When Life gives you Rotten Lemons, an Idea is Born

December 30/09 @ My Job

So I go to school but while I'm schooling, I am also working, but of course this job is just temporary, as I am going to school to you know... get a Real Job that means something to me.

I have been working this job (in retail) for the past year and a half and have since decided that when I get a rude customer, I stop smiling and pretend that they are no longer there while I complete a transaction or help them into a fitting room.

Last night I was working a register and the customer approached, the transaction began friendly as all transactions do.

She then kindly asked for me to wrap the socks she purchased w/ some of the tissue we had so I did w/ the first rectangle of tissue on my table. When I put it in the bag, she then grabbed and said "I didn't want this tissue, I wanted the blue. Just give it to me, I'll wrap it myself." So I took the tissue and handed it to her.

I then told her the total and she gave me a 50 and told me she was going to try to get rid of some change so handed me four cents. However, when the change due to the customer came up I ended up just giving her the four cents back because the change due was some-odd dollars and 49 cents. She then locked me w/ a stare of what I would say was an 'are you stupid?' stare. She then asked me to re-open the cash drawer and give her a quarter back because she wanted to get rid of her change because she wasn't done giving me change that she wanted to get rid of it. I then proceeded to tell her I couldn't re-open the drawer because I didn't have the authorization.

I then gave her the receipt and gift receipt she asked for but then she told me she had wanted them stapled and that she had asked me that even though I never heard her say that. She then looked to one of my managers at the next till and asked "She's got authorization to open the register, I want my change." My manager then told her that we don't make change, take money nor give money to customers because it is the policy. The customer then told me that there was so much attitude and continued to say so. I called for the next customer in line and begun to ignore her existence.

The customer then told me she had another item to purchase. "I still have suitcase to buy, but don't think that I'm going to lift it up for you. Just give me the scanner so I can do it myself." I then told her that I had to bring it around to my side of the register to remove the sensor tag and she continued to complain about the "attitude" and why she couldn't just scan the price herself. When I picked up the suitcase she immediately yelled at me "Don't even think about damaging this suitcase, I know you're aggitated, so don't even think about it." I got the suitcase to my side of the till continuely getting more and more upset with this woman's attitude. I scanned the price and took off the sensor tag then brought her bag back to her. She continued to complain about the attitude and I got back onto my side of the register.

I then told her the total and she handed me her Visa card. I swiped her card and waited for the receipt to print. However, when it printed it did so twice and didn't rip off straight. She then got upset over this and said she wanted my scissors because she refused to leave the store with her receipt looking like that. I gave her the scissors and she signed her name but she snatched her card from me before I could check the signatures so I told her she needed to let me check her signatures and she chucked her card back at me.

Continuously talking about the attitude and complaining about the service was really getting to me since I had originally done nothing wrong. After her not backing off I tried not to cry but started failing, and she knew I was getting more upset, so she told me "There's no need to be crying." My manager then told me to close my till and when I put up my sign the next customer was pissed that I was closing up and that's when I could no longer hold my tears and began crying.

My manager then told the customer that she cannot talk to me that way and that she could no longer shop at our store.

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When I left work the customer who was pissed that I was closing up was waiting for me outside, and still crying, she asked what exactly had happened then hugged me and told me it was not my fault but that the customer I was serving probably has some issues and was taking it out on me just because I was there.

Everyone told me that this customer was probably on something dealing w/ problems and taking these things out on me for no reason.

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So the idea:

On a card or a few cards put together, have pictures, words, things that make you happy and carry these things around w/ you. Then when you're out and about if you ever see someone whether it be an employee or just someone you see who is clearly feeling down or getting upset because someone is demeaning them, making them feel worthless, putting them down in any way you give them that card(s) and hope that it makes them feel better, even if it's in the slightest way imaginable.

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Let's Have At Her: Warning this is a Rant!

Omg Internet!

I am on the verge of having a complete and utter meltdown at this point in time. So to relieve some of the stress that I have been enduring I must imprint this anger onto this blog page.

Firstly and fairly it is clearly me who has let this stress leech onto me, I know.

Since I did not allow myself a decent amount of study time for each of my courses (one day is NOT enough), I have been under a severe amount of stress and used ridiculously unorganized study habits.

Because of this absolutely idiotic pattern that I continue to use again and again, I have most definitely failed an entire flab-dabbin (I am going to not swear but instead use substitutes to keep my anger levels as low as possible) course and 4 months of my life which ultimately would have helped me save future time since this course (Anatomy Biology) will be useful to the field I wish to pursue.

Secondly, this is what I think of exams, holidays, and scheduling:
WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU HAVE EXAMS JUST DAYS BEFORE A GIGUNDO HOLIDAY CELEBRATED A MASS AMOUNT OF PEOPLE IN YOUR COUNTRY AND PLACE THE DATE OF THE EXAM ON A FLIP-FLAPPIN' WEEKEND AT 8:30 IN THE FRACK-TACKIN' MORNING WHEN THERE ARE SOME GOD FORSAKEN PEOPLE WHO LIVE AN HOUR AWAY FROM YOUR GOSH DARNED INSTITUTION?!?!?!?!?

But enough of the ALL caps.

This is how my week went:

Monday
-6:30 drive brother to work
-7:50 get edible items from grocery store
-10:00 start work
-18:00 get off work
-21:30 go to bed

Tuesday
-6:30 drive brother to work
-7:50 get breakfast from grocery store
-8:15 begin studying for Exam A
-17:00 pick brother up from work
-18:15 eat and get back to studying
-23:45 give up on studying and go to bed

Wednesday
-6:30 drive brother to work
-7:50 get orange juice from grocery store because of being ridiculously sick (just great)
-8:15 eat breakfast and study for Exam C
-16:00 pick brother up from work
-17:15 eat and get back to studying
-17:45 give up on studying
-21:00 go to bed

Thursday
-6:30 drive brother to work
-8:30 shower and go to school for Exam A
-13:30 begin Exam A
-15:30 leave school go straight to work
-17:00 begin work
-21:30 finish work go home
-22:00 go to bed

Friday
-6:30 drive brother to work
-8:30 realize that not enough studying was done for Exam C; ignore Exam B (STUPIDLY!)
-13:20 panic attack and tears over not enough study time
-15:00 pick up brother get something to eat
-16:20 colitis acts up over fast food + panic attack, stuck in traffic = BAD FLAPPIN' NEWS!
-17:15 study for Exam B; panicking
-20:00 mom arrives and distracts
-20:45 mom leaves, brother distracts
-22:00 go to bed

Saturday
-6:00 go to school
-8:30 begin Exam B
-9:20 exit Exam B --> cry because over half the questions were not answered and failing exam = failing course
-9:35 phone mom and cry some more
-10:30 eat food figure out how to fix school stuff
-11:00 begin studying for Exam C w/ classmates
-13:30 begin Exam C
-14:40 complete Exam C; feels confident; goes to mall to finish X-mas shopping
-16:00 gets back to brother's place; gets stuff together; family picks up and goes home
-17:00 finally home and wraps presents
-18:30 showers goes to bf's house
-20:30 goes to theatre to see Avatar w/ bf and his family

Sunday
-1:00 gets home from movie
-1:30 sleeps
-10:45 wakes up and eats
-11: 50 begins studying for Exam D
-20:20 leaves for brother's place
-20:50 arrives at brother's place, no key, can't get inside; phone not being answered either
-21:11 tries to find ice rink that brother is at = no luck
-21:30 goes back to place still no one there
-21:40 goes home
-22:33 dieing inside right friggin' now

And tomorrow I get to wake up UBER early because I have another 8:30 exam.... lucky friggin' me and at 1 o'clock in the afternoon tomorrow I get to work till 9:30pm.

I have a very bad feeling about the rest of this week because I will be working up until X-mas and I am sure that I will get my first write up because if ANY customer gives me lip, talks me down, is rude to me in any direct or indirect way I WILL react and I WON'T be nice about it!

Anyways, I should sleep because I'm going to school at 6 tomorrow morning.

Here's some hope for me that I won't panic attack again and that my colitis will not react to the panic attack because I won't be able to handle that.

Have a sleep-filled night, lovely dreams, and let's hope that I'll survive the rest of this dreadful week. :(
Happy Holidays

Exam Cramming

Good Day Internet,

Well, it's not really all too great of a day.

I'm studying for my Biological Anthropology final and so far... clearly... I am getting little to nowhere.

Exactly how is one to study one half of a course (or 2 months of a course) into one whole day? Well, hopefully because I am actually studying for this exam, I will do phenomenal on the final and rock the socks right off my teacher and get a wowingly awesome mark for the entire course!

I can dream anyways...

So it has been a while but that's mostly because of final papers that were due and then actually trying to study for things. This in itself will be a short blog because
A) I should be studying
B) I'm super hungry
C) I should be studying
D) I need to pick my brother up @ 6
& E) Well.... I should be studying!

I just think it's great that I can freak out at myself online but in reality do shit-all. Ha!

Good luck to me, this'll be my first exam and hopefully the studying will be better for my other courses as those are really lagging in the awesome mark department.

Any-shwhat, I'll be going now.

CRIMINAL MINDS IS AWESOME AND I KNOW I'M GETTING THE FIRST 3 SEASONS OF DEXTER FOR X-MAS!!!!! Bwahahhaha.... I'm cool.... no, not really. Maybe I'll just go eat now :/

Toodle-ooo

Cafeteria Madness

Good afternoon Internet,

So today has been a regular day in the life of me, though it did start off way to cold to be wearing thin brown flats.

After getting over the ridiculous cold I made it to a fairly snoozy discussion class for Cultural Anthropology.

Anyways, the real highlight of my day was being lost in a sea of people as I sat down for lunch. None of my friends were in sight so I sat by my lonesome for a while. Thankfully my one friend... we'll call him Rhino, found me and we eagerly waited for some ginger to leave our corner spot. Still waiting we found another of my friends... we'll call her Juliet, and then sprang for our spot as soon as the ginger's bag left the cushion (these are cushioned seats kind of like in a restaurant booth but continuously along the edges of the wall).

Rhino and I guarded our spot and watched Juliet because she needed to recharge her lap top. Unfortunately, this interesting fellow who had previously badgered Juliet for a date entered the caf. Rhino and I looked at one another and silently screamed as we realized this... we'll call him Velociraptor , scoured the room for his next victim. We hoped he would pass Juliet without seeing her but we relaxed too soon, as after passing her, he spun around, grabbing a chair and planted himself by her side.

Apparently Velociraptor wasn't as big a pain as before, so it was all good. However, during the time she was parted from us, another of our friends... we'll call her Rapunzel, joined our corner viewing area and we waved at Juliet. Juliet waved back, but so did the guy in front of her who was also facing us. Funny story, he looked like Edward Cullen because his hair was just shaped and coloured that way. Random.

Eventually Juliet joined us and we studied a student performing a study on fellow cafeterians and we decided that if his nose were bigger and his jaw more square that he would have a striking resemblance to Adrien Brody. Rhino then left so it was just us three girls.

We decided to look around the room and rate the guys: a fun yet shallow game... oh well. After a while, a girl in our area started laughing then got up and left. Still laughing. Then the couple to the other side of us looked at us funny and the guy said "Are you really rating guys?" Yes, yes we are.

During this time, Edward Cullen kept looking up and over at us in the way that he does in the movie, and every time we would be looking at him and yeah, we laughed each time!

We also got told about another fancy safarian shin-dig down at the pub on campus later this afternoon, but none of us can make it as we are all poor.

How do you say poor? "p-oo-r" or "pore"?

We continued to sit there and then I saw my friend Mr. Tumness and waved, whereupon Edward Cullen looked up and smiled. Then later I saw my friend Barney with his cane and waved at him, again, Edward Cullen looked up and smiled. He was too much in the viewing field of where we sat and too many times he looked into all of our eyes! Good gracious!

Well, now that there's nothing left to write about I really do have to write these papers.

Skulls, Findings and I'm Still not Finished my Papers!

Hello Internet,

Let me recount my day for you...

An early rise as has been every Wednesday for the past 3 months. 5:30 Ashley, not so attractive, especially when unfed.

Lucky me though, this morning's lab was on the heart and digestive tract, so the dust was blown off of this past summer's Bio12 course. It was easy, breezy, and not as beautiful as CoverGirl unless you consider shades of pig intestines, liver and lungs as shades of beauty.

After successfully completing and submitting my D2L (Desire to Learn) assignment online my girlfriends and I oggled at beautiful men in a magazine dedicated to displaying beautiful man celebrities w/in their pages. Once the crossword was complete and the lack of Jackson Rathbone on the Hot Vampire Page crushed my heart, an Orlando Bloom look-a-like was spotted in our caf.

Next, my favourite class! Biological Anthropology was more exciting than it already always is because our prof shared w/ us a recovered First Nations skull from someone's basement. It was uber interesting as we got apply our knowledge of bone features to try and identify whether the individual had been male or female... we settled on most-likely-male. The head was interestingly shaped as some Coastal First Nations tribes used to practice head binding/flattening where the head of an infant would be bound so that when the various plates in the skull fused an individual's skull would have a more flattened shape. Now our prof has to determine exactly which First Nations group this skull belongs to so they can give a proper burial and what-not.

*sigh* so beautiful.

Anyways the rest of the day was a mix of hanging w/ friends, a presentation by classmates in one class and a boring friendless 50 minute lecture for Biology. However, I did some surfing and found the perfect camera to fit my lifestyle!

Ok, break down on how I am w/ electronics.
I am very tough on them.
I fried my walkman when changing the disc as I was getting water from a water cooler after P.E. then went on to disassemble the poor thing so that now it works awkwardly and is held together at one end by duct tape.
I once drowned my i-Pod by keeping it in a cargo-pant pocket that was just under my rain coat during one of the most ridiculous rain periods I have ever experienced in my "hometown." Now it decides how much music is allowed on the i-Pod and when it will allow me and has found its home... I can't even remember where, probably close to the walkman.
My first cell phone enjoyed being dropped down concrete stairs and sliding across pavement to the point where it committed suicide and took my phone calls hostage. It now sits on a shelf being lonely and lifeless.
And my current digital Kodak camera after taking three tries to find one that works was involved in a battle to the balls when it was taking a ride in my back seat pant pocket as I (sober) and a drunken guy friend got into a spat and he pushed me to the gravel. Her LCD screen is forever cracked and now sports a cutout of the M&M guys. Though she still takes photos and video I will never see through her eyes again... until I plug in the SD to my lap top that is...

As of right now, my ridiculously priced (could have been free) cell phone has survived the past... 2 months? w/o toooooo much damage... just a couple of scrapes... all minor and this time I paid for extra coverage!

Anyways... back to my story...
This camera I have been looking at is gorgeously black and orange and is waterproof and dust proof and if I'm really good will be protected by a hard case not some flimsy cloth sewn together to look pretty and by overpriced.

It's a Pentax Optio WS80 which will accept my SD card and is just beautiful!
Next on my to-do list is learning how to save money.... but before I do that I should put my body into over drive and finish at least one of my papers!

Thumbs up for procrastination.

Yes... well, that was my amazing finding

Confessions to the Internet

Good evening Internet,

So first confession:
I should be writing 2 papers right now and studying for a quiz and a test, but instead, I have once again allowed myself to be easily captivated by time-dwindling distractions... That damn procrastination!

My second confession:
the 100 Monkeys

If you do not know who they are:
http://www.100monkeysmusic.com may educate you in their existence
Also, for some tunage
http://www.myspace.com/these100monkeys may pleaseth thy ears
Furthermore, visit their YouTube channel to see some music vids
http://www.youtube.com/user/official100monkeys
Of their three official music videos, I uber heart "Sleeping Giants" and "Ugly Girl"
They are very contrasting music videos and songs in their tone (atmosphere) but are both A-maze-ing-guh-guh-guh-guh.

This group of fellas I would very much like to hear live! One day... some day.

Wrapping up my splurge, I must admit that my first attraction to the band was Jackson Rathbone. And I am certain that in later entries I will gush more over him. People head for the hills if they hear me speak of him because I'm nearly brought to tears by what I perceive as his immaculate beauty.

Anyways: my day!

It was boring, that's really the majority of what it was. All it involved was sitting in classrooms getting lectured at about various subjects in which I am studying. Exciting? Not so much.

However, lunch was a far more interesting part of my school day. My quirky friends and I acted like children laughing at ridiculous innuendos and watching Rejected (located also on YouTube).

I am rather certain that we are seen as creatures with some spine-deforming disease as everyone in our caf avoid us by all means and throw confused and/or irritated gawks our way. Only a select few venture near us: those who wish to survey and get a representative sample of the campus population, those who were brave enough to tell us about some fanshy-shmanshy shin dig being held at various locations around campus, or a fun activity being hosted by a department of our school where free food will also be provided.

Any-shwut, I really need to study for a test and write some papers here.

Noytee Nite