Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Sprucing Up

Now that I am done with my college classes for the summer, I have decided I need some projects to keep me busy. I cleaned my apartment up, (it was a pigsty) and made a list of things that need to be done.


I am replacing my towel racks, the toilet roll dispenser, the kitchen floor linoleum, and I am going to paint my bathroom, study alcove, and hopefully the kitchen and cabinets to bring in more light. I am also putting up a curtain in front of my sliding glass doors.


These are kind of little projects, but they are enough for me since I am just a girl and only partially handy with tools.


Last night, Gina and I made some new shelves for my shoes. Since I have a lot of heels, (very tall heels, I might add) I couldn't hand them on the door hanging thing. I had them all displayed on top of my winter clothes bin, but I didn't have enough room for all of them. So I now have a shelf to put them all on.


And they look kind of fabulous.


It is nice to have my closet getting slightly more organized and the rest of the apartment coming into order. Because I live by myself, I don't actually have any obligation to make it look nice or orderly, so things fall into disrepair sometimes. But I decided I needed to get on top of making the space habitable for more people than just me, because I actually have friends that want to party with me.


So my next project coming up, once I get my pay check, is spackling the bathroom walls where the old towel hanger and toilet roll dispenser was and painting that wall and the study alcove this bright blue color.


I am super excited!

Monday, May 28, 2012

Making Money

I work at a restaurant as a busser. I would work as a server, except the company's newest policy is that I have to be twenty-one. Since I won't be twenty-one for at least one more year, I am stuck bussing and hosting.


My days usually go as follows:


Get to work, bus some tables, run some food, deal with nice customers, deal with bitches.


For the bitches, I have a couple guidelines:


If you have NEVER worked in a restaurant, YOU ARE NOT RIGHT, EVER. No, you cannot just sit where ever you want. If I am taking you to a table, sit at that fucking table, because I SWEAR TO GOD THERE IS A FUCKING REASON I AM TAKING YOU TO THAT TABLE.


If you ask to sit outside, then you are going to go outside. At no point in time is it okay to just arbitrarily decide that you want to be seated inside as soon as we call your name. Our restaurant gets packed, and having very limited seating inside means that there is definitely going to be a longer wait for that, especially during the very hot days of summer.


I am NOT A SERVANT. I do NOT do your bidding, nor am I some trained monkey that will just fetch shit for you. If you ordered a pizza with pepperoni and I bring out that pizza, DO NOT GET IN MY FACE IF YOU FORGOT YOU WANT SAUSAGE ON IT. I will bring you out some fucking sausage if it means that much to you. Otherwise, you just save 25 cents.


If the kitchen screws up and forgets to put bacon on your burger or gives you chips instead of fries, I WILL FUCKING FIX THE PROBLEM. Keep the fucking chips, I will bring out some fries in a basket. It is not a big deal, SO DON'T FREAK THE FUCK OUT ABOUT IT. It gets on my nerves.


DO NOT MOVE THE RESTAURANT FURNITURE. Period. If there is an umbrella at a table, IT IS ANCHORED TO THE MOTHER FUCKING GROUND. DON'T FUCKING TOUCH IT. DO NOT MOVE TABLES. DO NOT TOUCH THE CABINETS. DO NOT ACT LIKE THIS IS YOUR HOUSE. GET YOUR MOTHER FUCKING FEET OFF THE TABLE.


Lastly, PAY FOR YOUR FOOD AND TIP 20%.


I do not know what the fuck is wrong with people. Do not ever go to a restaurant and just not pay. It is RUDE. The only way servers, bussers, hosts, all the kitchen people, and the management get paid is if people PAY. What is so hard about this concept?


Tip your server because that is how they make a living. They are getting paid nothing because all of their money comes from tips. If your food tasted bad, YOUR SERVER DIDN'T COOK IT. If your food came out late, YOUR SERVER DIDN'T TELL THE KITCHEN TO BE SLOW. If your iced tea isn't refilled immediately, STOP DRINKING SO FUCKING FAST. YOUR CUP IS NOT MADE OF MAGIC. IT DOES NOT REPLENISH ITSELF AND NEITHER DOES THE PITCHER. WHEN YOU GO THROUGH TWO GALLONS OF TEA IN 20 FUCKING MINUTES, WE HAVE TO MAKE A NEW PITCHER OF TEA. THAT TAKES A WHILE.


It is frustrating working in a restaurant. All of those things above happen everyday. People sit themselves where ever they want, are mean to every person they encounter, are rude to their servers, to bussers, to hosts. They think they know what they are talking about when they don't. Being called a liar when I have no control of the air conditioning, having people wanting to report me to a manager for telling them they cannot move umbrellas, and having people send back salads because there are "too many" croutons is what I deal with all the time.


So while I love making money so that I can pay to live in my cute little apartment, I hate dealing with nitwits.


Next time you go out into the world, weather to go to the zoo or the cinema, or a restaurant, remember that WE, the people who are trying to help you have a good day, also want to have just as good a day as you. We work on Mother's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and all of the other great holidays you get off. We are missing out on spending time with our families and friends because those are the days normal people venture out. Just because you have been waiting an hour doesn't mean that everyone else hasn't been. The only customers that get special treatment are the ones that are pleasant. Because ultimately it's the customers that will make our days good or bad.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

I've Been Neglectful

I am dearly sorry for how terribly neglectful I have been. Normally I try to blog at least, (at the very least) once a month. But I think I totally skipped April, and have basically skipped May. But I do have good reasons.


In February, on the 15, my cousin Sabstian told me he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. At that point she was three months pregnant, and they had only been dating four months. On top of that, my cousin is only turning 21 in July. Of course, he presented this information to me as a "Look what I did!" Getting girls pregnant is NOT the hard part.


My good friend Carl left for boot camp around the 20 of February, so that kind of bummed me out.


Ex-Boyfriend Chris returned. That was interesting, mostly because the night he returned, Regina's brother Matt and his fiance Kyra had this huge fight. Mostly it was because of Chris's current girlfriend Melissa who was trying to start shit between Matt and Kyra. Melissa had already left because Regina and Matt had gone to pick up Chris from the airport, and that had apparently pissed the little girlfriend off. So instead of trying to figure out where Melissa was, Chris called her a stupid bitch and instead decided to rough house with me.


Regina informed Chris in April that his girlfriend has been cheating on him for a long time now. Basically two days after he left for tech school for the army, Melissa has been cheating on him. I don't know what he expects from a 17 year old high school girl who gets high and drunk every weekend, but I decided to stay out of it. Of course, Chris blamed the fact that people said anything to him on me, so I still got the short end of the stick.


I was failing my Anatomy class almost all semester because the teacher was just not giving us the right information, so I had to really buckle down. I squeaked by with a C, thank God.


My cousin introduced me to one of his friends that is actually pretty interesting. His name is Erik, and honestly, he seems like a nerd. But he is a hiker, like I am, and so we are kind of clicking. Also, he gets my pokemon jokes like Chris never would.


Gina has been testing our friendship recently, asking me to point out all her flaws. I hate doing that, because in the end, if you keep pushing me, I will tell you the truth, even if it hurts. I have come to the conclusion that it's not that she is afraid of loving someone, it's that she is afraid to ever let herself be happy.


Now that school is over, I thought I would be happier. In a sense, I am in bursts. Like today, my little brother and I went kayaking on a lake, and it was ridiculously fun. I enjoyed teaching him different strokes, and being in the sun was good for me. But being alone in my apartment, sometimes I get to thinking too much and it makes me sad.


There are a lot of things I would like to do, you know? I would like for me and Chris to be friends. Before Melissa showed up and basically told him he can't hang out with any girl, we were getting there. There were old wounds that needed patching, but I felt like we were both moving on towards something like friendship.


I would really like to not be mad at my cousin for making a human. Because ultimately I am upset he got his girlfriend pregnant. We aren't going to have the same relationship we always have. We are really close, more like twins than cousins, and now he is deviating from the path we've been taking. It really frustrates me. He is my best, and closest friend, and now he is going to be raising a baby while I am going to college and hopefully studying abroad. It pains me to know that I get to do all of these amazing things and he never will.


I would like for Gina to just be happy. She won't be, especially when she gets turned down by one guy and that ultimately means to her that she should never date again. She frustrates me because rejection is not the final blow in the casket of love. Deciding to never try to love again is what destroys people.


I want to hang out with Erik more, but he is going away on an internship to New Jersey this summer. And while most of me is like, holy crap, that's awesome! Some of me is really bummed because I like that he gets my jokes and is way taller than me. But I don't want to start anything if he is going away, so I think I will just start by making a friendship first.


I did get a new job for the summer as a nanny three days a week, so at least I am going to have a little more money. And Carl is going to be going to a close by college this fall, so maybe I will actually be going to some fun parties instead of staying home on the weekends. 


And I do have a little trip planned for the end of the summer. I am figuring out the details for a 22 mile hike. It will be a backpacking trip, that I hope will be the epitome of awesome. The plan is for me and my friends to go, but considering Chris has me on his shit list, Gina is acting like a crazy person, and I don't want to be stuck hiking with just Matt and Kyra who apparently have REALLY loud sex, it might just be me and Dash. Who knows? My summers have unexpected turns all the time.