A gripe and a giggle
Oct. 11th, 2006 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
philenaMakes a griggle, says Daniel. Gripe first. Skip if you have enough gripes in your life.
We just hired a new woman at the bakery. She's working full time, which means I see her every day but Sunday. Megan hired her right after the interview, which I heard all of because it's a small store and difficult not to hear converstions when everything's slow. She seemed friendly and very chatty from the interview, and that is true. Man, is that true! The woman never stops talking! Babble babble babble on and on and on, all day long, frequently laughing extremely loudly at things that are not in the slightest funny! She's very slow to understand the basics of running the store: after almost a full week she still doesn't recognize the cakes; she doesn't understand the rules for determining when a cake expires (I might add that this was explained to me once, and I understood it perfectly, because it's not at all hard); she doesn't even know the names of the cakes! "Ganache" is NOT a type of cake! We don't make vanilla cream pie! Okay. So she's slow. That's fine. Business is slow this week, so she's got plenty of time to sit down and learn the cakes and what's in them. Maybe she can practice writing on cakes. But she doesn't do that! She gets a cup of coffee and talks. (Often about how she drinks too much caffeine.) It could be insecurity, all the talking and laughing, but I'd think that if you were insecure you'd work to rectify it, maybe by studying your job! Megan and I have started immersing ourselves in our books in self-defense, because if it's clear that we're not reading Brigette will start talking again! Then when a customer comes in she will continue the conversation instead of dealing with the customer, or at least releasing me to deal with the customer. Sometimes (which is much more often than she should be) she checks her cell phone messages or makes calls. I'm not really training her, so it's not my position to reprimand her, but I feel that Megan is a bit too lenient in keeping the woman in line. At first she hired her because Brigette is older (43, we learned today) than the other clerks in the store (no one older than 28, I'd guess), and wanted to work full time, which meant she would train quickly and be a good, steady, reliable clerk. But really, if she doesn't stop talking and buckle down, she won't be reliable for anything except annoying everyone else!
In other news, the boss lady herself (Katrina) called Megan and told her that my training is complete and my salary is now raised to full status! Huzzah! I feel more confident already, although that could simply be that the presence of Brigette makes me feel better about my own abilities.
In a way I feel odd with my animosity towards her. There's nothing wrong with her. She's a good person. I wonder how much of this is lifestyle: she never finished high school, she never went to college, she had two children out of wedlock (and I didn't even need to ask to learn all of this!), and is so clearly from a different circle from everyone else that I wonder if I'm simply reacting badly to a perceived difference in class. The one time I didn't feel annoyed at her talking is when she was telling me very sincerely that she is determined to go back to school, get her GED, and go to college. I told her that she can take adult extension classes to ease the transition, that she could go to the library and ask there for help and how to get started, and she seemed very eager to do that. Then she started babbling on about how she eats too much sugar, and the moment was gone. But I don't really think, upon further reflection, that this is a matter of class difference. I was annoyed with her long before I discovered her educational history, and when I thought her cell phone use was limited to checking on her 12-year old son who happened to be in bed from an asthma attack that day.
I liked working Sundays already because Effie is all kinds of awesome, and that's the only day I get to see her and work with her, but now I like Sundays even better because I get to be at nice bakery and not with annoying woman. I really feel, after less than a week, that Brigette is rather poisoning everything I liked about the bakery, which was that it was a nice, quiet place to work, with nice cake, and co-workers who were all very much like myself.
So I came home today practically seething with irritation, and Daniel was perfect. He listened to me for a little while. Then he cut me off, whisked me to College Avenue, fed me falaffal and ice cream, and on the way home we petted a kitty. Then we came home and commiserated about how our chronological status is getting more and more shaky. Of the eight items we have whose express purpose is to tell time, three (two watches and a kitchen wall clock) do not keep proper time, despite all of them having had a recent battery change, and two of them (more watches) have a broken wrist band. With this in mind, I found the following sentence in Strunk & White (in the section about dangling participles) particularly appropriate:
Wondering irresolutely what to do next, the clock struck twelve.
We just hired a new woman at the bakery. She's working full time, which means I see her every day but Sunday. Megan hired her right after the interview, which I heard all of because it's a small store and difficult not to hear converstions when everything's slow. She seemed friendly and very chatty from the interview, and that is true. Man, is that true! The woman never stops talking! Babble babble babble on and on and on, all day long, frequently laughing extremely loudly at things that are not in the slightest funny! She's very slow to understand the basics of running the store: after almost a full week she still doesn't recognize the cakes; she doesn't understand the rules for determining when a cake expires (I might add that this was explained to me once, and I understood it perfectly, because it's not at all hard); she doesn't even know the names of the cakes! "Ganache" is NOT a type of cake! We don't make vanilla cream pie! Okay. So she's slow. That's fine. Business is slow this week, so she's got plenty of time to sit down and learn the cakes and what's in them. Maybe she can practice writing on cakes. But she doesn't do that! She gets a cup of coffee and talks. (Often about how she drinks too much caffeine.) It could be insecurity, all the talking and laughing, but I'd think that if you were insecure you'd work to rectify it, maybe by studying your job! Megan and I have started immersing ourselves in our books in self-defense, because if it's clear that we're not reading Brigette will start talking again! Then when a customer comes in she will continue the conversation instead of dealing with the customer, or at least releasing me to deal with the customer. Sometimes (which is much more often than she should be) she checks her cell phone messages or makes calls. I'm not really training her, so it's not my position to reprimand her, but I feel that Megan is a bit too lenient in keeping the woman in line. At first she hired her because Brigette is older (43, we learned today) than the other clerks in the store (no one older than 28, I'd guess), and wanted to work full time, which meant she would train quickly and be a good, steady, reliable clerk. But really, if she doesn't stop talking and buckle down, she won't be reliable for anything except annoying everyone else!
In other news, the boss lady herself (Katrina) called Megan and told her that my training is complete and my salary is now raised to full status! Huzzah! I feel more confident already, although that could simply be that the presence of Brigette makes me feel better about my own abilities.
In a way I feel odd with my animosity towards her. There's nothing wrong with her. She's a good person. I wonder how much of this is lifestyle: she never finished high school, she never went to college, she had two children out of wedlock (and I didn't even need to ask to learn all of this!), and is so clearly from a different circle from everyone else that I wonder if I'm simply reacting badly to a perceived difference in class. The one time I didn't feel annoyed at her talking is when she was telling me very sincerely that she is determined to go back to school, get her GED, and go to college. I told her that she can take adult extension classes to ease the transition, that she could go to the library and ask there for help and how to get started, and she seemed very eager to do that. Then she started babbling on about how she eats too much sugar, and the moment was gone. But I don't really think, upon further reflection, that this is a matter of class difference. I was annoyed with her long before I discovered her educational history, and when I thought her cell phone use was limited to checking on her 12-year old son who happened to be in bed from an asthma attack that day.
I liked working Sundays already because Effie is all kinds of awesome, and that's the only day I get to see her and work with her, but now I like Sundays even better because I get to be at nice bakery and not with annoying woman. I really feel, after less than a week, that Brigette is rather poisoning everything I liked about the bakery, which was that it was a nice, quiet place to work, with nice cake, and co-workers who were all very much like myself.
So I came home today practically seething with irritation, and Daniel was perfect. He listened to me for a little while. Then he cut me off, whisked me to College Avenue, fed me falaffal and ice cream, and on the way home we petted a kitty. Then we came home and commiserated about how our chronological status is getting more and more shaky. Of the eight items we have whose express purpose is to tell time, three (two watches and a kitchen wall clock) do not keep proper time, despite all of them having had a recent battery change, and two of them (more watches) have a broken wrist band. With this in mind, I found the following sentence in Strunk & White (in the section about dangling participles) particularly appropriate:
Wondering irresolutely what to do next, the clock struck twelve.
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ugh
Date: 2006-10-12 10:32 pm (UTC)Re: ugh
Date: 2006-10-13 03:37 am (UTC)