One second I’m moping around in a post-hospital daze of laziness and depression, and now suddenly every last free minute of the summer is being taken over by Shaw’s/Star Market!  So far I’ve worked one 6 hour shift and then a 6 1/2 hour shift today, and more is coming during the rest of this week.  The first day was boring as hell…well, most of it was.  There was this deadly 3-HOUR-LONG session of sitting in a frigid, isolated storage room with a laptop computer, listening on headphones to a robot woman drone on and on about company policy blah blah and how to be a good, !!!SAFE!!! employee blah blah blah blah BLAH.  I learned all kinds of fascinating and useful tidbits that I’m sure I could never have survived without.  For example….

-There are many different types of grips that you can use to pick up groceries when ringing them up; you should be sure to use the appropriate ones for different items of varying sizes and weights.  Failure to adhere to the correct food-handling techniques could result in dire and possibly deadly injury to the hand, fingers, and/or wrist area.  (The only grip that I remember right now is the power grip, which you should use when handling larger bottles of juice or soda).

-Similarly, when an item is dropped and needs to be picked up from the floor, be sure to carefully consider its proportions before choosing the correct bending style.  (There are a total of 5 different bending styles, and they went over all of them in complete detail).  For instance: with small items like pencils or grapes, find a counter or other surface to grip with one hand.  Then, bend forward, keeping one leg straight and the other sticking out behind you as you bend.  With the unoccupied hand, slowly and carefully remove the object from the ground.

-If you see a large motor-operated vehicle sitting around (right, those are just all over the grocery stores these days), AND if it also has a “DANGER” sign on it warning people not to use it, do NOT remove the danger sign!!!!

-There are approximately 40 different fruits and 85 types of vegetables, and good, devoted Shaw’s employees should be able to recognize all of them.  (To make sure that we could, there was a paragraph-long description along with a picture of each one.  A bunch of them were foreign things that I had NEVER heard of.  Another large portion of them were absolutely indistinguishable from one another.  This would have been okay except that afterwards we had to take a vegetable test where we had to identify all of the different pictures.  Employees have been known to fail the vegetable test up to 15 times before finally passing it).

-If somebody gets pee on you and you think that it’s infected with a disease, tell the manager.

And so on…it wouldn’t have been so bad if it was all just dumb stuff like that, but they also went into the most detailed descriptions possible of all the forms of legal tender and what to do with them (and believe me, it was MUCH more extensive than just cash, card, or check), and just a whole load of other boredom wads which I don’t want to write about anymore.  However, I realized about halfway through that I was getting paid 7 bucks an hour to listen to the dumb thing, so then it suddenly seemed much better!  And the rest of it hasn’t been bad.  I’ve done a bunch of bagging and today got trained at the cash register, and got to actually practice with real live customers!  (Hi!  How are you doing?  I’m great, thanks!  Do you have your Shaw’s card with you?  Okay…..blip blip blip……That’ll be $89.50.  Here’s your change…thanks, have a great day.  (3 second pause) Hi!  How are you?  I’m good, thanks!  Do you have your Shaw’s card with you? Okay……blip blip blip blip……That’ll be $57.73.  Yeah, we accept checks.  You can have up to $50 cash back…here, thanks, have a great day. (2 second pause) Hi!  How are you?  I’m great, thanks……)

It’s easy to talk when you know exactly what you’re supposed to say. 

Well, anyways.  The WHS school newsletter came yesterday.  It made for a good few hours of depression before I eventually got over it.  It’s easier if you just don’t think about it and enjoy summer up to the last second, and let the first time that school enters your mind be at 11:30 Wednesday morning when you walk in through the orange doors.  But unfortunately they keep sending a bunch of mail and they gave out all this summer reading which just ruins the strategy!

This xanga literally exceeds the federal government’s qualifications for a novel, and it doesn’t even have any pictures to break it up.  But I couldn’t think of any, so you can suggest some if you feel like it.  Otherwise, I’ll see you before or during school! 

THE END.