I Just Can't Walk Away

( TMI )

Made it through last week at work by basically bullying myself and repeating "holiday pay, holiday pay, and also maybe Tony's right and we get the "sucks to suck, 24 hour store employees" bonus" over and over.

Did I update you on Thanksgiving shenanigans? I don't think I did.

So, a new overnight SFL was supposed to work Thursday onward, but this same guy also BEGGED to start his overnights the week before and then we never saw him, even though he was on the schedule for Wed-Sun. Any attempts to find out if he'd spoken to anyone at the store were met with "dunno, but hope not." We're down to basically a skeleton crew, again (still?) for SFLs and two of those were in Atlanta for the holiday. I was surprised when I walked in and saw Z's name on the task list as she always gave strong "no 3rd shift" vibes. She shows up late (ish?) and at some point after she came in, she kinda hinted that she was a little drunk/hungover. I wasn't sure if she was joking because she seemed sleepy but fine. Around 2:20am, I paged her because some skank ran out of the store, leaving a trail of stuff in her wake. I'm really not sure WTF happened, only that I heard thumps, went to see and found a bunch of boxes of condoms and makeup and other stuff in front of the door and then outside going around the building. I asked Z if she'd seen anyone and she said no, but since it took her a good solid 5 minutes to answer the page, I was pretty sure she hadn't been on the sales floor anyway. She tells me she's going on a 15 and heads outside.

Btw, Thanksgiving night got COLD (for us), so I figured maybe she was doing the shock to your system/smoke wakeup thing and didn't think too much of it. Until I realized we were getting awfully close to my lunch time and I hadn't seen her. Lunch comes and goes and I'm a little miffed, but I'm working on a project, so I decide I probably misunderstood her and she said a 30, which would still be over but not by that much. At some point I have to run to the bathroom and I chance it, after telling the only customer I see that I'll brb.

To keep this relatively short, I eventually go outside and realize there are maybe 5 cars in the lot that could be hers and I can't see her in any of them, but there's a couple of options that have really heavily tinted windows and one where I can see someone who could maaaaaaaaaaybe be her but I don't think so. I'm not about to knock on a stranger's door though because we're located at the corner of crazy and shoot first, ask questions never, my riiiiiiiiiiiiiights. So yeah, no.

I'm beyond pissed at this point because she's been gone for hours and I'd be willing to bet good money she was asleep in the store prior to that, or at least on her phone not actually working. I'm also hungry and realizing that oh, shit, period has kicked in and might be trying to go for high gear. I ask Tony if he's seen her and he says no, I lay out the likelihood that she's asleep in her car outside and he asks if I want to go knock on the doors. Nope. In the meantime, we're down to three cars, only one of which definitely has someone in it, and he's pretty sure that's her. It's also the car with the most heavily tinted windows so you can't see shit. He sets his car alarm off, sees the person in the car get up and we applaud ourselves and wait for her to come in.

It's damn near 6am when we go from "I really should've run to the bathroom" to "I'm just going straight home ASAP" as I wait for Sam to arrive, or Z to come back in and ... yeah. Sam comes up after a much longer wait than I could really afford, I explain the situation as "Z's asleep outside, we tried waking her, it didn't work, I really gotta go before I die." Because I feel godawful at this point. I run to the back, hit the bathroom, clock out, and then head up front where Sam tells me that wasn't Z in the car.

FUCK. So I drop my stuff off in the car and go check the other vehicles in the parking lot, only to come up empty. DOUBLE FUCK. I call the SM on my way back inside and get voicemail. I leave one and then send a text basically saying we lost Z, Sam's here, I clocked out already before I knew Z was gone, wtf does he want done? Once inside, I realize all our customers are in line, so I tell Sam we're gonna ring these nice people up, close the doors, and then figure it out. We get lucky that no one new comes in, but the registers are SO SLOW at that point that in the time it takes to even log back in on my register, Sam's finished with ringing up the last customer, so I go lock the doors and she texts/calls the ESM. We go tell Tony what's up, go look at the schedule and realize Z is the only SFL on the schedule ALL DAY. I'd known no one was scheduled for the morning but figured that meant the SM was gonna work (he was) but he wasn't gonna be in til 7:30 at the earliest. o_O So Sam and I see the schedule and echange A LOOK and eventually decide that
a) she's just gonna work on totes til someone comes in, and texts her morning coworkers to just call/text when they're here and she'll let them in and
b) she doesn't need me to stay, which is good since I'm not clocked in officially (I did make sure the SM knew when I did actually leave/stop working though) and also about three steps after I showed her how to lock the door and double checked it was locked, period slammed into me.


tl;dr- My overnight SFL ditched me at some point overnight but didn't tell me, so I spent the rest of my shift without any backup and clocked out without realizing I'd need to be there another half an hour to figure out shit.

I'm still not sure which scenario I'm more inclined to believe:
1) she WAS in the car that disappeared before 5am, but woke up and either decided "fuck it" or was so out of it that she didn't remember WHY she was still at work and just... left
2) she left as soon as she went outside.


So. Yeah. Thanksgiving. Other than that, it wasn't bad at work. About the time the temps really took a nose dive, things got relatively quiet and had I known she ditched me, I could've closed and finished my project and not worried about bathroom issues which would've been heaven.

Sigh.


Hungry and headache-y, so we'll discuss indie polish sales wank later.

Nothing like waking up to a text from one's store manager asking, "are you coming in tonight?" Ummmm...no? Apparently not because I didn't see the text until after my shift would have ended and also DUDE. I swear I triple checked the schedule -once when I made sure my request went through on the comp, once when I noticed the schedules were both up, and morning I left for vacation to begin. I specifically remember the last two because I mentioned both to Mums. I haven't heard anything back, I made sure no one called the house (though I was napping on the couch for awhile when my shift would've started so I would have heard it) and now I'm wondering if after a billion years, I'm getting my first NC/NS because either I'm a total idiot and misread the schedule or he did... or they changed it after I went on vacation and expected me to magically know.


:/


eta: I remain not an idiot! He apparently checked the wrong day. Phew.

On the third day of Christmas Walgreens gave to me... firing my fellow overnight employee.

I'd meant to post that on the third but life has gotten in the way. Anyway, I decided to take work up on their ever so generous offer to let me work overtime this week and work tonight. Honestly, if they'd said hey, you wanna just work straight til the 13th, I'd have said yes faster than I did for the two days they did wind up begging me to work. I agreed to work tonight since that'll mean holiday pay and OT on one check (huzzah!) and then next Monday but ONLY because they apparently couldn't get anyone to work.

This, corporate, is why you don't fire people at the holidays. Because when C told me, "well, guess A's gone," I damn near died laughing internally because uh, guys? I'm gonna be out for a bit and without A, that leaves no minions to work overnight in the immediate lead up to Christmas. I did not laugh aloud though, as that would be rude.

Alas, Fridays and Saturdays are getting much busier between us being the only thing open and the festival of lights kicking into high gear. Last night I spent damn near three hours in photo, and don't think I didn't spend every one cursing B who started printing an order for somewhere between 12 and 20 photo books. That I have no idea how to assemble! Why even start that mess if there's no chance in hell of finishing it? And why, oh why, was the promise time something like an hour after it had been submitted? It takes that long to print just half the order, let alone do anything with it! Somewhere around 2am it just stopped printing and neither of us could figure out what to do. Neither did D who came in to relieve me sooooooo... who knows.

Anyway. Agreed to work because I'm looking at likely at least a month off and I remind you all that is unpaid. I work retail. This is going to be...interesting, I suppose.

Work was pretty dead last night, which is not me complaining. Since today is the last day of the month, it's cig count and new tags get hung tonight. Because my boss loves me, she talked the store manager into letting me not count the cigs in order to do the tags instead. To make that job easier on the girl who has to do it instead, I went through and sorted things so it'll be really easy to count them.

And then around 5am I'm filling the area in front of the registers and I see a guy walking by the cos windows. And I just know it's the big guy who hops the counter and steals our cartons of cigs. He turns and then comes in and I'm not 100% sure because I've only seen him once before. I say hello and he says good morning and I take a step to the side because either he IS the guy and I don't want to find out if he's the shoving sort or he's not the guy and I'm in his way. The absolute second I take the first step, up and over he goes.


The best part is one of our regulars was in the store and he comes up as Biggie is raiding the Marlboros, and you can tell he doesn't realize the guy isn't an employee. And then it dawns on him and that's when Biggie hauls ass. Because he doesn't care whether we're around but customers are another thing entirely. He was in such a hurry that he dropped one of the cartons.

As I'm making my list of possibly stolen items, another customer comes in and warns us that today's gonna suck because everyone's going to be rushing to the stores for provisions because Dorian is now expected to make landfall near the GA/SC border. JOY.

G'ah. I don't think I'm going to get to go swimming today. Stupid period showed up last night and while it does explain the back pain it's not exactly thrilling. And I didn't go yesterday morning because by the time I got home from work (we stopped at the store), the walk from the car to the house was already too hot. The sun, it blinds and overheats me!

Sooooo... work. We officially opened Friday and I went in at midnight Friday and Saturday. It's... different. I don't spend a lot of time going into other drugstores but apparently our new store is set up like a lot of the newer stores. Which makes sense since duh, obviously they're going for a uniform thing. We do seem to have the fancier layout for cos, but our cos head moved to overnights so I don't know how that's going to work. Also, I still think it's ridiculous to have cos right by the windows, y'know? Ah well.
The store itself is bigger in a LOT of ways. There are more aisles, the aisles themselves are longer, the stockroom seems massive though I'm pretty sure I'll think differently once we start getting in promo stuff for say, back to school or an actual holiday. Pharmacy is huuuuuuuge on the customer side (I'm not special so I've not been behind the magic doors to see how it is from an employee viewpoint)... you get the idea. Oddly enough, the aisles themselves are more squished together which should make doing the floors at night easier. But it doesn't. Because whatever our floor is made of, it refuses to let the dustmop work. You'll sweep something up and then realize that as soon as you moved around one of the poles or something, you've lost your bit of trash/dust/whatever. And since there's a lot more floor to cover, doing the floors takes me a goddamned hour every night. And you can't even tell because not only does the floor repel the dustmop, it won't give up anything with a regular mop, either. So it's a waste of time!
Anyway. Since I also have only a general idea of where things are (whereas before I could pretty much tell you exactly where to find it) trying to put things away from the old store is a pain. Which I'd be okay with if half the stuff wasn't not sold at the new store because... why? There's more room, why are we cutting our selection of stuff? I don't get it! And it's not even like it's the stuff we never sold that's being cut. o_O So then you have to hike all the shit you can't find back to the cavernous stockroom and try to find a place to put it because heaven forbid we leave it in totes even though it's taken over about half the stock carts at this point. So that kills even more time. There are lunches (and I will say the new breakroom having the timeclock is kinda genius) and then there's the most difficult thing of all:
There is no way on earth to watch the front of the store if you are not standing at the wall o' registers or the front of a couple of aisles. And I do mean the front of that aisle, you cannot just wander down any of them and still see the damn registers because it's a wall of them so you can't tell when someone is randomly standing in front of say, the photo register because how are they to know which one you're actually ringing on? Which means you can't really do anything if you're covering the front for someone else. At first I thought the really annoying automated "welcome!" thing would at least alert us to when someone came in, but it also says "welcome!" when they leave and it doesn't trigger for everyone, so you can't rely on that.

Basically, the old way of doing things will not work at the new store and I'm going to burn myself out until people realize it and shift expectations accordingly. It doesn't help that we have a new overnight lead and she's working on the how things worked at the other store playbook, along with S who doesn't seem to comprehend that if she's outside doing the parking lot, I have to be standing up front and not doing my job and the longer she's out there, the less time I have to run through the hardest fucking aisles and ohholyfuck, woman, you still haven't touched the last three of your aisles and I... I'm going to just lose my damn mind, honestly.

tl;dr version: the store is set up like a maze which makes my job infinitely harder than it should be. The floor is made of evil and this sucks because my store manager has a thing about the floors. Half the stuff we moved over isn't even being sold at our store and I'm losing my mind.

It doesn't help that half the stuff we are still carrying isn't in the system. On the plus side, no liquor license yet.


In happier news, my B&BW order shipped already. I'm not sure I believe it when they say it should be here today but I'm happy to be wrong!

I suppose how I feel about Tuesdays is how most people feel about Mondays. Sigh. Work looms overhead and I think of how I squandered my days off. Squandered! Only I actually rather enjoyed a good chunk of yesterday (not the start really, but we'll go into that one day, maybe) so it's not really squandered, just gone. Sigh.

If I'm less than lazy, I'll get around to photographing the AG army in their holiday finery. Sometime this year I'm going to have to acquire more actual holiday dresses because by the end I was seriously fudging with the whole "holiday" thing. On the plus side, I think Felicity looks gorgeous so it's not a total wash, it's just I wouldn't really consider the peach dress a holiday dress. But there we are. Also, future!me, more Halloween costumes that require no thought in October about how to assemble them. I want actual, legit costumes, dammit.

While finishing dressing the army, I listened to a fair amount of youtube best of 2016/new for 2017 vids, so we'll report on the new stuff I tried out recently because why not.
Wet n Wild Mega Cushion Soft Matte Lip Cream is first up because when I got out of the shower, I saw this on my vanity. I don't know how I feel about this one, honestly. At 4.99, it's pretty damn pricey when you consider the fact that there's a cushion sponge that eats more than half the product. Seriously, the first time you use it, you will maybe, maybe, MAYBE get a quarter of the actual product onto your lips and that's not cute. The first review I saw on this had a comment (and that's not the review I linked to, btw) that said it was meant to be more of a Korean beauty thing where you dab the color on and it's a faded/muted/whatever look instead of actually relying on the sponge/cushion to apply the product. Which makes sense, except the cushion is hard as a freakin' tennis ball and doesn't really work in that way. I tried to work it that way later after my first "um, I am not smart enough for this, clearly" try.
You might be wondering why I'd be conflicted considering nothing I've said thus far is at all complimentary. Well, that's where the actual product comes in. I kinda love it. The colors leave a little to be desired, but if you're going for the sheered out pink (which is all I managed to work my way up to because the full dose of that pink on me would be a bad thing) it's really, stupidly pretty. Also, it feels amazing when it's on and it lasts a decent amount of time when you don't glop it on. Like rub your lips together happily just to feel it over and over again kind of good.
So I cannot recommend buying this at full price but it's something I wouldn't say is awful at the end of the day. Just...strange?

Sally Hansen Color Therapy has been at the store for awhile and when I got around to looking at the reviews and found that link. And I promptly fell in love with the combo of Indiglow and Soothing Sapphire that as soon as we had a sale at work.
The polishes smell kinda weird but not bad. Just weird, so I assume that's the argan oil but who knows? Neither shade stained but I did use a basecoat because I don't trust blues to not stain like a mofo so there's that. Also, used a top coat even though this is supposed to be a one and done line, I think. Mixed results were had.
On my left hand where I painted two nails (the other three still sported my NYE WnW Rising Star polish which is still one of the most commented on colors, even all these years later) and remembered to cap the nail, they probably would have lasted another three/four days and had yet to chip at all. (My top coat of choice kind of shatters polish which I don't mind because I get a week out of it and then it just kinda pops off all at once. No remover required!) My right hand wasn't as pretty because, y'know, not left handed, and I didn't remember to cap the nails. Tip wear within 12 hours, chipping in 24, and basically nothing special aside from the color. I recreated the Indiglow/Soothing Sapphire combo and I've gotta say that while it didn't get as many compliments as Rising Star did, it did garner its fair share and was just stupidly pretty anytime I saw my nails at work. I was going to say in sunlight, but it rained and was overcast for most of last week so... enh.
I wouldn't spend 8.99 on these (work's price), but the 6.99 price tag I've seen elsewhere (and the sale price at work) isn't awful and the colors are prettifuls.

In case you wondered, the winter storm didn't do much to us this weekend other than bring some cold rain and then make puddles ice over in pretty star patterns. So not completely frozen, just enough to crunch satisfyingly when walking the dog. I'd complain about not getting snow but work's having an issue with people showing up as it is and I don't really want to have to call out anytime soon. *knocks on wood*
Also, tonight I have to leave a note about something I noticed last week. Work switched to PTO a few years ago so that they could screw their employees prevent people from getting their vacation in January, taking all their days, and then quit. So we accrue time off very, very slowly. Anyway, because I'd asked for last Tuesday off, been approved only to not actually have that appear on the schedule, I kept an eye on my time off hours. I should have printed it when I checked last Sunday or Monday but didn't because I'm lazy. Anyway, when I checked, I was at 24 hours and some minutes, I dunno how many. When I checked Tuesday night, I was down to 20 hours and five minutes. Ummmm... no? I mentioned it to my immediate supervisor and she'd never heard of anything happening like that but she also admitted that it's not like that means a whole lot for this particular issue and suggested I wait to see if it was possibly tied to the checks or just a system hiccup, and if it was still screwy, I could talk to them Thursday morning since I'd still be here when the people I'd have to talk to about it would be there. Makes sense. Only Thursday morning came and the morning minion level employees didn't bother to show up, either at all or on time. It didn't seem the time to ask anyone about anything and instead seemed smarter to run as soon as they said I could.
And the rest of the week basically progressed in the same way. This week my hours went up to 23, almost 24, but that's just the accrual from last week's work week so... I'm gonna have to leave a note asking if they can do anything or if I need to go ahead and email corporate. I guess this works out better because if something can be done on a store level, tomorrow is the day to do it since it's payroll or at least the day before and thus it'll be fresh in their minds. I have no idea what happened though, or what could have happened. I'd say maybe I imagined it but the week before I was at 21 hours and if you look back you can figure out my average accrual rate... so I don't remember where I was going with this other than I should've been at 24ish last week and I'd like my time and blergh.

I think the lack of noise from the upstairs means my laundry needs me and that means it's nap time. Maybe I'll finish the dream I was so rudely awakened from earlier.

I haven't much time, but I do have to wonder if it's the PMS or the fact that I'm kind of touchy or if this really is as WTF-worthy as I thought.

Phone rings at work. I answer as quickly as I can without being rude to the person I was helping. Is Store Manager. He asks how I am. I'm... fine. I realize in the three seconds it takes for my mouth to catch up with my brain that he seems to think I didn't go to work on Thursday because I was sick. Or "sick." Uh, no. I told both managers that it was because it was my parents' 38th anniversary, or it would have been, and I was worried about Mums. She was not all that together on Wednesday, but Kathleen needed the night off because she had a family emergency.

So then he says that's good, but that I'm down to what, two sick days, and I'm really cutting it close and I need to watch that.

Take a moment.

Rewind.

RE-FUCKING-WIND.

I scrambled like mad to get to work as often as possible when our truck died, repeatedly. I have called out sick exactly ONCE this year. Once. And it was because my father was in the hospital and the stress of that and the stress of dealing with other things as well as people who cough all over their money and then hand it to you, well... I was sick. One day. The rest of those days were because someone decided that the days I called out while Dad was merely in the hospital at the start of his stay? They should be used as sick days. Which is fine. I can see not using them as vacation days, although I would have thought that they'd have been "special" days first. Doesn't matter.

Aside from one sick day, every day of work I've missed this year has been due to my father being in the hospital or, I dunno, when he DIED. I took less than a week off when he originally went in. Sometimes I seriously kick myself for that one, but hey. Not clairvoyant, no matter how I joke.

So. No. I cannot believe you just verbally chewed me out over the days I've missed thus far this year. Any other year and I'd just be ticked because he was right. But this year?

This
fucking
year?

If his immediate superior weren't an ethically challenged excuse for a man (there were frequently notes on his notes that his "suggestions" were dishonest at best, and a lawsuit waiting to happen at worst) I'd go over his head for that.

As it is, I'm trying to figure out how to politely say "the line. You crossed it."

Well, that was annoying. I decided to stop by the new Walgreens that's technically closer to my house than the one where I work. I was mostly there to see how different it is and to see if it was one of the Chosen Few to have Monster High dolls. (No.) Mom wanted the m&m's that were on sale, but I didn't have my little proof of employment card. I did, however, have my freakin' uniform shirt and I had to listen to people wax poetic about my store manager. I'm told to go to Cos, no mention of the dreaded ID coming up. I do, I wait. I wait. I wait some more because the Cos lady is helping someone else. I could make some catty remarks, but I don't think she was intentionally trying to screw my day up so I'll refrain. She pages the manager, he appears and walks right on by. He comes back and in the rudest voice I've EVER freakin' heard used towards me outside of family and exes, informs me that I have to have the little paycheck stub ID thing. He shows me his and then says without it I can't get my discount.

I was prepared for this because I've heard stories. Stories, man. Anyway, those stories end with you using the store in question's computer to log in (thus proving you're in the system and an employee!) and printing out the card right there in the store.

No. He walks off, does not offer this, and I'm just twitching. You're that fucking rude and then you leave your employee to pick up the pieces? REALLY? I briefly debate buying the stuff, full price, and just swapping it out at my store later. But I'm pissed at his attitude. It's not like the store was packed with people. And he didn't have to be an asshole. He could have said all this politely. He could have offered to call, or let me call, the store that I claimed to work at, and talk to my boss. You know, the one everyone is all, "We love him!" about?

But no.

So I put my stuff away after debating, for half a second, just leaving it and huffing off because of the rudeness, but then that would be rude. I put the stuff back where I found it (neatly, far moreso than it was to begin with, I might add) and I leave never to return willingly.

I debated putting in a complaint. On the one hand, rude. On the other, I really didn't feel like throwing that into the universe. Ultimately I decided that if I was mad enough to complain all the way up to the point where I had to put my name, I might as well go through with it. I wasn't nasty (since he should be reading it) but I made it clear that seriously, you do not treat people that way. Seriously. :P

To make my day suck less, the mailman brought me my Cyber Monday haul from AG.com No pictures because I'm lazy, but I have the Fashion Studio for Sam, the berry hoodie (which didn't even come in a bag. They just shoved that in the main box), the bag/shirt combo (they both say American Girl Place), and Ruthie's shoes. Yeah, I didn't go crazy. I did snag Molly's Skates and ear muffs yesterday, though, and a little something else from another store... which I'll share when they come in. (Though at least one of those things is a gift for someone else.)

The Fashion Studio comes with 40 or so pages of paper that's fairly thick. Most of it's patterned, especially in the same print as Samantha's clothing. You get a little stamper but no ink (Sam's little leaf symbol thing), a paper doll (photo, not a drawing, which makes the outfits look...strange in the photos), stencils to trace onto the patterned paper, and a little book that tells you a bit about fashion in Sam's time as well as advice on colors and design. Mom seems exceptionally taken with it. Me? I bought it because it was Sam and I was curious. The little book looks most interesting to me, but that doesn't mean I won't go for an outfit. Maybe. *shrug*

It also came with a catalog that had Kit & Ruthie on the cover, so Mums and I discussed the similarities between Molly/Ruthie/Samantha. I think that Molly and Ruthie would look awfully similar side by side, Mums thinks Sam and Ruthie would. My Sam and Ruthie don't because my Sam is old as dirt (comparatively speaking) but yeah. Then Mums shrieked in horror over many of Julie's things. She finds the Calico dress an eyesore and I find the jumpsuit to be too painful to look at. I shared the knowledge that the crazy calico dress looks infinitely better on Ivy who calms the crazy down. She did not seem thrilled at this, and I assured her that it wasn't likely to come visit my Ivy any time soon. She's got eyes on J's birthday dress and her roller skate outfit. Ivy will not be denied! Just... delayed a bit.

Oh, and my Target trip yielded partial presents for people, one of which was only a dollar. :D I wish I'd known sooner as I'd have picked up a couple more. I was too bored with the store at that point to willingly go back in again, especially once the toy section filled with people. They did have W1 Frankie and Draculaura though. I seriously considered buying Frankie, but decided that if hell froze and people took me literally when I said "ANY MH doll except Plush Clawdeen!" they might not appreciate me having bought myself the same thing they just did. :P (Technically I don't need or even really, truly want a third W1 Draculaura, but it's easier to have one exception to the rule. Which is why I have LAGOONA-ANY at the top of my official list. Yes. Lagoona.)

I'm sleepy now and my CD has burned so I'll toddle off to bed. Be good or good at being bad?

I am annoyed. And hungry. But annoyed mostly. Apparently the dress code at work is changing. Effective Monday. I heard about it? Today. Um, no. You don't get to make changes like that and give less than a week's notice. So, so sorry. I'll continue to wear my brown pants until I find a pair of black ones that I like and that fit. I like these, so the moment I find them in black? We're good. Until then?

Screw you, corporate.

Almost 5am, I'm waiting around at the front of the store for the pharmacist to come by so I can ring his stuff up. Kathleen's walking out the door and someone else walks in. The next thing I know, there's this guy standing right next to me, mumbling something I still can't figure out. I turn to ask what he said and then the world freezes. Complete silence in my head other than the cartoon me [people are cartoons in my head, myself included] screaming bloody blue murder. Dude is twitchier than twitchy has a right to be, and in his left pocket, he has a gun of some sort. He makes with the, "move, or I'll shoot you" type threats. It doesn't take a genius to figure out he wants zee money. Only problem is, you can't just ask, "oi, you want the safe or just the register?" Luckily, no such translation needed. We're headed to the office. Ten steps later, we cross paths with the pharmacist. I should point out that GWG [guy with gun] is thoughtfully letting me walk just enough ahead that I'm not sure where exactly he is. GWG says to pharmacist, "Alright, you too. Come on." To which pharmacist doesn't seem to hear him because GWG really needs to work on enunciating, okay? Seriously, if you're going to rob someone or a store, however you want to look at it, you should speak clearly so they don't waste precious seconds wondering what the fuck you just said. However, it's not like they give you a comment sheet after the robbery so they can work on their skills. Pity.

We were at the pharmacy crossing. GWG gets a little agitated and I can't help but say, "James," in this very un-me sort of voice. If you subscribe to the theory that with one word you can actually say so much more, that would be, "Please don't annoy the guy with a gun and get us all killed, please?" If not, well, that's all I could say because if I left my mouth open any longer, I started swearing. This became obvious a minute later when we got to the door to the various employee only rooms. I punch in the code, mind still screaming "ohshitohshitohshit!" and go to open it. The damn thing won't open. This pisses GWG off who begins to pick up the threats of violence. In fact, this is the ONLY time I can fully understand what he's saying. Basically, open the fucking door before I fucking shoot you all and kick the door down myself. Right, cuz you're so big and bad, my shorter than me little wimp. I mean, really. Anyway, I get the door to open and we all push through and he's back to mumbling and it's like he's sure that either James or I could open the safe, which we totally can't. Fortunately [?] management saw the whole effing thing through the office window. So he got to say the phrase I've always wanted to say on the phone. "Gotta go, we're being robbed." Not that I was there for that, but whatever. He'd opened the safe and GWG pretty much kneels next to him and starts grabbing for the money. He declines the offer of a bag [so rude] and when he's disappointed by his loot, management asks, "Do you want quarters?" Totally not being a smart ass for once, but about that time my brain stopped screaming. GWG scoops up the money he's carelessly let slip to the floor and then runs like hell. Which is still STUPID because the next door is like, half a second away and CLOSED. It's not like it opens outward either, so you've pretty much run into a wall. Or a door, I suppose. I gather he wasn't thinking that far, as after he opened the door he sent the chip display crashing to the ground. Not that I knew this at the time, I just heard a crash. So I'm freaking out still, as the panic button is being pressed and then Management goes to peek out the door to see if GWG is gone and if they can see Kathleen. While he's doing that, James and I both call 911. [dead cells are good for that, at least.]

Now here's the problem. Given how long it took for the cops to show up, it boggles the mind. Seriously. Watch, you'll see.

After enough time has passed for James to give an extremely detailed description of GWG as well as the night's events, we're told the cops are at the door. We all file out of the office, which is when I notice the chip display. Why? Because one has to climb over it to get out. I also notice the salsa on the floor and for a fraction of a second my brain didn't understand that it was salsa. Everyone goes outside, touching nothing, and each of us is looking for Kathleen. She's nowhere to be found. We're outside and the bathroom and breakroom have been checked. No sign. Not in her car. Where is she? It's really dark outside still, and I'm starting to panic, but it's not like I can be obvious in the panic. That'd ruin the cool. *snort* Anyway, I point out that sometimes she goes to the gas station across the street. So a cop runs over and when she comes out of the store, I think, "Thank you, God." Or whichever deity was passing through at that moment.

Now, here's the part where I cannot understand WTF. Kathleen realized what was happening and ran across the street to the gas station and had them call 911. So, considering that would have been DURING the robbery, why the HELL did it take so long for them to get there?

Perhaps I'm cranky because we spent the next three hours outside. I was fingerprinted shortly before 8am, and I was supposed to have gotten off work at 6am.

Oh, and upon reaching the office, I couldn't help but repeatedly say, "Shitshitshitshitshit!" Um, in case he missed the part where we were being robbed by a twitchy sort, or possibly because you try being followed by someone who keeps threatening to shoot you. It's just not something that sits well with me.

Need a new job. Don't know what I want other than to not be held up. Which is helpful as it rules out more time spent in gas stations, banks, and chech cashing sorts of places. As a matter of not going there, we'll also rule out grocery stores, anywhere in the godforsaken mall, and yeah, that's about when my head explodes. Honestly, if I could wrap my head around the cult of Verizon, I'd totally give it a shot. But anywhere that requires you to schedule your sick days in advance? No. Just... no.

That was my Friday. We had a moment Saturday where this guy kept trying to get me to stand near him and I just wouldn't. It's possible he didn't believe I could read what he was pointing out, but he was crowding my personal space and was just off, if only in my head. Later that morning, this cute, but unconventionally so, but I'm pretty sure other people would back me up on the cuteness factor and possibly up it to hot, asked for my phone number after flirting with me. [I didn't recognize it as flirting as such until the number bit] Total ego boost, although for some reason, he found it funny that I politely declined [gimme a reason here, Ryan] and ended with, "Thank you though." Dude, it should be obvious, big dork am I.

But I'm still twitchier than I would like to be. Could it be my days off yet? Please? I'm in need of fluff. And milkshakes. That's the cure, right there.

To round this out, a little bit of trivia: When grabbing your hoodie from the box it's been lying in for the last month, the moment you realize there shouldn't be a scratchy place because it doesn't have a tag? Disgusting! Scratchy surface was *twitches* a palmetto bug. It's bad enough to see them, let alone touch them. With your hand. EW.

*snuggles*