Vile Purveyor of Groceries

Today as I went to leave my grocery nemesis for the last time as an employee, the automatic doors failed to stop closing from the last person through them as I walked out. One of them actually hit the bag I was carrying and almost hit me. This is the only time I can recall being accosted by the automatic doors in any establishment, so I find it especially interesting that it happened to me on my last day. Is the building itself a sentient being bent on keeping overqualified employees within its grasp?

Freedom

Today I work my last shift as a floral clerk, having gotten a job in Information Services at the Fairfield Lane Library. Finally, things are starting to look up. I will miss a few people, but as a whole, Kroger can kiss my ass.

Freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom, freedom is coming, oh yes I know.

People With "Authority" Who Don't Have to Shave

There's a new kid at my place of work, and he really might be a kid. There's not even the faintest suggestion of stubble on his face, even at 9:00 p.m. And he clearly has no idea how to exercise the authority some genius gave him.

My first encounter with his supposed authority occurred about fifteen minutes before my shift ended. He asked me to run the register, and I rolled my eyes and did it until the line was gone. Then I signed off the register and went back to my *actual* job. And he came over and asked me to stay on the register for another fifteen minutes or so. I said no, I was off in five. I had things to do in my department before I left. He said, okay, just stay on the register until the end of my shift. I looked at the check-out lanes. There were five open, and only two of them had customers checking out. The rush was over. I gave him my incredulous look that is so easily interpreted. His face registered intimidation, but he said, "Please? I just don't want another rush." Right. I said "Fine," with all the attitude I had in me (it was a lot) and signed back on to the register. And stood there as no customers came. So I followed him around with my "you're an idiot" gaze and watched him avoid looking at me. I finally checked out one girl with one item and decided my shift was over and left.

Now, in the larger world, I'm still quite youthful. Relatively speaking at Kroger, however, I'm pretty sage-like. It's very possible that the pharmacists are the only people who have more education than me, and I'm also older than the vast majority of the minions (non-managers) by a few years. I know my job better than anyone but my manager. I work hard, even though I don't make anywhere near a living wage. I do what's asked of me without being told twice. I would like to think that this gets noticed on rare occasions.

I'm willing to run the cash registers up front if there's a rush and I'm really needed. The front-end manager always asks nicely and acts genuinely grateful when I do. It's not part of my job, and I hate doing it with a flaming passion, but I stick it out because I've always been a people pleaser. As much as I hate people, generally speaking (if you're reading this, I probably don't hate you), I somehow had this need to make authority figures like me. And the ones that matter do, or at least they don't dislike me. But this kid is not an authority figure. He's a kid. I found out after I started this blog that he's still in college. So, I don't care how much seniority he might have (he transferred from another Kroger), he's not the boss of me. So I don't give a flying fudge what he thinks of me. He can think of me as that red-haired raging bitch in floral, and I'll be happy.

Here's the kicker: I left work that day with an incredible amount of rage. Seriously, I wanted to inflict pain on someone. I could feel the stomach acid roiling around in my gut. Then my phone went off. It was a restricted number. When I pulled in at CVS, I checked my voicemail to find out that the HR person from the public library system wanted to talk to me about the job I'd interviewed for. I called her back. She offered me the job.

I'm done trying to please people at Kroger; until my two weeks are up, they can kiss my ass on a daily basis. What are they going to do, fire me?

Gingervitis? Your Kid Should Be So Lucky

Today started out well enough with an early morning run to Hertz to drop off my lovely replacement car (a Vibe) and pick up my newly restored Grand Am (which now looks better on the right side than it did when I got it). Then I got to work.

Approximately five minutes into my shift, I went to the customer service desk to get a till for the floral register. The very pregnant employee behind the desk was on the phone, discussing her pregnancy - certainly not official store business. I waited patiently for her to hang up. Several minutes went by. She had to know why I was there, but she chose to not even acknowlege my presence by looking in my direction. Whatever, I wasn't in a hurry, and this sort of thing is commonplace. I eavesdropped on the conversation that the keeper of the till was engaged in because, well, I really didn't have a choice.

"I just hope it's not red," she said. I only had a few seconds to wonder what she was talking about. She continued, in all seriousness, "Well, it runs in my husband's family and my family, and, well, that would just be bad."

There was a time when I resented my red hair. Now I'm quite proud of it; after all, we gingers make up a mere 1 to 5% of the world's population, depending on whom you ask. Because it is such a rarity, red hair has been both revered and reviled throughout history; it seems that at no time was it ever considered just another hair color. Even in elementary school, my classmates either thought it made me cool or thought it made me a freak; either way, it has always been a defining characteristic. Thus, when someone who doesn't know me makes a derrogatory comment about redheads, I tend to take it personally.

I can think of two other redheads, out of the dozens of employees at the store, and she had to bring up the curse of red hair while I was standing a foot away from her. She either really hates me (not outside the realm of possibility) or is completely inconsiderate of others (also likely). Either way, it was a bad move on her part. As Cartman will tell you, we gingers have no souls and want nothing more than to rid the earth of all non-gingers.

I came very, very close to confronting her but decided it wasn't worth the effort; anyone shallow enough to obsess about her offspring's hair color isn't likely to listen to some pathetic redheaded floral minion. I feel sorry for her kid.

Karma

While driving us home the other day, Mark felt an odd wetness on his arm. Then he made a sound of surprise and disgust. "What is it?" I asked.
"A bird pooped on my arm," he said with a bit of dismay in his voice. Suddenly I had the oddest feeling of deja vu . Then I snickered. He didn't.
"You don't think it's funny?"
"Oh, it's funny as hell," he said, not laughing at all, "but how do I get if off of me? Do you have a napkin or something?"
I managed to stop laughing just long enough to find him one.

Of Broken Glass and Twisted Metal

My mother says bad things come in threes. I think she's right.

Two Sundays ago, on July 23, I was driving on State Route 73 toward Oxford. Mark and I had planned on taking one more load of crap from my one-bedroom apartment in Oxford to our new, two-bedroom townhouse in Hamilton. We were both driving our cars, but we got separated, and I took his usual route back to Oxford (177 to 73) while, I later found out, he took mine (130 to 27).

As I was coming over the crest of a hill, I saw headlights pointed directly at me, in my lane. In the course of less than a second, my mind thought several things: (1) some jackass was passing someone on a double yellow line (2) the jackass was spending a bit too much time in my lane (3) the jackass wasn't moving (4) oh shit, I'd better brake! And brake I did, but I didn't slam on the brakes, knowing that such an action can sometimes lead to losing control of one's vehicle. Instead, I hit them fairly hard and veered to the right, off the road, to miss the truck. Just when I would have normally been able to get back up on the road and avoid any collision, I saw an overturned truck, one of those jacked-up pick-ups with too big tires that are used for offroad driving. To the right of it, preventing me from continuing my path on the side of a road, was a sign that read, ironically, "Pass With Care." To the right of the sign was a broken dolly that had previously been carrying the overturned truck.

There was no time to completely avoid everything, so in the split second I had, I chose the least of three evils: the sign. I turned a bit up toward the road, enough to miss the overturned truck and avoid hitting the sign post dead-on. Instead, the sign scraped along the right side of my car, twisting off the side mirror and sending it hurtling through the passenger side window. (I later found bits of the mirror in my backseat and on the passenger seat.) The damage stopped just short of the right quarter panel.

I sat, stunned, as my car crawled to a stop. Before it had even ceased movement entirely, I heard a voice approaching me through the driver's side window, which was rolled down: "Are you fucking retarded? You see hazard lights, you stop!" (More about that later.) The voice came from a large shirtless man, who then started suggesting that my car was probably still driveable and that I could probably just leave the scene before the cops got there. One of his friends said that would mean forfeiting any reimbursement for the damage from my insurance company. "So?" the large shirtless man said.

My mind stored this away until the drive home from the accident. I continued to sit in my car, processing what had just happened, for a few minutes. Eventually other people came over to ask if I was okay, and I told one of them (a skinny, shirtless man caked in mud) that I had not appreciated being yelled at by the large, shirtless man. A college-aged girl told me she nearly hit the truck as well, and I suspect she went left of center to avoid it, as what I think was her car was parked on the opposite side of the road.

I got out of my car and started to wonder what I should do. I called Mark, who said he was on his way, and continued to stand around in a daze, shaking a little but otherwise strangely calm.

I think Mark arrived before any police, but I'm not sure. Mark made sure I was okay and started talking to the people involved in the accident I'd stumbled upon. Then the police arrived and started piecing it together. Apparently, the overturned truck had been hauled by the truck whose headlights had been pointed at me on a faulty dolly. The tongue on the dolly broke, The dolly rolled away to the side of the road, and the truck it was carrying broke free and rolled over. Some genius put the truck that had been doing the hauling in my lane, with its headlights and hazard lights on, to attempt (in vain) to stop oncoming traffic.

The people involved in the accident before mine pissed the cops off immediately by going on the defensive the moment they arrived. I, on the other hand, calmly told them my version of what happened - a fact which amazes me to this day, as I would have expected my temper to get the better of me. The cops took my statement as a witness, as they had decided almost immediately that my accident was not my fault. If the other driver is not found at fault after an investigation, however, the whole thing will be ruled as no fault and I will have to pay the deductible on my insurance.

Mark asked all three police officers on the scene if any of it had been my fault. All three told him I'd had reason to believe my path was clear, and it was simply something that could not have been avoided. He later gave me props for the split-second maneuvering that minimized my accident. In retrospect, I also don't think I could have done any better.

After I got the name and number of the officer filing the report and was ruled okay to drive, I was sent on my way. And then the night got really interesting. I had just arrived in the parking lot of my old apartment, relieved that the ordeal was over, when my cell phone rang. It was Mark. "This is going to be really funny tomorrow," he said. His car battery was dead. He'd parked in a driveway and hurried off to the scene, not bothering to turn off his parking lights. He has a battery starter he keeps in his trunk for just such an occasion, but, naturally, he'd taken it out to be able to move more things to the new apartment. My battery starter had just been charged, so I grabbed it and went back to the scene of the accident.

And of course my starter didn't work, and I didn't have any jumper cables, and neither did the officer who was still hanging around the scene. So we drove back to Hamilton to get his starter box and his two sets of jumper cables that he'd also taken out of his car that very day. Thankfully, his box worked, for whatever reason. Then we took it over to another stranded motorist who's been stuck in the road block and left his car on but then engine off. And then, at last, we finally went back to the old apartment and I began a new ordeal with my insurance company.