True Blues... Or a Rant.

Biking home from work today tears started rolling down my face. It wasn't the wind blowing in my eyes, even though I was riding as fast as I possibly could with out protective eye wear. It was stress. Stress brought about by the fact that for the last hour and 45 minutes of my five hour shift I was running around like a mad man. Trying to fill end caps, which was impossible because most of the titles that were meant to go on them were either down to one copy, not coming out until the following day or were just plain sold out. Throw into the mix customers that were asking for songs they did not know the proper title or artist of, people who cannot seem to figure out how to use a touch screen with a functional keyboard, and people who actually did not know if Michael Jackson has a greatest hits record sucking time normally used to do important work out of me like a vampire sucking the blood from a helpless beautiful woman.

9 o'clock, you've never seemed sooooooo faaaaaaaar away!

So it looks like we're ready to go folks! Windows clean, end caps looking almost acceptable until we get the new titles on them tomorrow. Customer's are gone! Rows are pushed back (fuck yeah!)

Let's also not forget that I have to clean the windows and fix the mess people leave in the section. It appears most customers, at the end of the night, are left with those famous last two questions: "to buy? or not to buy?" and "if I leave this here will that make me a total bitch/asshole? I mean... people work here right? I mean they get paid to almost the same thing my Mommy did when ever I was a slob of a child... right?" Let's not forget to look for [Local Super MEGA COFFEE PLACE] cups condensing on our wooden shelves.

"Oh shit... it's Monday and there are a shit-load of new releases to put out,"one man down b.t.w. because god forbid everyone working a shift actually stay the entire shift. So what we're left with is no floor manager, 3 normal employees and a guy that can't hear and doesn't usually help with new releases.

So we get out of there. I jump on my bike and start pedaling as fast I can. Through red lights, past buses and cars, I can't get far enough. All this stress. I haven't eaten a thing all day. I'm running on cigarettes, coffee and some form of back-up adrenaline.

I could have gone home early today.

But, at the same time I couldn't. I need the hours. I don't make enough money as it is. In-fact, I'm broke right now. I currently have about 20¢ in my bank account, a dollar in change and a five dollar BART ticket. I get mostly night shifts, which are shorter than day shifts (there aren't enough hours to go around.) I work Monday night, Tuesday night, maybe Wednesday night, Thurs-day and Satur-day. Because of school this will likely be my schedule all Fall/Winter, which means I'm probably gonna miss every Monday night dinner, every dudes bike ride on Wednesday night, and probably a lot of opportunities for practice with any band during the week (seeing as how there's usually a ton of shit going on Friday, Saturday night. )

The kick in the balls: I'm not making my trek to L.A. (which has been canceled twice already) this weekend to see the only person I desperately want to see (regardless of what my friends think.)

All this may sound incredibly, for lack of a better word, self-centered but, it's work that makes me this way.

-c