“January 5th 2008: Buggered Rotas, Rocking, Guest Appearances By Dayshift, Espresso Is A False Economy and A Reality Check For JamesStreaming Song Of The Day: You by EvanescenceSo, we have a new rota system at work.  Entirely incomprehensible.  Instead of having all the information you need on one page, which makes sense, instead we now have the same information on 14 pages.  And to add a bit more spice to this system, most people's hours are wrong.  At least one person's rank is wrong too.  The assistant manager has been reassigned at a Services Customer Services Assistant.  AKA Bakery Bod.  It is never a dull week working where I work.  We rocked last night.  Properly kicked ass.  Many customers.  Much useless stuff in the chiller, and even more useless stuff in the warehouse.  And we got the whole shebang worked and the store faced up really well, and every single cage we have brought over.  All before 3am.  With just two of us because Simon has been taken out for 5 days with...something.  Yeah.  To get signed off sick from work you need to be that specific.  Even the assistant manager's son doesn't know why Simon is off.  He just is.  Although James did put it down to Polish Flu which I found immensely amusing.  If you don't work with Poles, this won't be as funny to you.  Long story short, the Poles are incredibly hard workers until they get "Polish Flu" - a mysterious illness which can come on at any time, and will take them out of work for between 5 and 10 days.  It's an amazing phenomenon.  Because it will also render them unable to get to the phone too...And we had a bit of a surprise last night.  Richard.  He normally works on Dayshift, and as such, is a pretty simplistic and dense creature.  He did ok.  He wasn't exceptionally fast, but he was alright considering he arrived at 5am.  Apparently he had to play football at 2pm.  As I pointed out to Caroline, this didn't surprise me.  Football is a pretty simplistic game.  Don't hurt the other players and kick the sphere into the big hole.  And don't play outside the nicely drawn lines.  Give me a quiz any day.  Where I can pit my wits against someone else who has thought up some questions for me.  Or a crossword, where I am given a description of something, and I need all my linguistic skills available to figure out which of the thousands of words I know match that description.  Anyway, back to Richard, he was pretty good.  And a pretty nice guy which surprised the absolute hell out of me because only once out of the times I have been around him has he ever been nice to me.  The rest of the times he was just plain nasty and a bit of an arse.  Must have been the lack of Cocaine, because he was too awake and alert for a normal person at 5am, and I know he does Coke, because a supervisor a few days ago asked how he was so alert at 11pm, yet acting drunk, and he sniffed loudly and said "Yeah mate, in the bathroom at The Mayflower, 3 lines mate..."So, I decided to try and match him.  Now, as I absolutely DESPISE drugs, I decided to match him with my own, legal Cocaine.  Espresso.  If you have never had one, go and buy one.  Seriously. Yes, they are small.  Yes, they are expensive for the amount of coffee you get, but my god, 10-15 minutes after you've drunk that stuff, it's like fire is running through your veins .  It is seriously the most potent wake up call I have ever come across.  And it's legal!  And, according to this online calculator, it would take 177 shots of the stuff to kill me!  Awesome!  Anyway, suicide by espresso aside, I drank the espresso, and 10 minutes afterwards, I got a raging headache.  Ok, so there are side effects, I also worked like a maniac.  For about an hour.  And then the kick wore off.  Leaving me as tired, edgy, blergh feeling mess.  And then half an hour later, my energy kicked in again.  Such is the randomness of Espresso.  Lastly, I had to give James a little reality check.  He said his friend wanted a job at our place, especially on Nightshift as apparently we earn a mint (first I heard of it...) so I gave James a small reality check where I told him that I could earn WAY more money typing up letters for a guy in a suit in an office.  He snorted and said "Yeah, find that job then Jack".  So I informed him that I used to work in office as a mortgage clerk (it was cack) and earned £1800 a month.  His mouth just fell open.  I love it when I do that to people!PermalinkJanuary 4th 2008: Distraction and Depression (The colour change is temporary...probably)Streaming Video Of The Day: Through The Fire And The Flames by DragonforceSo, I guess I should explain where I have been for the last 3 days.  I haven't had time off, I even prepared blog posts on bits of paper at work and fully intended blogging them.  But I got distracted and depressed.Lately I have been playing Guitar Hero 3 which I got for Christmas.  It's a really addictive game and until tonight it was a really good game.  But I think it has been distracting me a little too much.  Not quite sure what I am going to do about it, but I think resting the game for a while is certainly on the cards because to be honest, I have not hit my business with 1% of the force I fully intended to before the New Year hit us.  I've also been hit with a bout of depression.  No idea why.  Maybe due to massively negative forces at work.  Maybe due to the mood swingyness of my supervisor (I unconsciously mimic others moods, instability leads to depression) but whatever the cause, it isn't due to my medication.  I've even upped the dose, and nothing.  Lately I've been feeling very...blank.  Whatever it is, it's practically wiped out my emotions.  This is more easily done than you might expect.  My emotions are learnt, and when I am under pressure or stress, they go to hell.  Normally either they just go way out of whack, or get wiped out entirely.  Well...what I can say is that this blog is coming back.  Big time.  2007 was just the beginning.  2008 is going to be the year when this blog goes from strength to strength.  Just watch and see.  Changes are afoot.  At the moment they are just in the office and behind the scenes, but changes are coming for this blog too.  PermalinkJanuary 1st 2008: Celebrations, Orange Lights, Being Lazy, Slow Nights, Dangerous Dave, Conspiricies, and Good ReviewsStreaming Video Of The Day: Adagio For Strings by DJ TiestoFree MP3s Of The Day from Martin Najbrt: (Similar to DJ Tiesto)Bon soir, Bye ByeMartin Najbrt vs Bon Jovi - Living On A PrayerKept On RainingLeaving BoyettTake Me Away (Alaina T Mix)Puff3Do You BelieveSo, obviously, last night was New Year's Eve, and I was working.  To be more specific though, I was working with Caroline.  This turned out to be a good thing, as we did things by the book.  At ten to midnight I got a bottle of Ame which is a sparkling grape juice/fruit juice/herb drink and got paper cups out of the coffee machine, and we drank pretend Champagne from paper cups at midnight.  And went outside for half an hour to watch the fireworks displays which were going on all around the area, and we could see.  So we did kind of actually have a proper New Year celebration.  Albeit without proper alcohol.  Or dressing up.  And while we were outside watching fireworks, I noticed something.  8 to 10 flying orange lights.  They were reasonably big, and very bright, but just a solid light, and they flew past slowly.  I told Caroline to make sure my eyes weren't playing up again, and she asked some people inside the store to some see.  This actually turned out to be a big mistake.  Because the girl who was with two boys began crying and asking if it was UFOs and if it was, what was going to happen.  Poor kid, she seemed like a nice girl too.  She was absolutely sobbing by the time the two guys took her off, and I heard her yell "No!  Let's just go home, I want to see if it's UFOs!"But last night we were really lazy.  We did much eating of top of the range cakes, which were indeed very nice.  And we also did much reading of magazines.  And chatting.  And generally avoiding work related things.  But we still got the store faced up, the racking worked, and had everything looking pretty hot by 7am.  Well, 6am.  We even got the bread finished, which I had completely forgotten about.  So, essentially, despite doing nothing, we still rocked.  The reason we did nothing, was because last night was a really slow night.  We had maybe 50 customers all night.  The problem is, we may curse customers, but they are sometimes a welcome distraction from how routine our job is.  You do the same thing every night, but we don't get the same customers every night.  So they make a welcome break from anything routine.  And on this note, I would just like to give a big shout out to:Mr Security ManThe Jenson Button Lookalike (who now looks more like Russell Brand)The Cute Redhead Taxi Driver WomanMr Moustachioed Security ManMr Wightlinkand lastly - Mr "Marlboro 10 Light"These are the regulars who came in last night and made the night a bit more bearable for me!  Thank you!And last night marked the return of Dangerous Dave.  Dangerous Dave is a strange individual and our newspaper delivery man.  He has a 1950s slickback haircut, a 1960s hippy beard, and a thoroughly 1970s attitude to most things.  For example, he was asking MANY questions about Caroline, who I wouldn't be interested in because she's not my type, which I explained to Dangerous Dave.  His reply?  "When you haven't had sex for 2 months, a hole is a hole".  Nice.  He also told me a lucacrous story about how some drunk kids tried to grab the handle of the side of his van, missed, and landed in the road, and he just drove off, followed by the police who flagged him down and asked if he saw the kid try to grab the van, and he said yes, asked if they were going to check on the kid.  They said they might later, and he asked if they were going to arrest him and they said no because it would be too much paperwork.  Yeah.  Right.  He did also stand over Caroline, looked down and said "I could stand here and look at this view all night."  Top notch plonker.Then there is the theory going around the store.  Regular readers will know we have had a slightly larger than normal influx of meat.  Well...and you might find this hard to believe, but it's true...the manager organised for other stores to take all this meat, and then, horror of horrors, the chillers all died.  None of the other electrics were cut, but the chiller power died.  For 5 hours.  Rendering the meat rancid.  So we now have to claim it on the insurance.  Purely coincidental if you believe management.  Huge cover up if you believe anyone else who works at the store.  Me included.  Especially as I could do this trick too.  One little tiny switch in the fusebox and the chillers all die.  Now, if I know this, other people know this, and other people could do this.  Lastly, considering we did pretty much bugger all last night, and that the facing up we did was of not a particularly high standard, we managed to get a good review from Laura.  She had no complaints about the state of the store whatsoever.  Methinks that maybe when I am in charge, I will be doing my own little Store Walks before management arrive.  I did this last night and it seemed to work.  Less hassle for me.  And good reviews.  Which is always a bonus.  And might even get me away from the thought process of mine which goes "x hours to go, then I can go home, play Guitar Hero, and be happy.  Not here."  And remember, today is the first day of a new year.  Make it a great day!PermalinkAll content copyright (c) Jack's Blog 2007-2009.  All Rights Reserved.”