:: Searching for Puck... ::

:: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 ::

Very little has been going right lately.

First off, my job. I'm tired of it. It's really reached a point where it's seriously impacting my health, both mental and physical. For those of you uninitiated, let me sum up my job.

I make two different pay rates, 7 and 9 an hour. The 7 an hour is when I am a 'countergirl' - basically I answer phones and take orders. However, because I am the oldest there and, due to that, one of the very few workers with cars, I get called upon both to use the deli slicer (no one under 18 is allowed to run it - my work breaks about seven billion other laws, including working hours for minors and paying all of us under the table, but for some reason holds this one sacred...) and to take deliveries when the drivers aren't moving fast enough for the current manager on shift (usually bob, the owner, is the one who makes me do this, 9 times out of ten completely unecessarily.) Also, during my 'countergirl' shifts, I'm seemingly expected to, lately, do most of the manager's work - cashing out a delivery driver, cashing out the drawer, making the deposit....things that no other counter girl there would even be allowed to do. I only have two 'manager' shifts a week - saturday night and sunday morning. My schedule is Monday 10:30-4, Wednesday 10:30-4, Friday 10:30-4 , Saturday 4-10:30 and Sunday 10:30-4. I make about $220 a week.

Bob, the owner, is old. He's like 60 and practically blind and definately at least half deaf. Also ignorant and stubborn as a god damn mule. He makes us do really stupid and unecessary things, like keeping the pizza cutters submerged in water, so all the oil floats to the top and coats the handle, so you pick up this cold, dripping slimy thing every time you have to cut a pizza, sometimes in front of a customer. You get grease all over your hands, water on the pie, and a huge mess if the shallow container ever tips over. And that's only one small thing out of hundreds...before I get into the cause of this rant, let me explain the coffee situation.

When I first started working at Luigi's, back last September, Indigo Coffee opened up on the corner of the complex, a couple of stores down. By far, the best store in the entire complex...new, modern, very tasteful decorating, very friendly owners (Dave and Ilyana) - the whole bit. Well, as some coffee houses do, they started experimenting with wares a little...first some cookies, then some bagels, a muffin or two, and literally, a single panini sandwich, maybe two, a day. Nothing huge, just something to grab if you're on a lunch break or headed out in the morning with your coffee. Well, of course, Bob gave birth when he heard.

He found out because he saw carol (who runs the drycleaners next to us) walking by with a panini sandwich in hand. He came out of OUR store, followed her into HER store, and started accosting (not asking politely, *accosting*) her about where the sandwich came from (and why she wasn't buying it from us!). Literally, before bob cared, this whole thing was a total non-event. It was like remarking there was a lot of breathable air out today. It wasn't even a concept worth notice. So, of course, Bob turned it into world war 3.

He stormed down to indigo and started immediately getting loud with Dave, and when Dave tried to get a world in edgewise, Bob got even louder. He got so purple in the face that Dave stopped arguing with him, because, in his own words, "I was honestly afraid the guy was going to have a heart attack in my store". Now, I will take Dave's word over Bob's anyday, and I know that's how it happened. Bob is exactly like a toddler when he doesn't get what he wants. So, bob comes back with this whole story about how he *tried* to reason with Dave, but Dave was an asshole and refused to take the sandwiches and all the rest of his food away at Bob's mere asking, and this meant war because we had it in our lease that no one else in the complex could sell food. In reality, we don't, because bob called the landlord about it, and the landlord said 'eh'. In reality, DAVE has it in HIS lease that no one else can sell COFFEE. So, of course, what does Bob decide to do?

In a bold move of total idiocy, and complete economical stupidity, Bob decides to drop a mint on coffee. Yes, we, a pizza place that doesn't open until 11, can barely afford to keep up with our bills and paychecks, and are still stinging from the fantastic monetary and mechanical failure that an Italian Ice cooler had proved to be. Never mind that the ice machine leaks like a sieve onto the carpet in the dining room, never mind our air conditioner leaks like a sieve through the ceiling tiles and onto the customers below, never mind that the seat in the women's room toilet is fastened by one peg only and thus going to the bathroom is like trying to ride a mechanical bull, never mind that all of our dinnerware is mismatched and directly from the dollar store. No, to hell with all that! Let's get coffee!

Not just coffee, oh no. Two coffee machines, two airpots, five different kinds of flavored creamers, every sugar and non-sugar-substitute known to man, three different kinds of flavored coffee, regular coffee, decaf coffee, a new cooler (which is, in reality, a very old, poorly designed, scratched and scuffed poland springs secondhand cooler) with new bottled water, ANOTHER new cooler, apple and orange juice, promotional materials and posters out the ass for all the aforementioned items, and, as if that wasn't enough, muffins and danishes from costco.

Mind you, we have ZERO counter space, as it is. As a result, all of our condiments had to be crammed into the already really crowded counter with the paper plates and forks on the customer side of things. The coffee has totally taken up our side counter. On the FRONT counter (i.e., where we stand behind with the computers and phones) bob has piled tons of cookies, crackers, and more cookies (it looks REALLY untidy there, but god forbid we move anything) so we can barely even see the customers - apparently, boxes of shit from costco that he blatantly overprices are more important to look at. Guess who has to make price tags for everything, too? Me, of course. Ugh.

So the muffin thing...that brings me to my rant. Diane (bob's much younger wife, no idea why she's with him - all he seems to do is patronize her and yell at her) comes in with the danishes and muffins from costco, and Bob's looking over them, trying to figure out prices. Being as I'm on the side of the counter with the calculator, I ask him if he'd like me to do the division and figure out the cost per item. Well, you'd think I asked him if he wanted to stab himself with a pen. He BLEW up at me, saying basically I was implying he was an idiot and couldn't do math. And he ran with it for awhile. A long while.

He settled on 2 bucks for each muffin (mind you, the 12 pack was $5.24) because 'that's what starbucks and all them charge'. Diane disagreed quietly and politely, and he TOTALLY blew up at her, shoving the pen and paper at her and saying "fine, you know so much? YOU tell me what they should be, then..". Loudly. She and I bent over the muffins, and I did the calculations, and, very quietly I told Diane that if we wanted to make a 200% profit, we could charge about 90 cents. Bob, who normally can't hear a cannon going off three inches from his ear, starts screaming. He gets REALLY pissed off and threatens to lock the door and do some 'major housekeeping'. He threatened me and diane with violence, and threatened to fire me. Though, truth be told, it's the violence that gives me pause.

Later on that day, I got a heavy 6-pack of muslin tablecloths bound with plastic cording thrown at my legs because Glenn was pissed. The table cloths hadn't been changed - it was monday, and he'd told me to do it Friday afternoon 'some time over the weekend', and if I couldn't get to it, to tell Laura to. Well, I did tell Laura to, twice, and she didn't. Saturday night, it was busy as all hell and one girl called out sick, and the other had taken off to flordia without a cover on Glenn's permission (he 'forgot to tell me') so I was left with NO phone crew, NO one to take pies out of the oven, NO one to waitress, and NO one to wait on customers and do computer. Luckily James came in for a bit, but he could only stay for about three hours. I did all the closing stuff, and worked my ass off all night doing three jobs at once. So, no tablecloths that day. Sunday, I was on in the morning, but was really sick and had to go home early in the afternoon, but I reminded Laura about the tablecloths before she took over for me. Monday morning, I even told Claire we had to do them when the rush settled down, it just never did. Yet I get objects physically thrown at me when someone else drops the ball. I realized, in that moment, with my legs stinging and Glenn's curses ringing my ears, that my time at Luigi's is just about over. There's only so much one person can honestly endure.

I wish jobs would bother to call me back once in awhile.

~Fox

:: Fox 8/31/2004 10:04:00 AM [Say what?] ::
...