather make myself rich working for myself but for now at least I’m content making a living working for someone else. It happens to be a big box, but in all, I am currently making more money than I would be had I actually finished school and received that education degree. I have a LOT less stress and do a LOT less work too (that is of course a matter of opinion to some). I’m happy having made a decision to work for a company that has provided me with advancement opportunities that do not depend on education but rather on performance. Many people won’t ever be as lucky as me and sadly, because of the job market that exists, many people are having to lower their expectations of what they can accomplish at least in the short term. It saddens me that Walmart is trying to capitalize on a huge problem however if those without work are able to put their ego aside and accept a job with an income (any income), Walmart (and many other Big Box stores) can offer a steady income and the potential for growth. Never in my life did I ever think I would be a person to promote a career in sales, especially retail sales, but just as an example, when I moved up to TC with Jirar 5 years ago, I had quit my job, I had no savings, and no prospect of a job. Jirar had a job but it was no way, no how, going to support both of us for any length of time. My economy sucked in much the same way everyone else’s did with a poor job market and slim opportunities. It’s a matter of motivation and perspective. Within a month of moving up here I had a part time job for minimum wage, within another 3 weeks I found a second job. Within 2 months I was part time at Menards, within 6 months I was full time. Within 1 year I was an assistant manager, within 1 1/2 years I was the department manager. I went from an income of less than $100 a week to a $45K+ a year carer because I was willing to put my ego aside and take a job I didn’t think I would like because I needed an income, ANY income. I’d do it again too if I had to, and yes, I would work at McDonald’s flipping burgers if that was the difference between having a job and sitting around doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself all day. Yes, the job market is bad right now but it would not be so bad if people would give up the “i’ll never do that” attitude and actually took a step to better themselves. ANY income is better than none at all.
On a sad related note, we currently have a “begger’ loitering in our parking lot. He sits out by the curb all day, every day with a sign asking for money to help pay for a surgery for his daughter. A sad story indeed but worse, he’s been asked why he’s not yet come into the store and asked for a job application (he’s been out there nearly 2 months now). We are in fact hiring people. He needs the money and clearly he can commit himself to something since he’s been sitting on a bucket with a sign now for 2 months. His response? He won’t work retail because he’s got an education (spoken with a snotty condescending tone of voice). Clearly that education is doing him a world of good sitting out there on the corner, in the snow, in the cold. His problem? He has too much of an ego, he’s too good to work for a company that takes in billions of dollars a year in profits and is the #1 Home Improvement center choice by consumers in the Midwest. He won’t “lower” himself by doing work he think’s is beneath him. Sadly, he’d be making more money with a job than he’ll ever get begging in our parking lot. A good entrepreneur knows 1 thing. Location, Location, Location. Sorry buddy, our parking lot is never going to do it do you. He ought to know better than to beg from the locals. It’s the fudgies who have the money up here and they are all vacationing in sunny warm places right now.
So now, after that rather depressing post, I’ve got the weekend off from work and I think I may take a drive up to Northport this weekend with the dog and take some pictures. I’ll have to see how the weather is. Hope you are all doing well, sorry I’ve not written much. I’ve been just too busy and too tired and it’s only going to get more crazy as we head towards spring.
I have a problem. I like to think that most of the time I have the mindset of someone in their mid to late 20’s. You know what I’m talking about….I’m an invincible jackass, I can do anything sort of thing. Trouble is, when you are in your mid 30’s your body has unique ways of sharing with you the fact that you are most defiantly not younger than you really are. I had one of those days today.
Start with the fact that I got about 4 hours of sleep last night for no apparent reason, about 7:30 this morning, while putting up a new price sign at work, I managed to put all my weight back down on one foot and my body said FUCK YOU and fell out from under me! One big problem that I have at work is that I am on my feet all day long (10-12 hours at a time) and on hard concrete floors. Over the past week or so I’ve been having some mild discomfort in my lower legs which is something that is not terribly unusual for me considering what I do and that I tend to work about 50 hours a week. Well, today my leg just decided to give up on me and I pulled the hell out of my lower calf muscle. The timing could not have been worse.
Right about that time and after limping around the store trying to get my job done whilst being the laughing stock of my peers for being gimpy, it was announced that the head office was on the way to the store and we were going to get a surprise inventory audit. My day just got a LOT longer. Because I’m the manager, I have to be there, but because of my leg, I’m in a LOT of pain. Well, be a man dumbass….so I was (like a dumbass) and stuck it out for the next 4 hours waiting for my turn to be audited. Luckily I passed and the bonus I get from this audit will pay for the bullshit that happened next in my day.
As soon as my audit was over, I left work. I was given multiple recommendations for what to do about my leg (heat it, ice it, use Epsom salts…), I decided that a doctor might be better equipped to diagnose the problem and recommend appropriate treatment. So, it was off to Urgent Care. After waiting only 45 minutes (must have been a record for an Urgent Care facility), I was able to see a doctor. She was friendly, took my history, felt me up (my leg that is) and recommended that I go get an ultra-sound to make sure it was not a blood clot. Because this injury did not happen all at once in one fell swoop but sort of crept up and then exploded, she was worried that perhaps there was a bigger issue at play here. So off I went then over to the hospital to see the Radiologists. I’m not a big fan of radiologists, not because they are not nice people but because my experience with them in the past has resulted in having to drink nasty fluids. Not so much for an ultra-sound. I was in and out in 20 minutes and (because of my obvious limp and pain) I got to ride around the hospital in wheelchair so I didn’t have to walk. Well, no blood clots. My veins are just fine. I just have a really badly pulled muscle. So after that it was back to Urgent Care and the doctor went over some exercises that I could do. She offered me drugs, I declined and informed her that I could get by on Ibuprofen (also acceptable in her book). I’ve got this thing about taking pain drugs. Certainly there are times when they are needed but there are many undesirable things that can come out of taking them, one of them being dependence and I really don’t want to even go there. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain and the less medication I have to take the better. So all this consumed about 4 hours of my afternoon.
I was going to write a bit about the Prop 8 trial but at this point I’m tired, still in a bit of pain, and really just looking forward to going to bed and sleeping. I don’t have to do anything tomorrow and I really don’t think I’m going to.
SO, those of you reading this who like to think you are younger than you actually are, DON’T BELIEVE WHAT YOUR HEAD TELLS YOU. Your body is quite a bit meaner than your head and will have no problems seeking revenge on your ass.
Sitting at home tonight on Christmas Eve listening to the broadcast of King’s College Choir Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols and thinking back to doing this same service nearly 10 years in a row with the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys. That service is so burned into my head, I can even recite each of the lessons nearly word for word. Honestly I think it’s the only religious service that ever had any impact on me in-so-far as spirituality is concerned. This is a hard time of the year for me, not really because of any mental stress but because I don’t really have much of an opportunity for singing this time of year, in particular singing the music I love and in the style that I love. There are a few choral ensembles up here in the northwoods but with a retail schedule, I simply don’t have time outside of work to make commitments. That’s the one thing I hate about my job. I’m so tied to it that I have no time for anything outside of work. I suppose that’s just like any number of other people on the planet but it just bugs me. I always made room in my life for music in the past, sometimes to the exclusion of just about everything else. That was back though when having a job and a career wasn’t necessarily a huge priority, nor was it an expectation. I have no doubts that in my retirement, if that ever happens, I’ll be involved once again doing this sort of thing. My worry is though that even now, my voice is so out of shape that it can be exhausting. I should find a vocal coach up here to keep me in shape should I ever have another opportunity.
I managed to finish wrapping all the Christmas gifts tonight. I hate wrapping gifts. I did take my time at it this year though so they look a lot better than in years past. Tomorrow I head out to the parents house for a nice Christmas dinner and some time out at the lake. We are getting freezing rain tonight, hopefully that will not cause too many problems on the roads tomorrow. I know the plows won’t be out at any point tomorrow. They don’t work unless they absolutely have to up here. That can be a disadvantage of living up here, you pay all kinds of money for services that are lackluster at best.
I hope everyone has had a good holiday season, the decade is nearly over and it has flown by. There have been lots of changes in my life over the past decade, in particular the last half of the decade. It’s hard to believe sometimes where I’ve ended up. I’ve learned though in life not to have have any regrets. We all have to make choices about the path we want to follow in life. If we fail to take risks and make changes every now and then, life can become pretty boring. Who knows where I’ll be in another 1o years, or 20 years. Planning that far ahead simply doesn’t allow for opportunities.
As we prepare to close out the year, thanks to all of you who continue to read my blog. This past year this blog has had about 1500 unique visitors. Of those, 300 of you have been back here more than 5 times and 30 of you have been here 20 or more times (amazing what analytical software will tell you). I don’t know who you all are but the things I write about must be interesting enough to keep you coming back. I appreciate the fact that you are interested. I hope everyone has a great “Festivus” and I look forward to continuing this blog and writing about lots of random things for years to come.
As you can see, I’ve got a new theme for this blog. I decided this time to go with something a little simpler and a bit less distracting. Some of my previous theme’s have been a bit on the wacky side. I was able to get WordPress 2.9 installed correctly and everything seems to be working just fine. So now I’m sitting home on a Saturday Night, listening to the Indigo Girls and not really having much to write about tonight…at least I don’t feel like expending the energy to put much thought into a post. This was a 60 hour work week for me due to my little adventure to Wisconsin. To say the least, I am tired and not very motivated tonight. With that, I’ll leave you with another Muppet Video to calm your mind this holiday season.
So the holidays are approaching fast and as you family members are reading this you are likely asking yourself what the hell do I get a person who doesn’t know how to ask for anything (or doesn’t like to anyway). I am a horrible person to shop for when it comes to gifts and presents for holidays and birthdays and so I’ve decided to put together a “wish list” to guide your spending decisions. It’s always a bit awkward to inform other people of things you want them to give to you but it is also a bit of a drag always knowing ahead of time what presents you are getting. This solves both problems and you all might want to consider doing this sort of thing too. My wish list is powered by Amazon.com and over the next few weeks, I will be filling it up with things that I want from high price to low price and everything in between. You can see 4 random items form that list over on the right side of this blog below the category box. You can also get to my list by just going to Amazon.com and typing in my name or you can just click on THIS link.
Now then please follow this helpful tip: If you choose to purchase things for me from my wish list and you do not want to buy them through that web site, please let me know so I can remove the item from the list. If you buy them right through Amazon or by clicking through them on the site, they are taken off automatically (you know like a gift registry). If you would rather not tell me (and I’d rather not be told what you get me since I like surprises), make sure you hang on to the receipts just in case I end up with duplicate items. By the way, I purchased everyone’s holiday gifts on line last year, I saved a TON on money and I never had to deal with assholes at the stores or with out of stock problems. Want to avoid dipshits this holiday season? SHOP ON LINE.
SO there you go. DON’T ASK ME WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS…haha Surprise me this year with things that I want from my wish list.
For most of my life I’ve always lived by the mantra that there are no stupid questions. When someone has a question about something or questions a practice, definition, or some other aspect of life, I’ve always maintained that there truly must be a legitimate reason for asking those questions. Then I started working in retail. I’m not going to go into a long spiel here about some of the things I’ve been asked at work but I will say that I am sick and tired of being asked where the bathroom is and why we don’t have one in the back of the store. I DON’T FUCKING KNOW DIP-SHIT, I didn’t build the store, I just work here. Now, turn your lazy ass around and walk up to the front of the store and do what you should have taken care of before you left home.
Alright, that’s the most annoying question I get asked 500 times a day. My rant tonight really has to do with the level of intelligence I see on a daily basis up here in the northwoods. Granted, I’m not highly educated but I do consider the 3rd grade lessons of speaking in complete sentences something that is important in every day life. I do consider my adolescent years training of knowing how to read, understand, and communicate effectively through appropriate body language something that EVERY person should be able to do.
Alright, thats about all I want to say on that for tonight. I don’t like to rant too much about work because I do like my job. It’s just the people I can’t stand.
Most of you know I read a LOT of blogs on line that pretty much span the spectrum of intelligent political discussion to crude humour. I ran across a quote that I thought was interesting on one of the more obscure blogs that I read.
“The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive…but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.”
- Mark Twain
Someone said on NPR the other day that Religion today is more important in the lives of people than at any other point in recent history. I always have a lot to say about religion, especially science and religion. It’s nice to know that one of the greatest writers in our history also knew of the asshattery of organized religion.
So now it’s off to bed. Off on Tuesday, hopefully the weather will get better up here. This pic cracks me up.
By leelanau2010 ( August 24, 2009 at 7:50 pm) · Filed under random
This is some crazy shit. Check out this video. I loved LEGO as a kid and some of my fondest memories of childhood involve building all kinds of crazy cities and structures with pretty much all of my cousins (since they were all LEGO freaks too). It makes me happy that LEGO is still just as big as it always was.
Watch out world, I’m going on a road trip!! Tomorrow I am officially on vacation and I’m headed off for 2 days in Grand Rapids, 2 days in Chicago, and 3 days in Indianapolis. Wow, what a year it’s been, I can’t wait to finally get out of here for a few days and relax. I’m going to visit several old friends from my past and at the same time, put a few miles on my Dad’s car just for shits and giggles. Really, this vacation could not have come at a better time. I’m literally exhausted from work. I”m burned out and I need this break to get my ambition back. I love my job but shit, everyone needs a break and I’ve not had one in a VERY long time.
So I may or may not write again here until I return in a week. Hope you all enjoy your work week, I’ll be PARTYING (don’t worry, I’m an adult, I can party without being a dumb ass). SO, see you in week!!
By the way, Mom, I’m getting you one of these shirts!!! Wow! LOL!
