There are times when I honestly find myself speechless in the face of the sheer rudeness of people. Now, keep in mind, I am rarely speechless, so this is quite a powerful statement. But it is true.

Today I boarded an already crowded bus, and managed to find a seat next to a woman who was reading the newspaper. She apologized several times for the newspaper crossing over into my personal space. Dude, its a newspaper. No worries. Actually, I found myself enjoying reading the pages that did come my way as I had forgotten my book.

Anyway, a few stops later, the newspaper lady got off the bus, and a passanger who had been standing in the aisle took her place. The woman was, like me, not petite, so we were crowded in the two seats-astride seating configuration. This is par for the course on public transportation. What bothered me, however, was that, realizing that she was unable to hold her massive iced coffee, talk on her cell phone, and read her National Equierer at the same time, she leaned over at an obscene angle to facilitate cradling her phone between her ear and her shoulder (and I think I am rather qualified at this point to say that hair hygiene seems not to be a priority for this woman) and was all up in my grill. The paper was all over my lap, and she ended up trying to wedge the iced coffee between her leg and mine. When I suggested that she might like to place the coffee elsewhere as it was rather cold (not to mention DISGUSTING) on me leg, she shot me a filthy look and just got up. Big martyr.

I was just pretty much astounded that this moron would find it acceptable to place her iced coffee cup next to my leg.

Anyway...onto the gym.

It is so typical at my gym for women to walk in 15 or 20 minutes late to an hour-long class and just expect those folks who bothered to show up on time to move all their equipment around. Today, in my double step class, one woman showed up 15 minutes late, caused such an interruption as to cause the instructor to lose focus therefore throw off the entire class. She proceed to set up her equipment at the front of the class, even while she left her purse on the floor in the back of the room. Five minutes later, when some other bitch showed up for class, she caused a huge investigation into whose purse was on the last available inch of space in which she planned to set up her equipment.

Normally, the instructor gets us through six coreography combos in this class, but today she was barely able to get us through five combos.

The thing is that the teachers should throw these jerks out, and I know they'd like to, but they worry about having the members complain.

There are a plethora of other examples of rude and inconsiderate behavior that I could illustrate in detail here, but is it really necessary? I know you all see it on a daily basis.

I know I'm not perfect, but at least I try. I know I don't always do the right thing, but at least when I put other people out I apologize.

at last.....

Hi guys,

I finally have my computer back, and I finally have my wedding pictures, but now I can't seem to upload photos to blogger at this point! What's up with that?

Anyway, most of the regular readers of this blog have received an email with a link to my wedding photo album. Juanita and Laurita, if you're reading and you'd like to see a few pictures, shoot me an email so that I can send you the link.

Nants

Very Taxing Tax-Free Weekend

It was tax-free weekend in Massachusetts. Any single item with a price tag of less than 2,500 dollars could be purchased without tax.

The Apple Store closed down Friday at 9:30 PM, and then re-opened at midnight and stayed open until midnight on Saturday. All employees were required to put in a 12 hour shift sometime during that 24 hour period. We were all also required to put in 10 hour shift on Sunday.

On Saturday, I worked 11-11 and today, Sunday, I worked from 12 (noon)- 10 PM.

I have to tell you that I am exhuasted. My feet are killing me. My eyes are glazed over. I am dreaming about computers, student rebates, tax-free register overrides, and rebated printers.

It is amazing what people will do to save 5%. There were swarms of people all day and night in the store. The managers, however, had a few great procedures in place to eliminate chaos. For the most part, it worked out great.

I sailed through my Saturday 12 hour shift without incident. Today's 10 hour shift was pretty easy, too, until around 8PM. All of a sudden, I just "hit the wall." I heard myself talking to customers about RAM, hard drives, applications, etc., but it was like listening to somebody else talking. I felt like I was outside of my body. For real. My voice almost seemed to be taking on an echo-like quality. I couldn't believe that I was spouting all of these numbers, prices, and technical specs without even batting an eyelash, or referring to the spec sheets. I must have learned through osmosis and not even realized that it was happening.

Anyway, all I'm saying is that I became so completely exhausted that I was beginning to practically slur my words and completely overlooking the most obvious of crap in my transactions.

I even had a dream last night about the Mac Book Pro.

I feel like I did nothing but work at Apple this weekend. Honestly.

But, on the bright side, all of us were given the new iLife 08 suite (retail value of 80 dollars) and the new iWork 08 suite (retail value of 100 dollars) for FREE!!!

Yeah!

Exhausting

I've worked quite a few retail jobs over the years. Most of them have been in branches of large corporate outfits. This summer's job, like all the others I've worked, has this corporate culture that seems to ooze its way into the pores of all who work there.

The thing I've noticed about many of my co-workers at "The Fruit Stand" is the extreme use of the cheerleader/valley girl cadence. They add several extra syllables to each and every word, and they tend to inflect every second sentence to pitch out like a question, even if it isn't a question at all. Strange.

The saddest part of all this is that I work with mostly men. I mean, at any given time, I might be one of 20 employees on the floor. And more frequently than not, I'm the only girl working in the dump.

Tonight, I was taking the T home with this guy from work. He has an extreme case of valley-girl-itis. He even goes so far as to crane his neck into impossible positions when he is articulating some (in his opinion) meaningful thought. At the end of our conversation, I was completely exhausted just listening to him.

How the hell can he NOT be exhausted exerting that much effort just to speak?

I'm baffled.