Let's see... where did we leave off? Work. Work, work, work. Yeah. After annoying the crap out of Jeanie, she's now giving me six days straight in a row, then giving me this upcoming Saturday off. It's come to a point where we're just playing mind games with each other. She's expecting me to bitch and moan about having so many hours now, because that's what everybody else does; bitch and moan for more hours, then bitch and moan because they have too many. The look off jaw-dropped shock on her face when I asked her to give me more weeks like that was rather amusing.

I have gotten a little tired of the constant question of "how did you get that many hours" from everybody, and "But you're still a minor, aren't you?" Nobody really seems to get that I was a real pain in the ass for Jeanie when she tried to cut my hours, and that I'm an emancipated minor and actually can work that many hours in a day/week. The only person who doesn't give me the whiney "you shouldn't be able to do that" is our Union Shop Steward, and she thinks it's funny as hell that I've literally fucked up her system. She's really the only one to actually tell me that she thinks the whole thing is great, and that more kids should be doing what I've been doing.

As for stories from work, not much has really happened. I was actually scheduled to work in HABA yesterday, but Jeanie sucks a scheduling and didn't schedule enough people to work the front end, it was really busy yesterday, and three people called out. So, I spent a grand total of 20 minutes in HABA packing out shampoo and shaving cream before Artha (HABA manager) and I were paged up front to work register. Four and a half hours after we were told that we were only going to be on register for a few minutes, I was told to count my tray and go home. So much for HABA.

Some little adventures during that time...

I hate WIC. I hate it with a fucking wild fire passion. FUCKING HATE IT.

That being said...

I had this girl yesterday trying to use her WIC checks. Supposedly first time every using them, so, I was as nice as I possibly could be. On WIC, you get three months worth of checks. For example, you get one set for September-October, another for October-November, and another of November-December. You cannot use the October-November ones until the September-October ones are expired. There's a neat little thing up in the top right corner that says "Not Valid until [insert date]" and "Not Valid After [insert date]". It's usually printed in pretty clear, bold letters that are rather hard to miss. Aside from the checks, you have to have a "WIC ID". It's a little piece of paper that looks like a WIC check except it has who's allowed to sign the checks, who the checks are for, an authorization signature, and an account number. It also says, in very clear, bold letters as well, whether or not a proxy signature allowed. In this case, it said very clearly on the WIC ID "NO PROXY". Don't know what anybody else thinks, but that's pretty damn clear to me.

Okay. So, now that you have a fairly good idea of all that crap, here's what happened.

The girl sent her grandmother, who had no clue what the hell a WIC check was to begin with, to the register to do the WIC checks. Her grandmother asks her what checks to use for the orders. What does the girl say? "Oh, well, just give them to the cashier. She'll sort them out." Oh, just fucking lovely. I don't know what checks you want to use, what ones you want to save, who the crap is for, so I can't match name to check, none of the somewhat important stuff. So, I'm handed a WIC envelop full of WIC checks. I open it up to find that we had done a little card shuffle with the checks, meaning September-October, October-November, November-December were all mixed up. So, I had to go through three months worth of checks and sort them out, only to find that she didn't have a check for cereal, peanut butter, and cheese, she had gotten the wrong kind and amount of eggs, had gotten the wrong milk, and that I would have to somehow explain this to a girl who didn't seem to understand a word that came out of my mouth. This, of course, is after ten minutes of trying to explain to her that her grandmother was not allowed to sign the checks, and that there was not proxy signature allowed, and that, yes, she had to stay there until I was done with the checks.

So... after I finally got through with her, Patrick decided he had to come rub my shoulders for a minute and give me his hat while he was up front bagging. He also stayed at my register until I had gotten through my long line of really pissed off customers. "Moral Support", as he calls it.

So, that's work. Schools good. I've got all sorts of tests and stuff coming up. I have an outline due for speech tomorrow that I haven't even really thought about, and Tuesday I have an outline for a research paper due that I really have absolutely no clue what it's going on. Sounds normal enough, I guess. As for grades on both those classes, I got an A- in speech, and an A on my first essay. Awesomeness. It's all good.

Hmm... I think that's really it. Patrick is in "trouble" for right now. He was supposed to talk to my Dad yesterday and didn't, so I told him he was going to get yelled at. I told him no hug, no handshake, no arm around me, and no hat until he talked to Dad. I came home with his promise that he would call and talk to Dad when he got home, and his hat, which he still thinks Tanya, one of the baggers, has. The story behind the hat is that he was making fun of Tanya, or "Shorty", as we call her, because she is, undeniably, short. She makes me, with my whole 5'2.5", look tall. Anyway, he was teasing her about being short, so she stole his hat, and told him that she would give it to me. Apparently, he thinks that I would give it back, and decided that I was just having him on and that Tanya still has it. He still thought that when I left today.

I think that's all of this weeks adventures. I have to go load wood into the cellar way in the basement, then get my homework for speech done. Oh what fun.