Have you seen these?
A Year in Books - 2009-12-27
Skip Tracer, Loan Detective - 2009-11-22
New Job - 2009-11-03
The coleslaw got served. - 2009-10-21
Probably a new job. But maybe not. - 2009-10-08

"I don't see what the big deal is. Guthrie almost had a baby once..."
2006-05-24 3:22 p.m.

LARP was last weekend. Ellen was asked by another character to stop crocheting, at least while they were talking, because it really "creeped him out." That was the effect I was going for, so hooray.

I hadn't even brought out the far too many legs yet. One of KC's characters was all, "Ooh, do you have other pieces hidden in your bag there, can I see them too" but I cleverly stopped her. All anyone's seen In-Game so far is Ellen finishing one leg, and starting another one. I am a master of sneakiness.

Ellen had an ultrasound, and as far as the (bloodbound and Dominated so he didn't notice that the mother didn't have a pulse) doctor could tell, it's a totally normal, healthy-looking baby boy. This was good for Ellen, because the other vampires were convinced not to kill the baby right that minute, but kind of sucked OOC. What the hell am I going to do with all these extra legs now?

Someone, possibly KC, suggested that instead of a jumper, Ellen is actually making a stuffed toy of some kind. There was also (OOC, of course) discussion of Ellen asking the Tzimice to Fleshcraft a few extra legs for Junior. So very Toreador. "But I MADE this! THIS is my artistic vision!"

(I just realized, I'm speaking Dork pretty fluently up there. A few quick asides, for my parents and other non-gamers: Bloodbound mortals have had enough sips of vampiric blood to go along with whatever halfway reasonable things their vampire friends tell them. Dominate is a power, and does much the same thing. OOC is short for Out Of Character. Tzimice is a vampire clan; their big party trick is the Fleshcraft power, which does just about what it sounds like. Toreador is Ellen's clan; they are almost all some sort of artists.)

(The title for this entry was Ellen's quote of the night. It only took a few seconds for people to come up with the obvious responses, that was in a parallel reality, there was all sorts of crazy paradox magic flying around, Guthrie was sane enough to take the steps to STOP having a baby ASAP, etc. But even if it was just briefly, Ellen rendered a few people completely speechless with that line. I'm usually not that quick with the repartee, so it was a good feeling.)
***
And in the real world...

Work continues. I had a few completely bonehead closes in a row, where I missed a lot of big, obvious, dangerous things. I'm in the middle of a month of almost nothing but closes now. HBL was all, "Well, I expect more from my salaried staff..." so this is my punishment and my valuable learning opportunity.

I had a few compliments on my closes, but now I'm forgetting some of the small stuff again. It's frustrating. I KNOW I'm paying more attention than I used to. The list of things I caught and made associates fix before they left is much longer than the list of stuff I didn't think to check. (She was cleaning the top half of the hotbox! Without even being asked, she took out all the top shelves and washed them! I SAW her do it! WHY didn't she clean out the bottom too, and see that pan of sauce that should have been chilled and saved? Argh.) But it's only the stuff that didn't get done that will be noticed.

I am slated to become salaried July 1st. I'm not even sure anymore how much my occasional lapses into Bad Closing Manager will affect that. It's very stressful.

Also at work, I HATE schedules now, even more than ever. The second week of June, Riker will be taking over again, just long enough to train K, her projected 2nd in command. Learning schedules is even more time-consuming than doing them, so Riker asked me to be two weeks ahead of normal when they start. "Normal" is of course 1-1.5 weeks ahead of real time. I just finished the June 8-14 week. I think this means I'm right where I'm supposed to be, and now all I have to do is maintain this lead until this schedule actually happens, and K is the one with time set aside for schedule hell instead of me.

I was relieved last night to discover I CAN'T do any more schedules right now. I did the sales projections for June 15, and could do no more. HBL needs to do some manager schedules, so I can enter them, and then I can start the long, painful process of figuring out everyone else. I hope she does it soon. I really don't want to lose my lead, and then be forced to build it back up again.

I may have mentioned this before, but schedules SUCK. There's just too damn many associates. They all want hours, and I just don't have enough to go around. The worst part is, yesterday, I was part of the decision to hire three MORE people. As I was interviewing them, I kept thinking, "Well, shit. This guy would probably be REALLY good. I'd be a fool to not hire him."

All I can do is hope that 5-6 of the current associates quit. I even have a list of the ones who I wouldn't be upset to see go. There is also a list of people who I really do like, but they suck up too many hours. Delicious hours, that could easily satisfy 3-4 other people. ("Hmm. If Blah, Blah, and Blah left, it would suck of course, but wow would a lot of people stop bugging me for hours...")

At least two, possibly as many as six people are leaving at the end of summer. I understand that hiring replacements when they leave is crazy-talk. You want to have people trained and ready to take the hours immediately. But what that means for right now is that NO ONE gets as many hours as they want.
***
I've been writing for a really long time. I think I'm all ranted out now.

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