But Wait There's More

I have this sort of pet theory about employment:

Almost every job has an obvious component that you are aware of and that gets mentioned in the interview. Take a fast food job for instance, going in you expect that the job will involve either making food or ringing up orders for food and collecting money.

The remainder of this theory is: almost all jobs also have a somewhat less obvious component, often one that might make you think twice before accepting a job offer. To continue the fast food example: Quite a lot of it is dealing with the aftermath of having customers in the store- wiping down tables, restocking condiment packets, sweeping floors, changing trashes, and washing dishes. It's amazing how much time goes to things like that. In my experience at Burrito Gong and Sandwich Emperor, I've found that on a typical day at least half the day is spent at this clean up work.

If I have a point, not always a certainty, it's this: next time you're at a job interview and it looks lie it's going well, ask for a written list of all duties you might be asked to perform. Then think it over carefully. Also save the list and have fun pointing out- I didn't sign on for this.

Take That You Fiend!

Etiquette, manners, and customs are human constructs. We can create new ones. We can modify or discard old ones. The fact that we rarely do says something about us.

Likes and dislikes are rarely entirely sane and rational. They are also personal. I don't like nickels.

I have worked fairly steadily in the food service industry for a bit over five years. One of my jobs was at a fast food place that I shall call Sandwich Emperor. I was frequently assigned to the task of order-taking and/or collecting money from the customers.

One of the things about this job is that employees were expected to count down their drawer themselves at the end of the shift before handing it over to management to make the count official. I didn't like counting nickels. Quarters make sense: four of them make a dollar. Dimes make sense: two piles of five make a dollar. I'm a very visual counter: I sort things into piles and then count the piles. Pennies make perfect sense: each one is worth one.

Nickels bother me: it takes four piles of five to make a dollar. So, I made it a sort of secret goal of mine to run out of nickels by the time my shift was over. This led me to a new practice. If a customer wasn't one I was especially fond of, I'd make sure their change was as heavy on nickels as possible. An even ten cents change as two nickels instead of one dime, for instance.

People in customer service jobs put up with a lot of crap. We need a way to express our frustration with more subtlety and good taste than serving the customers sneezers. I propose that anyone in a cash-handling customer service position adopt my practice of giving out change that's heavy on nickels as a subtle sign of displeasure.

The Bright Shining Hope For The Future: Buggy Technology

Well, work is a subject I've touched on before. It's kind of an inexhaustible well of stories about how crazy people can be, life's little frustrations, and the horrors of modern technology.

I have probably mentioned that one of my jobs is as a cashier at a fast food place that I shall call Burrito Gong in order to protect the guilty.

Well today, the credit card machine stopped working again for half an hour or so. It does that about once a month. Sometimes customers want to know why the credit card machine is not functioning.

At one point I was tempted to say: Because James Cameron was right and the machines are taking over.

Now that I've had time to think on it though, the very unreliability of technology is our best hope against a Terminator future. Think about it if SkyNet regularly spontaneously crashes, the Terminators aren't going to be able to hunt down all that many humans.

Mnemonics and Pluto

I was thinking the other day.

Everything I remember from science classes is because of mnemonic devices. Unfortunately there is no mnemonic for remembering how to spell mnemonic. Until I googled it, my initial impulse was to spell it with a p as the first letter.

Anyways, most of what I remember from science classes is because of a mnemonic.

The spectrum of visible light: ROY G. BIV for Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo, and Violet.

Taxonomic classification order: Kings Play Cards On Fat Green Stools for Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

The Nine planets of our home solar system: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pumpkins for Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto.

Unfortunately Pluto no longer counts as a full-fledged planet, but has been demoted to minor planet. This rather spoils the mnemonic. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine is a sentence fragment.

So, Why Don't Bus Boys Get All The Girls

Bart Simpson (voiced by Nancy Cartwright): If this girl I'm seeing comes here, and she might, I wouldn't mind of you told her I was the kind of boy that does the dishes.
Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellaneta, with a tone of derison and sarcasm here): Yeah, bus boys get all the chicks.
-The Simpsons, episode entitled "The Good, The Sad and The Drugly" written by Marc Wilmore and directed by Rob Oliver


So, as the above quote indicates, telling a girl you're a bus boy is not the best opening line. I am somewhat puzzled about the why of it. Being a bus boy, among other things, by trade myself, I think there's a good case to be made for bus boys.

Males and females are mysteries to each other. At least that's the gist of the vibe I get from books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, He's Just Not That Into You, and Bridget Jones's Diary. Part of it is until humans perfect telepathy, everyone is a mystery to everyone else. While an individual might get lost in thought from time to time, really foreign territory is someone else's brain. This foreignness increases exponentially when crossing gender lines, though.

So because we are alien to each other, males and females, who attempt to make the effort towards some form of heterosexual romantic relationship, have some complaints. Two complaints I have heard females make of males are:

1) He's not very domestically inclined; he's no help around the house; he never cleans up after himself.
and
2) He's got some BS macho attitude about being head of the household, the one in charge, etc. and so on, simply because he's got the Y Chromosome and higher levels of testosterone.

Here's where bus boys might be an improvement:
1) If you are a true bus boy and it has taken root in your soul, you will feel a natural inclination to try and pick up after yourself a bit because dirty dishes left on the table are WRONG in much the same way that a Christian would find a Satanic shrine WRONG.
and
2) Maybe it's different other places, but where I bus tables, most of my bosses are women. While, I think I've always been more or less a feminist, low on macho BS to begin with, following the orders and instructions of so many females has killed what little I had left. I am ready, willing and eager to accept a female as my equal or superior. If other bus boys are similar, then that's a second point in our favor.

So if bus boys might represent a slight improvement over the average male, why aren't they the most sought after mates on the planet? Or at least in the industrialized Western countries where bus boys exist... I have two somewhat inter-related hypotheses:
1) Money
and
2) Social status

Money, I'll try to be concise about. Bus boying alone will never get you rich. In the whole game of dating, mating, and relating, having some disposable income at your disposal is a help.

As for social status, that's almost another essay. A while back I read a book called Where Do Nudists Keep Their Hankies? It's one of those books of random facts that might be interesting. The whole book was sort of themed around sexuality and the whole weird mating dance that humans have built for themselves. I have since sold my actual physical copy of the book, so I am going from memory here, but this was a pretty memorable bit.

The book is presented in a sort of question and answer format. One question was something along the lines of, "why do women go for jerks?". The answer came from emerging scientific research. Among lower types of social mammals, like wolves and chimpanzees, females try to mate with a high status, as close as possible to the pack alpha, male. This ensures good genes for resultant offspring. Then the female will seek a lower status male to actually try to take care of her and her offspring.

There is no reason to believe these instincts and behavior patterns have entirely disappeared in humans. Now among humans, the type of aggressive behavior that allows one to rise to alpha status often comes off as jerky behavior.

Getting back to bus boys, we are almost certainly not the alpha of our local pack. We might not be the omega wolf, pushed to the fringes of the pack and forced to beg for scraps, either. The point remains that we are the guy approaching the alpha and asking if we can take away his salad plate so there will be room on the table for the main course.

Another political rant

If anybody were to ask me what's wrong with the democratic republic system of government in the United States of America, which nobody will because I work at a Burrito Gong, I would say: lawyer politicians and professional politicians. These two problems serve to disenfranchise the common man by making the law inaccessible to him.

I mentioned working at a Burrito Gong. Our current store manager is a latina, and she hires mostly latinas and latinos. Many of them speak little English and have even less literacy in English. They often get put into the kitchen making food because they don't speak English well enough to ring up orders. The trouble is, they are often being taught how to make food by native English speakers with little or no Spanish language skills. Also, the electronic screens displaying the orders, once they are rung up by an order taker, so the kitchen crew can see what to make, are in English.

It's not too hard to imaginge that quite often orders get screwed up because the people making food don't understand why +ON ON ON (for add onion three times) means mucho seboya. Here's where I'm going with this: The law is a specialized language. Lawyers learn it well, if they are good at their job. Legislators make laws that apply to everybody, lawyer and lay man alike. Electing a lawyer to legislate ensures that future laws get written in legalese. This means that a lay man can look at a bill that his legislator wrote affecting his life, in possibly drastic ways, and have no idea what it means.

To make laws that will serve lay people, like folks who work at the Burrito Gong, well we need lay people legislating. There are a few barriers to entry though, one of which is professional politicians, that is to say incumbents who win and keep on getting re-elected. I believe that politics should not be a viable long-term career choice.

First we shouldn't need as much government as we get. I really think that law-makers should only need to put in three hour days and not every day, either. Now that we've got the basics down already: murder is against state laws and is either a death penalty or a life sentence, depending on the state; rape is against the law; theft is against the law with size of the theft affecting the severity of the charge which affects the sentence; there's really nothing that law-makers can do except build highways to nowhere in Alaska and allocate funds to the Lawrence Welk museum. And name post offices.

Second, law-making isn't real work, so it shouldn't really pay. Besides salaries, pensions, and health benefits paid for by people who work at the Burrito Gong, politicians have many unofficial streams of revenue available, including book deals, speaking gigs, and gifts from lobbyists.

This brings me to my third point against professional politicians, lobbyists. Lobbyists seek influence with politicians through gifts. Every time someone forces politicians to clean up their act by setting limits on what lobbyists can do for politicians and how, the lobbyists find new loopholes. No politician is aboe the influence. Time in this system is inherently corrupting.

Compassionate Curmudgeon

Compassionate Curmudgeon


First let me state for the record that I am neither a Satanist nor a Buddhist. I find religion to be a fascinating phenomenon and try to find out as much as possible about it. Every religion, epsecially the ones that are more philosophies than religions, says something about the human race.


I started reading two books recently: The Devil's Notebook by Anton Szandor LaVey and The Art of Happiness by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. Anton LaVey, was the founder of the Church of Satan. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Tibetan sect of Buddhism.


These books and the men who wrote them and the teachings they try to exemplify come from pretty much opposite ends of the spectrum. LaVey's Satanism is all about being a jerk if it suits you. Tibetan Buddhism, on the other hand, espouses loving kindness.


Despite these opposite approaches, I found myself nodding my head and silently agreeing with much of what both books had to say. This has led me to identify my own philosophical position: I am a Compassionate Curmudgeon.


My basic worldview can be summarized as follows:
I wish the human populace of the world well and I wish it well away from me.

The Disintigration of Western Civilization Part 3: There Are Too Many Worthless Holidays

A holiday is meant to be a time of merriment and/or reverence. It should be spectacular. It should be a day off for more than just letter carriers and bankers. In the United States of America we have too many days marked on our calendars as holdiays that are none of the above.


When was the last time anyone threw an arbor day party? Does anyone other than bankers and postal workers celebrate Martin Luther King Day or President's Day? How many people curse Martin Luther King Day or President's Day because the bank's not open for them to cash a check or because the check that's in the mail is going to be a day later than expected?


Now, President Lincoln, President Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are all admirable men who did great things for this country, but maybe we should do something to actually endear their memories to people, like give everyone except banks and the post office the day off. With pay.

There are a lot of saints. From what I understand there are days for all of them. For whatever reason, Patrick and Valentine are the only ones whose days are paid much attention by the American populace. I guess green beer and/or chocolate are popular.
Saint Valentine's Day is a total Hallmark holiday. It exists to prop up the candy industry between Christmas and Easter and the greating card industry after Christmas.

Saint Patrick's Day is something of a mystery to me. In what way did a Saint associated with the Catholic Church endorse green minty milkshakes? Other than that, I've got no problem with it. Any excuse to listen to my Pogues and Dropkick Murphys albums is a good excuse.

Arbor Day and Flag Day are the quintessential worthless holidays. Nobody throws a party for them. I think they don't even bother with closing the banks and not delivering the mail on these days, so really they are totally unmarked.

I have no idea how people react to Secretaries's Day. I work in fast food and as a bus boy. This means I do not have a secretary and I will never have a secretary. I imagine that having to get the obligatory card is an annoyance to those who do, but quite honestly if your position within a company affords you a secretary, I have no sympathy for you.

Super Bowl Sun Day has become a sort of unofficial holiday here in the U.S.A. I don't like football and don't care about wierd advertising that costs a lot of money to air. About the one good thing to come out of the Super Bowl is the Janet Jackson incident.

Independence Day/ The Fourth of July can be fun. When you mix drunken red necks with explosives fun often ensues. American freedom is also a nifty idea. Let me know when it arrives.

I like Halloween. It's an excuse to dress up the way I normally would: cape, skull jewelry, and black nail polish and then go out in public. There's also the free candy. Unfortunately, now that I'm over twenty, people frown on me trick or treating myself . In past years, I've gotten around that by borrowing my younger brother and his friends and claiming that I'm just escorting them.

Christmas is okay by me too. I like giving and receiving gifts. It also falls on Sol Invictus, so it's a holiday on a Holy Day.

All in all, though there are definitely too many worthless holidays.

The Disintigration of Western Civilization Part 2: U-Scan Must Die

The Disintigration of Western Civilization Part 2: U-Scan Must Die


I work at a Burrito Gong. I get payed a little over seven dollars an hour (the state minimum wage plus a tiny merit-based raise) to stand behind a cash register and deal with idiots.


When I'm off-duty and buying pita chips and hommus at a grocery store, it is my turn to be someone else's idiot, but the grocery stores want me to be my own idiot. They have gotten rid of express lanes manned by people. Instead, they install U-Scan express lanes.


This leaves me with two unpalatable options. I can do something that somebody should be getting paid around seven dollars an hour to do and do it for free. Or I can stand in line behind three housewives who are buying the month's groceries for their twelve kids.


I usually choose to stand in the long, slow-moving line. If I've got time to go to the grocery store for my pita chips and hommus, I've got time to stand in line.


That's another problem with the U-Scan concept: it doesn't just represent the death of good customer service at a grocery store, it's also yet another symptom of the constant hurry that Americans live in. I never hurry. There's no point. There is no on-time and no late, there is simply when something happens.

Tomorrow, I will go to the grocery store. I'll pick up something cheap like a pack of gum. Then, I'll stand in line to have my pack of gum checked out by a human being. When I reach the cashier I will thank her for being there to deal with idiots like me. I encourage all of you to do the same.

U-Scan must die.

Civil War & What's Wrong With Comics These Days

I recently read the Black Panther: Civil War trade paperback collection. I found it to be an engaging read. I'd recommend it to others who like political thrillers, espionage, and/or superheroes. I also read the Checkmate: A King's Game trade at about the same time. My overall enjoyment and evaluation is the same.

Despite the excellence of these two collections, they seem to perfectly illustrate a trend I don't especially like in comics: the post-90s, post-9/11, grimmer, grittier superhero comics. It probably started in the 80s with grim, deconstructionist superhero tales like Watchmen, Bat Man Year One, Bat Man The Dark Knight Returns, Miracle Man, and, depending on your definition of the superhero genre, V For Vendetta.

It went further in the 90s, with companies finding ways to make superheroes grimmer and grittier by either screwing over their marquee characters (Knightfall, The Death of Superman, Emerald Twilight, Age of Apocalypse), increasing the prominence of or introducing grim, psychotic vigilantes (Lobo, Azrael, the three regular Punisher books plus his guest appearance every month in someone else's title, Ghost Rider and Wolverine's similar omnipresence in the 90s), and turning villains into not quite heroes (Venom, The Thunderbolts).

Now after experiencing a bit of a slow down, the grim superheroes trend has kicked back into high gear again. I can't say it definitely started with Avengers Disassembled, but that seems to be a pretty key point. Since then, Marvel's House of M and Civil War and, on the DC side of the street, Identity Crisis and Infinitie Crisis have kicked it up another notch.

It's not that these are bad comics. They're not. They're intelligent and well written. The trouble is, these comics are too reminscent of the troubles of the real world.

Do I really need to read about a superhero civil war, spured on by a superhuman registration act precipitated by a disastrous explosion that resulted in numerous civilian deaths, when we've got two real wars and are heading for a third, while the nation is deeply politically divided, and the Patriot Act erodes our civil liberties, all precipitated by the real 9/11? No. I want to see the JLA and JSA team up agaisnt the Crime Syndicate of Earth-3. I want the bad guys caught. I want the world to be a bit more idyllic than our own.

I'm also tired of morally ambiguous superheroes. I like superheroes who do what's right. The Powers make them super. Morals makes them heroic.