Today's rambling: Manager for a day
Written on Tuesday, Jul. 16, 2002 at 10:14 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Today, Miss Berry was put in charge of the bakery department.

No, don't get yourselves all excited...it was an "In Charge By Default" sort of deal. All the managers in the store (except Dave) had to go to some training class, so there was no supervision to be found in the food court. Debbie is on a mini vacation, Zenon works in Produce now, and Mare was supposed to be off...though she came in to do the morning bake (and left shortly after I arrived). That left me as the only person in bakery (excluding Karen and Joanne, but they're kind of in their own department anyway). Therefore, I was in charge. Cathy, who usually works in deli, helped out for a little while...though she also whined and moaned pitifully a lot. That's her usual thing, though. She's a very whiny, "woe is me" sort. But back to me. ;)

There was no setup kid either, so basically I had to do everything by myself, as Cathy left at noon. Thankfully, she had most of the stuff packaged up, but I still had to do the setups, as well as keep an eye on things to make sure none of the bread ran low. Our new "cinnamon chunky bread", which is very tasty, by the way, wasn't ringing up as it was supposed to, so I had to wander up front and see if that couldn't be fixed. The woman in charge of pricing, Tina, came back to the bakery later to explain what was going on, and I felt sort of special being the 'important' one, hehe...

One of our vendors called, and I had to give the bread order. Thankfully, she had last week's order on file, so I just told her to send us that one, with two minor changes. Mission accomplished, and again I felt somewhat important.

So then I was moseying along with my setups, knowing I had to hurry because I had to leave an hour early. Around 12:30, Dave's voice rumbles over the intercom: "Amber to the office, please."

"OooOOoo," Karen taunted good-naturedly, making me feel like I was in elementary school again (though, as she brought up, I'd never been called to the office because of misbehavior in school).

Apprehensive, I walked up to the manager's office. Just before I got there, however, I saw a kid and two women standing off to one side, and I knew they were the reason why I'd been called up. See, we've got a new kid working in the bakery now. He's seventeen years old. He's also deaf and autistic. Just my luck that I'm the one who has to teach him what to do...and on a day when I'm already running behind!

Y'know, the 'we don't discriminate' thing is wonderful, but THIS is just getting out of hand. How does one communicate with a deaf person when one doesn't know sign language? Out of the whole store, I think only Ryan does know how to sign, and he's going to be leaving next week! And to have the kid be autistic as well just causes even more problems, because he can't read lips or anything, and when you're trying to explain, he just loses concentration and stares off into space. Add to this my very low tolerance for such things, and we find ourselves with a bad situation.

It's not that I don't like people with disabilities. I just don't communicate well with them, because I can't find a way to make them understand what I'm trying to say, and that frustrates me. I admire people who can deal with such problems...alas, my temper is entirely too short, and my patience isn't any better.

So anyway, Evan happened to have a job coach who'll be staying with him. Her name is Lisa. She doesn't know sign language, either. Though, as she told me, he doesn't seem to like it when people sign to him anyway; she's seen him swat his mother's hands several times when she's tried to sign to him in public (because I guess it embarrasses him). So, we both figured that he must just be more content with us pointing and gesturing, rather than actually trying to communicate.

Things didn't turn out to be so bad...I actually got finished with the setups early enough to make a batch of Pane. He'll be working again tomorrow, and Yours Truly will once again be the only one around to help him. The nice part is, Bob will be in tomorrow to do the setups, so all I'll have to show Evan is how to package stuff. I know now not to let him near the Pane, because when you have to roll the dough into a ball, he just keeps playing with it, instead of actually rolling it and setting it aside. He's very slow with stuff...even though Bryan was technically 'slow', he was still comparatively swift with tasks. Well, not really swift, because he DID take a long time, though that was more out of laziness than anything else.

I enjoyed talking with Lisa. She reminds me of my cousin, Melinda.

Anyway, I got my hair cut this evening, and it looks really cute. It was getting too long, and so the ends were scraggly and ugly. Now it falls just a little below my shoulders, and I'm happy with it. ^_^ The hairdresser I always go to, Lisa, told me to go down to GNC (I was in the mall) and find out what vitamin is supposed to help regrow hair. Every time I go into the salon now, I don't let her shampoo my hair because I'm so extremely conscious of that thin spot (which is growing larger, I'm loath to add)...conscious of it to the point where I just cannot be in public if I haven't covered it. The funny part is, Lisa said that the stuff I use (which is actually just dark eye shadow) blends so well that she wouldn't have even known about the thin spot if I hadn't mentioned anything.

I picked up some stuff at GNC (the first time I've ever bought anything there, since I generally think it's a fairly hokey store), and I hope desperately that it works! I was trying Rogaine for awhile, but I just don't have the discipline to remember to spray the stuff two times every day. Besides that, even if it DID work, I'd have to continue using it for the rest of my life, and who wants to do THAT? Think of how expensive THAT'D end up being...

Electronics Boutique is turning into EB Games, so don't expect them to have anything productive there anymore. I was trying to find that French program they used to sell, so that I could start practicing again before class starts, and the guy broke the news to me. So I took my business elsewhere. Actually, he told me that I should try Best Buy, hehe...Likewise, Radio Shack lost my business, though it turned out to be a good thing. In order to hook up my computer to Clarion's Internet, they told me that I need a 3Com card and a CAT5 cable. I was looking around in Radio Shack, hoping maybe someone would offer to help (because goodness knows that when I DON'T need help, the employees are swarming around me), but no such luck. One guy was helping some customers with a phone, while the other guy...well, I'm not sure WHAT he was doing. It looked like he was paging through something at one point, so I didn't know if he was helping out another customer, or just taking up space. As it was, I wasn't about to stand around all day and wait, so I left.

Went to the Gateway Country store where my laptop was purchased, and by chance, the guy who sold the laptop to Mom was there. My first reaction to him was "Ugh, facial hair!" but y'know what? He was very cute! He had an awesome grin, and these big dark eyes...But anyway, he told me that my darling laptop already has that card thing built in...so think of the money I would've wasted (not to mention the time it would take to return the thing) if I'd bought it at Radio Shack! As for the cable, I ended up having to go to Best Buy...so I got my French program, AND my cable from Best Buy! They should give me a Frequent Shopper bonus, hehe...I love that store.

Turns out, the French program isn't so much a 'learn how to conjugate verbs and other fun stuff' program, it's just a 'learn how to speak French!' program. Still, it should help at least a little, which is all I need.

I also bought Plus! for Windows XP, for some retarded reason. I just wanted the screen savers and the desktop themes...There IS a pretty cool bowling game on there, though. I got 140, or something like that. *giggles* Never expect me to get that in REAL bowling. ;)

Went to Arby's on the way home, and since they don't sell my Hot Ham 'n Swiss sub anymore, I decided to chance the Beef 'n Cheddar thing. I don't even like roast beef, but I remember having an Arby's roast beef sandwich once at Kathy and Amy's, and I liked it. I didn't like this sandwich. But I was tired of chicken, and I'm tired of fast food burgers, so there we go. At least their curly fries were good... ^_^

And now I'm home. And it's almost 11 o'clock. And I have to work again tomorrow. But at least Geoff will be there. And hopefully he'll be in better spirits than he was today (not that I can blame him for being cranky, considering everything that happened).

Good night!