Kid-hands

I'm not sure what Panera Bread was thinking when they installed the sneeze guard in the Bakery side. I mean, it works, guarding from sneezes and all that, but the main flaw is the four inch gap between the bottom of the glass and the counter. I'm sure it makes cleaning easier, but that gap is right on the eye level of a small child of the age where they don't seem to know better than to stick hands, toys, and anything else nearby into certain gaps in certain sneeze guards. And try to touch pretty pastries.

Official policy is that if you touch it, you buy it. However, I don't want to be the one explaining to some parent that because they did not watch their kid, they are now the proud owner of a bear claw, an orange scone, and a smeared cherry pastry.
Therefore, the cashiers try and keep an eye on kids who seem about the right age and discipline level to be a threat to the our pastries. Or parents who don't seem to care if their kids spread their little kid germs around in sanitary areas.

Today while I was taking care of a customer, another woman with her kid was walking along the bakery counter and she was pointing out all of the good stuff to eat, asking him what he wanted, the usual. That I don't mind. But the kid was shoving his hands under, going after our cobblestones.

"Please keep your hands out!"

You have to say it loud, or nobody hears/listens. Mom murmurs to the kid, but whatever she said didn't work.

"Don't touch that, please!"

Mom ends up snatching kid up and holding him to her and I catch words that give me the idea that they aren't going to buy anything after all and with the glare she directs at me, apparently it's my fault.

I finish with my customer and shout out with the normal, "Is there anything I can get for you?" Mom refuses, still glaring, muttering to her child about not going over there, she'll get mad at you.

Roar, that's me, the big scary Panera employee. Seriously, do you really want a cobblestone added to your bill?

In the end, she does order, but she makes sure it's from Jenny. I might bite her kid or something.

We deal with kids like that all the time and parent reactions usually range from swift removal and profuse apologizing to completely ignoring their kid. This one really ticked me off because instead of telling her kid not to touch stuff, she instead blames me for telling her kid not to touch stuff and comforts the poor frightened little boy. A kid coddled like that is going to go running to his mother for protection against everything and he's never going to learn.

And I'm still annoyed cause I hate it when customers get upset with me, but I'm still not going to let children fondle my pastries.

This could have been all avoided with sneeze guard that went down all the way, or even just enough to prevent kid-hands.

Musings of a bored employee

I feel like I've really only just begun life in general. I had to deal with school for the past seventeen or so years and thought that once I got out, I would be meeting life! The fulfillment of dreams! The start of adventure! The culmination of all the learning I did in childhood!

Ok, nowhere near that optimistic. Actually I've had a Peter Pan mentality pretty much since I was born. If he showed up and offered to take me to Neverland, I'm not even sure I would've had second thoughts. I NEVER wanted to grow up. It seemed like growing up always came with more responsibilities and less freedom and fun.

By the end of college, I was bored with college and ready to do something else, but I can't say my heart leaped at the idea of nine-to-fiving it at a desk job. The economy made sure I didn't have to worry about that and around six months after I graduated, I finally managed to get A job at Panera Bread.

Now when I was working hard in college and listening to idealistic professor talk about all the great things we would be doing in journalism, I wasn't exactly pumped to go into news. I wanted to do magazine with a more creative and fun aspect. And I actually read magazines, unlike newspapers, so that's a good sign right there. I was still worried about going into magazines, but even so, I didn't really want to go into sandwich-making and cashiering.

Which is where I am now. The culmination of my 17 years of schooling and thousands of dollars of tuition and I can now take your order and even, possibly, make it for you. Unless it includes a salad; I don't do salads.

Now I've mostly been able to repress my "I'm failing my own potential and expectations and everyone else's as well" because I'm doing this to get David through college and mostly I just stamp those instincts down. Shut up already, at least it's a job.

David graduates in December and we will probably move to Des Moines, which all of a sudden means that 1) We don't have to rely entirely on my income, 2)I will have to switch jobs anyway, and 3) there could actually be places where I could "use my degree" in Des Moines.

Now with the hope of actually being able to work at a place that is not Panera (and hopefully a step up from it... as in not Burger King either) is making me want to do something else. I am not fitted out for a career, I would get bored. If it were up to me, I'd probably switch jobs every year until I could find a job I wanted to stick with... for maybe three years.

All this to say, I am becoming discontent. I want to do something else. There's got to be more to life that just work.

Identity Crisis of Geekdom

I am having a fantasy identity crisis. Weird concept to start with. It is not an identity crisis for me, the respectful writer, but more of a disconnect between me and one of my characters, my shades, who dated back from my high school years. This character was the embodiment of the depression I was going through then. It was non-clinical and caused by typical high school things, such as not having any guys like me. However, it was pretty deep on some levels and I continued to be affected by it long after high school. I still encounter some of the mental garbage associated with it as well.

When I am down in a rut, sometimes I create more because I have to have a way to tell people what I am feeling. I don't write poetry anymore because I don't have any of the negative feelings to tell.

Anyway, all that aside, I was very involved in an online forum-based role-playing game. Basically, all we did was write on the forums what our character would do and other people would respond with their characters and we could interact and create stories and explore a world fueled only by imagination, proboards, and a decent internet connection. The one I'm talking about in particular was based on X-Men Evolution, starting when most of the main characters are in high school. I will never be able to catch up on all the comics, but I can watch all the episodes of the tv series and felt well-informed before I entered.

In one of my moods, I created an X-Men style character named "Midnight." Original, I'm sure. Midnight was able to create darkness and as a result of her powers and her past, she was even darker and more emo than I was. Many of my characters start out as me, but as I form them for the world they live in and the things they must do, they change and become separate. I refer to them in the third person.

I am very attached to Midnight for the long and creative life she lived (and subsequent role-play addiction I had) and all the stories I carried out in the X-Men world with other writers. But eventually the forum died. I can't even remember why I left.

Now the crisis I'm in revolves around a reoccurring X-Men obsession and the discovery of a new forum, this one based on the movies. I considered bringing Midnight back as a new character on this board, but as I started to re-write her biography, I started making little changes... Her eyes are no longer red on black (think, Gambit) because that is too...overused. Just red irises now. She no longer wears all black... way too goth. She wears maybe some more gothic accessories sometimes, but it's mostly tank top and jeans, with a belt and a pair of shoes that I would wear. Her past was somewhat poorly written, so I'd have to re-write that... each decision chips away at what Midnight was and now I don't know who this character is.

Should I just reformat Midnight and try and learn who she is now? It's hard to write a character you don't know. Or should I completely start from scratch, starting with new powers? Would I know that character any better?

It's hard to abandon a staple of my past. I have imaginative landmarks just as I have the real life events, the ones you vaguely remember forever. I remember back before I started imagining me... I made myself a slim blonde. Eventually I came to grips with the fact that I wasn't going to change and lose the dark eyes and freckles no matter how hard I imagined, so I started putting myself in my stories... little less of a letdown. I vaguely remember so many pieces of cameos I played, trying to add myself into a movie, wanting to experience it first hand and have the characters interact with me. I remember most strongly Midnight and my experience in the role-playing game. I remember putting real faces to the characters in Deerslayer so that I managed to stumble over all the language and over-wordy descriptions to see what happened to the main character... who coincidently looked like a guy I thought was cute.

Do you ever feel like you NEED a story to happen? You need to find or see or hear or imagine a story that is so riveting and creative and well-done you might almost burst if something doesn't fulfill your creative longings? I'm feeling that right now... I've got to find a story...

Cyborgs and the Future

My husband, I believe, could play computer games for a week on end if he had no other pressing responsibilities. Apparently in Jr. High, he played some games through the night, which I find very easy to believe. He's done it before in college as well.

We have somewhat different priorities. I like normal human stuff like sleeping and eating. He seems to get around to those things when he remembers. I think there have been more nights when I make dinner and put it down in front of him in between his two arms and in front of the keyboard than nights where we've sat at the cute little table in the corner and actually looked at each other.

I knew about this tendency before I married him. It didn't bother me too much because I, myself, am also a geek. I have much more limited tastes and an eventual "your brain is turning to mush, do something else" check in my head, but I've been known to burn several hours at a time, especially on free days. But I digress.

I think that the eventual creation of cyborgs might overcome this problem. I think eventually our electronic devices will become a part of our systems, something combining the idea of tattoos and Bluetooth headsets. A couple of ports in our ears, mebbe a mechanical eye, something like that. What I am going for here, is the implantation of a video game system that will let David get away from his computer so he is less like an invalid when at home and actually able to do something useful. Now granted, I don't see him being able to multi-task to the point where I won't know if he's playing a game, but I was thinking operation somewhere along robot lines, like able to make his own food and vacuum the floor... he won't even notice he's doing it!

So all for turning gamers into robot-like cyborgs? At least the chores will still be done.

(As I wrote this, he discovered he could hook the brand new 37-inch flat screen up to his computer with an HDMI cable and is now playing World of Warcraft at a resolution that would be fine for me, all the way back on the sofa.)

Is it exceedingly weird to want to take homeless people home? Or pick up hitchhikers? Or help the people who have signs that say "please help?"

It seems that one does not pick up hitchhikers in America. It is simply not safe. Who knows who they might be, with or without Bud Light? I know at least two people who are against me trying new things (like bar crawls) who would also be firmly against me picking up hitchhikers and homeless people, namely my mother and my fiance, David.

I only discovered that they were so against these strange longings I get when I was designated driver for a co-worker at a Des Moines. I didn't drink then, in my pre-21 days, because I need a serious good excuse for breaking the law and "having a good time" with that foul-smelling liquid that can make anybody turn into an idiot was not a law-breaking type of appealing. I like to pick my battles.

Anyway, my Mom and David were not too keen on my doing that, but it was uneventful and he really wasn't even that drunk.

Another time I became aware of their combined displeasure was after I gave plasma at Bio-Life. A college age guy was also there, and had locked his keys in his car and just wanted a lift to the nearest Ford dealership. I agreed and to the amazement of everyone, it happened without incident. However, I was told not to do it again.

But really, I see the amount of people driving past these people and wonder, if we aren't helping them, who will? Why can't I adopt a few homeless people?

RAGE

I was pondering on a few different types of rage on the way back from David's apartment tonight. A popular form of rage is NERD RAGE, which I identify to be something along the lines of "This movie sucks because in scene three, Aragorn is supposed to be wearing a brown waistcoat and they put him as wearing a green waistcoat." Nerd rage means you know too much about something and therefore are upset when anyone who might know less than you changes something. I occasionally have nerd rage, but I like to make sure it is warranted, like say the leaving out of entire characters.

Another type of rage I've identified very recently is PANERA RAGE. Panera rage is induced by people allowing their children to reach under the glass and touch pastries, leaving all their dishes on their tables (instead of putting them in the carefully labeled bins), and stepping up when we say "I can help whoever is ready!" and then looking at the menu for the first time. By the way, would that be "whomever" instead of "whoever?"

The type of rage that set off this mental examination is what I fondly call VIRGIN RAGE. And I won't say any more about that except that this entire month stinks and the days are taking FOREVER. It's about nine days left now?