A Working Lass
Aug. 28th, 2004 07:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fredericksI actually went back to Radioshack today. It was a given: my dad bought a headset for his phone and was unhappy with it, so he asked me to get another one for him. I wasn't hesitant, I just wanted to avoid the place if possible. I'd done what I needed to do, I moved on, and I fully intended to napalm that bridge, like I destroyed all the other ones I've moved across in life. Stepped in after work today, and it was looking overcast, but still not rain-worthy. In were the manager, the co-worker who totally weirded me out, and a cool guy (or a guy that I'm cool with). It wasn't as bad as I thought; no one came down and told me to leave the store immediately, although the manager did rib me a little. I showed off my current bookstore purchase, made the exchange...and then turned around to see it was *pouring* outside. Great. Conversation sort of died, but I lingered inside a little longer, waiting for the rain to stop. After it became too awkward (heh...I'd say two minutes into the downpour) I decided to make a run for it and wait in the Dunkin Donuts a block down instead. Needless to say, by the time I got to the establishment I was soaked. I ordered a bagel and coffee to tide me over while I waited, only to see the rain stopped almost as soon as I made it to my seat. I tried my darnest to make some sort of cosmic logical conclusion from all of that, but all I could come up with was sometimes my decisions are really really stupid. But, even in those cases, you can end up with a blueberry bagel with cream cheese and a medium coffee to smooth things over.
*
Today was my first full shift at Shake and Co. Twasn't that bad, although I was really not feeling the 7:00AM wake-up call, especially since I'd been going from 9AM to 11PM the day before. That monstrosity was a combination of six hours of school and five hours of work, along with the usual long trek back and forth on the F-train. Class itself...again, I have to say that I'm not used to the whole big-ass school set-up. Firstly, I didn't realize that the Brookdale campus (the place where my Orgo and Anatomy classes will be held) was so far away from the 6-train station. My Italian class ended at 12:15, and I had to make my way down to 1st and 25rd for 12:50. By the time I got down to the 23rd Street stop on the train it was 12:40. The train stopped on 23rd and PARK (not even Lexington) so I had to walk about 7 Manhattan blocks to get to where I had to go. No WAY I was going to get there in 10 minutes, factoring in traffic and the fact that I had no bloody clue what entrance to use. So, after rushing (basically race-walking because, yeah, I can't run) to this building, afraid that I was going to lose my place in Orgo Lab, I come to find out that the lab person is nowhere to be found. Everyone is lined up in the dilapidated looking hallway of this place. We wait until around 1:25 (I'm tempted to leave a number of times) when the assistant and the coordinator show up to call off names and let us in.
I've heard horror stories about kids having teachers they can't understand (and I'm noticing that I'm calling college students "kids" now when I used to call them, well, peers) but this is honestly the first time that I've ever had to deal with something like that. My lab instructor has an incredibly strong Chinese accent, and his grasp of the English language is minimal at best. It's a damned good thing that I've done the whole Orgo lab bit before; turns out Orgo students the world over apparently do the same labs. I took the first semester of Orgo at Brown and failed it horribly, but did well in the lab. Hopefully I keep my lab notes and didn't chuck them out of frustration when the final grades came in.
Lab was just check-in (because of the guys inability to communicate with us, he actually had us thinking we were going to do a lab yesterday; that wasn't the case, thank goodness). He did mention that only if we came to lab after 1:20 would we be considered absent, which is a little bit of good news for me. I'm having a hell of a time trying to rearrange my schedule at the moment, and don't think I can move the Italian to another time. I might just have to keep the class from 11:10 to 12:25 Tuesday and Friday, skip out of class ten minutes early on Friday, and then pray that the subways aren't majorly delayed so I can get to lab by 1:00. Afterwards I went back to Hunter to get an ID and then try to see what I could do about the Math requirement for Nursing. I'd forgotten that the Pre-Cal course I'd taken was *mandatory* pass/fail, so Hunter should have given me credit for it (the office got bitchy about transferring over credits to any course I took pass/fail at Brown). I went to the Math Advisor on call to see what he could do about it, and to my delight he told me that I could just skip Math 101 although (because I'd been looking to place into it) and go straight to Statistics (which is the class we needed Math 101 as a pre-req for). He gave me permission for a few of the sections, but all of them were (and remain to this very moment) to be full. I'm going to go back there on Monday and see about this "overtally" thing I've been hearing about. Maybe I can get Stats out of the way this semester, so all I'll have to worry about next semester is the second part of Anatomy.
*
So, right. Work today. Long. But okay. I was working upstairs, so I wasn't dealing so much with students as I was with EastSiders. My co-workers are all pretty chill, for the most part. There is this one girl, though, that totally rubbed me the wrong way. And it's bad, because she was trying to be helpful; I just wasn't having any of it. When I told her that I hadn't had a tour of the store she made it her duty to show me around to all the different sections. Mind you, I was tired and sort of didn't want to be there (it's work, even if it is in a bookstore), so she had a number of external things working for her. But she was just...I hate when people assume you're an idiot when they're showing you something. Assuming people are naive to the workings of a place and assuming that they're short-bus worthy are two things that are often confused. Instead of going spot by spot and saying, for example "in this section, although it's labeled 'Fiction' we put political novels and historical novels as well", something I couldn't have figured out just by reading the placard at the top of the row, she'd just read the blinkin' placards and rattle off the names of authors in the section...which I could figure out just by glancing down. I also could figure out how the books were sorted (whether by author, title, or subject) by reading the conveniently placed signs, but she took it upon herself to tell me that as well. I could see right away that she was one of those workers that considered themselves a perfectionist and thought themselves vastly superior in knowledge to all those around them. One of those people that took a crap job that paid a crap wage and ran with it, perhaps to protect their enormous ego from popping. Then she added little bon mots about what she placed on the shelves and blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong, she was genuinely helpful on the occasion, but overall I just wasn't in the mood to hear it. About a minute into her tour she told me to stop her if I was confused, and after fifteen minutes, when I realized I was spending more time picking up books and reading the backcover as she spoke or zoning out while staring off into space, I told her point blank "I'm sorry, we should stop now, because I'm just not absorbing anything". She looked offended and then I felt a bit guilty, like I should placate her, but then I said "fuck it". What pissed me off even more during the course of the day was that she really seemed to think I was an idiot. If a customer asked me a question she'd jump in to answer it. If I moved in to do shelving, she'd occasionally make it her mission to keep an eye on me and make sure I wasn't screwing up. I'm a follower of the school of thought that goes "if you have a question, ask" and "you learn best through doing", especially when it comes to menial shit like putting books away. Oh yes, I'm going to have so much fun inhabiting the same space as her.
Tomorrow's another day at Shake. It'll be shorter than today, and I get to go in an hour and a half later, so that means more sleep for me. I'm feeling good about that. The store really is going to put me into financial ruin, though. I've been working there three days in total and I've already purchased three books from them. I think I've spent more money over there than I've earned so far. Damn.
*
Today was my first full shift at Shake and Co. Twasn't that bad, although I was really not feeling the 7:00AM wake-up call, especially since I'd been going from 9AM to 11PM the day before. That monstrosity was a combination of six hours of school and five hours of work, along with the usual long trek back and forth on the F-train. Class itself...again, I have to say that I'm not used to the whole big-ass school set-up. Firstly, I didn't realize that the Brookdale campus (the place where my Orgo and Anatomy classes will be held) was so far away from the 6-train station. My Italian class ended at 12:15, and I had to make my way down to 1st and 25rd for 12:50. By the time I got down to the 23rd Street stop on the train it was 12:40. The train stopped on 23rd and PARK (not even Lexington) so I had to walk about 7 Manhattan blocks to get to where I had to go. No WAY I was going to get there in 10 minutes, factoring in traffic and the fact that I had no bloody clue what entrance to use. So, after rushing (basically race-walking because, yeah, I can't run) to this building, afraid that I was going to lose my place in Orgo Lab, I come to find out that the lab person is nowhere to be found. Everyone is lined up in the dilapidated looking hallway of this place. We wait until around 1:25 (I'm tempted to leave a number of times) when the assistant and the coordinator show up to call off names and let us in.
I've heard horror stories about kids having teachers they can't understand (and I'm noticing that I'm calling college students "kids" now when I used to call them, well, peers) but this is honestly the first time that I've ever had to deal with something like that. My lab instructor has an incredibly strong Chinese accent, and his grasp of the English language is minimal at best. It's a damned good thing that I've done the whole Orgo lab bit before; turns out Orgo students the world over apparently do the same labs. I took the first semester of Orgo at Brown and failed it horribly, but did well in the lab. Hopefully I keep my lab notes and didn't chuck them out of frustration when the final grades came in.
Lab was just check-in (because of the guys inability to communicate with us, he actually had us thinking we were going to do a lab yesterday; that wasn't the case, thank goodness). He did mention that only if we came to lab after 1:20 would we be considered absent, which is a little bit of good news for me. I'm having a hell of a time trying to rearrange my schedule at the moment, and don't think I can move the Italian to another time. I might just have to keep the class from 11:10 to 12:25 Tuesday and Friday, skip out of class ten minutes early on Friday, and then pray that the subways aren't majorly delayed so I can get to lab by 1:00. Afterwards I went back to Hunter to get an ID and then try to see what I could do about the Math requirement for Nursing. I'd forgotten that the Pre-Cal course I'd taken was *mandatory* pass/fail, so Hunter should have given me credit for it (the office got bitchy about transferring over credits to any course I took pass/fail at Brown). I went to the Math Advisor on call to see what he could do about it, and to my delight he told me that I could just skip Math 101 although (because I'd been looking to place into it) and go straight to Statistics (which is the class we needed Math 101 as a pre-req for). He gave me permission for a few of the sections, but all of them were (and remain to this very moment) to be full. I'm going to go back there on Monday and see about this "overtally" thing I've been hearing about. Maybe I can get Stats out of the way this semester, so all I'll have to worry about next semester is the second part of Anatomy.
*
So, right. Work today. Long. But okay. I was working upstairs, so I wasn't dealing so much with students as I was with EastSiders. My co-workers are all pretty chill, for the most part. There is this one girl, though, that totally rubbed me the wrong way. And it's bad, because she was trying to be helpful; I just wasn't having any of it. When I told her that I hadn't had a tour of the store she made it her duty to show me around to all the different sections. Mind you, I was tired and sort of didn't want to be there (it's work, even if it is in a bookstore), so she had a number of external things working for her. But she was just...I hate when people assume you're an idiot when they're showing you something. Assuming people are naive to the workings of a place and assuming that they're short-bus worthy are two things that are often confused. Instead of going spot by spot and saying, for example "in this section, although it's labeled 'Fiction' we put political novels and historical novels as well", something I couldn't have figured out just by reading the placard at the top of the row, she'd just read the blinkin' placards and rattle off the names of authors in the section...which I could figure out just by glancing down. I also could figure out how the books were sorted (whether by author, title, or subject) by reading the conveniently placed signs, but she took it upon herself to tell me that as well. I could see right away that she was one of those workers that considered themselves a perfectionist and thought themselves vastly superior in knowledge to all those around them. One of those people that took a crap job that paid a crap wage and ran with it, perhaps to protect their enormous ego from popping. Then she added little bon mots about what she placed on the shelves and blah blah blah. Don't get me wrong, she was genuinely helpful on the occasion, but overall I just wasn't in the mood to hear it. About a minute into her tour she told me to stop her if I was confused, and after fifteen minutes, when I realized I was spending more time picking up books and reading the backcover as she spoke or zoning out while staring off into space, I told her point blank "I'm sorry, we should stop now, because I'm just not absorbing anything". She looked offended and then I felt a bit guilty, like I should placate her, but then I said "fuck it". What pissed me off even more during the course of the day was that she really seemed to think I was an idiot. If a customer asked me a question she'd jump in to answer it. If I moved in to do shelving, she'd occasionally make it her mission to keep an eye on me and make sure I wasn't screwing up. I'm a follower of the school of thought that goes "if you have a question, ask" and "you learn best through doing", especially when it comes to menial shit like putting books away. Oh yes, I'm going to have so much fun inhabiting the same space as her.
Tomorrow's another day at Shake. It'll be shorter than today, and I get to go in an hour and a half later, so that means more sleep for me. I'm feeling good about that. The store really is going to put me into financial ruin, though. I've been working there three days in total and I've already purchased three books from them. I think I've spent more money over there than I've earned so far. Damn.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-28 06:55 pm (UTC)Ha!
Date: 2004-08-28 07:17 pm (UTC)I think the stench comes with the territory. If I go to a station that smells tolerable I actually get alarmed, that's how bad it is.
And I'll keep an eye out for you. Although I've noticed that when kids are rushing in and out I don't look up that often. I'll do my best, though.
Re: Ha!
Date: 2004-08-28 07:34 pm (UTC)