five o'clock world

I've worked at Target for four days now, and I already want to kill myself - even more than usual that is. The only thing that keeps me sane is knowing that I will be getting a paycheck every couple of weeks, something that I have not gotten in nearly a year. But I use the word paycheck loosely. At $6.50 an hour, I could probably make just as much money walking around town checking the coin returns in pay phones and vending machines. But if I must have a job, I may as well use it as fodder for my blog so at least some good (besides the pocket change I'll be making) can come out of it. So here we go . . . .

After my orientation on Thursday, I find out that I am scheduled to come in at 5 am Friday morning. As I arrive, the "leader on duty," as she is called, has a meeting of all "team members," as we are called, to discuss the plan for the day. She introduces me to this group of approximately 25 employees, and they all give me a big "HI BRAD!" at her bidding. I can tell that a fantastic day is starting. She points me in the direction of two ladies with whom I will be working. As the meeting breaks, the fatter one, named Julia, tells me to follow her to the stock room, and as we arrive she informs me that I am going to "hate it" working there - a great way to break in new employees I'm sure. Needless to say, my outlook for the next eight hours was not too sunny. Julia is one of these women who can't go five minutes without talking about how she needs a cigarette. You know the kind. It's one thing to be so weak as to be a smoker, but it's completely another to be so addicted that one must advertise that addiction to the entire world at every opportunity. Anyway, this woman insists upon calling me "honey," even though it's obvious that she's not more than 35 years old. I feel there there must be at least at 25 year age difference between the honey-er and the honey-ee in order for that to fly. It's also fairly obvious that she spends at least half of her income from this extremely low-paying job on cigarettes. So she begins to explain to me, as briefly as possible, how to use the mystical "PDT," a fairly complex little gadget without which Target stockroom work would be but the fevered dream of a madman. However, professor Lena Myers was better at explaining social inequality than Julia was at explaining the PDT. Imagine trying to learn sign language from Koko the monkey. Sure, Koko knows sign language - it was a long and painful process to teach it to her, spanning years - but you're never going to learn shit from her. That's the only thing I can compare to trying to learn the functions of the PDT from Julia. I eventually figure it out enough from talking to somebody else to do the task at hand. Finally my immediate supervisor Jon comes in. Jon reminds me of an older me. Not much older, mind you - perhaps even a couple of years . . . younger. Julia proceeds to explain to Jon several complaints she has about her co-workers, and about her work schedule and how it will conflict with her far more important schedule of cigarette smoking. I can tell that it's taking Jon all the willpower he has to keep from crushing Julia's head with his fists like that guy they used to show at the end of the Daily Show when Craig Kilborn was still the host. You know what I'm talking about. By this time I have walked past the dog food section of the stock room at least a dozen times, and I determine that, based on the smell, dog food has got to taste like a combination of rat feces and mothballs. I theorize that If I were a dog I would be forced to eat my owners just to get some fresh food. Plus they deserve it for feeding me that crap. A while later I find myself at the top of some 20-foot shelves removing boxes to be pushed to the sales floor. I wonder if I should take a tumble whether I would be able to claim workman's compensation. I curse the fact that I didn't read through the fine print on my contract and decide that it's not worth risking a spinal cord injury for money that I may not even get. Eventually the day ends with my life, my $52 in pre-tax earnings and my suicidal thoughts intact.

We listened to KISS 96.5 WAKS on the radio the entire day, and I realized that they essentially play the same 10 or 15 songs in a loop all day long. At least I think they do, or that could have just been my brain taping over itself. Also, "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas has got to be one of the stupidest songs ever made - and I had to listen to it at least 4 times that day.

Also, I would like to point out that during my three work shifts I have had thus far, I have already taken two dumps. 21 hours of work, two dumps. That's a 1:10.5 dump to work hour ratio. I'm definitely on pace to eclipse the 1:18 that I posted at the Career Center and blow the 1:32 from Hawkins out of the water. Plus I took a dump while I was at home during my lunch break my first day, so had my bowels functioned slightly differently we'd be looking at possibly a 1:7 ratio, which would be more than one dump per full work day - quite a feat if you ask me.

it's a wonderful life

I'm back again after a long layoff. I'm going to try to post at least once a week, hopefully more, now that it looks like I probably have a job. But I just thought I'd share with you what I've been doing during my excruciatingly long layoff. So right now, let me lay out for you a typical day for me and the activities therein.

9 AM - Wake up, then fall back to sleep for an hour after realizing that there's not really anything to do once I am up.
10 AM - Finally make it out of bed, and out of the basement, up to the dining room table to read the sports sections of both the Plain Dealer and the Beacon Journal. Also, do the jumble. But not the Wuzzles. Wuzzles suck.
10:30 AM - Daydream for a while about a fictional episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent in which Goren, having just gotten the suspect to confess to a crime even though the police had little incriminating evidence by knowing exactly how to push the suspect's buttons, sits back in his chair, looks over at Eames and says "BODY MASSAGE." Also think about how Eames is played by Kathryn Erbe, who also played Richard Dreyfuss's daughter in What About Bob? Baby step to four o'clock. Baby step to four o'clock!
11:30 AM - Take a shower, during which I sing "Under the Boardwalk" at least four times.
12 PM - Eat lunch. Banquet chicken nuggets. De-lish.
12:30 PM - Check my email, which usually includes something from the NFL, something from MLB, and a email or two from Blogger, telling me I have a new comment on my blog from a fine young gentleman advertising his very own blog for penis enlargement.
1 PM - Look for jobs on the internet and become extremely tempted to sign up for one of these "work from home" deals with a guaranteed 100,000 a year payoff.
2 PM - Go up to Tops and buy my (frozen) meals for the next few days. Meatloaf. Turkey. Pizza bagels. Sliced beef meal. Chicken fried steak meal. Refuse to get a bonus card once again, even though it would probably save me quite a bit of money, because it just seems like a pain in the ass. By the way, I'm pretty sure Banquet mashed potatoes are nothing more than crushed ice and dandruff, and maybe a little farina too.
3 PM - Play in a free online poker tournament, because that's all I can afford anymore. Maybe win fifty cents or so.
4 PM - Daydream a while longer about a hypothetical world in which a person never needs to take a dump and therefore has no butthole. Also about how butthole is an extremely underrated insult. Butthole. You know, it really should have been called Beavis and Butthole.
5 PM - Pass out from all the excitement.
6 PM - Eat dinner. Alphabet soup (one of the few things I'll eat that doesn't come straight out of the freezer and have a sodium content that would make even Luke run for the hills).
7 PM - Begin watching television, perhaps a sports program, perhaps CI or SVU.
10 PM - Go into my room and begin watching Futurama episodes that I illegally downloaded about 2 years ago and neglected to delete. Realize that I have now seen each episode 5-10 (and in some cases more) times and probably now know the show better than Seinfeld, which is a sad, sad state of affairs.
11 PM - Listen to Lewis Black's White Album or Mitch Hedberg's Strategic Grill Locations.
12 AM - Play in my second free poker tournament of the day, this time pretending that I'm really going to try to play well, and that I care when I lose chips. Of course this has no real effect, and I still call an all-in with QJ off-suit.
1 AM - Go to bed while listening to an extremely garbled repeat of The Jim Rome Show on WKNR on my clock radio. Wonder if tomorrow will be any different, and upon realizing that it won't, hit myself in the head with said radio.

So there you have it. That's the life I've been living for the past 4-5 months.

A side note - Remember that episode of Seinfeld where Elaine failed a drug test because she ate poppyseeds? Well, I have to take a drug test today for the job that I am trying to get, and I just realized that I ate some poppyseed muffins yesterday. So I may not have a job after all.