gordonzola (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gordonzola) wrote2003-12-20 11:41 am
gordonzola) wrote2003-12-20 11:41 am
Entry tags:
Holiday mixed feelings
I need more sleep and I need more time. Annoying family obligations, working more hours than usual, nursing injuries that I’ve obtained from working too hard, holiday things that I actually want to do: it’s hard to get through the holidays healthy and sane.
Believe me, I know it’s a cliché to write these things. But I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to work one of those jobs where you get time off at this time of year rather than work twice as hard. I’ve worked some form of retail every year since I was 17 and for some reason this year is getting to me. At least I don’t work in a mall and have to hear Christmas songs all day. My picture would be in the papers if I still had to survive that every year.
I did have a wonderful time on Thursday night though at our Winter Worker party. Instead of just a show of co-workers bands, our party committee moved it away from the leather bar and rented a space where we could have kids too. A lot more people came and we invited all the other co-ops and a few nice customers and vendors too. By 11 everyone was dancing and we’d filled the place up. It was advertised as "dress to impress" so there was a nice mix of suits, rented tuxes, Goth runway fashions, punk formal, and a smattering of fetish wear. If we can only ditch the crappy co-worker bands altogether next year it’d be perfect.
The best act (whose punny name escapes me at the moment) was a drag king act, lip-synching and dancing to ‘60s soul. The two Black performers had purple ruffled tuxes and afros wigs bigger than their shoulders, the white member went for the "Jazzy white guy" look with a less ornate suit, beret, and twirled mustache. The audience rushed the stage at the hot sex lust that their songs provoked. I love my co-workers.
Unfortunately my memory of the event is not good since I ended up chugging a lot of drinks. You couldn’t bring drinks from the live music room into the kids/karaoke/formal photo room, or vice versa, so before I realized I could just hide a drink in both places, I kept hurriedly finishing them in order to mingle. Receiving cheese in the walk in was no fun the next morning at 7:30. I apologize if you shopped there on Friday and felt like people weren’t very friendly. Most of us were hung over.
Well, except for the co-worker who came in while I was baling cardboard at about 1 PM. Singing, soaking wet from the pouring rain, and staggering a little, she announced, "I just got up. I think I’m still drunk!"
Believe me, I know it’s a cliché to write these things. But I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to work one of those jobs where you get time off at this time of year rather than work twice as hard. I’ve worked some form of retail every year since I was 17 and for some reason this year is getting to me. At least I don’t work in a mall and have to hear Christmas songs all day. My picture would be in the papers if I still had to survive that every year.
I did have a wonderful time on Thursday night though at our Winter Worker party. Instead of just a show of co-workers bands, our party committee moved it away from the leather bar and rented a space where we could have kids too. A lot more people came and we invited all the other co-ops and a few nice customers and vendors too. By 11 everyone was dancing and we’d filled the place up. It was advertised as "dress to impress" so there was a nice mix of suits, rented tuxes, Goth runway fashions, punk formal, and a smattering of fetish wear. If we can only ditch the crappy co-worker bands altogether next year it’d be perfect.
The best act (whose punny name escapes me at the moment) was a drag king act, lip-synching and dancing to ‘60s soul. The two Black performers had purple ruffled tuxes and afros wigs bigger than their shoulders, the white member went for the "Jazzy white guy" look with a less ornate suit, beret, and twirled mustache. The audience rushed the stage at the hot sex lust that their songs provoked. I love my co-workers.
Unfortunately my memory of the event is not good since I ended up chugging a lot of drinks. You couldn’t bring drinks from the live music room into the kids/karaoke/formal photo room, or vice versa, so before I realized I could just hide a drink in both places, I kept hurriedly finishing them in order to mingle. Receiving cheese in the walk in was no fun the next morning at 7:30. I apologize if you shopped there on Friday and felt like people weren’t very friendly. Most of us were hung over.
Well, except for the co-worker who came in while I was baling cardboard at about 1 PM. Singing, soaking wet from the pouring rain, and staggering a little, she announced, "I just got up. I think I’m still drunk!"
no subject
hi
your stories make me homesick for the bay area.
sascha
Re: hi
tocayo
Re: tocayo
Re: tocayo
no subject
And, you bring up the best part of working retail at this time of year. The people are much more fun to be around. There's a great communitas that is formed working through holiday retail hell. Hopefully you guys are taking it easy or crazy after work. I know the random acts of drinking with co-workers used to get me through retail at this time of year.
no subject
no subject
well, that was a buzzkill.
it sounds like a beautiful party and i'm glad the soul broz were fabulous and you got loaded.
no subject
The holidays, they'll be over soon. Just think of me and my crappy birthday during this period. Depressing to say the least.
no subject
I worked in a Ruby Tuesday in the mall for two years when I was in high school, from spring of my freshman year to spring of my junior year. During my junior year, I worked 50 hours per week during both weeks of our christmas vacation. I was a busboy. We got tipped out by the waiters and the servers. We also got some small fraction of a percent of sales as an incentive to turn tables over quickly when they were dirty. I was averaging almost $20 per hour (about twice what I normally made) during those two weeks. The restaurant, though, only had one tape of christmas music. It was 3 hours long. By the time I was hearing a song for the third (and on a few occasions the fourth) time in a day, I was ready to kill. For years afterwards, just the first few notes of that "rockin' around the christmas tree" song was enough to make me want to grab the nearest person and choke the life out of them.
no subject
and so I offer this
Email this Story
Dec 22, 10:35 AM (ET)
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - Labor unions in the Czech Republic demanded Monday that stores stop playing Christmas carols incessantly or pay compensation for causing emotional trauma to sales clerks.
Some stores here play the same songs all day - and play them loudly. Employees say shifts have become unbearable.
"To listen to it for eight hours a day is not healthy, that's for sure," said Alexandr Leiner, a union leader. "And for the customers, it's almost unbearable as well."
Leiner said unions have written to major chains, such as Tesco, and demanded that employees be compensated. He said the unions want 500 koruna (US$19) or two days off as a possible compensation. They've received no response.
Unions in neighboring Austria have lodged similar complaints against stores there.
Tesco spokesman Vesselin Barliev said the chain has not received any
complaints.
"We don't see the music as a problem," Barliev said
Re: and so I offer this
Happy Winter Solstice!
Just winding down from our family's holiday frenzy (actually, pretty mellow - just us four and Jim) and had to sent you our love and sympathy for having to deal with the crap you endure in retail hell.
Obliviot will have to fill you in about the job he started working this week - it will make you feel like you have a dream job.
I've been busy working at the Y, established a transitional preschool room (not yet 3s), the girls are doing fine - (both made high honors (straight As) on the honor role this quarter. Gab has a boyfriend that is scared of me (rightfully so) and Nikki is rocking the Jr high chorus and playing xylophone in the band. We went to 2 concerts last week and were very impressed at the quality of musical education our little public school provides. I knew there was a reason that we moved here.
Our annual Holiday White Elephant party was cancelled last minute (on the 14th) because of the 2ft of snow we received, so we just had a couple of friends from town come over and talk, eat, play records.
Most of my friends live in Binghamton, just too trecherous on the roads to make it out to our little Pennsyltucky town.
We've been here a year now, and it has been...interesting. I think we've found out what we're made of out here. Our door is always open to visitors, if you are so inclined to East Coast it...anytime.
Hard Broad is coming out here to see me in April, and I will be coming back to the Bay Area to work at my old center from end of June to mid-August. My sisters and their families will be coming back in July to visit as well - one from the Rafiki Children's Center she and her husband established in the past 2 years in Jos, Nigeria, and the other sister with her seminary student husband who moved to St Louis, Mo.last June (they keep sending me subscriptions to World Magazine - have you ever heard of it? Scary.... it burns very well with the rest of our paper garbage.)
I thoroughly enjoy reading your LJ when I get the chance - makes me wistfull for the Left Coast.
Seeing our kids getting older makes K and I realize that there is so much we can and will do when the girls graduate and go on to find their places in the world - maybe live in AK for a while, K will start a business or go to school to teach HS math ( I've always thought he would be a great teacher), who knows...it feels good knowing that there are options, we will not be the kind of parents that will wait around for the kids to come home and visit. This is one of the advantages of being young parents, I suppose.
Much love from the rural northern Tier of PA - oh, by the way, do you still have that furry hat that I left in the Lucky 13 that last bday party we went to of yours? If you do, and you sent it to me, I would be most grateful and ecstatic!
-Paganpeg