First of all, I found out last Saturday that I was being transferred to another Stater Bros., this one in Encinitas. It is not the greatest situation for me transportation-wise. I've gone within a few days from a workplace I could walk to to one that it takes me 1 1/2 hours by bus to get to. Erika (the store manager at the store I was at) had told me last Wednesday she'd have me working at the Encinitas store the following week, but I did not realize that this would be permanent. I thought maybe they were just having me help out over there (they have people help out at other stores sometimes for a few days). No such luck. No reason given, no asking me if I wanted to transfer, a brushoff statement of "it's a reasonable distance" when I expressed concern about it being a long way for me to go.
My mom was saying I should look for another job since this transfer isn't very good transportation-wise, and so I'm going to look, keeping my current job for now. I hate to just quit now, even if there was another job opening, because it seems humiliating, after a little less than 3 months, to give up. Maybe it's just my pride or something, but I am the kind of person who will stick it through in tough classes and work environments even if they grate on me. I try to make things work until I can't do so anymore or I get through it.
I told Gilbert about it on IM not long after learning of the permanent nature of the situation, and he was saying the transfer was unfair and that I should just quit. I agreed that it was an unfair situation but was reluctant to just quit, for the reasons I already said.
I started at Encinitas yesterday, after a day off and the next day spent at another Stater Bros. for the General Merchandise Clerk class, which I must admit was ridiculously boring, filled with information I pretty much knew anyway from job experience, training videos from Wendy's that talked about food prep, and the county Food Handler's class I took, and 3 absurdly simple true/false tests, which you could ace no problem if you paid attention to the info being presented, since it gave you all the answers. I missed 2 on the first test cause I was tricked by the wording and put "false" when they were true, but the other two I perfect scores on. I had to be at work at FIVE A.M. Ouch. Not fun, especially since I'd gotten up the previous day at 4 a.m. to take the bus to the training, spent a whole hour getting ready, and then found out my dad was going to take me anyway, which left me with a couple hours to spare and no point in going back to sleep. Fortunately, getting in early means you get out early too, so I got off at 2:00. The strange thing was going to "lunch break" at around 9:30 AM, when pretty much no place that serves lunch and that is not a fast food place (or the almost-always-open Starbucks) is open.
Today was a slightly later day; I was scheduled to be in at 11 a.m. Unfortunately, I was 20 minutes late cause I missed one of my bus connections and thus had to wait half an hour for the next bus. So I asked the deli manager (that's where I am at Encinitas, btw...back in the service deli, after being in the bakery for about a month in the other store) if she wanted me to stay late to make up the time, and she said it was up to me whether to do so or not. I did stay the extra 20 minutes to make up the time, but I had to clock out right on time to avoid going overtime, which meant I had to hand off my task of putting fried chicken in the hotcase to Michelle, who I met today. The thing was though I was all hurrying over to the timeclock cause the clock in the deli said I had a minute before I was supposed to clock out, and I got there and the timeclock said 8:17 PM, which meant I had to now kill 3 minutes I could've spent doing something more productive than staring at the timeclock or looking at cigarettes (the timeclock's right by the cigarette/cigar/chewing tobacco case). This has happened at least once in the last two days -- the clock in the deli must be fast compared to the timeclock -- there's at least a 2-minute difference at all times, it seems.
The people in the deli are really nice. So far I have met only a small fraction of the half-page-worth-of-the-schedule amount of people who work in the service deli at this store. There are two guys I have met: Daniel, who usually opens (meaning he comes at 3am) and who is loud and obnoxious, and the more gentlemanly Alex, a CSR (Customer Service Representative; at the store I was at they act as checkers, but in a few stores like Encinitas, Alex told me, they are trying out having at least one CSR in each department). The rest of the deli crew are girls, as far as I have seen. Nely is the deli manager and doesn't look that much older than me, although I have often misjudged the ages of people I've worked with since I started at Stater Bros. (Michelle, the newest person in the bakery at my now old store, is around 40 but looks like she's 20). Since I am used to working for managers who were more obviously older than me, this is a new experience for me. Then there are Myrisha (not sure if I spelled that right...she's a talkative woman with a foreign-sounding accent), Clara (who transferred from the same store as me at the same time I did), Alicia (who doesn't understand much English), Diana (who is talkative and fun), the aforesaid Michelle, Celia (a nice lady who is very helpful), and a quiet but sweet Cambodian girl named Lang. There may be others that I forgot, but it's tough to remember them all.
As the title says, Gina Glocksen, my favorite girl in this season of American Idol, is gone. She, the "resident rocker" of this season's American Idol, was voted off last night, after landing in the bottom 3 with Phil Stacey and Haley Scarnato, both of whom could've been eliminated a whole lot easier this week if people actually paid attention to the contestants' singing rather than more shallow things -- Phil wasn't so hot this week with the song "Night and Day," and Haley is the model beauty pageant contestant but she honestly cannot sing at all and she shouldn't have even made it this far. Gina, on the other hand, sang a song called "Smile" that was written by Charlie Chaplin for his 1936 movie Modern Times (famous for being the last film to feature Chaplin's "Tramp" character and being the first Chaplin movie with sound, although it was not an official "talkie"), and she did it very well. She received good comments from the judges also. But even this did not help Gina when she was in the bottom 2 with Haley, who has somehow managed to get this far although her singing's not that great (Mum thinks it's cause she wears short skirts and such all the time, which I assume means Haley attracts a lot of votes from men who care about that stuff). And once again, surprise surprise, Sanjaya was safe. That kid is just weird, and his singing's not really that great, plus he picks very strange outfits (and hairdos, like his slicked-back hair this week and the faux mohawk last week). This week he wore a white suit, which looked sooooo wrong on him (his outfit last week was ok but the faux mohawk threw everyone off, including the judges -- Simon said "There must not have been a mirror in your dressing room"). It's a shame cause he sang a great song ("Cheek to Cheek") but that suit kept bothering me. But anyway, he is so darn popular that he keeps surviving on the show, even though he doesn't deserve it.It's getting late, so I'll be quick on the other stuff.
- Keepsake: Keepsake is a computer game I bought a few weeks ago which I have finally started playing recently. It's an action-adventure sort of game with lots of exploring, though the story is more fantasy RPG.
- Deathly Hallows cover: Yes, ladies and gents, it's here -- the covers for the U.S. and UK versions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were revealed last week. You can see the U.S. front cover below, and more cover art here.
- I got a webcam the weekend my parents were gone. I finally opened it at Gilbert's encouragement, but I don't know what I'll use it for yet.
- I've got a big list of videos to do, which I hope to make soon.
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