Thursday, January 18, 2007

This may very well be the stupidest man on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.

Today's post is brought to you by Nevis.





Nevis is conical in shape, with a volcanic peak at the centre. The island is fringed by long strands of golden sand beaches and has a coastline intermittently protected by coral reefs. The colour of the sand is a result of the mixture of coral, foraminifera and volcanic sand. The most famous beach is the 4-mile (6.44 km) long Pinney's Beach on the west coast.

Thanks, Wiki!

Oh, and: The majority of the approximately 12,000 inhabitants of Nevis are of African descent. English is the official language and the literacy rate, 98 percent, is one of the highest in the Western Hemisphere.



In trying to learn these airport codes, I'm often left wondering things like, "What the fuck is Nevis?" The answers to most of my questions turn out to be islands, not unlike Nevis. I thought it might be nice to know where some of these places are...

And now that we know, who's coming with me?

Assuming I still have a job offer there...I sort of bunged up my medical this morning. Actually, first I would have to explain the interview to really illustrate how one little slip-up could mean they don't want me anymore. And it's really not that interesting--I know it sounds like a good premise, I mean, there are only so many things one can do at one's medical. I did not urinate on the wall, for one thing. I did, however, fail to bring the job offer letter along with me, which is a far tamer and fairly lame screw-up. The hell was I supposed to know? Who the hell are they to not have that info anyway?

But first, the beginning. So for the original interview there were ten of us. They initially gave us these "clerical" tests which only made me realize it has been many years (I wish it had been more) since I had to bubble in little test bubbles. Like a scan-tron. Two people failed and they left. Then there were eight. They told us the initial shift hours (due to lack of seniority, these could also be referred to as "little bitch hours") and someone else left. They then had the remaining seven of us answer three questions. I forget the first one (those lame interview questions are always the goddamn same), the second was a scenario (I answered that one first, since I knew six out of seven people were going to have to make a regurgitated answer sound good), and then a stupid personality question that only dumb bitches would ask because seriously, who gives a goddamn flying fuck what magazine you would want to have your picture on and why?

We were then sent out of the room and were to be called in one by one. After doing this with three people, they stopped bringing people in. There was a longish pause. And then they brought the remaining four of us in and offered us the job. I have honestly no idea what the other three people did that turned them off--all I can deduce is that perhaps they did not answer with the amount of alacrity required and/or they didn't have enough personality (I think that only because one girl truly did have NO personality whatsoever...except for when she revealed that she probably vacuums twice a day).

So you really don't have to do much to get axed at this stage in the game. Which is why forgetting a job offer letter in order to process the medical "exam" might qualify as nixing material. The beauty of it was that they wouldn't let me re-schedule for tomorrow morning. Once you're there you can't re-schedule. LOVE this reasoning. So I had to call the manager who hired me (what a great start!) to get her to fax the letter over. I had to leave a voice mail. At this point, I could conceivably have been there for the rest of my life. Luckily, D was closing today. I called, woke him up and had him fax it from, hell, I don't even know where he had to go. When I asked the useless oaf-woman behind the desk if she'd gotten it, she said she'd check in a minute. Meanwhile, D was waiting because he didn't want to drive away if it didn't go through. Five minutes later I explain this to her and she kinda waves me off, "Oh, it's fine."

IF IT'S FUCKING FINE THEN WHY ARE WE DOING THIS GODDAMN CHARADE?? Wait, "it's fine, you don't have a job here anyway?" or "It's fine, I'm sure it came through??" WHAT, BITCH? I went through with the exam so if it really was all a charade and they don't intend to keep me then man, they REALLY suck.

The bitch of it is that the manager didn't need to know any of this. If this were a bad sitcom I would have spent the rest of the episode trying to find her office and delete her voice mail.

I got to work around 11:30 (after stopping at one of our competitor/friend camera stores because our film processor officially died last week and they're processing our rolls for us for a very cheap rate. They've been around as long as we and are kind of stringing me along that they might have a job for me which, at this point, I'm still not sure if I want/need. Every time I pick stuff up I can't get over how awkward and weird their processor guy is and how much I would hate working with him. He's the most awkward but nice mumbler; a thousand dollars says he's single. And we didn't fix our own processor because we'd have to backorder the part and well, what's the point there?). Anyhoo, by then the feeling of wanting to pummel useless oaf-woman had mostly diminished.

It's a little hard to work, though. Most of the print work is stuff I, well, just don't want to do! And my co-worker/co-lab manager (shall we call her Co?), who usually has a mule-like work ethic has sort of given up and it's hard to say which of us is doing less work. Example. Cinema Mark has a compulsion to play with things around the store and frequently carries around a piece of a tripod we all refer to as "his stick." We hid it and he still has not found it. Also lately, he's been playing with a blue rubber ball. Co and I were so bored yesterday that we stole it, wrote up a ransom note in Photoshop and (when he didn't bring us coffee after lunch as was clearly specified in the note) started taking pictures of the ball in perilous situations (held above the urinal, for one) and left them around his work area. I liked the one with it strung up in the airhose. After he left for the day, Co had Pedophile Ed (who had no idea what we intended to do with it or what was even going on) hold both the stick and the ball while she took a picture. I took it into Photoshop and scrawled, "FEELS SO NICE" across it with "So taut...Almost fragile..." in the body of the email.

Did I mention it was a slow day?

And non-inventory things continue to disappear from the store. There are more tools, crap, odds and ends, crap, you name it, in that store. Co has a whole bag of stuff. There's not much I have my eye on aside from the "Darkroom" sign. Well, and I may or may not be consuming a bottle of Chardonnay that had been in the ex-owner's old office (which became the copy room for shooting ebay stuff, making copy negatives, etc.) for God knows how long. This is the ex-owner who left and filed bankruptcy six months ago. And it may or may not be surprisingly tasty. Clearly it had been abandoned. Not that I'm drinking it.

Damn. I have all the ingredients for a real dinner but I'm kinda craving fried pickles. Don't worry--D woke up and faxed me my papers. Of course I'm going to make him a nice dinner.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took it into Photoshop and scrawled, "FEELS SO NICE" across it with "So taut...Almost fragile..." in the body of the email.

This whole post, lmao. But ESPECIALLY THIS.

Ellen Aim said...

heehee. I had fun doing it.

so nice to have comments again!! missed you!

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHA!

I'll go to Nevis with ya. Sounds dreamy.