It’s Sunday morning, and Lionel Ritchie says we have to take it easy… and what’s easier than one, two, three? Here’s three more small tidbits from The Nest’s past week that will be much more fun to read than the newspaper…
Although a “big box store” is hardly considered to be an office environment, there are still many times when I feel like I’m working in the middle of a Dilbert cartoon. Like this past week when we received an anticipated visit from someone high enough in the company to set off red alerts everywhere…
Someone MUCH higher up than you, Pointy Haired Boss.
Like every other retail business, Mecca has a philosophy that states “The customer is THE boss.” Our paychecks come from their business with us, after all…. no customers, no money, no jobs. Well, that all gets chucked right into the nearest trash compactor whenever a big shot is going to appear… particularly at times like this when the labor market is still entirely out of whack due to the ridiculous unemployment incentives. Despite entering the weekend several days behind on stocking freight, much of the focus was on cleaning up the trivial details that the higher up was going to be looking for…. like dust bunnies and loose items under shelves, spacing action alley features apart correctly, ensuring the deli rotisserie possum was the correct temperature, etc. All that, of course, got us just farther behind, leaving to nice, barren empty shelves for our real bosses to attempt to shop off of this past week.
Is this seriously the only can you have? It expired in 1974!
Since management types are trained to focus on nitpicky details so they’ll always have “issues” they can bring up to make it look like they’re doing their overpaid job, they’re generally quite oblivious to whether the store is actually functioning as it should. I’m so glad I was able to get out of that mess for four days this past week… thought I dread what it’ll look like when I go back last night (this post is being written Saturday morning)…
Hey, not as bad as I thought!
One of the people who had a front row seat while the world of Evil Squirrel was being created a decade ago liked to point out that August 13th is International Left Handers Day. While I like to be the contrarian, this is one instance where I’m with the majority, being very right hand dominant while my left hand is most useful for decoration.
I guess my left hand isn’t totally useless…
There are a couple things I do lefty, though. One is swinging a bat. While there are many righty throwers, lefty swingers in baseball, I’ve never understood why they aren’t a majority since it seems so natural for a right handed person to swing that way. Your right hand is supplying all the power, and most lefty batters will finish the swing with their left hand completely off the bat. How is your left hand really doing anything but guiding the bat in a lefty swing?
How all righties should hit.
The other lefty thing I do is eat. Not where silverware is involved, but when I eat with my bare hand, I will ALWAYS pick up the food with my left. I only discovered this a little under 20 years ago, and I wonder if I didn’t develop that habit after I started eating a lot at the computer, where you need your right hand to surf while you stuff your face. Whatever the case, I eat lefty anywhere I am now… even in the car where I’ll have the food sitting on the passenger seat and have to reach over my body to pick up fries…
This wouldn’t be an issue in the UK…
Because the nasty infection that hospitalized me back in June was caused by my incessant itching that’s plagued me for months now, my doctor sent me to a dermatologist. I saw them last week, and they ripped off a massive small chunk of my skin to biopsy for a cause. I got the results Friday, and their diagnosis was some 800 letter word that got ejected from my brain as soon as it entered my ear, but they also called in two prescription ointments for me to use. The bag the pharmacy put them in looked like a bag your fast food order would come in, not the small treat bags they usually use for prescriptions. This is what was inside…
Any chance this has any, you know, CBD oil?
I put Fuzzy and Fleabag there not just for humorous purposes, but for perspective to show just how fucking large the jar of cream is. And I have two refills on it I could use! I’ll have enough cream for them to slather on my cadaver when I croak…
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Well you may be dead but you won’t itch. Tradeoff? I am a lefty but when we lived in Germany when I was learning to write they tried to force me to be a rightie….it just wasn’t natural to be a lefty apparently. My parents read them the riot act and the whole debacle has left me pretty much ambidextrous. I write and eat lefty but bowl, swing a bat (not that I do that often these days), play golf (only the mini kind) as a righty. I had a friend years ago who called me “Pambidextrous”. HA
Pam
Yeah, I’d hate to have to try to scratch an itch in one of those cramped up coffins. Those worms are really itchy too. I’ve heard many of those horror stories about schools trying to force kids to write right handed… that’s where being Pambidextrous with the middle finger comes in handy.
Every bottle of wine in this house is past the expiration date that is prominently displayed on the label.
Wine expires? So much for it getting better with age…
You don’t want any of those pesky customers around when the boss comes for a visit, wandering around making the place look all untidy…
Apparently not. And the visit must have been real bad, because they’re making our store manager work nights with us for a while. I now officially hate my job…
That rash must be really irritating. I have rosacea and I’ve had eczema, and for the one (which is basically adult acne on steroids) one takes a ‘cycline’ (tetracycline or monocycline) which has been known to be ‘bad’ for a person if they take it long term. I’m going on seven years now I think
Well my father used to say “Nobody will get out of this world alive”. Truth. The eczema though (an itchy horrid rash that makes a person want to claw their skin off, it itches that much and no amount of scratching relieves things takes a really thick cream like I bet you have in that big jar. I hate the feel of the stuff, but it stops the damned eczema from itching, so the trade off is good enough. My sympathies!
This is a groin and pits thing, and flakes like crazy. I mean “make it snow” kind of flaking. I don’t know if the cream’s controlling the itch or not, but one thing’s for sure… it’s so nasty, I as soon as I put my hand to itch it, I yank it right back because of how gross it feels. I guess whatever works….
Allergies and itching…ugh. Remembering to slather ointment on double ugh. Triple ugh for the location-that’s just all wrong. Hope everyone made it through the big wig visit. Working for a national chain is definitely a Dilbert cartoon.