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I’m so tired and burnt-out. I’m gonna try to be funny while I complain,
that’s what I do– that’s the point of complaining– you get all het-up and
yelly about what’s wrong, and it’s funny, and you all yell together about
how terrible everything is, and if you’re lucky you can coin a really
hilarious phrase to describe it and then that catchphrase can go on to be a
thing you can yell in high-stress moments in the future and the people who
were there for the earlier stress can yell it back and it can be a whole
thing, an heirloom of thine house etcetera, but sometimes you feel a
little, well, tired, and you feel like…. why all the heirlooms of mine
house gotta be hilarious ways of describing terrible things? i want
something good once in a while, you know?
anyway I’m feeling very tired and burnt-out and frazzled and like I have no
attention span and can’t focus. The current straw breaking my back is that
they raised the minimum wage in New York again, yay, but my company owners
are in Pennsylvania, where they haven’t raised the minimum wage since like
1992 or something, and so every year when NY’s goes up, they illegally pay
us at our old rates for the first pay period and we have to chase them down
and ask them to pay us the difference that we’re now legally-entitled to,
and I get that this is an innocent enough thing to happen but it’s all just
a big slappy reminder that even though many of us have worked here for
literal decades the owners will only ever pay us the least they’re legally
obliged to.
Anyway they said they’d put the difference in the next paycheck, and it
didn’t come, and now we’re on the third paycheck of the year and i squinted
at mine and it was for 72 hours, and I’m pretty sure I worked 72 hours, but
I don’t have access to the report the register generates of employee hours–
but I do have access to the clock-in-and-out data, and long story short I
finally did the math and they owe me 3.58 hours, and also I’ve now
discovered that they round down to the nearest half hour when they pay us,
which was something I’d been carefully not paying attention to, and it’s
just all. Well it’s all tiring.
They insist they paid me the extra in this past paycheck. I double-checked
my math; I worked 77.8 hours in two weeks because I took a day off after
doing slightly over-long shifts all week to try to get shit done, and they
subtract half an hour per eight for lunches, which puts me at 72.8, and
then they round down, so it’s 72.5, that’s what I got paid for.
The other employees may not mind as much because they’re all working short
hours so they can get the bonus unemployment money that’s going around
currently, and that’s great (that’s a flat $300 regardless of what you earn
so if you’re a high earner that fucking sucks for you, but for us on
minimum that’s pretty damn good), but they’re all able to do this without
falling behind because I’m the only part-timer doing 40-hour weeks. And
it’s best this way, otherwise the bosses would’ve had to fire somebody
entirely and this way they can hang onto people to hire back once,
presumably, business goes back to normal. But it sucks because I’d be
earning more on unemployment. Whatever! I don’t specifically need the
money. But I feel shit-upon, which is really not what I need. I’ve been
coming in four hours before the store opens so I can be out of the way, and
it’s exhausting to leave the house so early.
On the other hand, if I get home early in the afternoon, I have time to
work out and cook dinner. I went in extra-early yesterday because on
Tuesday I’d come home and collapsed into bed and when I woke at 5:30pm dude
was mad I hadn’t made dinner because he was tired too. (”Fine!” he said,
when I woke, groggy, “I’ll come up with something!” and then started making
beef stew, which apparently only I have ever made in our 18 years together
because he had no idea that stews take 1-2 hours to simmer at the bare
minimum if you don’t use the pressure cooker which also apparently he’d
never observed me do the half a dozen times I’ve made stew since we got the
pressure cooker? Anyway he made pan-fried catfish with great drama once I
pointed out that the dish I’ve made at least once a month for 18 years
needs to be cooked and wouldn’t be done in 20 minutes so starting it when
we were both ravenous wasn’t a fantastic idea.) I’m sorry me traveling away
for the weekend and coming back tired is so inconvenient for you, sir, I
was at home trying to help my family work out the logistics of dealing with
my late father’s belongings? this was not like some kind of fun
gallivanting expedition? we do not have those in our lives anymore? anyway.
He says he’s Extra Tired this week and is just So Out Of It so apparently
that’s my problem. So I went in 45 minutes earlier than my usual
early-start time, so I could come home, work out (my hips bother me if I
don’t do this regularly and they’re starting to bother me and no I cannot
put that off another day if I want to walk), and then make dinner, and
have it ready by 5:30 because when you wake up at 5am your body clock tends
to shift early!
But that’s the downside– when I rush out super early and come home super
early, it’s very hard not to look like a total lazy loafer when it’s 3pm
and you’re flat-out on the couch staring at the ceiling because you just
worked 9 hours and you’re fried.
Anyway. I’d say “ah we just need a weekend out” but. where. no. not
restful. anyway i feel like vacations are a fake idea.
I wanted to get takeout sushi to celebrate Rush Limbaugh’s death but I’d
gone in early so I’d have time to get dinner started, so it seemed stupid
not to do it, so I did it. But maybe tonight. All I want is a bucket of
salmon. And a bottle of champagne. I’ll do without the hot tub.
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