Day 14 - A day off

Today is a day off for me, which is pretty rare because the last time I had an entire day off was last Monday.

My general scheduling is pretty absurd. Sometimes I get 3 hours a day, sometimes 5, sometimes 10. But unfortunately I only get 32.5 hours total. It feels like I work 6 days a week though... maybe that's because I do... but I only get paid for 32.5 hours of work, which is slightly discouraging. And my hours are placed at random times, totally at the mercy of the Troll.

A co-worker, who is a Colonel in the army (from henceforth he shall be known as Colonel), said that Istanbul is an interesting place to visit. He does a lot of traveling and he seems like an interesting guy. Finally, I found someone other than apathetic and retarded teenagers, bitchy Hobgoblins, and depressed Trolls to talk to. Talking to him reminds me of why I'm working here in the first place, i.e. so I can get off my ass and do something.

Colonel is a fairly young guy (mid to late-20s), and is already an officer in the army, but for some reason, he won't be deployed until two months later, even though he was supposed to be deployed last Wednesday. He has a lot of qualifications, as well, he used to work as a by-law officer, i.e. the guy that gives parking tickets. He made a lot of money doing that and he could've found a far better job than literally flipping burgers at night at Harvey's and working at Rexall (a Canadian pharmacy chain) during the day. But, since he is going to get deployed on short notice, and because he used to work with the Boss and enjoyed working with him, he decided to work here instead to support himself before he gets shipped off. Anyways, an interesting person to work with and definitely an ally. He seems to be above the petty squabble that goes on, especially with the teenagers and trolls and hobgoblins. Unfortunately, he only works during some nights, and most of my shifts are daytime shifts, so I don't really see him that often, unfortunately.

So the duty I've been assigned to the most, by far, is garnishing. Basically, I take customer's receipt to a garnishing station, look at the thing, and go to the rack where Troll puts the burgers that she finished grilling, come back, and put whatever crap customer wants on it. The things that customers can get are sliced pickles, diced onions, shredded lettuce, sliced tomatoes, sliced hot peppers, and relish (the sliced pickles and tomatoes are sliced by the prepper, which was what I did last week for three of my shifts). They can also get me to squirt some ketchup, mustard, mayo, hot sauce, and "mesquite sauce", which is, from what I can tell, the mayo and the hot sauce mixed together. I have a fun new name for mesquite sauce: my-skeet sauce.

Not a day passes by without the fucking Troll blowing her fuse at me about some random bullshit. I've had three different guys secretly confide in me that they find her short-tempered and constantly angry and whom are convinced that Troll has a target on their back. Funny, I thought I was getting it bad. We compared stories on who she hated the most. No one was convinced that the Troll hated the other guy more than them.

There's not really much happening at the moment. Two weeks done, five and a half months to go.

Day 10 - Customer service is a two-faced street

Or Day 11, something like that. It feels like I have worked at Harvey's for an eternity, but I only started on the Thursday of the week before (it's Monday night right now); I haven't even gotten a god damn paycheck yet!

Anyways, I am settling into a routine now. So far, I've been getting a full day off per week, and this week I got 32.5 hours ... less than I needed but about what I wanted. Sometimes I work 3 hours a day, and sometimes I have to work for 8 to even 10 hours a day. Usually, the 8 to 10 hour days are divided into 2 shifts with a 3 or 4 hour gap in between. This is okay for now, because I can bike home during that time and play some League of Legends or relax and watch some TV or something, but when it snows, it's going to be a lot more difficult for me to do that.

Basically, if a day has me starting during breakfast time, I would be doing prepping. What I would be doing is using the slicer machine and slice bowls of pickles and tomatos. This would take approximately two hours. Then I would make the salad, which takes around 20 or so minutes. I've done this three times so far: last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I hated doing this before, because I had to wake up early and the job is pretty tedious. But I don't really mind it as much anymore, cause I tend to whistle random songs while working, and sometimes I would talk to my manager about random crap to pass the time. Maybe I'll ask the guy if I'm allowed to listen to my iPod in the future.

The worst part of the job so far, other than the tedium and the seemingly slow passage of time that incur in the building, are the co-workers. Most of them are nasty, ill-mannered people with terrible attitudes. They are people (not to be sexist or anything but so far all of them are women ... just saying) that have been too stupid to get another job or gain better job prospects or go to school and thus condemned to crappy places like this for the rest of their life. The more upbeat/less irritable people tend to be the kind that actually realize what this place is, which is a place where you get some money and then get the hell out. These people are trapped here for life. To be honest, I would feel the same way if I am trapped in this kind of lifestyle as well. Hell, I'm only going to be working for six months, being at it for only 2 weeks, and I'm already getting a taste of what it feels like to be "trapped". I really hope I can get back to school next September. As I said, I will never be academically suspended ever again.

Anyways, one woman is particularly vile. From hence forth, I shall refer to this individual as "Troll", because that's what she looks like. She looks like Lady Ashton with 50 extra kilos of the burger grease that we cook with in her belly. She looks like a freakin' troll, and she has a foul attitude and tends to snap at everyone, predictably she causes few co-workers to be sympathetic to her. Unfortunately, one of them that is sympathetic to her is the manager, because the manager is her husband. As well, she also writes the schedule, and thus can deal some sweet scheduling retribution on me if she suddenly decides to dish out her wrath on me. She's horrendous to deal with, and even customers that have seen the way she dealt with me have offered words of condolences, and she's connected as fuck. Crap.

From my experience, I just find customer service to be a hilariously two-faced affair. There's another women that works the drive-through a lot, let her be henceforth be known as "Hobgoblin", because she will eventually transform into the Troll in her future. Anyways, she would be apologizing to the drive-through customers on the headphone, going "Aaaaaaaam sorry about that" on her drive-through speakers every five fucking minutes. Just try going through the drive-through at Harvey's one time and see for yourself! Anyways, that phrase is so overused that it's becoming an ironic kitschy defining character of hers. She's just so sorry all the time! Except she's not! Sure, it could be interpreted as manners/politeness, except she is an inherently nasty, arrogant bitch, for she has shown most condescending and impolite attitude toward me. In other words, Hobgoblin is going to grow up to be a troll.

Customer service is hilarious, because when I worked at Canadian Tire as a cashier, there was this manager that's more two-faced than Harvey Dent. She would literally come to my cash, in front of a customer, spew to me the nastiest insults on my intelligence and my dignity in the most arrogant, brash and condescending tone with a nasty snarl, and then in the same sentence return to the customer and talk in the sweetest voice like you would use on a child. It's like going from Hitler to Mother Theresa in the same breath. It's hard to explain, so if you see me, ask me about that Sports Manager from Canadian Tire. Power corrupts. A little bit of power corrupts assholes absolutely.

Other than that, I find that there are little to complain about so far except for some other idiotic, anal-retentive women (the guys are generally not as irritable and most have good humor), and the fact that I have to work itself, that kinda sucks too. Going back to the first point, I'm not saying all women that work here are annoying, stupid, and inflexible. There are some cool ones, like one particular manager, whom I shall call "Skipper". Apparently she worked here for two and a half years, and is, of course, a full time student about to graduate, and therefore, has a half-decent future ahead of her. She's generally very pleasant to deal with thus-far, and I actually confided in her about Troll. In general, she said that she will help me deal with Troll if Troll is going nuts and decides to fire me or royally screw me over like give me like, 7 hours a week from 7 to 8 in the morning each day. I just find it incredible that "Skipper" has endured this for two and a half years. I guess doing this part-time while going to school keeps you from being demoralized and knowing that you'll be doing something else eventually. Working in a burger joint full-time and sometimes you start to think that you might be stuck doing this for the rest of your life, and that's scary.

Anyways, my usual routine is do some garnishing, do cash if they tell me to, sweep the floor, wipe the tables, change the garbage bags, and restock some items and garnish. I alter it up, just so I can look like I'm doing something constructive and therefore will not bitch at me or tell me to do stuff that I'd rather not do, like mop the floor. The thing is, I kinda like doing the aforementioned tasks because they're fucking easy to do and aren't physically demanding.

Basically, try to bleed out as many hours as possible. I'm making progress on saving up money, and haven't gotten fired (lost and exiled to Quebec) so far, so I guess that's a plus. Approximately 26 weeks left in Survivor: MW!

Survivor: MM - Day 1, 2, 3, and a bitter rant about CT

So I have worked three days at Harvey's without getting fired or reprimanded yet. So far, this is the least objectionable place I have worked since I left Chipworks. The tasks that I am assigned to are so far not that bad relatively. Taking orders, doing cash, garnishing the burgers, and even tasks that I traditionally despised, such as sweeping, cleaning tables, and taking out the garbage, just seems to be easier than, say, working those dirty assed kitchens that I worked at at the beginning of September. This is much more bearable than Canadian Tire, because I'm not stuck in one place at a time. Eventually I will have to do prepping and the frier for the fries and onion rings, cause I see some of the kids doing that.

I have to say that the manager is a genuinely nice guy. All the managers I had in my Minimum Wage adventures have been owners of the establishment, so they are all no non-sense and watching-you-under-their-constant-gaze types (i.e. dicks). There are a few dicks here too, but there are not that many, and I am on good terms with the manager, so all is good for now. I think he might be the nicest manager I've had since Denise from my co-op term in Toronto.

Overall, this Harvey's location isn't a horrible place to work for. A handful of students worked here for two and a half years or so, so it looks like they don't fire people randomly for being "slow". No one is bitching at me for being "slow" or some bullshit, and the tasks aren't as physically demanding or backbreaking as the three other jobs that I worked at since September. I actually was told I'm doing a pretty good job. All in all, Survivor: MM is proceeding as planned. Six more months to go.

One observation that I have is that the people here are a lot less anal than Canadian Tire. For example, in Canadian Tire, the people (that weren't fired) really seem to be indoctrinated (and therefore more likely to rat you out if you speak frankly), or for the managers, have an authoritarian streak to them. We were instructed to learn about things like "corporate mission" and stuff like that. Managers at CT go left and right giving "verbal warnings" or "reprimands" like they're some hall monitor in some middle school, and everyone is careful of what they say because everyone is a potential big brother. Canadian Tire made up all these inane policies and irrelevant training that I had to learn and adhere to. I got written up for a warning in Canadian Tire once because I was 7 minutes early instead of 10 minutes early like I was suppose to. I am here to make minimum wage, my labor is already being exploited disproportionally to make rich people richer. Don't make me give a shit about Canadian Tire's corporate strategy or be here 10 minutes early for my shift instead of 7 minutes. I don't need 10 minutes to be ready, I only need 1. As long as I'm ready to go at the appropriate time, don't bitch at me and fuck off.

However, in Harvey's, you just have to be ready at the right time (with your uniform and everything) and there's no problem. You don't need to be here 10 minutes beforehand or some crap like that. I don't need to know about Harvey's corporate strategy. They just taught me how to do things that I need to do on this job, and I'm not being harassed to give up my time outside of work. Overall, a much nicer place to work for, if unglamorous. Hey, if I'm getting paid minimum wage, then I'd rather just do work, not know as much as irrelevant information as possible, and not know what the hell Canadian Tire's 5 values are.

Another thing that is good about Harvey's, or accurately, another thing that sucked about working at Canadian Tire, are "secret shoppers". What these douchebags do is that they pretend to be a customer and try to catch you making a mistake. Mistakes include not saying "hello, how are you", offering to sell them those ripoff Canadian Tire MasterCard plans, having to open up every stacked large bins and containers to check for theft and then awkwardly apologizing to the customer because you are basically accusing them of theft, having to scan 50 of the same thing, even though you can just hit x50 and scan once, and saying "thanks, see you soon". You get reprimanded for saying "thanks, have a nice day" (because it signals them that you don't want them to come back... yeah), and not scanning every item, despite the fact that 50 of the said items are the exact same thing. But no, you have to scan each of them. Once these secret douchebags catch you, you are given a reprimand by the manager. You never know when these guys are around, but given the fact that 99% of Canadian Tire's clientèle are people over the age of 80, well it's probably going to be that middle aged smug bastard that's buying 50 bins, stacked on top of each other, inviting me to waste hours unstacking and scanning each one while frustrating the hell out of other customers.

Speaking of training, there is online training thing that employees (i.e. I) go through called "Canadian Tire University". In it, they have these "courses", and they have many courses including "Canadian Tire Corporation Strategy, Corporate Vision, and other crap that business majors invent to make themselves feel useful. They set it up like a curriculum so that if you take these courses and some of these electives, you get a "degree" or certification, just like a real university! First of all, I object strongly to the name, because using the word "university" in their corporate indoctrination program is demeaning to real universities. Universities are places of knowledge and free thought, they promote equality and fairness and intellectual merit, and serve as the economic equalizer of society. This "Canadian Tire University" and Canadian Tire itself is the antithesis of a University, it's a corporation that only cares about profits. Canadian Tire University is to universities what Church of Scientology is to churches; it's blasphemous.

In Harvey's, there's no crap like that. People are just generally more chilled out/apathetic. When customers come in, people usually say "hi, what would you like", or something to that effect; nothing's set in stone. You know, normal, appropriate stuff, instead of clumsily engineered statutory phrases born out of an attempt by a corporation to make the customers feel at ease while regarding people's worth only in so far as how they contribute to their profits.

Maybe it's because the workers at Harvey's are basically indistinguishable from, say, Beavis and Butthead in those Burger World episodes. Maybe because people working at Harvey's are in general much less anal. Harvey's is just less stressful place to work for, and as I said, I'm making minimum wage, so I can't afford good healthcare anyways.

Speaking of money, I got my check from Canadian Tire recently for my time there. I have extracted a total of around $460 from them. Not too bad for less than a week of work. They can still kiss my ass though. Fuckers.

Survivor: Minimum Wage

So for those of you that don't know, I got fired from Canadian Tire (boycott Canadian Tire!) two weeks ago. What happened was that they said I was "too slow", which was a complete lie, because I was performing at the speed of the other regular cashiers. I was very competent and never had a customer complain or become dissatisfied with my service made the sudden termination by that bastard manager with a shit-eating grin all the more surprising. The more likely reason was that I recognized this almost axiomatic fact: Canadian Tire is a horrible place to work for. The managers and department heads (except my Head Cashier, she was really nice) treat their subordinates with absolute contempt, and what little authority they receive in their retail job world they use it to abuse their underlings. The fact that this didn't rub well on me, the fact that I forgot to bring my pen with me (a required item) a few times, and working in a place where my legs buckled faster than Space Shuttle Challenger were the real reasons that I was fired. Retail is horrible, and good riddance to them. Some people enjoy retail work, lording over their underlings because that's the only place in their life where they have a little bit of authority, just like some people are Nazis (or both). I believe afterwards some of the other new hires found new jobs, so good for them. I'll miss some of the guys I worked with.

For the past two weeks, I've been seriously thinking about how else I should make due with my year in suspension. My original plan was to work from September to March/April and then go on a vacation. But, if I don't find a job soon, I need to have a second plan that would interesting and/or educational. A co-worker from Canadian Tire, Mimi, suggested a brilliant idea. She, like I, was very disgruntled, and told me about the Quebec government's subsidy of French language classes in their province. Basically, there are many French language schools in Quebec that the Province would like Anglophone Canadians to go to. They subsidize, and according to intetwebs rumors, even let Canadians go for free. Now, I am an adventurous guy, and while Quebec is no Europe or Middle East or whatever, it's still very different than English North America. I wanted to improve my French anyways, and I would like to explore a new culture, so my plan was that if I don't find a job soon, I think I will take what I saved and enroll into a French language school in Quebec. I like learning languages, and French is a very important language in this country, because all the decent paying jobs for those with a high school degree need bilingual abilities. Also, rumor from knowledgeable sources has it that French chicks (that aren't from Quebec) dig the Quebec French accent. So learning French in Quebec is a very attractive option.

Thankfully I found a new job today at Harvey's. And having learned my lesson, having had three jobs in the last month, I think I definitely need to change my mindset, which is to "get through" six months somehow, hopefully with as little effort as possible, and then go vacationing. The problem with this mindset is that I tend to get discouraged by how hard work is (having been spoiled at Chipworks by work that were enjoyable, and thus easy). Henceforth, I will have to adopt a new mindset.

I call it "Survivor: Minimum Wage". The idea is that what I am going through is a challenge. I gotta treat this situation like a gameshow. The challenge is to get through six months of minimum wage action, and all the delinquency and abuse that comes with it, and if I succeed, I win a free vacation. If I lose (i.e. get fired), I am banished to Quebec to learn French. Honestly, it's a win-win situation, because while one alternative is slightly more attractive to the other, the banishment to Quebec thing isn't that bad; it's just a toned down version of vacationing, really.

Anyways, hopefully I will succeed in "Survivor: Minimum Wage". Outwit, Outplay, Outlast!