Hot nights

It's uncomfortably hot tonight...even here in my basement where i'm hiding until i get tired enough to drag myself to my bed to get a few hours of sleep before the start of yet another long summer day. they do seem rather long now filled with work and not much else.

We're short staffed right now, by sunday there will be only 4 of us working and over 170 hours a week to fill. We have no manager right now so we all do a part of the work; i've taken over a lot of the ordering and various other things like filling orders by restaurants and dishing out permits to those that need them. Another unfortunate fact is 2 of these 4 also have full time jobs and one of those can't work weekends for family reasons. My other co-worker who is sharing a great deal of the extra workload with me was not supposed to work more than 20 hours a week...she takes care of her grandchildren on a regular basis. So this leaves me, age 20...pretty much running a liquor store and looking at maybe getting half a day off next week hoping that maybe...just MAYBE we might get a new person to help lighten the load. To add to this we had no running water at work today. there has been a leaking water main out in the parking lot for 3 weeks now and the county finally turned it off because our landlord has done nothing about it. Not only that but our air conditioner is leaking as well from a cracked drain pipe and it's dripping onto the floor, this has been going on for a few days and someone has come to look at it and nothing else.

And just to add a bit more to it...today was the start of our Canada day long weekend sale...besides christmas it's one of the busiest times of the year and our liquor order is 2 days late...

why do i stay? Because the 4 of us have been working together for about a year, i see these people almost every day and they have done coutless things to help me out over the past year. I feel a certain loyalty to them and want to help them out as much as i can.

Despite all this I do enjoy my job, I lean new skills all the time and build links to other people. Fine it may just be a retail store to anyone else but in some strange sense...we're an odd sort of family but it IS true. makes sense to me...

-Matt

Greed

For those of you who may have read a larger portion of my previous posts may notice that greed is a recurring theme for me. I can't stand it! Everyone will do anything, but only if there's something in it for them. Rewards are so common place now that they're practically expected when someone does a "good deed". What happened to the times where helping someone was a reward in itself? Why is it that the only way to motivate a lot of people is with the promise of cash in their pockets? Why is there such a drive in people that they'll go out of their way for something free? This post was inspired by a phone call I received at work a short time ago, the guy had seen the pictures we had posted of people that had shoplifted from one of our stores. The only thing he asked me was if there was a reward involved with these people. After I told him there wasn't he then said "well fuck you then" and hung up. It just saddens me that there has to be a gain for them to help.

Think of a program like crimestoppers. It offers money for tips leading to an arrest. Yes it is somewhat effective, but then in my opinion it should be someone's duty to help prevent crime. Fine sometimes people fear for their safety but there are ways around that as well. Everyone will complain about crime but very few will actually do something about it, many will turn a blind eye because they don't want the hassle of dealing with it. Many believe that the police are just assholes because they can be and just won't help because they feel that's how they can get back at them.

I guess in a round about way this brings me to another topic that I hate...People that complain about traffic laws. These laws are in place for the safety of everyone, the police aren't just pulling you over because they're jerks, they're doing it because you're doing something wrong. I'm sorry that you think it's unfair that you can't get your jollies by speeding everywhere you go, or that you're in such a rush that you need the few minutes that speeding there will give you. But if you think that that's unfair, then how fair is it for say...Little Timmy who no longer can use his legs because you just weren't paying close enough attention because "he came out of no where". And just to top that off, how fair is it for little Timmy who now no longer has a mom or sister because you "just don't know what happened". Bloody hell people! Think of others for once, obey the freaking laws.

-Matt