Oh, if only I ran into this fucker on the street

On Tuesday morning I rang up a customer for the correct price of his drink, despite the fact that he tried to word his order in a way that I would charge him less. (People like that are my least favorite types...and sadly they are pretty abundant.) Well, when I apologetically wouldn't budge on the price (my manager was right next to me!) he left without getting anything.

I found out today he called the corporate line to file a complaint about me. He told them I was very rude and embarrassed him in front of the other people in line. If my manager hadn't been working with me when this occurred, I'm 99% sure I would have been reprimanded and had corrective action taken against me. But since she was there, she backed me up and pointed out his lies. Corporate, however, did not back me up, and told us that we should have basically let him get away with his (flawed) logic.

The difference in his drink price, folks?

Fifty fucking cents.

GTFO.

Morning times!

I'm the kind of person who stresses over many things, but something peculiar has started happening where the more things are completely fucked up behind the counter the more serene I become at the register. It's really quite lovely. A coworker once told me that one of the reasons she loves opening is that you pretty much know what you're walking into and what needs to happen. It's a clean slate, I guess. That may be why I stress over mid-shifts so much - I just don't know what I'll be walking into.

But yeah, this morning was good (for me at least). Also, my manager mentioned me in the weekly store notes, saying that customers come up to her frequently to complement the drinks I have made for them. Weird, I know. I guess they're just trying to get into my pants or something. On that note, we really do get some creepy ass dudes in the store who like to leer and slip inappropriate comments into the normal business conversation. One of my other female coworkers (who is a latina [and this is relevant]) has even had a dude try and kiss her! She also has had some dudes call her "brown sugar." Gah-ross.

T R I V I A and why St John's sucks.

Last night was too much fun. It was around 8:30pm, and John was on his laptop and I was probably on mine, and we had eaten and were doing that thing where one of us is like "what do you want to do tonight, watch a movie?" and the other says "yeah, sure" and then nothing happens.

Then I think I sent Robert a random text and he calls and invites us to join him at the Flying Saucer, because it's trivia night and he and a few guys are going over to play. And without really asking what John wants I'm immediately like "we're so there."

Well, I don't really say things like that, but you get the idea. John was dragging his feet (haha) but we went and had a BLAST. We didn't place, but we scored like three points less than the winning team and got an honorable mention. One of the rounds was "video game trivia" and although there were no FF or Elder Scroll questions, our team collectively shat ourselves and answered everything perfectly. Maybe even too perfectly.

The final round (and the hardest round) was "Euros," and I was really terrified that it would be all about the currency and that the game would fall on my shoulders as the only coin-collector. There were a few non-coin-related questions, but sadly a few were and I had no clue about them. However, one question asked something like "which European country has featured or will feature King Juan Carlos I on a coin?" and I totally knew it was Spain (duh) but an overly-confident teammate (who went to St Johns HS [ew] and happens to be currently going to UT Law) was fucking determined that the answer was Portugal. I really couldn't offer any reasoning besides my gut feeling, and so the group decided to go with Law School Dude. :( It wasn't the difference-maker, but the first thing I did when I went home was pull out my coin collection and find my King Juan Carlos peseta. Sigh.

Last Week

Last week was a weird one. I didn't have to work on Monday, so I was going to go to lunch with a friend and take it easy, but my mom called and told me that my grandmother had died. Everyone thinks that her heart just gave out after 99 years, which I guess I'm inclined to believe as well. The assisted living staff found her in her favorite chair, and since she never pushed any of the call buttons for a nurse she probably went in her sleep.

I still have her birthday invitation on my fridge.

It's kind of funny how even though she was 99, and even though my mom and dad had been giving my brother and I the whole "we need to go and visit for ____ occasion because it could be her last!" for what seemed like the past ten years, no one really seemed ready for it. Nor okay with it. I mean, this is only the second funeral I've experienced, but the entire congregation of people seemed drastically more upset than at the first funeral I ever went to, Dylan's, and he was in his teens and it was much more tragic in that respect. But maybe I'm biased, being that it was the first death in my family, and that I was sitting with and hanging out with all the other family members. By the way, if there were a prize to be won for the weepiest person at that gathering, I would (amazingly) win it. I guess I say amazing because I was definitely not as close to her as many of the other people there.

I think even if I tried I will never be able to forget the image of my grandmother's sister, the last living sibling of that family, walk up to the open casket at the end of the service and just lose it. It required three fully-grown men to lift her from the floor and help her back to a pew.

So I'm still a little bummed about all of the past week's events, but my coworkers and bosses were so nice and helpful when I had to get all of my shifts covered at the last minute, and John was definitely there for me when I needed him.

Excerpt from "The Meaning of Tingo - and other extraordinary words from around the world"

Kicking the Bucket
Other languages have highly inventive euphemisms for the tricky subject of passing on:

nolikt karoti (Latvian) to put down the spoon
colgar los guantes (Spanish, Central America) to hang up the gloves
sucrer les fraises (French) to sugar the strawberries
de hoek omgaan (Dutch) to go around the corner
bater a bota/esticar a perna (Portuguese) to hit the boot or to stretch the leg
avaler son bulletin de naissance (French) to swallow one's birth certificate


I like the fourth and sixth ones the best. The fourth is pretty cute and comforting while the sixth just makes me laugh.

Colossopendium of New, Revolutionary Sex Positions

In another attempt to get my friends interested in Achewood, I am transcribing an article from the Achewood zine Man Why You Even Got to Do a Thing, written by Ed E. Haskell (aka Roast Beef [aka Chris Onstad]).

Stick of Nitroglycerin
As everyone knows, a stick of nitroglycerin is extremely dangerous, likely to explode at the slightest scrape or movement. In this position, the lady treats your "companion" like it could blow up at any moment, and moves extremely slow and careful as you lay on your back and "have wood." It is extremely important that she is nervous, and has shop goggles on. If either of you talks, the other person has to say "ssssh!"

The Sugar Loaf
The man lies on his side under a single white sheet, curled in the fetal position. The sheet is tucked pretty tightly around him. He is in the middle of the bed. When he hears the lady come into the room, he quietly says, "don't you want to examine this sugar loaf?"

The Gammalon
This is the only sex position believed in by the Church of Scientology. It is said to lead to superior offspring. The principle is that by lying on one's back on a large ball or convex mattress, with the man's "companion" being the highest point of the body, only his strongest seed are able to scale the heights. This concept is easily disproven when one considers that seed are always scaling that height whever the dude is on his back, not just when he's on a dome-shaped mattress.

The Stick It To Ya
Not as raunchy or straightforward as it would seem, this position is actually all about the lady. There is almost no literal "sticking" of "it" to anyone. In fact there is no penetration of any kind. This position is bad. It is pretty weird for the couple. In this position, the lady dies and the man if foreced to grapple with the tragedy alone. They may not even be at the same place when she passes. He may hear about it on the phone.