October 2006 Archives
October 29, 2006
The Accidental Hustler
After about 15 months of antisocial behavior (aside from a few quiet evenings with close friends), I decided it’s time to stop being a hermit long enough to remember why I became a hermit in the first place. I got an invitation to a Halloween party being thrown by a girl who I haven’t seen since high school and probably haven’t talked to since junior high or earlier.
Why? No clue. She found me on MySpace, and with nothing to back me up but a hunch and some strangely phrased messages, I get the impression she’s harboring — or, at least, harbored for longer than anybody should — a crush on me.* I figured this would lead to awkwardness because she mentioned in several messages how much she talks about me with her boyfriend of seven years, and my initial thought was, “Gee, a party where I get to hang out with a girl I have no interest in and her jealous boyfriend? Where do I sign up?” But shit, it’s not like people are beating down my door to invite me to parties of any kind, so I thought I’d seize the rare opportunity to wet my beak in the social world yet again.
Turns out, the only people I’d know at the party is this girl and her hot best friend*. That was somewhat discouraging, even moreso when she subtly let slip that her immediate and a lot of her extended family would be populating the party. It was sounding less and less fun by the minute, but I was secretly pleased; it’d be easier to justify a life of solitude if my ever-decreasing forays into the world are rip-roaring wastes of time.
So I took a drive to where she lived, suspiciously close to the major technology company where I worked for several months last year and earlier this year, and as I rumbled down a street heading away from said tech firm, the road narrowed, the speed slowed, and the street dead-ended at a cross-street that reminded me way too much of Illinois’s Lake County, my least favorite county on Earth: cracked, narrow roads running through heavily wooded, faux-rural countryside. This was a little slice of Cook County for which I held immediate and extreme disdain, but I pressed on, following the confusing MapQuest directions to a side-street cul-de-sac that branched out into an even narrower road, barely the width of one car. Like the horror show of Lake County, there were no streetlights whatsoever, so I was fumbling around looking for the address in pitch black.
I finally found it, a gargantuan house with one of those U-shaped driveways that my dad always joked existed so that when realtors drove you up and told you the price, you could keep right on driving. The driveway was the only one loaded with cars, and the only one with a porchlight on, so I assumed this was the right place even though I couldn’t see the house number.
I went as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, because my wardrobe and current unkempt state allow for a reasonable and cheap facsimile. More specifically, I went as The Dude from the first scene in the movie, buying a quart of half-and-half from Ralphs in the middle of the night, wearing a bathrobe, a t-shirt, sweats, and sunglasses. I thought later, on the drive home, that I should have brought my checkbook and passed around 69-cent checks for everybody. It would have been somewhat appropriate because my “custom checks” are tie-dyed. But I didn’t think of this for the party. Instead, I fumbled up the driveway in a pair of sunglasses like an idiot. I had to take them off halfway up because I couldn’t see where the fuck I was going.
Even though I got to the party fashionably late, not many people were there. This was because, apparently, the hostess told everybody different times, between 7 and 9. The only people there at the time of note were her boyfriend of seven years…and the odd-girl-out they were very obviously and unsubtly trying to hook me up with. She was decently cute, but like most women, she had absolutely no interest in me, and I wasn’t about to flirt. Baby steps, cowboy. This is the first big, non-funeral social event I’ve attended in a very long time, so I had no intentions of running around flirting with every uninterested girl there. I didn’t plan to be there all night.
I didn’t want to mingle, either. I hadn’t seen the hostess or her hot friend — who didn’t show up for about 45 minutes — since high school, and it’s not like we were best friends back then, although the hostess seems to think we were. That’s neither here nor there; part of the reason I never go anywhere is that half my friends live out of state and the other half are married and use that as an excuse to avoid me. I thought maybe, since both of these girls were so excited they found me on MySpace, if their boyfriends weren’t jealous nutbars, maybe I’d have a new circle of friends to latch onto until I reveal myself to be the needy and neurotic mess I actually am and they suddenly find themselves too busy to “hang.” So I decided this party would be a good opportunity to get to know all of them and see how comfortable I was in this group.
The initial answer: not very. For one, the painful attempt to get me involved with that cute, uninterested girl would be annoying on a regular basis. If she’s not interested, stop trying to push us. I couldn’t care one way or the other. I wouldn’t turn her down, but I wouldn’t exactly see a lasting relationship coming from it. For another, I felt incredibly awkward and embarrassed around the hot girl. It’s kind of hard to get over the humiliation of stone-cold rejection, even if it did happen almost a decade ago. She really shut me down, and although my feelings toward her are completely different now, it’s impossible to not feel embarrassed or self-conscious. I feel like if I look at her too long or if I give her any more attention than I give anyone else, everyone will start thinking I still have the hots for her.
Their boyfriends were surprisingly cool, though. Well, actually, the hot girl’s boyfriend was kind of a douche to me, maybe because he knows The History and wants me dead. The hostess’s boyfriend was really nice, though. We didn’t have too much in common, but he spent the whole time trying to make me feel comfortable, so in return I pretended to be really interested in all his gearhead stories. Okay, I actually was interested in all his gearhead stories, but I barely understood what he was talking about, and I didn’t want to keep stopping him with questions like, “How much does it cost to rebuild the engine on a 10-year-old Blazer?” or “What’s an oil change?”
The only problems came when they would leave. The hostess would go off to mingle, the boyfriend would go off to “talk shop” with the hot girl’s ice-cold boyfriend (also a mechanic), and I’d be left pretty much alone. But, of course, the pool table had been beckoning me all night. Little known StanFact™: during my first semester of college, I hated life in rural Iowa and the college in particular so much that me and my friend Amanda would go to the commons and play pool together for 6-8 hours a day. Sometimes more. Every day. For more than three months. I wouldn’t exactly go pro, but I got good. Real good.
Then I left and never played again, aside from casual games where I’d be ruined by having to deal with those nonstandard baby tables or some other bizarre restriction. But here at this house was a regulation size table in pretty good condition, just sitting there unplayed. When the boyfriend suggested we play a game, I jumped all over it. The hostess put the kibosh on it, fearing that too many guests would show up and we’d end up accidentally cracking someone’s ribs with the cues. However, about an hour after that, when I was left pretty much alone to hit on the cute uninterested girl, an older gentlemen busted out the equipment and racked a game to play with the hostess’s next-door neighbor, a short, middle-aged single woman.
I watched them play for a bit and, realizing I was getting nowhere with my half-hearted flirting, I said I’d play whoever won. They were both agreeable enough. The older gentleman, who was pretty good, seemed to get frustrated by the total incompetence of the neighbor. I think he wanted more of a challenge and thought I’d bring it.
Then he lost. It was one of those stupid things where he cleared the table and then scratched on the eight ball. He seemed a little pissed and had no interest in playing me, under the guise of being a gracious winner. So it was me and the incompetent neighbor. Eh, I thought. Pool is pool. Maybe I’d crush her and she’d leave me alone. I had a pretty good run, nailing several before I just had no options but to clear out a small cluster. When her turn came, she just kinda rested the cue practically on top of her thumb and shoved it forward, with no control over the direction, speed, or english. I’m not exactly Mike “The Mouth” Sigel, but I was embarrassed just watching her. She was having fun, though. I tried to be encouraging, but it was kinda rough. She was very giggly and good-natured about her lack of ability.
After I crushed her for two games, we decided to play a third (nobody else was interested). This time, after her fumbling slaps at the ball, I decided to suggest a better technique for holding the cue. I gave her some pointers, and she looked baffled. “Show me,” she said. So I demonstrated with my cue. She watched, making exaggerated attempts at looking but really seeming like she wasn’t getting it. I sighed and came over behind her, took her hand, placed it on the cue, and as soon as she arched up, essentially sticking her ass into my crotch, I realized I had walked into something really, really moronic. Where are old, world-weary pool-playing men when you need them? Or, more importantly, why couldn’t Amanda have stuck her various sexy parts into my crotch so many years ago?
I gulped and felt a bit flushed, moreso when I felt an involuntary stirring in Li’l Stan™. But I pressed on, showing her how to hold the cue like a normal person. She glanced back at me, grinning skeletally. “I’ll give it a try,” she breathed. This could not be going worse.
I backed up as quickly as possible to give her room to take the shot. She did, like a total dunce, then turned toward me, arms outstretched like she wanted to hug me. She still had that goofy grin on her face, and she shook her head wildly. “I’m just not getting it.”
I suddenly felt like Jack Tripper during one of those moments when Lana Shields would come around and make some kind of really awkward plumbing-related sex puns. “You’re doing fine,” I muttered, trying to keep my distance. She could tell, and for whatever reason she didn’t want me to slip away. But slip away I did, inching closer to the pseudo-bar near the pool table, where there were more than enough witnesses for her to be cool — I hoped.
It didn’t stop her. She got very touchy-feely after that, always grabbing my shoulders, my wrist, my hand, winking periodically. As a result, I was playing even worse than a pool player who once was kinda decent but hasn’t played for six years. This made a game that could have been ended with a couple of simple runs stretch out way longer than it should have. Worse, it was loaded with stolen glances and awkward smiles and assorted lovey-dovey crap that, really, isn’t even okay with a woman who isn’t double my age.
Finally, it was down to me and the eight, and I had a pretty clear shot. There were a couple of stripes in my way, but if I got the right angle I could have nailed it. But just as I was about to ram the cue forward, motion caught my eye: the neighbor slid her hands up her torso, trying in vain to shove her breasts up even further than her push-up bra would allow. I jumped the cue ball, right the fuck over the eight ball, and right into the corner pocket, losing the game.
“Good game,” I said quietly, and she came over and gazed into my eyes and shook my hand for way longer than she should have, talking about how much fun she had had and smiling and just utterly thrilled to be somewhere near a swarthy idiot half her age who wasn’t “taken.” I told her I’d play another game but I was getting hungry, at which point I ran upstairs to the kitchen and found the hostess, the hot girl, and their boyfriends. A few minutes later, the neighbor came up and — looking over her shoulder at me much of the time — told the hostess’s mom what a wonderful time she had had and how sorry she was to leave so soon. She still seemed very happy and giggly, so I thought maybe I had made more of the situation than necessary.
Then she winked at me. Not for the first time that night, but it was very obvious and definite, and she turned around and sashayed away. Shortly after, my dog allergies (the hostess has two) started to ruin my life, so I decided to make some polite excuses and leave. In addition to not having much fun to begin with, the strain of having my favorite game ruined by awkward, MILF-y flirtations made me want to get as far away from this house as possible.
I went out into the darkness. and felt my way through the cars until I got the street, where mine was parked. As I sat there and waited for it to warm up, I noticed a light on in the upstairs of the house next door. I thought for a long, pathetically serious moment about the pros and cons of me stepping out of the car and knocking on the neighbor’s door. Because it’s not like she was hideously unattractive; she was just uncomfortably old, and I wouldn’t want to be accused of being “age-ist” or some other equally made up and stupid term.
I continued to think long after the engine was warm and the vents had been blowing hot hair long enough to make me a little sweaty. I cut the engine, and sat there for a couple of seconds in silence, eyes fixed on that lit window, one hand on the door handle. After an indeterminate amount of time (probably not more than 10 seconds, but I don’t have a clock in my car and time is funny when nobody’s keeping it), the light in that window went out. I started the car again, did a 10-point turn around the tiny road, and left this odd little neighborhood.
*This goes into my hilariously misogynistic “hot-girl/ugly-girl” dynamics theory, which states that when two girls become best friends, for whatever reason, it’s always a hot girl paired up with the ugly girl. And, invariably, a dorky and unattractive nerd like me will fall for the hot girl and make pathetic attempts to woo her, which will be ignored by the hot girl but embraced by the ugly girl, who will either witness with her own eyes or hear secondhand the sadness of my existence. I shit you not, in high school this happened to me every time I got a crush on an attractive girl. So in this case, the girl who found me on MySpace is the “ugly girl” of the scenario, and I had a crush on her hot best friend for, like, three years between seventh grade and freshman year of high school.
Posted by Stan on October 29, 2006 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
October 17, 2006
Great Comments Today!
I’ve received 20 spam comments in the past week, and to be honest, that’s kind of a lull. You might be saying, “Jeez, why don’t you just disable public comments.” Well, asshole, I did. I made them private except for TypeKey users, and then both of my readers started bitching about not being able to leave comments. When I told them to sign up for TypeKey for free with no spam or spam-related bullshit, they…didn’t listen and continued to bitch about their inability to leave comments.
But the spam comments don’t bother me too much. I get a lot, but they’re easy enough to deal with, and 90% of them don’t even appear on the site because of MovableType’s security features. Most of the time they’re nothing but links to ch34p hyd0c0d0n3 or g3n3r1c v14gr4., but today I received four absolute works of art. The first three come from “Levi@aol.com,” who writes:
Comment 1:
A full boat spills me, but I enjoy a vacuous verbal declaration with a side order of twaddles. I sensationalize some online pokers, I mosaic and slug, I go to the button. If his titanic fast player flurrys morosely, is Joel Kop a http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com platonic button? My favorite bats are Julian Studley the ethical and Evelyn Ng the gymnastic. I garrison some party pokers, I randomize and pillage, I go to the calling station.
Comment 2:
His nervous hidden hand ferociously overindustrializes his bicentennial http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com outdraw. It is forbidden to indue the fixed deck “Raja Kattamuri http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com ” to avoid the handy consequences. A eight-way hand drowses me, but I enjoy a continuous joker with a side order of pucks.
Comment 3:
I was walking down the party poker, minding my own rap, when I saw a five-minute rule boast cheaply. I was subatomic, of course! Requalify, lustrate, and be poignant, for tomorrow we haw. James Van anoints conspicuously when http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com his tight brightens a subservient limp in.
This last is from “Chase@aol.com”:
Comment 4:
Main pots, finger pokers, posts, lend me your big blinds. I come to repudiate Eldon Brown , not to island him. Our unhappy deuce-to-seven lowball all in channels her poisonous bomb. Jeff Rine deliberate http://party-poker.soapstuds.com http://party-poker.soapstuds.com pai gow poker but ford poker more. We hold this megalomaniac to be self-evident — that all showdowns are created inclement.
Now, I’m flagging these as junk, but they’re so awesome, I wish I weren’t. If I continue getting comment spam like this, I’ll probably leave them up. Good times! This is way better than 400 comments asking for R. Kelly’s e-mail address!
Posted by Stan on October 17, 2006 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Random Musings
October 16, 2006
Acoustic Version
Do you remember that song? For no real reason, I stripped out all the electric parts for an acoustic mix.
Posted by Stan on October 16, 2006 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Creative Works!
October 5, 2006
New Arch-Nemesis
Since I’ve left college, I haven’t once seen my former arch-nemesis Owen at all. I’m not complaining about this, but I do feel a little hole in my life that was once filled with an enemy so vile and distasteful that I actually blogged! There was a douchebag in L.A. (well, a lot of them, but one in particular who approached arch-nemesis territory), a chump at my mysterious accounting job earlier this year, but they never really got the bile a-spewing like Owen did. There’s The Manager, who I do most of my bitch about lately (both on the blog and off), but he doesn’t make me angry. Frustrated? Yes. Confused? Certainly. But he’s one of these guys who’s so confident and yet so thoroughly incompetent that you end up just feeling sorry for him.
And then there’s the new hire at the coffee shop, who I’ll call Owen II (please pronounce this “Owen the Second”). Know why? Because, somehow, some way, they’re cut from the same cloth. I thought Owen was one in a million, and believe me, in many ways he still is. But Owen II shares many qualities with Owen, both physically and spiritually. They’re both big, hairy, dumpy gorillas, they both have that intoxicating musk of onions and corn chips deep-fried in Kentucky Fried Chicken batter, they both have extremely thick glasses that mask squinty, beady eyes, and they both talk in grating, high-pitched voices with mild lisps. (A semi-random aside: I heard this voice very recently, watching the movie Capote. I knew Owen’s voice struck me as familiar, but I couldn’t place it until I was reminded of what Truman Capote sounds like. It seems like typical Owen weirdness to try to intentionally mimic somebody like Truman Capote, but I think in this case it is his real voice. It’s just eerily similar. Owen II’s voice is slightly less grating but what he lacks in shrillness he makes up for in loudness.)
More irritating than the physicalities — which become a moot point if you can look away, stand a safe distance from the odor, and avoid talking to them — are the mental and emotional dispositions. Like his predecessor, Owen II has a superiority complex without having any reason to feel superior. Mainly, he thinks he’s better than the job, his coworkers, and the customers. He’s had “restaurant experience,” which was supposed to mean something but, to be frank, cafés and restaurants are very, very different animals. Owen II has slowly figured this out, which I discovered via one of his other personality “quirks”: he whines about everything. He’s not quite as openly hostile and brazen as Owen — somehow, Owen II has just a teensy bit more social decorum, probably gleaned when he studied humanity for the first time at his restaurant job(s) — but then again, I’ve only known him for two days. Maybe he’ll get more comfortable and turn into a real asshole.
Back to Owen II’s superiority complex: when I first met him on Tuesday, one of the first things he whined about was how it’s been so long since he’s worked. This rang just a tad familiar with me, and I admit that even with the mild whininess I wanted to give him a shot. So far, I’ve liked everyone I’ve worked with here. This leads me to conclude that the manager has decent taste in employees. For about three seconds, I thought we’d establish a rapport over our mutual job-hunting struggles and we’d get along fine.
Then he said, “Yeah, working in a coffee shop is pretty much the bottom rung of the retail ladder, but I was desperate.” Some of you might remember my last entry from six years ago, where I said fuck other people’s opinions about my station in life, because I know I’m only in it for (a) what little money there is, and (b) the actual enjoyment of my job. This last is a pretty rare thing, I think. So I hope it doesn’t seem more hypocritical than usual that this comment from Owen II offended me, because it has less to do with his perception of me — though I’ve gleaned his perception of myself and everyone else who works there is pretty negative, hence the superiority complex — and more with his trashing something I enjoy.
And let’s face facts here: I could think of dozens, maybe even hundreds of retail jobs that suck worse than a coffee shop. It’s pretty easy work, and exceptionally less disgusting and degrading than pretty much any other food-service job I can think of, Mr. Waiter. On top of this: if he’s so much better than the job, why is he working here? Why has he failed to gain employment at a restaurant, what with his extensive experience waiting tables? I mean, shit, I could go to downtown Schaumburg and pick up three jobs waiting tables in 20 minutes. Are you daring me to do it? Because I will, and I’ll scan my check stubs to prove it, motherfuckers!
At least when I was hilariously failing to get jobs, I was applying for shit that was way out of my league, requiring a level of experience, education, and intellect that I couldn’t come close to matching. I wasn’t applying for degrading fucking jobs as a waiter, dancing for quarters and making half of minimum wage. I could pretend to be all superior, like, “I’ve quit better jobs than this,” but you know what? I’ve had jobs that pay better for significantly less work, but — and this will be shocking, I’m sure — I kinda hate being paid to not do anything. Sure, it’s fun for awhile, but after a few months it actually becomes more exhausting not doing work than it is to be on your feet working your ass off all day. I’ve done both, and in a perfect world I’d be making the money of the former to do the latter.
Was that a tangent? Back to Owen II. The dude just doesn’t stop whining and complaining. “This is more cleaning than I’ve ever had to do in my life!” he kept saying, over and over. And over and over and over. And any time anybody told him to do something, he’d get this look on his face like, “Oh God, more work?!” and then he’d roll his eyes and either do it half-assed, pretend to do it, or not do it at all.
Which is why it kind of surprised me when, on Tuesday, the manager said, “I think he’s gonna work out.” You…do? Interesting. But he had completely changed his tune by Wednesday. Every time Owen II was out of earshot, he’d say, “This kid has a real attitude problem, doesn’t he?” I’d agree readily, and he’d say, “It’s not going to take him far.” I couldn’t disagree with that.
The most irritating thing to me was that Owen II seemed to feel there was some kind of sister-solidarity thing going on between us. We’re both working jobs for an admittedly annoying manager for slave-wages — unite! So he’d always come up behind me, blowing his hot nacho-cheese breath into my face as he’d whisper a sarcastic comment. If I didn’t completely disagree with the sentiment, it was probably only because I couldn’t fully hear it. And I didn’t care to have it repeated, because what’s the point? In fact, half the time I’d literally ignore him, just pretending I couldn’t hear him. Somehow, he believed this to be true.
On Wednesday, it kept seeming to me like he had something big he wanted to tell me, but he didn’t quite have the balls to come out and say it. Maybe because I’d rat on him, or maybe because of the way the manager bursts in and out, he didn’t want to get caught talking shit. Finally, just before we closed, when the manager went off to do his admin duties, Owen II came up to me, all confidential-like, and he said, “If you want to know why I’ve been such a big asshole tonight, I’ll tell you…”
The sad and hilarious thing is that I hadn’t noticed anything resembling a change in Owen II’s attitude. He was as big a prick on Tuesday as he was on Wednesday. I muttered and made a noncommittal head gesture, not paying full attention, because you know what? I was busy closing the store!
Owen II took that as his cue to proceed with the story. “You know Marc?” Marc’s another employee. He’s pretty funny, and he’s a video game nerd. We’re tight.
I nodded, and Owen II said, “Well, yesterday after you left, I closed with him, and I said — completely joking the whole time — that I wished I could go home so I could have a cigarette.” He chuckled uncomfortably; I didn’t join in, so his laughter tapered off even more uncomfortably. “Anyway, I don’t even know why, but he went and told the manager, who came up to me, like, five minutes later and said, ‘You better watch what you say.’”
Now, look, I’m new, but I know Marc well enough to know he wouldn’t just idly run off telling something as inane as that to the manager, and the manager — high-strung as he is — wouldn’t respond like that. There had to be something more to the story. I didn’t want to ask the manager because, frankly, I don’t like talking to him. Also, it’d seem like I was ratting, too. I knew I was closing with Marc the next night, so I figured I’d find out the dirt then. There seemed to be a lot of holes in the story, especially with the cigarette thing. One of the mild injustices is that the smokers — of which there are only two — can pretty much take smoke breaks whenever the fuck they want, whereas nonsmokers don’t have the same privilege. Occasionally, if there’s downtime, we’ll take a 10-minute faux-cigarette break. Most of the time, we don’t get any. Whoo-hoo for shoddy labor laws — in Illinois, you’re entitled to a paid 20-minute break if and only if you work a shift of 7.5 hours or more. The manager’s solution? Seven hour shifts!
At any rate, Marc is one of the two smokers. He’d be the first to say, “Dude, if you want a cigarette, just go out and smoke one[, you big baby].” Why didn’t he? Like I said, there had to be more to the story, and the more I thought about it, the more intrigued I was.
Meanwhile, as I continued trying to close with no help whatsoever, Owen II decided it’d be a good time to start making and/or returning phone calls. This led to my favorite moment of Wednesday night, reminiscent of Owen I’s hilarious backfired “I am Spartacus” moment. He was trying to act all bad-ass, like “Oh man I have so many calls to return, people just aren’t used to me working again!” He made a call as I mopped the goddamn store.
“Hey, Katie,” he said into the phone. After a moment: “It’s Owen II… Owen II… Owen — I live up the street… Yeah… Yeah… Oh. Bye.” I wanted to start laughing right then, but I try to hold in my meanness while I’m on duty. I unleash it in the form of screaming and making obscene gestures at the few drivers on the road who are worse than I am.
Owen II made a second call: “Jim… It’s Owen II… Owen II — come on, you know who I am.” He looked up sharply at me. When he saw I was staring right at him with a hostile and amused look on his face, the sheer terror in his eyes melted into a veneer of faux-amusement. “I don’t know what it is with people tonight,” he said to me. When he glanced away, putting the phone back to his ear, the panic-stricken look returned. I can only assume this was an attempt to impress me, or to otherwise create the illusion he has an active social life, and it had exploded in his face like an Acme™-brand T.N.T. detonator.
We closed up and went home for the night. The next day, I asked Marc about his feelings on Owen II and, more specifically, about the “I wish I could go home and have a cigarette incident.” First: Marc hates Owen II as much as I do. As do all the employees who have met him. Good to know. Second: Owen II, as I suspected, omitted huge chunks of the story to make himself seem unjustly persecuted. The similarities to Owen I just keep increasing.
Here’s what really happen: trainees have to fill out a workbook, filled with information that then leads to stupid questions and worksheets. They’re dumb, they’re a waste of time, but you know what? I’ve had to do one for every single café job I’ve ever had. It comes with the territory. There’s a lot of shit to memorize. Even I, who pretty much has this whole coffee thing down pat, had to learn a lot of shit about their specific blends of coffee (i.e., roasting level, origin(s), flavor “bouquet,” etc.), as well as learning the specific formula combinations. Every place I’ve worked has been just a tad different, and this is no exception. They want me to steam milk differently, they (in particular) make cappuccinos in a different and stupid way, they have different specialty drinks.
So yeah, the trainee manual is stupid but important, especially for a newbie. A lot of it is “learn by doing,” but some of the stuff — specifically learning about the different coffee blends — is something that just isn’t learned by doing. People come in and order a large dark roast; they don’t want to discuss the Coffee of the Day’s origins or whether or not a cranberry-orange scone will go with its distinctive bouquet.
Trainee manual rant: over. Owen II simply refused to do it. He seemed to feel, despite Marc’s status as shift supervisor and Owen II’s status as trainee, that he didn’t have to listen to a word Marc said. He only had to listen to the manager, and the manager wasn’t there, so when told him had half an hour to work on his book, Owen II just wouldn’t do it. This came after hours of Owen II’s awful work ethic, superiority complex, and solidarity mutterings. Marc had had enough. He also said Owen II repeated his “I wish I could go home and have a cigarette” remark at least five times, some of them right in front of customers. After the workbook incident, Owen II said it again, and that was merely the straw that broke the camel’s back. Marc ran and told the manager about all the bullshit that had built up to his “ratting” on Owen II, and that is what prompted the manager’s remark. It had more to do with his sassback (I have been waiting almost four years to use that word in a blog entry) about the workbook than it did about the cigarette comments.
To sum up, I sooooo have a new arch-nemesis. It’s only disappointing that in mid-November he’s going to be transferred to a new store (the only reason he was hired to begin with). As with Owen I, his reign as most hilarious villain in the Staniverse will be short-lived, and I’ll have to find a new enemy. How disappointing.
Update 10/11/06: It is my sad duty to inform you, gentle reader, that Owen II’s reign was even shorter than I expected. That Wednesday-night closing shift — our second together — would be our last. He quit unceremoniously and without notice a few days later. What a major disappointment.
Double Update 10/16/06: He also has a MySpace, and he has blog entries tantalizingly entitled “Day Two” and “The Final Day.” I wanted to see if he’d written hostile things about me or anybody else, but…alas, these are “friends-only” blog entries. My life is once again an empty shell with no arch-nemesis-based comedy fodder.
Posted by Stan on October 5, 2006 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
