By Heather
Now I know that this blog is entitled "Misadventures of Working Retail" and I know I haven't made any posts of working retail lately. One, being that I have changed jobs and yet to have any bad experiences with co-workers (which is unlikely at any rate cause there are only two of them and they remind me of my brother and his friend I aptly call "the butt" so therefore have no qualms with either of them). Two I've only been working there for three weeks so I've yet to become embittered enough to write anything worth reading about. And hopefully I never will become embittered with it because I'm more than ready to be in a job that I enjoy doing. I'm going to take a while to decide on re-purposing this blog as a wait and see what happens but I will continue making posts about random aspects of my life like the title also states "...and Random Posts about My Life". But as always I promise it to be entertaining.
Now having started this new job Ryan and I are now on the same pay schedule. We were on alternating pay weeks and I am going to say, that was grand. But now having to re-work bills suddenly and juggle a few till next pay therefore having to pay late fees has kinda brought us back down from the new job high. We are sweating a bit but its nothing we can't handle and nothing that we haven't had to do before. I was out with my best good friend Panda yesterday, planning for her wedding, putting center piece ideas together and we were out most the day. It was the longest I had gone without seeing Ryan in a few weeks. What I like most about this job is that I've had more time with him in the passed three weeks than I had in two years at working at my last job. But I digress, I got home around nine and when I got in it looked like Ryan had just lost all the blood in his face. I thought something horrible happened. He told me that since I didn't get paid last week because of the change in jobs we could only afford to pay half of our bills and we'd have to pay the rest next pay to catch up. He was stressed because ever since our bank account got hacked and the bank took forever to re inverse us for the loss we have been hardly able to get ahead and stay there. Now to all you married women or even you women out there in a relationship I'm going to impart some very powerful nurturing advice to you on how to comfort your man when this happens. Are you ready for this spectacular and revolutionary tactic? Stand in front of him while he's sitting and place his face in your boobs. Trust me, it works.
Before you accuse me of being dirty there is logic behind his tactic. One, other than the fact that they being smothered by fun bags, they can hear your heartbeat which is a proven fact to make them feel calm and relaxed even if it is in the slightest amount. Two, this gesture is made that you understand their frustration and that you are there now. Three, this is a gesture of love and that immediately makes the stress level go down. Four, no lack of money can make this go away. You can now assure them that yeah, things are harder but not undo able, the budget will just have to be tighter for the next few months or how ever long it takes. It won't always be winter, that massive gas bill won't always be there. There is always a silver lining. And Five, humor, using your fun bags to distract them from their financial brooding. But a good distraction never the less.
You can argue my tactics all you want but I have substantial proof for that at least in my case it works. Knowing how to keep a balance, when to make each other heavier and each other lighter is a good sense to have. Yeah, we are a young couple, we are going to make financial mistakes, but they are ones we learn from and learn to avoid. You can warn your kids all you want but those mistakes are going to happen with or without your input, that much I've learned. Not that we don't appreciate the advice and warnings and I'd like to say that I listen and do as I'm advised but never really do. Sorry for that, but its true. The follow up to this tactic is to turn everything off and go to bed. A good nights sleep can take a huge load off. A wise man I worked with at my last job once said this "When you get older you come to realize there are only two things worth their weight in gold. A good nights sleep, and a good bowel movement." More and more I'm finding this to be true...oddly enough. At least for the sleeping part. I guess the point of this blog is that things are never as dark as they seem and to never let things like finances bring you down to far. If you let it get you down to far it gets really hard to see out.
And that is my nugget of advice and humor for the day.
By Heather
What television and Hollywood make marriage out to be.
When in most cases it is probably the most chaotic, stressful ordeal that you will ever experience. (not in my case) But in most cases this is true. But at the end of the day, usually during the reseption you take a step back and look at everyone and your segnificant other and the same expression falls on both your faces "We did it."
However, after the wedding reality comes in and you discover some incongruities with what television and Hollywood have told you while you were growing up. In your mind before marriage this is what you see.
In reality, this is what happens.
or
The reality is, from a woman's point of view, is that man with his arms wrapped around you is a blazing furnice. And no matter how much you would love to spoon and cuddle with him, it would mean certain dehydration and mummified doom if you did all night long. Also Hollywood doesn't prepare you for what you wake up to in the early morning either. You wake up at the crack of dawn each day and as you raise the covers of your bed, what ever smell has been furmenting under those layers over night eeks out and makes your eyes water. Nothing prepares you for that. Now before my husband chimes in here and says I'm just as bad I'm going to make a point. Yes, I'm a girl and yes I fart and I'll be the first to admit that at times I am out right foul and nasty. But your forgetting one thing, I am used to mine. So what ever unholy mixture of both you and I is sturing under those sheets for six to eight hours is suddenly unleashed is noxious. The government needs to capture that and use it for chemical warfare. At times I believe that our bedroom needs to be quarentined and people with hazmat suits need to burn some fabrics.
Now this is an outright fabrication. I can count maybe six times that both me and Ryan were brushing our teeth at the same time. The times where me and him are in the bothroom together are when I'm showering and he runs into the bathroom in a rush to the toilet. Or when I'm brushing my teeth again, running into the bathroom in a worried rush. And yet again I have to sit there in plethra of smells, this time with my mouth open. But what is most important here is, that I wouldn't trade this for the world. Oddly enough there is nothing else I'd rather come home to and all that Hollywood crap they shove down your throat seems so hollow compared to what it actually is. There is a lot of humor in marriage and I think that there is what bonds us to one another so much. There will be some serious tests along that road. And yes those gross, silly, or weird habits at times may be the things that drive you nutts that day but later on it is still the thing you think of that makes you laugh. You have to laugh, you hear that saying all the time but its something you come to learn to be an undeniable truth.
But I think both me and Hollywood can agree on this.
Buuut more realistically this
I love you Ryan :)
By Heather
What would you do if you won the lottery. I mean really won. Imagine you won some absurd amount of money. I realized something today. What I would be the most excited about having won the lottery, was not what bills I could pay off, where I could go, or what I could buy. But I would be most excited about the fact that I'd be able to spend my entire day with Ryan. Its what I look forward to at five o'clock every day. Don't get me wrong I'd probably burn through a lot of cash at first just for the hell of it. Then I'd be smart with the bulk of it. Sure I could go to Hawaii, but if I don't have Ryan with me its not even worth it.
By Heather
#1 Prisons
I don't believe my hard earned money should pay for some thug to eat three meals a day, a gym, cable television, and health care. Just so when he gets out he does something else stupid to get through back into prison because he gets taken care of so well there. The death penalty people, yeah people have the ability to change, I do believe that. But if people are repeat offenders to the worst of crimes they should be taken out of the equation and I don't mean an eighteen thousand dollar shot, I mean a dollar fifty bullet right in the temple. Quick and painless. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles. There goes at least a third of the people my taxes are paying to feed, cloth, and keep healthy.
#2 Welfare
Since the system no longer serves the purpose it was created for I don't believe I should be paying for it. The system was created for a leg up, not a way of life for people. Unfortunately the people that genuinely need this assistance can't get it because they are "to well off" to receive any. Which raises the question, "Why is there still welfare?". These people are living better than I am and I'm paying for it.
#3
Did you know that the government owns GMC and that the government spends a lot of money making you feel good about your vehicle purchase. Scratch that, they spend a lot of your money just so you can feel good about a car you bought. Did you know that no one wants to by a Chevy Volt, and the government is subsidizing the company about two hundred thousand per car because they're trying to force people to buy the Chevy volt.
#4 Failed Green Energy Companies
That stimulus package that was passed in 2009 was used to pay off bankruptcy for these companies. And I'm going to connect this one to bail outs. If you are a business and you did not spend your money responsibly and you are going under, then you deserve to go under. Solyndra, have you heard about this? They make solar panels and they were trying to sell them for five dollars less than it took to make them which leads to bankruptcy pretty quickly. So the government gives them $500 million, they took it and they still went bankrupt. And to top it all off, Obama's justice dept. threw out the last hundred years of loan litigation by putting his campaign a head of the tax payers that actually paid for it. This situation has happened at least twelve other times.
So while I was doing research for this I couldn't find an itemized list of what our taxes go to but these are just a few examples. If anyone has anything they'd like to add to the list of things we shouldn't have to pay for please leave it in the comment section below.
By Heather
So I started my new job on Monday and I have to say the work environment is just so much better here. I have the weekend off so we came up to visit my parents and my mom just made the statement "I can see a major difference in you now that your not working there anymore." And I suddenly realized, quitting that job was like haveing a really good poop. You know the ones, you're full of pain and anguish for hours till your able to get to your bathroom and when you finally go you feel lighter, happier, more awake, more energetic and look around your house to see what work can be done.
By Heather
This happened about two nights ago. It was the last time I will ever close the store since I will be starting a new job this coming Monday. I was waiting on my last customer of the night and of course when he swipes his store credit card of course the register prompts for an authorization number. This process usually takes about 2-3 minutes but course this one took 6-8 minutes and I'm convinced that the lady I'm talking to on the other end of the line has short term memory loss because of the amount of times she asked me for the same information over and over again. Now as I'm on hold waiting for her to get her act together so she can provide me with the authorization code I can't help but notice this customer that I am waiting on has his entire hand in his pants and he is just scratching away. First off EEWWWWW! Second, okay I understand you're a guy and having grown up with a brother and being married I understand that every once in a while for a guy there is a level of discomfort that happens in that region periodically. But you don't take care of that in public! If you've ever seen a guy moving side to side or doing a funny little jig THAT is what they are doing! Sorry to out you guys but its not something to be afraid to admit. Because those funny dances you do are way better and more appropriate than sticking half your arm down your pants going downtown Lester Brown on yourself in front of a complete stranger. This guy had problems because it wasn't just a one and done scratch, I'd say it was at least four minutes of scratching and pulling at his crotch outside of his jeans.
To top this off I was only allowed to authorize half the amount of his sale and of course he paid for the rest in cash of which he handed it to me by hand...imagine how thrilled I was to take this mans money. Interesting game to play while watching this happen. Lets play spin the wheel of STD's! Trust me, there is no sufficient amount alcohol disinfectant that I could have drenched my hand in that would have made me feel clean. Of which I drenched my hands in so much that my skin started to peel. Hands down that was the most grossed out a customer has ever made me.
