Odds & Ends – late pandemic edition

Originally the clever title of this post was vaccine edition but changed it later, I have no plans to get the vaccine unless the job requires it. I don’t remember the last time I had been vaccinated was it back in high school or grade school? Hmmm, perhaps it’s time get a physical to see what vaccinations are necessary other than for this bug.

My mother should be ahead in line for this vaccine as she’s elderly and probably needs it more than I do. I was in on a call with her doctor where it was discussed though she’s still debating it. My answer is that she should go ahead, but as for her and the rest of you if you have questions ask before you do the deed. Allow medical professionals to put any doubts out of your own head. Sadly the doubts are out there when everyone should just find out the facts for themselves with people they trust.

* Earlier this year I noted that Larry from my old dept at the Hole had finally posted back then though for a part time position. I chose not to pursue it because in contravention of my own advice with regards to this vaccine, I didn’t ask enough questions. For one thing my biggest concern was for my own full-time status would it get bumped down to part-time. And would it lead to me getting the position I had hoped to achieve even during the “reign of error”?

Well this new posting is full-time, however, here’s my hesitation. I feel as if it brings me back to square one. A lateral move when it’s more important in my mind to get roles that allow me more responsibility and especially higher wages.

I suppose here’s the big picture at least yours truly would be back at square one but in the paint to get back what your’s truly felt was lost just about four years ago. And if that meant I’d have to apply and interview that would be alright with me. At least this time around there is a fair opportunity and no issues with points in this case.

What is recognized is that team has changed so much since the calamity of 2017. Many of the people I had gotten to know since opening are gone. To be honest my fear before the main one was realized which is getting let go is that yours truly would be the only one left. Everyone else is gone for a variety of reasons and my thought had went there even back then.

If yours truly goes back I just know aside from some of the leadership there won’t be a person there who opened the store with me or had been there any length of time before my separation. Also add to this we have this pandemic going on and there was some attrition as a result as many were transferred outside of the dept as I have been. Also the store is located near a lot of the unrest of downtown.

* When I first wrote this post, there was another posting from the Hole which is a different dept and it’s definitely a receiver position. Basically my role is to maintain the backstock area and of course receive and store product accordingly. I’m working in that dept right now and occasionally entrusted with doing the receiving especially while our main receiver is out of action. If that position came up I’d take it, however, it means I start earlier than I had been. Though it means no more nights unless I make another change.

I talked with one of my supervisors about it told him about both the full-time in my old dept and the receiving position. He offered some good information and good pointers. If I don’t get a raise and normally transfers come with a bump in pay it’s just not worth it. A receiver position is guaranteed raise the other I just don’t know, but I had been thinking about reaching out to the mgrs I know at least in my old dept. Besides I expressed my interest in buy/receive to them then and Larry himself gave me a bit more info than the other had.

He let me know about the leadership in that other dept and says they have a solid team. And alerted me to the associate store mgr – the one who interviewed me over three years ago and it went down in flames. Not many good things according to my supervisor were said about him. And I consider that usually they rotate those positions around every couple or so years in his case he’s been in that role for over three years. Might be saying something who knows…

Either here’s my thought process, the receiver position is worth it. On the other hand if I can go back to my original dept and parlay that into going back into the buy/receive area. I’d like to find a way to talk myself into that. The scary part remains could I succeed in this gambit?

* I wrote about dwelling in the years since I first started this blog. I think it’s time to stop dwelling on one situation which was the Reign of Error. As far as I’m concerned it ended in reality the day of my return to Fresh Foods. There are ups and downs it’s going to happen no matter what, however, it was triumphant even if it wasn’t the story I really wanted to tell.

I think I still have some thoughts about that time. Thoughts that no matter how small needs to be address, however, at the end of the day yours truly had spent too much time on it and it’s time to move forward. The people I had been concerned over have moved onto to where they needed to be. And my goal is to worry about myself.

Perhaps the one thing that hasn’t escaped me is there is a chance I failed to play the game. It’s just me hoping for the best and often the opposite happened. The goals that I had weren’t realized and perhaps there is still a way to go on my end. However I realize sometimes you have to change with the times and I shall.

Another part of going back to square one is going back to where I started. Going back to the past, am I? Or is going back to where I started just a way for Jack V to say you can’t get rid of me that easy.

Perhaps there is another story of the end of the Reign of Error to tell yet. Time will tell.

Stay safe, and hopefully you’re ready to be vaccinated. 🙂

Another blog in the future?

I’ve been thinking about starting another blog. Perhaps when I’ve settled on it there will be a link posted here. Likely it will start publishing by the time of this blog’s 5th anniversary.

What is expected to be seen there is more topical posts. Things that are really incompatible for this blog and there are some posts here that aren’t very compatible. Hopefully there will be some tie-ins to my YouTube channel.

I’ll be happy to let you know once I set the place up. This blog isn’t going anywhere if you like seeing updates from my life as it unfolds.

July

I just wanted to update you all. I haven’t heard from the Hustler since February so basically it seems as if he’s finally gotten the hint. Of course often I’ve stated this or even said this might be the last time I say anything else about him only for him to call one more time. A very quiet end if I never hear from him again, but I really have no desire for a real conflict with the man.

I also stated that it’s not really news any longer that he’s attempted after some time to make contact. It’s been established that if he feels the need to dial my number he will. The only way he won’t is I gave him a reason not to, and often since February no answer isn’t really an answer, he tries again. Sometimes I recognize him as some others as a man who is determined not to be ignored.

I noted two months ago that I’ve decided that the subject of him is something I didn’t want to keep banging out and found some other subjects to discuss. Then noted there were some other posts in the pipeline I wanted to share. So this month I plan to share those posts and it rounds up a couple of stories that is time to put to rest.

Nothing much new beyond that however I hope to do my vacation this month. It’s another family reunion and it’s been a few years since Ive been to Georgia where I attended Mission College for my extended undergrad years. This would be very interesting and believe it or not I’m such a delight at these reunions and even more so now that I’m out of school and have my own cash.

(Can you sense the sarcasm? :P)

More to come this month…

How about the Fresh Prince now that we’re in the heat of summer

 

How many I have left?

For over a year at least I’ve been writing about my former friend & coworker from The Show Anthony the hustler. I feel as if I have a few more posts in me with regards to him but it’s tedious to have to continue to basically say the same thing about him. Basically he begs for money and he wants me on his planet so he can keep begging and the tendency to express a rather foul side of his personality often with anger and lashing out.

A few times I’ve written on this blog that I didn’t think I’d hear from him anymore only to run into him at his job or an intermittent phone call every now and again or even a random Facebook comment on my page. All the same it isn’t worth it barring some unusual event to even mention that he’s contacted me.

So I’m hoping that the last few anecdotes that I’ll tell will be it for him on this blog. He’s a character that I would like to place in my rear view mirror. As I had realized he had a reason for why he wanted to connect and as for yours truly it was for a season because I allowed some things to go on for far too long.

I’ve said that I’m enforcing my rules of no engagement and true to form he’s bullheaded enough to press forward. I’m showing no inclination to really respond and yet he picks his time and dials my number. It just shows that he’s the type once he’s set on something he will keep going until he really has no reason to.

Like I said he has a history of this. Perhaps for me his paternalistic behavior insists that I must answer to him for whatever he requires. Now, I just have stay off his planet and try to run my life as I see fit. As I see it now, his life isn’t where he expected it to be and although he has his own children he’s looking to run someone else’s.

He really should look himself in the mirror.

Psychology

I’ve been thinking about doing a series of “psychology” posts. I feel as if I’m waging an odd war of psychological warfare with someone who’s proven to be difficult to shake loose. Indeed some may consider that person a vampire. But then they would be the start and I have a number of posts with regards to their psychology.

This means I may have to rehash some odd episodes explored here. And yes it can include yours truly always. Don’t know if I will do any research, but then remember some past events just causes me to realize how it could’ve been handled differently. Also I have to realize the psychology of others involved mainly.

So this means I may revisit “Petty“, I may revisit “Missy“, I may revisit Anthony, and I could go on and on. It’ll be a while before I’m ready for the first post, for now time to get started on analyzing some unfortunate events of the past. Then I can start creating some solutions and I say some because well many of these situations aren’t ongoing so there’s that.

What prompts this well I’ve taken psychology in high school and at community college. Someone might say regardless of taking those courses I missed something somewhere. In school I spent very little time evaluating people or reading them. I like to think I’m better at it now, however, when situations go south (whether me or something external) I’m always caught off guard. Anyway that’s the motivation.

Streaks & likes – records

First I broke the previous streak at 9 though with this post the streak of consecutive posts will be extended to 10.

And the previous post about online dating breaks the record for all day likes on a post which is 13. Of course the post with the most likes of all time at 17 is also about Online Dating. The previous record was for likes to another records update.

That is all!

Streak

I had a nice streak going posted my last post yesterday although I took it down because I wanted to refine it some more. Perhaps in order to have quantity it’s not very important to share a post that really wasn’t ready.

Either way, I have at least 8 straight days of posts and that streak got broken recently. Don’t feel too bad besides it’s not often that I have posts almost daily here. Plus I don’t always have much material to share with you, especially fresh material meaning nothing repetitive.

At the same time I have some backlog of material I would like to share with you which explains the joke I shared a few days ago. So perhaps I have a few more posts in me for this month, however, at the moment I hit something of a rut.

If you have anything you’d like to see my write about, especially, if it’s the main topics of this blog feel free to let me know. I can come up with something, otherwise I can come up with more material or do a few re-blogs as I have been doing so far this month.

This place is open and as always I can use some feedback…

Update

Not a major update, however, I believe this to be necessary. As I noted recently that my old hustler Anthony who is an older martial artist former co-worker at “The Show” had called me again recently to leave a vague voicemail. He only said that he wanted me to call him back as he had a question for me.

Well I waited a few days to call him back. When committing I had just dialed his number saved to my phone. It rang a few times and then it just went to voicemail, then I hung up without leaving a msg. And surprisingly despite his seeming eagerness to get the communication going again he hasn’t yet called me back.

This has me wondering if this is it? No more calls? I think his past behavior says otherwise. If he feels as if your time is his time and/or he needs something he will give you a call. If he senses you want to pull back it’s in him to come up to you and look for an understanding.

I know that I’ve spent time whining over this during the past year. And as stated this is some uncharted territory for yours truly to sever a friendship that was never really beneficial. He’s benefited with small cash infusions which was something he had been looking for once we started working together at “The Show”. And while he’s given me job leads which never led to offers and unsolicited advice there’s very little benefit for me.

As far as what to do about him. Well it’s been suggested that I have absolutely no contact with him. Those who say so view him as toxic or even a sociopath. Another suggests that I call him when he tried to contact me most recently. And at that if he tries to start something just bail, end the call. Regardless I suppose the communication blackout remains I called and  he never answered.

Even better if he wanted to know why I blew him off this year he blew his first chance when he didn’t call me the night I saw him. And I blew my chance to explain some things to him when I essentially ignored his call for a few days. He also blew his chance again when he never called me back after my own “late” return call.

Then again, as much as I do want to “tell him off” I don’t know if it’ll have any results. Who knows if he’ll just revert back to the behavior I have always found problematic. And it also didn’t help that I allowed him to get away with it. And now that my birthday has passed and I’m in my new year perhaps now is the time to change the rules of engagement. Or more accurately establish rules of no engagement.

BTW, I’ll admit that the heat of the “Reign of error” once I got let go from my job at “The Hole” made it much easier to start cutting contact with “the hustler”. If he came looking for money there was no free cash to hand to him. So once he finally came around calling earlier this year it was easy to recognize that he was looking for something and just not respond. Not that I ever had to tell him, however, he needs not know that I was out of work. And knowing him I’d really hear it from him, especially losing a job that I really liked.

Beside he knew that I liked the job and what does he start doing? “You’ll like this company better”, or “come over here you’d make more money“. I’ll bet he’d start working on me to come somewhere he’d want me to be. For now we probably will never know.

Colleague…

The team I work on is very different from the one I worked with at “The Hole”. Every branch of a company has some minor differences of course and it’s usually thanks to the quirks of construction and design. Regardless by the time I got let from from “Fresh Foods” last year my former store was starting to go downhill as far as morale.

As with most Fortune 500 companies “Fresh” has gone through it’s own changes. Costs are cut here, there are layoffs, changes from corporate, perhaps even rumors of a buyout these could weigh you down. One could even be concerned about their own jobs if the changes could whittle down to the small fish other than mgmt.

I had an interview to return to “The Hole” and it was destined now to work out. When I wrote about that interview which was with a store mgr not Larry who had took over my old dept. It’s safe to say we didn’t click and that happens, what can I do about it. This is what I told another coworker who was around and let go when Rog became our dept. mgr. More on that later…

I told you a basic story about how I got hired at my current job. I often like to say I had people looking out for me and thanks to my own history with “Fresh” my current boss reached out to two key people from my old dept. First he knew the boss who first hired me at the company back in 2015 and he reached out to Larry. It’s not a huge secret that I had some issues with tardies however I got the e-mail, responded, and then got an interview. Also in short order interviewed with my new boss and ultimately his boss. Either way there was something there that had been worth their time!

As for that coworker, remember another post where another colleague Bill had the tendency to note the bull$h!t? Well this coworker we’ll call Sally got caught up in it and she noted the picking that our bosses had been doing. Hell unexpectedly one of the supervisors where checking out her movements such as her breaks, or trips to the bathroom. Another colleague noted that there was some weird investigation where he outright noted someone didn’t like Sally – don’t know why – and it helped ease her out!

I told Sally what happened with yours truly and it was the tardies, however, I made sure to note the one who I believe was doing the “picking” got himself “picked up on out of there“. Told her the basic story about Rog that he had been demoted and sent to another store and then finally no longer with the company. She could attempt to get her job and would have to go through Larry. Updated her on the assistant mgrs and supervisors who are still there.

Who knows if Sally will ever return to the company, it seems she’s not hurting now. She was quickly able to find a job at a local university working in the cafeteria. Almost similar to what she did at “The Hole”, but of course with some minor differences. She was quickly back to work and I had to wait my 6 mos before I could return to “Fresh”. Either way let’s just say our experiences didn’t hold either of us back for any extended period of time.

July

Happy 4th!

Well I’m sure as the month goes on I’ll have more to report as far as the modern day.

I plan to share another story from my senior year of high school. It’s somewhat embarrassing and is a lesson when it comes to an overbearing parent. And I could relate it to the fact that during my junior year of high school my dad finally succumbed to the complications of his alcoholism.

Also I want to give another update on an old friend Anthony. It has been a few months since he tried to get in touch with me. He wished me a happy birthday on my FB page and then made an errant comment which I deleted upon seeing a hotly anticipated film release. It irritated me because he wanted to open up a can of worms that when you think about it really bother him more than it does me. That’s his thing however he feels as if he has to punch through barriers that shouldn’t concern him! So far I haven’t heard much from him again after his odd attempts to get into contact.

“Mission College“

Even though I got a reboot with “Fresh Foods” I’m going to get a little trip in this summer. The last time I had been to my parent’s southern hometown was not long after graduating from “Mission College”. Though I’m sorry you won’t see many of them I anticipate taking lots of iPhone videos and photographs. When I have children I can show them their roots and if I’m lucky perhaps I can own some land down there.

Since I was let go from “Fresh” I don’t have as much vacation time accrued. So it’ll be like requesting off from “The Show” I get those days off, but I won’t get paid. It sucks but that’s the situation I’m in, just concerned that I won’t have that paid time off banked to be able to really use it!

All the same as we’re already in roughly the half-way point of summertime some interesting things are going on currently and more to come! How about some Will Smith aka The Fresh Prince.