As Mabel and I would say, "I'm becoming even more of a gwumpy wittle bayer day by day!" It seems like I am encountering more and more things that frustrate me, and they are totally starting to take their toll. Let's start with today and back track, shall we? #1: Yahoo directions suck! I used them to try to find the location of a workshop I had to attend and totally got sent in the wrong directions, which made me 15 or 20 minutes late. Fortunately they were still doing introductions, so it was all good. Being late just always frustrates me. #2: Why did it take me 45 F#%$in' minutes to find parking near the Tang Center? I wasted a 1/4 of a tank of gas circling around that area, which I might add has a few too many one way streets. Incorporating Kat's Law again, every time I would make the block, I would see someone pulling out of a spot in my rearview mirror! GRRRRRRRRRR! #3: I went to Grocery Outlet to pick up some gift certificates to purchase food for office meetings and such, and was totally blown away by a few things. First off, I couldn't believe the low prices! Did that sound like a corny commercial line, or what? Anywho, things are really cheap there and I recommend going for that at least, but what I am about to say in a minute or two will probably change your mind. As I was waiting for the manager to finish filling out all of the certificates, I heard her yelling at an employee. He was a bagger, and was also mentally disabled. What happened was the checker asked him to get a price check on a mop, so he went down the aisle to find it, but the tag wasn't there. So, he went to the manager's office to see if someone could tell him. At around the same time, an armored truck guy came by to pick up money and was counting it out in the back. Well, apparently that was a big disturbance, which I don't doubt it was, but I don't feel that the bagger deserved the blitzing he got. I mean she was just totally trying to embarrass the guy in front of everybody. The bagger was really apologetic about making the disruption, but the manager didn't care. I mean the guy was nearly in tears for goodness sake! As he walked off, I heard the manager tell another clerk, "damn retards!" How f%$#ed up is that? If that wasn't enough, another mentally disabled employee got blitzed by another manager for not wearing his apron, shirt, and name tag. He tried to explain to them that someone stole it, but who gives a damn about what a "retard" has to say anyway, right? The way "normal" people treat the mentally and physically disabled is ridiculous! I often wonder who has more of the disability: the clerks trying to do their job, or the dumb ass managers? Some people are just so insensitive and have no clue on how to treat others as they would wanna be treated. If this store treats their employees this crappy, how am I as the customer going to be treated?
There are some pretty good/funny things I have encountered this past week: 1# : At rehearsal, some how we got on the discussion of food stamps and welfare ATM cards. I got now shame in my game and I will admit that we use to be recipients of food stamps when I was a kid. Heck, everybody on my block did, so we didn't feel embarrassed about it. We were joking about the different generic stores that used to be in East Oakland, like Pak 'n' Save at Eastmont Swapmeet, I mean Mall. ABC market, Embees, Alpha Beta, etc. It's funny how we can laugh and joke about that now, but that crap was not funny when you were going through it. My brother always talks about how he and his friends would avoid getting stuff near the 1st and 15th of each month cuz you didn't want anyone to know or think that your family was getting welfare checks. Getting busted out by your friends on that was not cool! Back on the subject of Eastmont, that is the most ghetto place in Oakland. I swear I cannot stay in that place for more than 20 minutes! It has a damn WIC store near the library! Powdered milk and all! Off da hook! It's hard to imagine that Mervyn's and JC Penney's used to be there. What happened? #2: Taewoo has been having me dying laughing with his e-mails. They help brighten my day and help me pass the time when things get slow. I swear there should be a Taewoo Comedy Hour on HBO or somethin'. Homie's got jokes!