Sandwiches of Your Nightmares!

At last, my skills have been acknowledge! I am moving up in the job world! I am... in charge of paninis. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the signature hot sandwiches of Panera are in my hands. The glory! The prestige!

Actually, this job shift, while a slight relief from the monotony, is akin to some of my nightmares. Just to note, I am not alone in this sort of nightmare. I dream I am making breakfast sandwiches and can't remember what goes in them and it takes me like five minutes to make one (goal time: under three minutes) and then I drop it on the floor and have to remake it. Geez, even my dreams are stressful. So, as I am new to panini making, it takes me at least twice as long as any of the line people. And as the time continues ticking and the sandwiches just seem to be coming together so slow... Not to mention fellow co-worker Klifer asking every 10 minutes, "Are you done yet?"

My manager has actually been really cool about it taking me from 08:00 to 10:30 to make the paninis, never pestering me and only occasionally asking me where I am. "Just try everyday to beat your time from the previous day," she advised. Course, we had to introduce a new panini, which makes it slightly more painful.

Anyway, those sandwiches were my stress problem last week. I wonder if I'll keep chugging away at them this week.

Like I said, at the very least, it is something different.

Life Goal List (aka "Kill List" or "Bucket List")

Several different sources have recommended forming a list of goals that I would like to accomplish during my life. The list would give me an idea and a focus of things I'd like to accomplish. I am twenty-four years old and I am now past the "once I get out of school" phase. I have already completed a few, like graduating and getting married. But now I am just passing time in a dead end job, thinking "I'll get out of here eventually." Even if I stay in my job, I need to do something else with my time, other than gaming. I need to progress. Otherwise, my life will just be stagnate, waiting.

Completed:
Own a bike
Get a gym membership
Graduate
Get married

In progress:
Bike RAGBRAI (Summer 2012)
Learn to box

Yet to be started:
Learn ASL
Learn Turkish
Learn massage
Get my pilot's license
Learn belly dance
Join choir?
Visit Ireland
Write a book
Publish a book
Run a blog
Get a Harley and travel cross country (35+)
Learn some form of self-defense
Learn guitar
To be continued...

Rock Off

In a rather stupid move, I attended a casting call for LAZER 103.3 radio station to find their next "Rock Girl." I say stupid because afterward I heard them call it on the radio the search for their next "spokesmodel." As there is no chance I will ever be close to being a model. David will look upset and tell me I'm beautiful, and I'm hardly fishing for compliments, but I know what I look like. I may not be dog ugly and I can see how I can appeal to the few who have ever found me attractive, but model I am not. I'm not skinny and blond, either, which would've helped I think.

All that aside, I want to be the Rock Girl. They do get a lot of free stuff and I think that's cool, but that's not why I'm doing it. I love rock music. It is difficult to describe sometimes how it is to rock out, volume up, singing at the top of my lungs while the beat and guitar riffs pound along my veins, capturing me in the sound and the moment. Something speaks to me more in this genre than any other I've listened to. Probably my favorite band is 10 Years, and the first song of theirs I heard was "Through the Iris." Sometimes it still gives me chills to listen to it. So being the Rock Girl, I would be working for LAZER 103.3 in an easy schedule not exceeding 25 hours a week (although sounds like it might have some odd hours), basically promoting the station and being exposed to rock, attending concerts. It would be varied, interesting, and fun.

Sadly, I don't believe my views on the work or the genre itself are going to get me in. Viewing my competition, the chances of me becoming top 10 are slim at best, probably impossible. The only comment I've had compares me to the lead singer of Foo Fighters, who is in fact male (oddly enough, I can see that). Hardly complementary.

Anyway, if you felt so inclined, you can vote for me. First round ends the 16th and Top 10 will be announced the 19th.

We all want to be big rock stars...

What feature do you like best about yourself?
My imagination and passion.

Who is your favorite LAZER artist?
Seether and Apocolyptica are the ones I crank up in the car.

What is the craziest thing you have done?
Growing up in a different country was pretty crazy sometimes.

What celebrity do you most look like?
(My grandmother. Wait, you haven't heard of her? Damn!)
If I get this gig, I'll sort of be a celebrity, and that will be the closest I've been to looking like one.

Why should you be the LAZER 103.3 Rock Girl?
Because in some small way, when I found rock, I found a part of myself, and I would love to continue with this passion/favorite on the front lines with LAZER and would do my best to deserve the place.

Concentrated Frustration

I hate my job. However, I have been informed that a large majority of people actually hate their jobs. So what is it about me that makes me so severely discontent? I cannot fathom 9-5 of a job for the rest of my life, much less one I can't stand. How do people do it, day in and day out, just mindless grinding of work? Even in the early days when I didn't mind working there and was still learning stuff, I was embarrassed because it had nothing to do with my major and seemed like I was lowering myself to work in food services. I worked in the same town I graduated from and would see professors and fellow students from time to time. I wanted to say hi, but I also wanted to hide so they wouldn't see me in this position. Even from the beginning, I had no intention of staying.

The...wanderlust...has gotten so bad. I can't stand my job anymore. Either it is the managers micromanaging, scolding, and driving me crazy or it is rude customers or just customers who don't think at all... It has gotten about the time I need a different job. I want to job hop for the rest of my life, really, finding something interesting and temporary and moving on. This job has served its purposes.

To be honest, I don't know if there is anywhere I can be content. I have my doubts that there is a job that can charm me so much I want to stay there for extended periods of time. All of my jobs so far have been endured, at best. Is there really a place I'd actually somewhat enjoy? I doubt it.

Hence the job hopping. I need to go out and learn something new. But what?

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.