“How did it come to be like this?!”

I know I haven’t written in a long time.. I’ve just lost a lot of motivation in life.. but that’s not what this post is about.

At work today, I was thinking a lot. I know it sounds weird.. but do you really ever take time to just stop and think? It doesn’t have to be about anything, it can just be following your thoughts and memories… But.. that’s for another time.

There was an elderly couple at Target today, and they were using one of our motorized carts. The battery died and so I was told over the walkie to find another one. We didn’t have it so I had to get a wheelchair. The elderly man was trying to push his wife in this heavy motorized cart. It’s so heavy that even I have a hard time moving the thing. When we finally got them the wheelchair, I thought that it was the end of it.

I was wrong.

I went to make my final checks in my supply closet which happens to be right next to the bathrooms. Apparently the elderly woman had fallen while trying to get into the bathroom. Her husband tried to help her but he had fallen too. I saw his hand as he was leaning against the wall. His withered, wrinkled hand.. The blood vessels were almost black, and his knuckles were slightly bleeding from his fall. I talked to the front end manager and was given permission to help them out by pushing the wheelchair that the eldery woman was in so the elderly man didn’t have to.

Apparently, the elderly woman was changing her diaper; she wasn’t able to do it by herself and consequently made a mess in the bathroom. One of my co-workers that works in the clothing department went to help her as the assets protection person and I waited outside and helped as much as we could by diverting others and getting supplies. When she got out, she just wanted to get the one bottle of advil they had managed to get and go home.

I wheeled her over to Guest Services to ring up the bottle of advil. She was in tears, most likely from embarassment. As soon as she finished buying it, I wheeled her out towards her car while my co-worker helped her husband along. The things she told me.. I can’t remember the last time I was this sad. She told me about how they had no family or friends left… it was just the two of them. They were easily in their 70’s or even 80’s, and they looked it. Their skin draped from their bones with massive wrinkles and creases. Her husband’s eyes were cloudy and turning slightly yellow with a milkish texture…

The elderly woman was extremely upset but thankful that we were taking care of her. I was worried about them driving home. She told me about how her husband recently had a stroke. It looked like it too, the old man didn’t look like he had much life left in him. He didn’t remember where they parked but the woman did. It was really bad, this was right before closing at around 9:40PM and there weren’t many cars left in the parking lot. When we got closer to the car, the old woman was sobbing. They had no one, and their health was failing.

I will never forget the words she said as we got close to her car. She sobbed, “How did it come to be like this?!”  Those words pierced me whole, like a scorpion stinging a rabbit’s soft flesh. I can’t remember the last time I was shaken up this bad. It’s been a long time since i’ve felt strong emotions like that.

As we were walking back inside, my co-worker told me something the elderly lady said. She told me that the elderly woman had said she wanted to just go home, go to sleep and never wake up. That is one of the most depressing things i’ve ever heard. It made me wonder about how this country treats the elderly.

If I manage to live as long as they do, will someone take care of me? Will the way we view elderly people be different then? That’s assuming my frail body even makes it that long, which i’m not too sure about. It must be so hard, having everyone you’ve ever known, be it friends or family to all die before you and leave you alone when you need help the most. It’s certainly changed the way I look at life.

Of Records, Webslingers, and Puppies.

John and I had decided to go see Spiderman 3 today. …As usual, this entry will be filled with various necessary backstories that are totally out of place. For example. yesterday I bought the tickets for not only tonight, but yesterday (accidentally) as well at 7:30. We went to see it at the Moorestown theatre. However, this was after a frantic day at work.

Since Hakim left, it’s been only Sharon and I at Photo which is a royal pain in the ass. This has more or less killed our entire 1 hour photo capability because we spend most of the time catching up on the next day orders and solving various machine disasters which seem to happen at just the worst possible times. John had a slightly different shift than I and I matched mine to his since it was only a 30 minute earlier difference. I went to work from 7:30AM-4:00PM instead of 8:00AM-4:30PM. Whenever John and I work together, it’s always a blast because we have so much fun together. I love lady watching with him, it’s the most hillarious thing that I do these days… It got so busy at Work that I wasn’t able to finish all of everything. I was able to catch up yesterday’s work but tommorrow since I’m the only one working again I’ll have to finish up today’s orders.

Anyway, after work I went home and found out no one was home. Katie and my mom were out picking up a new puppy… I still don’t know whatk ind of dog he is, although he’s a mix. He’s small since he’s only 4 and ah alf months old. He’s got long black wiry hair with some white tufts in it. His ears are pointed and it looks like he has a beard. However, his long tail has virtually no hair on it so he’s quite a creature. They wanted to name him “Norbert.” Seriously, how lame is that? I called him Rufus and we decided to name him that. After all.. Norbert? Seriously, come on.

I got dropped off at the mall a bit early so I could go to LensCrafters and get my glasses adjusted. It was crazy-crowded in there and I more or less had to wait for 20 minutes. However, they finally got to me and adjusted my glasses so they don’t slide down my face anymore and they gave me new nose pads. Sweet. After that, John and his son Jacob came and met me in there while I was getting my glasses fixed and we went to the dollar store. We were originally going to get some drinks but there wasn’t anything good. John got two lottery tickets instead, scratch ones. On the first one he didn’t get jack shit, but on the second one he won two dollars. He more or less won the loss of a few minutes of his life. We went to the food court so I could get some pizza. John’s words were something along the lines of, “What’s up with you and Pizza?” …Can you really ever have too much pizza? I could probably live on the stuff.. and I pretty much do. We scoped out a lot of girls at the mall.. I mean, the only thing that happens in the mall is two things. The kids who try to ‘out-goth’ each other and the girls who try to ‘out-slut’ each other with the most airheaded and gay guy friends that they hang around. All the while John and I are making racy, suggestive comments and having a good time. John’s buddy Mario shows up and we decided to get our tickets and get our seats. He’s a pretty damn awesome guy, I liked him.

Anyway, when we finally get in our seats, the floor is sticky as all hell. As I told John, I might as well have been standing in someone’s piss it was so sticky. In fact, during the movie my boots actually sealed to the floor which was totally nasty. When the movie came on, I was kind of excited but kind of disappointed at the end. I know Stan Lee’s big thing about super heroes is that they must stay true to themselves and virtue, but Spiderman 3 was total overkill on the whole zealous virtue thing. I mean, if I wanted to subtly brainwash a kid about morals and staying true to himself, i’d sit his ass in front of this movie. Granted, there were some really awesome parts… Like when Spiderman was sitting on top of the church in his black suit while it was raining? I was numb with excitement the whole time. My hairs were standing up and I had goosebumps it was so awesome. However, the amount of action and awesomeness was far underwhelmed by the amount of romance and garbage that went on. Bruce Campbell had a role as a french waiter though and that was a huge highlight for me.

I’m back home now and I was just laying with Rufus while I watched some TV shows… That dog is like a breathing stuffed animal, I swear. He’s awesome though. I also got my package from the UK, My TC record came! It’s really awesome and I can’t wait until I can listen to it. Until then, it’s just sexy. Anyway, it’s really late and I have to getu p for work soon so i’m gonna head out…

A big shock.

Today was just going to be any other weekend that I close on.. Stay up ’til 3 in the morning the night before and sleep in as late as I can before waking up and going to work. Well it turned out to be way crazier than that. Those CD’s that I had ordered that said 2-4 weeks? I got them today before work. I was shocked, but happy. I ripped three of them and added them to my Zune and took that with me to work. I haven’t even listened to all of them yet! I just opened the last two and ripped them. I’m gonna stay up and listen to them all since I don’t have work until 4:30 tommorrow.

At work, something shocking happened there too. While opening a disposable camera, I got electrocuted. Sharon had always told me how bad it hurts and how she screamed/cried from the pain because it hurts so bad… Well, it does. She really wasn’t kidding. I felt a jolt and then my hands involuntarily dropped everything in them. I fell over onto the counter and started breathing slowly. I was seeing the shit that you see when you get up too quickly and the blood isn’t all in your head… I started feeling pins and needles in my finger where I got shocked and it worked its way up to my elbow for about a minute in a half. Then the pins and needles stopped and it was just burning pain on my finger/hand. I told Katie who was the LOD for the night and she requisitioned out some Ibuprofen for me. She gave me the option of leaving work and going to a doctor or something but I stayed at work because I had a job to do. Besides, I need the extra money because I keep buying CDs. Anyway, I was disoriented and kind of dazed for the rest of the night until I came home. Now, i’m just listening to some Six Feet Under… and I ordered more Six Feet Under. Awesome, Eh? Anyway, I’m going into Second Life. Hit me up on Xfire. My Xfire name is PJesus.

Paperwork Nightmare.

I went into work today thinking, “Alright, Henry said last night that it was going to be nasty weather and it wouldn’t be busy, so I shouldn’t have to do much today…” I was totally wrong. I walked in and Sharon was running around with stacks of photo envelopes towered very high. It was totally insane. Not only that, but when I got clocked in and in the photo lab, there was stuff all over the place. To make matters worse, Sharon wasn’t able to do all of the paper work since it had been so busy. You know what that means, I had to do it! I hate the paperwork so much, it’s such a pain in the ass.

Anyway, I not only had to do all the paper work, but I had to try and clean up some of the mess, file all of the orders, and help the storm of guests that kept pouring into the Photo Lab with huge orders. I wasn’t able to get half of what was put in tonight done and I feel bad for Sharon because of it. I ended up doing atleast 3 pages of paperwork which is more than I do in three days. I’m really exhausted from all of it now, so i’m going to go muck around Second Life or play some Vanguard.

“You aren’t allowed to do that.”

Today was an interesting, yet frustrating day at work. I did get to spend a little bit of time with Sharon, my supervisor though since our schedules interlapped for the first time since my training. That was always fun. However, some woman dropped off 19 rolls of film for a Next Day order. Talk about a nightmare…

At first Amanda was working Guest Services, which always sucks. She’s fucking crazy and drives me insane, she just doesn’t stop talking and is so damn strange! To make matters worse she talks down to everyone like they are a small child, I don’t even think she realizes that she does it. However, Janelle came in later and that always makes my day better. She’s such a cool girl that I don’t think I could have a bad day when she’s working with me at Guest Services. In fact, I only offer to stay after when she’s there because she’s willing to give me a ride home and I trust her. I spent most of the day working on those next days anyway.

I bought the new Sevendust album today called Alpha. I’m listening to it now. I’m on the second track and so far it’s pretty decent. The album art on the cover and inside is utterly crazy…

There was this woman today who has by far the hottest daugther I have seen in years. Apparently her daughter and her son are both actors and do stuff like movies and tv stuff for channels like Nickelodeon and the Discovery Channel. That’s crazy! Almost as crazy as how I was able to get the woman’s MySpace page from her. The mother, not the daughter. Apparently there are trailers on her page so I can see the movies that her kids are going to be in. I found all this out when I asked her about some pictures that she had since her daughter was just so ridiculously attractive…

Carl is starting to get on my nerves. He’s like a white Steve Erkel in a way. I swear the guy is a 40 year old virgin and has good intentions, but he’s just too creepy and doesn’t know when to stop talking. He’s obsessed with trying to get me to talk about women I find attractive and insinuates about our female co-workers and such. It’s just strange and wrong. I don’t want to take a part in any of it so I usually just blow him off and laugh him off… He’s so strange and creepy…

L.O.D. Henry said I could stay after to work on photo stuff. However, Linda found out and said I couldn’t. I suspect she got Henry to change his mind which sucks. So I was there working until 10:30PM and they made me clock out. I had to sit around and wait 30 minutes off the clock for Janelle to get off so I could get a ride home. I ended up helping them clean up anyway so in fact I was working off the clock which is total bullshit. I should have just been able to stay on the clock since I was going to stay… I have work tommorrow as usual and hopefully Hakim will be back from vacation soon so I don’t have to work as much. I know i’m around 35 Hours this week on top of going to school…

Exhaustion.

I made the brilliant decision last night to go to bed and take my sleeping pills after 3 AM in the morning when I had to get up at 6. To cut the details short, I fell asleep while in the shower, while drying myself off when I got out of the shower, and when putting my clothes on. I’ve been tired all day until very recently where i’ve suddenly gotten a ’second wind’. Either way, i’m going to be going to bed shortly.

Target assumed my Spring break was this week and it wasn’t. They originally had me on the schedule today for 12PM-8PM. Yeah right, i’m still in school. Anyway, it was a half day so I ended up getting home at like 1PMish or so. I decided I would go to work early and get there at about 2:15PM. I kind of wish I hadn’t had done that now, seeing as how tired I was all day but it turned out to be kind of wacky and strange. A little bit after I got there and started working, Quintus came walking in smiling with his mother. He came to apply for a job and he listed me as a referral. That should actually help him seeing as my attendance record is nearly impeccable. Anyway, after he filled out his application and went and got his hours sorted out, I decided to buy us pizza from Pizza hut which was fun. We ate and talked for a little bit but then I had to get back to work.

Later on, some very strange older man came up to me mumbling about something I couldn’t understand at all. He had this crazy unibrow going on and this thick eastern-european accent where I couldn’t understand him. I don’t think he spoke much English actually. He kept saying something like “Lotreh” and “Lotrey”. Eventually, he pulled lottery tickets out of his wallet and was showing them to me. I had no idea what this guy wanted so I tried to go find Linda who was the GSTL at the time. The guy followed me and paced around behind me while mumbling various things, I was actually pretty scared. Eventually he said something like “You no have?” I finally understood that and I was like, “Yes, we don’t sell lottery tickets. Sorry.” Then he just turned and left and I never saw him again…

Anyway, I got Vanguard:Saga of Heroes recently. That game is actually pretty damn deep with the customization of your character and skills. I’m really enjoying it so far although it takes a lot of time to do much of anything. However, the amount of stuff you actually do makes up for it and the time passes by extremely quickly. I think i’m going to log on Second Life for just a few minutes while I still have this second wind.. then i’ll go to bed…

Closing.

I was scheduled to work until 10:00PM tonight, which is the first time it has happened. Really i’m only supposed to stay until 9:45 PM at the latest but I decided that i’d stay after like all of the other 18+ people to help clean the store so we could close. This was the first time i’ve ever stayed after. I ended up leaving Target at 11:20ish or so.

I guess the main reason that I stayed after was because i’d get an excuse to chill out with Janelle. Seriously, very few gals even compare to how awesome she is. It was fun, I got to spend some of the day with her from work this afternoon until closing tonight. After all the minors left, I stayed on register until we ‘closed’ the store. After that, I restocked all the bags at the registers before collecting all the hangars and dumping them in the back room. I wanted to stay with Janelle because I had no idea what I was doing and so we went to help clean up the Softlines department.

At first, we started cleaning and organizing the clearance racks until it was mostly satisfactory. Then Janelle got assigned to Lingerie, and I was told to assist her when I got done. After mucking around and cleaning up the clearance area, I finally went over to help her out. We got to talk for a little bit about various things and joked around about various undergarments, which was fun. After that, we were assigned to organize the Baby stuff. That was when we were both like falling over and suffering from exhaustion, but the zone was called and we were able to go home. She then drove me home and i’m here now. Tommorrow, she and I work from 8AM until 4:30PM.

Something weird happened though. I could have sworn that I saw my old best friend, Shana O’Brien applying for a job. If I was able to work with her, that’d be friggin’ amazing. I haven’t talked to her in years and I really wish I could. I should have said something, but I guess I was just too shy. She looked at me, and I wonder if she knew it was me.

I seem to have lost my good Target name tag, and so i’m stuck with a “New Team Member” one until they are able to order me a new one. I think I lost it somewhere inside the house, but i’m not sure. Either way, I just want my name tag back. It’s like a badge of pride, you know?

Yesterday, Sophie came home. She’s actually well enough to be at home which is good. She ran into the study when she got home and wagged her tail and licked my hand before I realized she was even there. I really missed her. I wonder how she is going to take Shadow not being around…

My dad also gave me a Zune yesterday. So far, I’m really enjoying it. I don’t have anywhere near all of my music on it though. Most of my music is on my old desktop which kind of died. I really need to get that fixed. Speaking of computers dying, the old Craptop’s screen went out. I treid plugging it up to an old monitor and it still wouldn’t work, so i’m not sure what’s going on. That more or less means I won’t be on instant messengers for a while because I don’t want to put them on my gaming machine. Well, other than XFire.

Anyway, I should be getting to bed because I have to be back at work bright and early in the morning. Hopefully it will be a good time.

“I’m happy anyway…”

Today:

    Today was rather chaotic to say the least, but it turned out to be a good one after looking back on it. I actually had fun even though some pretty lame shit happened to me. That actually doesn’t happen very often, where I’m able to so easily shrug off the bad. I guess today was mostly a work story so here goes.

    I had to work starting at 8AM up until 4:30PM. This was right after closing last night (which will be mentioned later), so I was rather tired. When I first got to Target, I was one of maybe 4 or 5 team members around that I could see. So I simply got to work starting up the Photo Lab. I saw Janelle, which made me very happy. It turns out that she was scheduled to work Guest Services next to me for the entire time that I was there! That alone made my day amazing. It was also pretty great because I had no way of getting home and she was able to give me a ride home.

    The workload was pretty much the same, although it was mostly catch-up from last night. I still wasn’t able to get all of it done because there had been so much from the other night. But when I’m around Janelle, I feel really calm and at peace. She’s just that awesome. Having her there made this day hands down one of if not the best day I’ve had at Target.

    The only thing that kind of sucked was how I messed up my right hand… twice. Granted, I get a lot of hand injuries at work, whether it is from paper/plastic cuts or the occasional burn; this happened to be right next to each other on my right hand. I got my middle knuckle of my middle finger slashed by a cardboard box and my top knuckle of my middle finger got smashed and slashed by a sharp cabinet corner. It looked kind of silly having to wear two band-aids on the same finger so close together, but they helped.

    Alicia and Gabe were actually supposed to show up at Target today; however, they never did. She said that Gabe came over and got upset and left. Since she didn’t have a car, she didn’t show up. We were going to buy Gabe a cell phone together since he is a mutual friend. Oh, and yes, we are talking again.

 

Yesterday:

    Yesterday was pretty damn bad. I didn’t really get any enjoyment out of it what-so-ever. I had to close down last night, and when I got to work, it was utterly packed. It was like friggin’ Christmas! Not only that, but Hakim called out that morning so no one was there to get the machines up and running and get some of the orders taken out of the way! To make matters worse, I covered his shift on Friday night, so when he didn’t show up for work on Saturday I thought that he was like stabbing me in the back.

    I was so stressed that day that it was one of the worst experiences I’ve had at Target. Granted, the worst would probably be the one where I got so upset that I more or less told my boss off, but that was just terrible. There were so many orders that I had never seen so many full film envelopes up till that point. Even at Christmas there weren’t that many film envelopes. There were at least 15 of them on top of some digital orders.

    The only good thing about yesterday was that I got to spend a decent amount of time with Chris from electronics. We coordinated our lunch breaks so that we could go at the same time. We decided we would drive to Arby’s in his utterly awesome car. It smelled really good because of his crazy air freshener. Even better than that was the other stuff though. He had some crazy awesome red and black seat covers as well as a Pioneer sound system and a radar detector. It was this ridiculously cool Red Saturn; I don’t remember the year or model though…

    On the way to Arby’s from the Target Parking lot we saw a Lancer Party. A Lancer Party is where a bunch of Mitsubishi Lancer owners get together and bring their cars, chill out and play loud music. At least, that’s what I’ve gathered from seeing it. It’s probably a bit deeper than that, but I’m not sure.

    I got two things at Target on Sunday as well. I bought Wii Play and this movie called Pro-Life. I’ll try and post a review of Pro-Life after I watch it again. Anyway, it’s getting late and I should head to bed…

Pandemonium.

    You know it’s going to be a long day when you don’t even make it to school before work calls you and tries to get you to come in. I didn’t even make it to school when Target called me and asked me if I could come in. I told them I was still in high school and they were like… “Oh..”. I immediately knew it was going to be terrible because I had to work today and that meant that the person before me called out. I had to hope that Hakim would go in, but I didn’t have too much faith that he would.

    So after a boring day at school I end up getting home only to have Target call me again and ask if I can come in early. I was like, “Sure, I guess. It all depends on if I can get a ride.” I ended up getting there at 4:45 instead of 5:00, which meant I got a lunch break. That alone ruled. However, no one had been there all day so I had to more or less open up the Photo Lab. There were orders all over the place. Some inside the drop box and some sitting on my counters, it was a total mess. There was so much that I actually wasn’t able to get it all done before it was time for me to leave. It felt like it was Christmas because I was rushing all around trying to get things done on time since I wasn’t able to finish everything the night before and had to rely on the person the next morning to finish it, which is a common occurrence. But since there was no one there, I had to try and get it done before all the other stuff. It was utter chaos…

“This is fucking horseshit!”

    I’m not going to say much about my school-day today because nothing really worth mentioning happened. Well, with the exception of that Shakespeare guy coming back. But he’s gonna be there on Mondays for a while, and I’ll talk about him when he does something worth mentioning. This entry is more or less about what happened at work today and this one woman.

    So I got to work a little early and I noticed we were out of Dino-Magic Eggs. Bummer. I was going to end up buying one and bring it to my Chemistry class because it’s a chemical reaction. Lisa said it would be ok too, but we were out of them. Anyway, when I got to the Photo-Lab, Sharon warned me that people were really nasty today. I kind of shrugged it off because of what happened with Janelle. After that happened to her and the way it made me feel, I figured that I could take it. Wow, was I in for it.

    Later on, some young teenage girl shows up and was going to return this little doggie carrying bag she got because it was defective. Unfortunately, she didn’t have her receipt. She claimed that she never got it and that it wasn’t her fault so I got Jeff. He told her there was nothing we could do and that we’d have to do a no-receipt-return. I explained that to her and she asked if I could just give her store credit, which I couldn’t. She wanted to speak to someone else so I got John to come and more or less tell her the same thing. This made her angry and so she said some things and walked off to get something.

    After a while, she showed back up with her father there who was this big looking dude who I’d seen before, definitely the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley. Anyway, she was really upset and ended up bringing two items that equaled the amount of the bag. We can’t do that since it has to be one item of equal or greater value. She claimed we didn’t tell her this and so I went and got John again. He more or less really let her have it. He told her how the three of us told her that it had to be one item. She started freaking out and I could tell she was choking back tears she was so upset. She started cursing at John about how “this is fucking horseshit!” and all sorts of other things. Her father was sitting there calmly and explained how he’s a really calm guy and what we could do to fix this. Eventually Jeff came over and made an exception for him but only because he was so calm and nice while his daughter was freaking out and cursing.

    I only had a 15 minute break today since I worked 4 hours and 45 minutes. If I had my shift 15 minutes longer, I would have a 30 minute lunch break but I didn’t get one, as usual. Anyway, my friend Jared got on his 30 minute break when I went on my 15. We decided to go to Wegmans next door which was a crazy idea. I decided I wanted some Wegmans pizza for my break for once and Jared wanted some Chinese food. I lent him some money for it and we rushed over to Wegmans because I had to go over, get the pizza, get back, and eat it all in 15 minutes. Somehow, I was able to do it and it was definitely worth it.

    It turns out that the old woman in the electric wheelchair that I previously mentioned is well-known around Target; her name is Phyllis. Anyway, John told me stories about her and how she used to actually be nice but still equally racist and crazy. At one point she was talking to him a while back about how we shouldn’t outsource things. He told me about how when he was trying to help her with her payments that she randomly said something about America buying its bullets from Israel because we don’t need to make them. There were all sorts of random stories like that about her. There was even one about how she comes in for hours at a time so she can be with Team-Lead Jared from Furniture. She really wants to take him out to dinner, or so I hear. Either way, it was a weird day at work today…