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By Mark D, July 28, 2012 2:39 am

So I’ve mentioned before that I’ve worked overnight stock for Giant. If there was one thing I eternally hated about the job, it was having to “Face” the products. This was made even more fun by the fact that my hands aren’t exactly small. So it was a ton of fun, especially when working with items that barely fit in the row they were in. See, you had to bring forward 2 pieces of merchandise to the front of the row. Because I guess otherwise people would think that we were sold out of that item?

It was easily the worst part of the job. First off, if your in the aisle with Ketchup and don’t SEE your brand of ketchup at the very front of the row, aren’t you going to take a peek and see if maybe there’s some pushed back? 90% of the time when you go to the grocery store, especially after 10 or 11, most of the products aren’t faced anymore anyway. You would have to be an idiot to not realize whatever your looking for is no longer there just because you can’t “see it”.

But it would be the end of the world to the higher ups if we didn’t face merchandise. You know, because we were actually trying to get EVERYTHING out and on the shelves that came in. But I guess looking pretty > having product on the shelves to buy. Then again everything about the company was ass backwards anyway. Since most of the bosses didn’t get in until 10 AM (it’s nice being in charge) they would complain that we didn’t put enough water on the shelves during the summer. Needless to say if they came in early they would see we stocked plenty of water, just the contractors bought it all up and no one else would stock the shelves. Despite us leaving a note and all the water by the doors to the floor.

I think they just loved to blame the night shift for everything, since we got something like an extra 75 cents for working overnights. For anyone that’s worked overnights before, that 75 cents really isn’t worth the level of frustration involved in working overnights. Changing your sleep cycle so that you sleep during the day is the absolute worse. Plus everyone loves to call you when your asleep, conveniently forgetting that you work at night. To top it all off? One time I put my head down to fall asleep, and a god dam parade came down the street.

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By Mark D, February 10, 2012 9:14 pm

I realize I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s mostly because I’ve been working a new job. It’s been a while since I worked a job that had me on my feet, and dam I am in pain. Truthfully I think I slipped a disc a few years ago working at a job. I’ve had doctors look at it, but never gotten a MRI on it. Which I really should have back when I had coverage. It’s a pain in the small of my back which feels like a tightening pain, and also causes my left leg a lot of weakness. Mostly centered around the top of my leg right where it starts.

So pretty much as soon as I get home, I force myself to go get some drugs and I have to lay perfectly in order not to be in pain. So writing isn’t high on my list of things to do. I realize it seems kind of silly, because it’s rather easy to type everything out. But all I would think of over and over is “Pain, Pain, Pain, Pain” and you can see how this would go. I just get home and need to unwind.

It also reminds me of when I was working and living in Brick NJ. I was working in a junkyard breaking my back day in and day out for shit pay. My ex would spend all my money and she didn’t work. When I’d get home I’d want nothing more then to just relax. I got to the point where I would take as much time untying and getting my boots off as possible. At one point I realized that it was taking me a half hour to get off my boots just so I’d have a few moments of peace. The amazing thing is that she’s still a complete child today. Doesn’t work, has no future, and she’s just looking to get some dumb guy to let her be a housewife. I was an idiot when I was younger.

So I’m trying to write up more posts in one sitting and schedule them to run during the week. I got a couple written today. Also hopefully in time and with drugs I can not be totally dead the second I walk into my house. I really can’t explain it, but I wish I could explain it better and this didn’t come off like me bitching. Which it probably does. Oh well, such is life and the internet.

Talking about my crazy Ex from Brick reminded me of a story from that time. She used to do stuff on Wednesday because I got paid on Friday and could put money in her account before the check cleared. Well one time she told me she went to the doctors, and I deposited the money for her and everything no problem. So Saturday comes along and we’re out driving, I decide to ask her which doctor she went to see. She stutters before telling me she went to see “Dr Staples”… Because she actually spent the money at Staples and had forgotten her story.

Even more amazing is that I was apparently wrong. She’s a department manager at Wal-Mart now. I can not imagine the hell that the people working under her are going through day in and day out. Who would ever put her in any sort of management position is beyond me. Hell, I’ve busted my ass at some places and had bosses who loved me and I still never had any sort of promotion. Another reason why Wal-Mart is awful.

So to pad this out a little more, I went to a Chinese buffet the other night with a friend. I was looking at their chicken and saw something that caught my interest, “Hong Kong Chicken”. It looked like regular chinese fried chicken with a coating of something on it. When I brought it back to the table my friend mentioned that “It looks like boneless wing sauce”. So I had some and that’s exactly what it was. With all the different kinds of fried chicken you can make at a chinese place, I will never understand why they bothered to coat it in generic boneless wing sauce.

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By Mark D, May 16, 2011 6:28 pm

I suspect I’m not alone in this either. I’ve been working on and off for the last decade, and I’ve absolutely hated just about every job I’ve had. I don’t want to go back to school, because one of the small joys of life is not going to school. I’m not good enough to be an actual writer. Not charismatic or funny enough to try filming myself in skits. Not talented enough to do any number of things. It sort of sucks that my two favorite things (writing and history) have almost no way of paying the bills.

I look day after day in the classifieds, and basically what I see are a bunch of jobs that I have no interest in. It’s not just a matter of pay either, I’m more then used to surviving at 7 bucks an hour.  It’s a matter of being somewhat happy at a fulfilling job for once. I realize a good number of people are unhappy with where they are working. Hell, just about everyone I’ve worked with has been unhappy with where they were at. The two jobs I liked I actually managed to get along with the guys I was working with. Of course the one job my best friend left the job and it got boring. My other job they decided that they were going to make everyone part time, or you could take a severance package. So I left.

My reason for writing this isn’t to whine. I just feel like I’m not the only one sort of floating out there in the sea of unknown. I think there’s a lot of people out there like me. I’d love to hear from you and your thoughts. Or feel free to call me a loser asshole and pathetic, I’m not exactly picky. I think it also helps that I was a bit brighter in my life then my dad, who spent most of his 20s doing drugs and being an alcoholic. He only got married because he got my mom pregnant. I’m pretty sure it worked that way for all my uncles on that side of the family.

It just seems that there should be something more to our lives then just survival. I just seem lost out in the world, without any idea what to do other then survive. Just being a cog in the system and doing something I hate just doesn’t feel like it’s cutting it anymore. It’s like we went to school just to train us how to work a shit job and not question authority. It’s probably my own fault. I probably should have went to college and gotten a useless degree in something or another while taking my time to get it. In the long run one of the probably bad decisions I’ve made in my life. Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I never dated that crazy girl from Jersey. That choice was one of those first ones that in my mind I wonder what if?