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quiet_tiger) wrote2005-09-27 08:14 pm
Bagels, Art Films, Security, and Work
One long entry, with cuts, to save space and energy. It also makes it easier for y'all to skip over. ;)
Bagels
At home, when I go to Dunkin' Donuts and ask for a bagel "lightly toasted, with a little bit of butter," I am handed back a lightly (more or less) toasted bagel with butter (sometimes too much so I have to scrape a little off).
Last night when I ordered the same thing here, I was handed my toasted bagel and a bag with individually wrapped cold butter packets that I had to spread myself. It totally threw me. That, and the bagel boy was totally flirting with me. I think he even called me to his register out of order of the line.
When I was in Los Angeles for a couple of days last year for a conference, the continental breakfast at the conference didn't have butter. And when I got a bagel the next day at a vendor on the campus, I asked for butter and the sales person looked at me like I had three heads or something.
I had no idea that butter and bagels were such a regional thing.
Art Films
Tonight was the viewing for the class that I TA. They had to watch The Cheat, produced by Cecile B. DeMille. They should feel lucky, it's only an hour long. The Cecile B. DeMille film *I* had to watch, Intolerance, was exactly three hours long!
Anyway, that was for a class called The Art of Cinema. So, really, we watched a lot of art films, which I generally don't appreciate at all. But tonight I was talking with a couple of the students I TA for, and I wound up talking about a couple of films I had to watch.
The first, De Profoundis, is totally gay porn that we had to watch. The film was treated to make it look all psychedelic and colorful. But it was still visibly gay porn. My professor had said that you can't really see anything.
You could *totally* see everything. The blow job. The anal sex. I didn't have a problem, but I felt bad for the jocks in the class, and I suppose anyone who hadn't agreed to watching gay porn when they signed up for the class.
Also towards the end of the semester, we had to watch a film where the video artist recorded his wife giving birth to their daughter.
Up close and personal.
*This next part gets a little gory in detail, so skip my desciption if that bothers you*
Close ups as the blood started running out of her vagina. Watching the opening get wider. The baby's head crowning, covered in more blood. The baby coming out. The afterbirth as the placenta was pulled out.
It was, to say the least, utterly horrifying. I'm terrified of pregnancy anyway, just the concept, but watching the culmination of that state of being? Awful. Show that video in junior high school and the teen pregnancy rate will probably decrease significantly.
Miracle of life, beauty of birth, whatever. Ugh. To all mothers out there, cheers. *raises glass*
And these films weren't even the one where we had to watch an older dude jerk off, and then have sex with an old woman.
Security
Last week, after the movie, I ran upstairs to drop the attendance sheet into the professor's filing cabinets. No problem.
Tonight, after walking up six flights of stairs, because the elevator buttons weren't working, then back down 11 flights because the door to the 11th floor was locked, the security guard told me that after a certain time the top floors of the building are locked.
Which is total crap. But I wouldn't mind if I hadn't had a problem last week. And the guard tried to show me the schedule, which I couldn't care less about because my point was that I was able to get up the stairs the week before. I hate that.
And yeah, security. No security in undergrad because we were in the middle of freaking nowhere. This is like being in high school (lots of security for us in high school).
Work
I've been working in a jewelry/gift shop down the street for the last couple weeks. I needed a part time job, and my boss, Elizabeth, needed help.
Boy, does she need help.
I'm not sure how she's been able to keep her business afloat because she's a total scatterbrain. She tells me to do one thing, then ten minutes later, before I've finished, she tells me to do another thing. And so on. As a result, nothing really gets done.
This past Saturday, jewelry was stolen because it got left on the counter. At least, she's convinced jewelry got stolen. I never saw it, and her price tags usually have some problems, so I don't know if this jewelry actually existed. So, after she discovered this, I was given a lecture about leaving expensive stuff on the counter.
I would totally feel guilty if I had been doing *anything* with the jewelry. I, however, was in other places or doing other things in the shop. Eventually I think she realized that I wasn't about to take any crap for what was her fault, and she admitted it was her fault.
Now. I might even feel guilty if an hour later she didn't leave the same jewelry on another counter, then leave the store, let people into the store while she was outside, and stay outside with people in the store while jewelry was on the counter and she was outside.
Today, she left the cash envelope on the counter, with $80 in twenties underneath it.
I had not a single thing to do with that, other than to tell her about it.
So. She's totally flighty, which really isn't good. She had me clear out a shelf of jewelry the other day, which she didn't put new stuff on until today. She has stuff in cabinets beneath shelves, but no examples on the shelves.
You can't sell stuff if people don't know that it exists.
She needs to organize the store better. I will happily help her with this, because disorder is something I can't handle. If she knew what was where, it would be one thing (for example, my room is always in my Order, which may or may not make any sense to anyone else). But she doesn't.
And today she seemed to imply that she would have trouble paying me. She has also alluded to the existence of other employees, but I've never seen them. There's a little girl who comes in every now and then and does stuff, but she's like 12, maybe younger, so she can't really be an employee.
So, Elizabeth has quite a dilemma. She needs help to organize the store and get things priced (half the stuff in there doesn't have a price tag, which I know deters some people), but she can't afford to pay people to help her with that. But she can't bring in more money until things are better organized.
Then again, it may just be the merchandise. Some stuff is really expensive. She is really, really huge on the evils of outsourcing, and people ripping off the original ideas of other people and selling the stuff for cheaper. Hate to break it to you, toots, but consumers want stuff for cheap. If they can get the same thing for cheaper, they're going to. So... change your merchandise. Go for cheaper stuff. Yeah, it may hurt the artist, but you need to consider yourself, too. She sells a lot of funky, expensive jewelry, but today I tagged some cheaper stuff that was actually stuff I would consider buying. Hell, I have a bracelet similar to the ones today. She needs to try to cater to customers other than those who have too much money and time.
My issue is that, if I can spend 30 dollars on a bookcase, I will, because if something happens to it, I won't care. Elizabeth sells nice hardwood handmade furniture, which is beautiful, but runs into the hundreds of dollars. If something happened to a hundred dollar bookcase, I'd hate myself. And my 30 dollar bookcase folds up for easy moving.
I dunno. She needs lots of help.
But, mostly, she needs a brain. If my store, my livelihood, was as disorganized as hers, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.
On Bones tonight, people keep talking about sex. Which I wouldn't mind except I have no interest at all in considering the cast having sex. Other than David Boreanaz, I suppose. The rest? Nope. Nu-uh.
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Luckily, I never intended to reproduce anyway, so I'm all good.
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