i feel possessed when you come round.

it's technically the ninth of december right now. midnight. well, half-past midnight to be more accurate. so going by these specifications.. i'm seeing U2 tonight. you really don't have any appreciation for just how stoked i am right now, to have the privilege of seeing U2 live. ohhh my god, blog. i don't want to get all fangirly on you, but i thought i'd sooner die than get an opportunity like this. my parents raised me on U2, this is huge. so why am i sitting on the internet, in townsville, at midnight without packed suitcases?



bet that one wasn't hard to figure out. lol. so i'm basically procrastinating from packing my goddamn suitcase as long as i can before i start to get tired/the time lingers closer towards 7:30am (when we leave for the airport). ahhh! well, since i have absolutely nothing to talk about aside from the fact i'm super excited for a concert, i'll tell you about how my day at work was.




that about sums it up. so i rocked up to the shopping complex at 1pm - a nice late start, to find the temperature outside something like 35 degrees. ridiculous. walked inside expecting a nice cool rush of airconditioned freedom and received:

nothing. same temperature indoors. i feared the worst as i approached my workplace and queried them on the temperature and my fears were realised as i was told the airconditioning system had shut down in our store and the management was waiting for someone to come and look at it. of course i'm on registers, sweating my ass off whilst we lose most of our customer business due to the fact that the store is a fucking oven. to make matters worse, the eftpos system ran through like four separate errors throughout the day and it was at the stage where my register backup person and i were swapping customers over between us for cash/card sales respectively. it got busy at times, and i got really snappy.



the airconditioning was shut off until our regional manager came in to inspect stuff and was turned on again around 4pm. while it may seem like not a lot to put up with, crazy clarks brings out the angry sociopath in me and no airconditioning to make my useless presence there worthwhile just kills when you're dealing with shitty, unfriendly customers all day smelling like a greasy locker room. so i made my way through the day and eventually left.

that was my day at work today. interestingly enough, the big poles that separate the roller doors that i have to drag out to each individual spot were excellent today. they slotted in first time every time, and the third roller door next to the florist (which is broken and requires a ladder + careful fiddling with to pull completely down) descended right to the bottom on its first try. i actually patted it and told it what a good job it did. customers must have thought i was nuts.



guess i'd better start packing since i've managed to waste an hour here already. eep, i'm so excited for my show! i hope my pets are okay while i'm away.. my fish should be okay, budgies and finches should be fine, i'll leave an instruction leaflet for my grandfather to tend to the parrots, and i've prepared food for him to give leo so there shouldn't be any dramas. i hate to leave them though. well, i'd best be heading off to fill this infernal suitcase with items of clothing and toiletries and crap you take with you when you go on a plane somewhere. catch you later blog. :D

dust from a distant sun, will shower over everyone

*post was done at 11am, but my computer dictated that i post it six hours later. okay then, computer. you just keep doing what you're doing*


ugh, i have finally awoken from my slumber and cracked myself out of my tired stupor. guess what, y'all. it's sunday! i'll tell you about my shift yesterday.

since my brother goes to tennis on saturday mornings, we had to leave at 8am and get me to work about 20 minutes before my shift started. which meant that i was up at 5:30am to allow myself the time in the shower, time to eat breakfast, and time to get my hair dried and straightened out that i need in the morning when my reflexes are about 4x slower than usual. so i rocked up to annandale central at 8:10am feeling like crap. i didn't have any sleep the previous night because i'm an idiot, so getting out of bed wasn't the issue. it was fighting the urge to not just drop.

so we opened up the shop, and 8:30am rolled around fast enough. it was then, that i realised: 20% off storewide. 50% off christmas ware. 30% off toys.



needless to say, my dreams of a nice quiet saturday with minimal customer traffic were smashed in front of my eyes when i saw the sign out the front. it was one of the busiest shifts ever. we made almost $11,000 in sales yesterday alone. halfway through the day, we ran out of the 7ft christmas trees and the one that was on display was the only one left. of course a lady wanted the display model because it's easier to buy the one already assembled with all the lovely decorations, tinsel, fake snow and lights: collectively a 2 hour effort last month by yours truly. so that was another hour of my day, disassembling it and breathing in ten tonnes of false snow (to give you an idea, its just like sticking your face in a box filled with glitter, sneezing in the box and having to inhale all of it again, rinse repeat) so by the end of it i looked like i'd been rained on, or i had really bad dandruff, haha. so i ran out the back and grabbed a flatpack trolley, wheeled all this lady's stuff to the registers and sculled the rest of my waterbottle.



that was memorable customer number one. she thanked shantell, said her girls were excellent, "this little one in particular" (moi ;D) so that boosted my mood somewhat. i then went on my ten minute break and went to investigate what was left in the lighting section. obviously this is completely impossible when i'm in my work uniform, every fucker wanted a price on something. then a lady asked if i could take down one of the moving reindeer displays instead of her buying one in a box to save having to assemble it later. asked manager, received negative response. so she asked if i could assemble one for her. asked manager, received mixed negative response. i did it anyway, and that was another hour of my shift gone. those things are so much harder to put together than they look. so once that was done, i brought her things to the registers once more and helped her to her car. she tipped me $10. that put me into platinum mood, and i finally went to go on my break. good timing too, my parents happened to stroll into crazy clarks so i got to lose the professional attitude and browsed the lights with them, pretending i was helping them out so people wouldn't attack me for more prices.



dug out three packs of blue icicle lights and the inflatable santa chimney display that i wanted, paid for mum's stuff, grabbed two bags of bird seed and ended up only spending $75. wicked. grabbed a waterbottle with $5 cashout because i'm poor as christ and had lunch. then i was back on the registers and i had a lady come through with a stroller and a naughty child. she looked at me, looking as stressed as possible and said "autism. attention deficit disorder, sensory disorder".. and seriously recited about ten different disorders.. "..you name it, he's got it. VICTOR STOP, COME HERE NOW." paid for her stuff, and walked out. i gave her half a smile and told her to try and take the rest of her day easy. she left her credit card in the EFTPOS terminal in a swarm of anger and that parental rush that just spews "i'm busy today". fortunately the next lady in line was a nice enough woman, and offered to chase her down. i set the sale up so she could just pay by debit card and grab her things and leave, took the previous customer's card and chased her down.



god, i don't think i've run faster in my life! she moved so fast, i had to sprint to catch her before she drove off. poor thing, i felt bad for her. so i ran back to crazy clarks to deal with the fifteen mile long line of angry people banked up behind register two for the next half hour.

the rest of the shift flew so fast, it was incredible. closed it down, counted the registers, and got right out of there. i then met up with my family and we went to coles to grab a few groceries. we then headed home and had dinner, and dad had three one-nighter movies for us to watch last night but i fell straight asleep when i sat down to watch them. i felt terrible, but really i was running on empty and would've fainted either way. that was the end of my saturday.




sunday started with me being forced awake from where i'd fallen asleep on the couch last night at roughly 9am. i was completely immobile; my body just wouldn't move from where it was. i was stuffed from yesterday, and it took my dad physically pulling me off the couch and a hard landing on the floor that i swear nearly cracked my teeth to get me to move. so i wobbled around vacantly trying to figure out what i should do, thinking i'd slept until like 4pm, when i realised what time it was and felt better about the fact i hadn't wasted the whole day as i'd previously thought. work is great like that, it makes me sleep in regular patterns, just like normal people!

i can't believe i've worked a collective 24 hours this week, that's awesome. i'm feeling it though; i'm not used to work having money for me. it's kinda ridiculous. i love the current management layout though. i must have done something right to be getting more hours than most other crazy's casual people at the moment. ahh. well, i might let you know how the rest of this day pans out if i have time later. for now, i must depart. mother's been screaming at me to tend to my birds for the last two hours. au revior!

oh THERE'S my hatred of humanity, i wondered where it'd gotten to

today, i woke up at 7am on the dot to the sound of my phone singing minnie the moocher, blues brothers style! haha. so i made my way into the kitchen and grabbed an energy drink because the previous night i'd only had about four hours of sleep because i'm an idiot (of course) and surprisingly enough i felt pretty much spot on from there. showered, jumped into my uniform and headed to work. then i got showered in favouritism by my manager (which is just, the absolute bomb. seriously. i can do no wrong apparently) and made my way through the day.



updated my facebook status from my phone halfway through my day, and eventually it got to around fifteen minutes before closing time. i was feeling absolutely stuffed, it was just such a boring, uneventful day. then something a little unpleasant happened.



at the time i was dealing with this big ass line of customers on my own cuz my register back-up guy went to the toilet, and this lady came through. i try to be as friendly and super nice to people as possible, and... i treated her with so much respect, and when i offered her cashout at the end of the sale she was like 'yeah just take it up to $60 please' (meaning, the total eftpos transaction equals whatever her purchase costs + the extra money in cashout to make the total transaction $60, you probably know that but anyway) so yeah, i was like "alright then no worries, just give me a second and i'll grab a calculator and fix that right up for you."

her total sale was $34.63, and i had a big line + i'm really bad at off-the-top-of-my-head calculations and didn't want to mess up, but i couldn't find my calculator anywhere because the lazy fuckers i work with decide it's a fabulous idea to just move shit around and not put it back (case in point: every stanley knife ever) and so i said to this lady "look i'm really sorry, but i can't seem to find the calculator!" and she gave me this look, as if to say.. are you serious? you actually need a calculator? and i said "hmm.. what'd that be.." and i guessed the cashout total in my head, impressing myself and taking the total sale to $60.99. and i asked her was she happy with that amount because my maths wasn't quite adequate after 8 hours of mindless packaging (i was just joking with her, being friendly and stuff) and she's like "you're serious? did you quit grade 10 to work here or something?" and half smiled at me, real bitch.



so i gave her a nasty smile back, and i said to her, "why, is that what you did?" and she's like "what's that supposed to mean?" and i said "look, don't insult me. i'm being polite, i'm processing your sale. i could be out living, but i'm in here doing this. so do you want your cashout? i'm quite content to stand here forever and make all these tired people wait while you make up your mind." and she was like "just give me $20." so i processed her sale and told her to have a lovely afternoon.



if she complains to management, fuck her. i think our store manager knows quite explicitly that i'm not an unkind fool who just gives customers backchat. the next lady in line said "good one" to me. i then proceeded to shit bricks after realizing what i'd just done and served everyone at 2x speed. then it was hometime, and i got right out of there.

that's the first time in three years i've ever stood up to someone giving me crap about working at crazy clarks to their face.

Achievement Unlocked: Realised Self-Worth - 100G