Ah, work drama. Where would I be without you? Sane and less cranky, of course, but then I'd never have anything to bitch about and then I'd be more cranky.

So, customer drops off a trimmer. ("It won't start, it should be under warranty, blah, blah, blah.") Dad's the one who wrote it up, so really, I have no idea if the customer asked to be called if it wasn't under warranty. Mechanic tears into engine to discover foulest case of carbon build-up seen in a weed whacker. (It's a more common and even more annoying problem with this brand's big blowers, because basically you just buy a new blower once this happens.) He's then stuck tearing it down to basic components and soaking it overnight to clear the junk up. Then once that's solved, it turns out the cause of this was ancient gas run through the machine, gunking up the carburetion. So there's a part to be replaced. I look up the registration, find it's been registered to a business and thus has a one year warranty, not two. Shrug it off, since either way, it wouldn't be a warrantied repair.

So the customer comes in for unit. Proceeds to bitch me out for his $200 repair bill. Okay, try to keep customer happy. The icky overnight valve job is written off, please pay me $100 for the carburetor replacement. Customer proceeds to bitch that it's a two year warranty, why does he have to pay anything? I point out that 99 times out of 100, the carburetor is toast because they've used bad/old/stale/vegetable gas in the machine.

(Hello, does nobody pay attention to things like oxygen and ethanol? They do shitty things to cars, never mind even less-forgiving teeny two-stroke engines. Oxygenized fuel may burn cleaner, but it sure has hell has no shelf life. And the heat range on ethanol means the piston is practically at melting point while running. (I actually had someone at the city replace a cylinder and piston on a big cut-off saw (which costs something terrible) and not three months later, his piston was funny shapes. And it's not like the guy who did the job hadn't done it a billion times before, which means the workers put something weird in it.))

Customer repeats why does he have to pay for carburetor. ("Blah, blah, blah, I was told two year warranty.") I point out his warranty covers manufacturer defects. Stale gas is not a manfacturer defect. (I do not say that it's because the operator is defective, but it was a near thing, because I had a full house and he was seriously getting on my nerves and paying his bill and taking his happy ass home where he would never have to come back and see us again.) Also, by the way, even if it was covered under warranty, it was registered to a business, which is a one-year warranty.

Customer proceeds to get pissier. ("Blah, blah, blah, I'm a window-washer" or some shit like that. As if it's my fault for not remembering that when I registered the damn thing.) Mutters under breath about spending $6000 here, and why wasn't I bending over backwards so he could completely fuck both the boss and the mechanic over. (Like the manufacturer was going to reimburse me for that goopy carb, which was 98% not their fault. (The other 2% is them using those carburetors, but I suppose that's CARB and EPA's fault, because those assholes pick more on the two-stroke community than the car community. Like it's chainsaws that are the primary reasons for the destruction of the ozone layer.))

Anyways, the mechanic has already lost half of his charged labor for this job, I'm not taking any more off. I wouldn't even do it for my regulars, and you, good sir, I haven't seen since I sold you this trimmer. Which, btw, wasn't even $400. I can only assume that not only are you an asshole, you are an asshole who can't count how many zeroes he's spent in one place.

Finally get his credit card (debate charging him the first total of his bill, because there ought to be a 'putting up with assholes' surcharge), ring him up, point out the door, and turn next customer in line. (Who thankfully works in a small-business industry and has his own story to share. Unfortunately, the three guys behind him in line would also like to be helped, so had to cut that conversation short.)

I want ice cream.

Roscoe got stuck in my box of Cheerios. Or else he just really didn't want to leave the box when I tried pulling his head, paws, and shoulders out of it. I'm just glad the box was mostly empty, as I really didn't feel like figuring out if he managed to reach the Cheerios and got cat cooties all over. So instead, I just dumped what remained in the box into their food dish and threw empty box away. Came back ten minutes later for toast and found him chowing down on cheerios, making sure not to eat the cat food. Was rather amused.

Has been month of hell at work. We could do with another two mechanics and another front person if things keep going like this. We've had eleven Hustlers delivered in the span of about four working days. Those suckers take two hours to get off the truck, uncrate, assemble, and test drive, all told. (Hustlers, btw, are like, the Mustangs of riding lawn mowers. They are so cool. Even if they are named after a magazine you buy in a brown paper bag. Well, no, they're not, they're named after the verb, because they're fast for a mower, but people still look at you funny when you say you sold three Hustlers today and please stop bothering you because the paperwork gave you a migraine.)

We've only had ten working days and have already made twice our monthly minimum in sales. Can I take the rest of the month off?

Also, apparently it is Sears season for lawn mowers. We're getting three people a day (up from our three people a week last month) asking us to look at their piece of garbage because they hit a stump/have let it sit since September and fouled the carburetor because they're fucking morons who can't drain their gas/need a tune up and maybe those cable things too/need parts. Take it back to Sears, you cheap bastards. I don't care if you already went and they told you it'll take a week to ten days to deliver your fucking part and you need the part *now*. Did you not see the sign on the door that says No Craftsman Allowed Because We Don't Get Their Parts Because We Sell Quality Items Not Stuff Made in Taiwan? (Okay, it just says we don't service Craftsman, maybe I should make a big No Smoking sign and put a little Sears logo there instead of the cigarette? Would that make them less likely to come in and whine? Probably not.) We sell stuff like Snapper, who has a CEO with the balls to say 'thanks, but no thanks' when Wal-Mart made an offer to sell their stuff. (But only if they halved their prices, kthnxbai.)

I had fun organizing the paperwork in the office though.

Well, no they don't, because I babble when nervous, except when I go completely silent, which is hard to tell 'cause I'm usually quiet. Er, anyways, babbling confusedly now.

I've been working both stores all month after the manager at the other store quit. Mornings are spent with Dad frantically trying to catch up with what got pushed behind while I was at Bud's store after lunch the previous day. (Bud has now enlightened me to the fact that, should he not have hired a manager for his store by July (the height of the busy season), I get to open his store while he and his brother go to someone's 50th high school reunion. If he hasn't hired another person by then, I'm speaking my mind and telling him where he can shove it, because he hired me to work the office for Dad's store, damn it, not run parts and the counter at his residential-oriented p.o.s.)

Anyway. Four mechanics now, two at each store. Dad's got James (lazy and a slob) and Rob (manic and short-fused, but a hard worker), Bud's got Bill (angry and a slow worker) and the recently hired Tom, who apparently worked for Bud before he moved further south to live with his girlfriend (with whom there was a bad parting three or four months ago). Tom's 42 and just asked me what I was doing tonight. This is probably my fault, as I'm desperate for conversation with anybody who isn't Bud or Bill (because Bill gets mad at people easily and I'm passive-aggressive and cry when yelled at and Bud's, well, Bud) and thus have been chatting with Tom. I told him I spent Fridays with the folks (because they have cable and yay, I heart the new Dr. Who, even if all the old school Who-ers don't like it because it's not cheesy enough for them.) I told him the twenty year age gap is a serious put off (which was brought up by mentioning his ex had a daughter- not his- that was 18, and I'm pretty sure he's got a son near my age running around somewhere, so um, gross. Not to mention I like the runner and/or swimmer build, not the 'bigger than my mother' build.)

So, I'm just going to sit here and panic and whine to Dad after work, because that's safer than saying "yes Bud, I think he was trying to get me on a date" instead of "no Bud, we were talking about his ex's kid who talked her mom into buying her a $20,000 car that neither kid nor mother have the money for." Not that Dad will be much better. He's got that "my baby girl" excuse to use. So yeah. Panicked and weirded out beyond words.

We have an engine in from a carpet-cleaning company. The van it was taken out of has been sitting behind our gate since Thursday. The parts were supposed to be overnighted for it- because that's thousands of dollars worth of work they can't do while the engine is being repaired. Half the order got back-ordered. i.e., the guys we buy the stuff from lied when they said they had everything. So they drop-shipped from the factory when we called the assholes on it, and our mechanic has spent most of today fixing the engine. The real bitch isn't fixing the engine, it's taking it out and putting it back into the machine it goes in. (The reason why the van has stayed here while waiting for parts. Waste of time to take it and drop it back off when the parts finally do come in.) That's three hours a piece. Want to know how the mechanic described the job?

( Naughty language warning )

Some funny stories from yesterday.

First up, my sister, Laura. She went to the base hospital to see if they had copies on file of her recent physical. The conversation went something like this:

"Would you keep copies of sports physicals? I lost mine."
"What's your name?"
"Laura Strawser-Booth."
"And your last four?"
"Uh... Ooth."

I worked records for the hospital for three summers. I know exactly what the receptionist wanted. The last four numbers of her sponsor's social security number, or hers if she doesn't know her sponsor's. Not the last four letters of her surname. Ditz.


Second up.
I'm reading the archives of a new comic I found. Liz gets home, comes in to see what I'm doing. Strikes up conversation whilst I'm still reading. I get to this comic.

"Hey, they sound an awful lot like J.C. and St- Oh my god. James Jones and Stephen Schrader."

Two words for you: Lex Luthor.

The mind boggles.

Thirdly, something from work and only a little funny.
Phone rings, I answer it.
"I'm looking for some lawnmower parts."
"Who makes the lawnmower?"
"Sears."
"We don't sell their parts."
"Do you know who does?"
"Sears, I'd imagine."
"They don't."
"Then nobody else does either."
And then he hung up on me.

Seems obvious to me that if Sears is our competitor, we wouldn't sell parts for their machines, don't you think? These old people, they think they can buy a Gremlin and our Mustang parts will fit on them. You got your money's worth, dude.

(Liz wants to know what quixotic means. I forget. But it's the mood I'm in. (Actually, I said, "I don't know, but I feel it." I think I need to cut back on the iced caffeine.) Quick, minion, go look quixotic up. (Liz calls me terrible because I know she'll look it up, too. She's just jealous I've got a minion and she's still looking for her eye-candy kitchen boy.))

The straw, she breaks the camel's back.

I have a shitty job. I love its mindlessness, don't get me wrong, but it's not air conditioned (a fact most would hate more than me, but I put my limit at continuously 90 degree weather indoors with no breeze), it's dirty (and don't think I don't know that you don't give a single thought to the person who's got to clean up after you when *you* stay in a hotel), it's thankless (we're overworked and underpaid and under-fucking-appreciated), it's tiring- and I do mean physically exhausting (before taking this job I could stay up until midnight, wake up at five, and be perfectly awake. Now I'm lucky if I manage to make it to ten and crawl out of bed barely coherent at six. I've driven home and started to doze off at red lights- and let me tell you, am I glad that my route home has many parking lots to make pit stops. Putting in multiple ten hours days within a week will do that to a person.), and I'll be damned if I roll over and play dead like I usually do.

I'm passive-aggressive, yes, and I'll handle a great deal more shit than most would solely due to this fact. But I'm not about to explain to my friends that, even though I'm the one who persuaded them all to go, I won't be able to attend DragonCon because the new girl who's been here ONE FUCKING MONTH has requested that ENTIRE FUCKING WEEK OFF. Funny, I didn't see the notice on the board with her so-called request. Funny how you made me put up notes for certain days I needed off, when I asked about it. Odd how you told me that if I wanted vacation days, I'd have to wait until my year was up to actually make the request. If she made her request a month before I did, it wasn't in writing and if it's not in writing, it's not binding.

Not to mention you get vacation time after a year, not a month. I don't fucking care if your mom has been there longer than me. She can have the week off- not you. Do the time, get the time. So what if your brother's graduating boot camp? Just because it's a fucking long drive to Ohio and back does not mean you are entitled to more than your usual two days off. Jeez, if I'd known I could've asked for a week off last year for DragonCon, I would've skipped town and bugger the fact that laundry'll be short for a few days.

I haven't seen some of these friends in *months* and that was only a couple of fucking days, and it will again be only for a couple of days. They're more important to me than this shitty job- or any job, for that matter.

Here's my notice, assholes. Go hire someone else to shit on. It's not like your employee turnover rate isn't ridiculously high anyway.

And if you should actually be so dimwitted as to offer me my vacation days back, fuck you. That's not only unfair to me, you're rescinding on your promise to her. And you're not changing my mind.

Laura mentioned that I don’t say much about my daily life. To which I prove otherwise! Or just tell you the silly things that happened.

Like, for instance, today, when the housekeepers were loading their carts this morning, Luisa gave a sudden shriek and cried out in Spanish-accented English "Roach! Roach! Roach!" (Cucharacha is harder to say.) I poke my head around the corner to see her dropping a laundry bag and skittering away from it. The housekeeper next to her- Sherry, (who I found out last week lives just down the street from me, but anyways)- picks up the bag, opens it, gives a startled cry, and drops the bag. There is a cockroach *in* the bag.

Andy (the girl in charge of housekeeping while the boss is away, and you may remember her from previous posts) summarily stomps on the bag until she feels something hard. “I squished it,” she announces to the fluttering housekeepers. (Because, y’know, there were eight or so females in the room all going “ick!” over the roach, or else just watching the scene with great amusement. Or bewilderment, in the case of the non-English speaking twit recently hired.) I don’t really believe this (cockroaches don’t squish easily when hidden under soft things) and pick up the bag by its bottom (thus allowing for any squished or unsquished roaches to fall out of the opening).

Sumiko- head laundry personnel from Japan- arrives back downstairs to the cockroach-infested laundry room around this point. She skirts the entire scene to keep working. Wise woman, her. Luisa starts shrieking again, and Sherry says "It’s crawling up the bag!" The cockroach is crawling up the bag, on the outside, towards my hand. Brave girl that I am, I instantly drop said bag and cockroach goes skittering away under Sherry’s cart. Sumiko can be seen moving one of the laundry tubs. Likely hiding the cockroach's escape, as the cockroach was never seen again.

I mentioned as Sherry was moving her cart to look for the roach that maybe we should have called Maintenance, have them take care of the roach for us. (Or even funnier, if only Shane was still working in Laundry and we could make him deal with the roach!) After some serious groaning on the part of the younger employees, we decided that we needed no man to solve our bug problems.

They’d just scream the bugs away. The girls, that is.

( Yet another anecdote of the day. With an even funnier side story. )