Tessa's guest appearance
Last night I was reading Mo's blog and Tessa was reading it over my shoulder and she was inspired to write a mini blog in the comment section, after reading it I asked her to write out the whole story because it was just so heart warming!
Here it is:
So, I suppose I’ll take a stab at blog writing for like the first time in my life. I barely write on my own, but I told my Mum what happened at work and she practically hog tied me to the chair to write the full story down. First of all, the only thing I can say is that I have heard of stuff like this happening before. There is this guy in Vancouver, for example, who goes around Vancouver handing out three hundred dollars to random people on the street. You hear about it, but I never actually seen it happen before.
The day started out pretty bad for me and went south rather fast. I had made a note to write down my schedule on a piece of paper because I’m a basket case and would forget my own head if it wasn’t attached. I had written down four pm to ten pm thinking ‘Cool, I get most of the day to do whatever I want and six hours isn’t bad.’ I don’t really do much in the day, I pretty much give myself up to carpel tunnel with writing short stories on my computer or drawing on my tablet, but I like me time. Who doesn’t? I’ll deal with arthritis when I’m older.
Anyway, my Mum comes out of her room saying “I think work is on the phone,”
I didn’t immediately panic thinking they just wanted me to come in early or something like that. When I answered the phone I expected a co-worker asking me to take their shift, but it was my supervisor.
She asked. “Do you know that you work today?”
Me. “Yes… Four to ten right?”
Her. “No, ten AM to four PM.”
I was barely able to keep from saying every swear word I knew and then some. I was able to force out an apology and explained that I wrote the time down wrong. She said it was fine but I had to get from my house to the work in under a half hour. Seriously? That is damn near impossible even if I could catch the next bus and then practically run up the stations steps to the skytrain just as it is leaving the platform. I asked her if she could extend it a by fifteen minutes and she said fine. She wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. I threw on jacket, my tag, and was out of the door into the pouring rain. My jacket is thin, so yeah, it sucked. Specially since my mother had yelled for me to put on another jacket – I hate to admit it, but sometimes I should probably just listen. I got to work soaked, late, angry that my hair gone this weird curly/straight mess, and I had to stand by this wet-dog smelling man on an overcrowded train. I mean, really, where does everyone have to be at friggin’ 1: 30 in the afternoon?
I signed in and headed through the hordes of Christmas shoppers to the main checkout outs. We have eight checkouts, but only three of them are ever open – So it was PACKED. I slipped onto the checkout at the back and was swamped within seconds.
It wasn’t so bad through the day, I didn’t get yelled, hit on, or glared at while I was on cash. One of the girls that worked at desk was ‘capping’ that day – Mainly meaning if we had a problem we called her. She came over to me to grab the extra money from my till and I asked if I was still working till four or they wanted me to stay late. She didn’t know so she called the supervisor. I handed over the money she wanted and she told me that I was staying till 7:45 pm.
Right, so I can officially say I was moderately annoyed with that. I had expected my shift to change add on the few hours to make it four – Not turn into a seven hour shift. I had made plans before work, but they fell through because I left early, I made plans to go after work – But bam, I can’t do anything now. I had planned to talk to a friend about going to see Avatar on Friday, it was the only chance I was going to be able to see her before then. I couldn’t even text her because the cell phone got suspended… So, in the end, crap.
Yeah, I know, it really isn’t that big of a deal – But I’m a teenager. I take small things and blow them up into big massive things that bite you.
To add insult to injury, that wasn’t even the end of it.
On my break two hours before my shift ended I checked my schedule to see that I wasn’t booked to work after the twenty-third, a day before my contract was up as seasonal. I was hired on seasonal and I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance of not getting hired back, but silly me goes and asks one of the four supervisors on shift what was up. She looks to me and says. “Oh, that’s right you weren’t here earlier, we aren’t hiring back the seasonal staff.”
…
Crap…
I can’t say it was completely heart-shattering, but I was absolutely pissed about. I had worked my butt off trying to get them to keep me on. Coming in early, working four days in a row with six hours shifts, picking up shifts on my days off, and staying late. The PNE had me working a normal eight hour day five days a week – so it was easy. I felt kinda used and then chucked out with the garbage. I got back to the checkouts and slipped in for the break relief and wore my anger sleeve. Really not suppose to do that.
So I have to explain this first… Surrey Central Mall is connected to the Simon Frasier University and a business building called “Central City” but most call it Tower. The mall is on the bottom while the University is on the upper levels. You can see clear up to the University floors from the mall when you walk near the food court. I worked with a lot of people that go to school, work, and do their practicums in the same building. It was near the end of my shift and I was pretty much frustrated with everything at this point and ready to yell at the next person that looked at me cross-eyed. A woman came through my till with a buggy stalked full of groceries and toys for the two little boys that were following behind her with Spiderman and Batman backpacks. I’m gonna admit I was really annoyed. I didn’t want to deal with a customer that was going to take me forever – Especially since I just had one that made me have to call the cashier that was capping that night to help me deal with our stone-age cheque machines.
The oldest boy smiled up at me with a large goofy grin that only a kid chalked up on sugar could do. His little brother was excitedly holding a large Bakugon (Weird ball game thing from a T.V show) toy. “Look what we found!” The older one said happily pointing to the package. “We can finally have a full set. It is an early Christmas present for my brother!”
The woman laughed lightly and looked to me with a tired smile. “We’ve been to several places in the last week trying to find that toy.” I nodded somewhat aggravated as I passed through the toy so he could hold his new prize. I ran through the spiel that we’re suppose to feed customers about the mastercards, donating a dollar to the Canadian athletes, and if she had her points card. After that I didn’t really talk to her, but like I said – You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize I was little angry. I was maybe half way through her purchase when she asked me what was wrong. For the like the millionth time that day I forced back the urge to start swearing like a trucker. Your not suppose to let the customer know your anything but the cashier with a smile plastered on your face and asking if they had a good day or found everything they needed even if you really don’t care.
Ya, I know, it sounds callous – But I was just told I don’t have a job as next week.
I sighed and decided there wasn’t any harm in telling her. I wasn’t smashing the company name, I was just saying that I didn’t get hired back and my hair was still this straight/curly mess that I couldn’t fix. What was the worst they could do? Fire me? Ha, yeah right… Already did that suckers.
The whole purchase took me nearly twenty minutes and I learned that the woman had just gotten off work in the Tower, picked up her two younger kids from the daycare across the street, and decided to get some shopping down while waiting for her older daughters university class to end to drive her all the way into Vancouver to get dress for a party. Vancouver is a good hour of driving from Surrey and the woman already looked ready to fall down. I was impressed and kind of felt sorry for her, but she won ‘mom of the year award’ in my book. When I totaled it came to 790.00 even. I turned back to her with a smile, eased up by the conversation, but it was immediately wiped from my face. She let out a heavy sigh and said she didn’t have enough; we had to drop it to under five hundred and she’d pay on her credit card and deal with it later. She started to put back what wasn’t necessary – Which meant the toys she had bought the boys and half of the others smaller things. She looked so helpless and embarrassed - I felt like horrible because I had been laughing with the woman about how much buses suck in the rain and who bad gas prices are before hand and now I was taking back her things because I couldn’t let her have them without paying for it. I could barely look at her as I took them back and mumbled the subtracted total.
Then I felt the devil when the Mother told the oldest boy to give me his toy so I could place in the return bin. This little eight year old boy let out a big sigh and patted his mom on the leg in a consoling manner. “It’s okay Mommy,” he said. “Maybe next time.” He turned to his brother and got his early Christmas present back and handed them to me. The woman looked ready to cry then and there and the little boy was sniffling sadly.
If the girl who hadn’t helped me with the cheque machine was still there I would have just slipped it into the bag and pretended I didn’t notice I left it. Hell, I would have paid for it if I had more than four dollars to my name. I felt like I was going to start crying. Be it from the way the boy just looked so sad, the youngest one going to cry, or how bad I felt.
The guy standing in line behind her was a customer I remembered from my second shift working for them. I remembered him because he was a Translink Bus Driver and told me that the uniforms they have to wear during the 2010 Olympics looked like a smurf barfed on them. While I had been ringing her purchase through I had told him to go to another till, that it might take me awhile to finish her. He shrugged and said with a laugh. “Nah, I’ll wait. I wanted to see if you got any better. No tuna cans this time. I’m in no hurry.”
As I took the boys toys from them and debating if I should just say screw it and just shove it in a bag and deal with the other cashier later, the smurf guy came forward asking. “Can I pay her bill?”
Absolutely everything came to a stop as he held out his debit card for me to take. I was so blindsided by it, all I was able to stammer out was. “Yes, if you want too…”
The woman was bewildered and tried to tell him no, but he merely waved it off and walked up to the debit machine as I stood there stupid for a moment. I shook myself off, glanced to the woman, then to the man, and went to swipe the card. He shook his head saying. “No, I mean the full bill with everything.” I had dropped the total six something, but I put everything back and he paid for it. He turned back to the woman and her two children, once again with their toys, and said with a large grin. “Merry Christmas.”
The woman tried her best not to cry right there in the middle of the store and said thank-you before taking her children and leaving . He paid for his stuff, nearly the same amount as the woman before him, and waved to me leaving the store saying. “Happy job hunting!”
… Talk about angles on earth…
Here it is:
So, I suppose I’ll take a stab at blog writing for like the first time in my life. I barely write on my own, but I told my Mum what happened at work and she practically hog tied me to the chair to write the full story down. First of all, the only thing I can say is that I have heard of stuff like this happening before. There is this guy in Vancouver, for example, who goes around Vancouver handing out three hundred dollars to random people on the street. You hear about it, but I never actually seen it happen before.
The day started out pretty bad for me and went south rather fast. I had made a note to write down my schedule on a piece of paper because I’m a basket case and would forget my own head if it wasn’t attached. I had written down four pm to ten pm thinking ‘Cool, I get most of the day to do whatever I want and six hours isn’t bad.’ I don’t really do much in the day, I pretty much give myself up to carpel tunnel with writing short stories on my computer or drawing on my tablet, but I like me time. Who doesn’t? I’ll deal with arthritis when I’m older.
Anyway, my Mum comes out of her room saying “I think work is on the phone,”
I didn’t immediately panic thinking they just wanted me to come in early or something like that. When I answered the phone I expected a co-worker asking me to take their shift, but it was my supervisor.
She asked. “Do you know that you work today?”
Me. “Yes… Four to ten right?”
Her. “No, ten AM to four PM.”
I was barely able to keep from saying every swear word I knew and then some. I was able to force out an apology and explained that I wrote the time down wrong. She said it was fine but I had to get from my house to the work in under a half hour. Seriously? That is damn near impossible even if I could catch the next bus and then practically run up the stations steps to the skytrain just as it is leaving the platform. I asked her if she could extend it a by fifteen minutes and she said fine. She wasn’t happy, but there wasn’t really anything I could do about it. I threw on jacket, my tag, and was out of the door into the pouring rain. My jacket is thin, so yeah, it sucked. Specially since my mother had yelled for me to put on another jacket – I hate to admit it, but sometimes I should probably just listen. I got to work soaked, late, angry that my hair gone this weird curly/straight mess, and I had to stand by this wet-dog smelling man on an overcrowded train. I mean, really, where does everyone have to be at friggin’ 1: 30 in the afternoon?
I signed in and headed through the hordes of Christmas shoppers to the main checkout outs. We have eight checkouts, but only three of them are ever open – So it was PACKED. I slipped onto the checkout at the back and was swamped within seconds.
It wasn’t so bad through the day, I didn’t get yelled, hit on, or glared at while I was on cash. One of the girls that worked at desk was ‘capping’ that day – Mainly meaning if we had a problem we called her. She came over to me to grab the extra money from my till and I asked if I was still working till four or they wanted me to stay late. She didn’t know so she called the supervisor. I handed over the money she wanted and she told me that I was staying till 7:45 pm.
Right, so I can officially say I was moderately annoyed with that. I had expected my shift to change add on the few hours to make it four – Not turn into a seven hour shift. I had made plans before work, but they fell through because I left early, I made plans to go after work – But bam, I can’t do anything now. I had planned to talk to a friend about going to see Avatar on Friday, it was the only chance I was going to be able to see her before then. I couldn’t even text her because the cell phone got suspended… So, in the end, crap.
Yeah, I know, it really isn’t that big of a deal – But I’m a teenager. I take small things and blow them up into big massive things that bite you.
To add insult to injury, that wasn’t even the end of it.
On my break two hours before my shift ended I checked my schedule to see that I wasn’t booked to work after the twenty-third, a day before my contract was up as seasonal. I was hired on seasonal and I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance of not getting hired back, but silly me goes and asks one of the four supervisors on shift what was up. She looks to me and says. “Oh, that’s right you weren’t here earlier, we aren’t hiring back the seasonal staff.”
…
Crap…
I can’t say it was completely heart-shattering, but I was absolutely pissed about. I had worked my butt off trying to get them to keep me on. Coming in early, working four days in a row with six hours shifts, picking up shifts on my days off, and staying late. The PNE had me working a normal eight hour day five days a week – so it was easy. I felt kinda used and then chucked out with the garbage. I got back to the checkouts and slipped in for the break relief and wore my anger sleeve. Really not suppose to do that.
So I have to explain this first… Surrey Central Mall is connected to the Simon Frasier University and a business building called “Central City” but most call it Tower. The mall is on the bottom while the University is on the upper levels. You can see clear up to the University floors from the mall when you walk near the food court. I worked with a lot of people that go to school, work, and do their practicums in the same building. It was near the end of my shift and I was pretty much frustrated with everything at this point and ready to yell at the next person that looked at me cross-eyed. A woman came through my till with a buggy stalked full of groceries and toys for the two little boys that were following behind her with Spiderman and Batman backpacks. I’m gonna admit I was really annoyed. I didn’t want to deal with a customer that was going to take me forever – Especially since I just had one that made me have to call the cashier that was capping that night to help me deal with our stone-age cheque machines.
The oldest boy smiled up at me with a large goofy grin that only a kid chalked up on sugar could do. His little brother was excitedly holding a large Bakugon (Weird ball game thing from a T.V show) toy. “Look what we found!” The older one said happily pointing to the package. “We can finally have a full set. It is an early Christmas present for my brother!”
The woman laughed lightly and looked to me with a tired smile. “We’ve been to several places in the last week trying to find that toy.” I nodded somewhat aggravated as I passed through the toy so he could hold his new prize. I ran through the spiel that we’re suppose to feed customers about the mastercards, donating a dollar to the Canadian athletes, and if she had her points card. After that I didn’t really talk to her, but like I said – You didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize I was little angry. I was maybe half way through her purchase when she asked me what was wrong. For the like the millionth time that day I forced back the urge to start swearing like a trucker. Your not suppose to let the customer know your anything but the cashier with a smile plastered on your face and asking if they had a good day or found everything they needed even if you really don’t care.
Ya, I know, it sounds callous – But I was just told I don’t have a job as next week.
I sighed and decided there wasn’t any harm in telling her. I wasn’t smashing the company name, I was just saying that I didn’t get hired back and my hair was still this straight/curly mess that I couldn’t fix. What was the worst they could do? Fire me? Ha, yeah right… Already did that suckers.
The whole purchase took me nearly twenty minutes and I learned that the woman had just gotten off work in the Tower, picked up her two younger kids from the daycare across the street, and decided to get some shopping down while waiting for her older daughters university class to end to drive her all the way into Vancouver to get dress for a party. Vancouver is a good hour of driving from Surrey and the woman already looked ready to fall down. I was impressed and kind of felt sorry for her, but she won ‘mom of the year award’ in my book. When I totaled it came to 790.00 even. I turned back to her with a smile, eased up by the conversation, but it was immediately wiped from my face. She let out a heavy sigh and said she didn’t have enough; we had to drop it to under five hundred and she’d pay on her credit card and deal with it later. She started to put back what wasn’t necessary – Which meant the toys she had bought the boys and half of the others smaller things. She looked so helpless and embarrassed - I felt like horrible because I had been laughing with the woman about how much buses suck in the rain and who bad gas prices are before hand and now I was taking back her things because I couldn’t let her have them without paying for it. I could barely look at her as I took them back and mumbled the subtracted total.
Then I felt the devil when the Mother told the oldest boy to give me his toy so I could place in the return bin. This little eight year old boy let out a big sigh and patted his mom on the leg in a consoling manner. “It’s okay Mommy,” he said. “Maybe next time.” He turned to his brother and got his early Christmas present back and handed them to me. The woman looked ready to cry then and there and the little boy was sniffling sadly.
If the girl who hadn’t helped me with the cheque machine was still there I would have just slipped it into the bag and pretended I didn’t notice I left it. Hell, I would have paid for it if I had more than four dollars to my name. I felt like I was going to start crying. Be it from the way the boy just looked so sad, the youngest one going to cry, or how bad I felt.
The guy standing in line behind her was a customer I remembered from my second shift working for them. I remembered him because he was a Translink Bus Driver and told me that the uniforms they have to wear during the 2010 Olympics looked like a smurf barfed on them. While I had been ringing her purchase through I had told him to go to another till, that it might take me awhile to finish her. He shrugged and said with a laugh. “Nah, I’ll wait. I wanted to see if you got any better. No tuna cans this time. I’m in no hurry.”
As I took the boys toys from them and debating if I should just say screw it and just shove it in a bag and deal with the other cashier later, the smurf guy came forward asking. “Can I pay her bill?”
Absolutely everything came to a stop as he held out his debit card for me to take. I was so blindsided by it, all I was able to stammer out was. “Yes, if you want too…”
The woman was bewildered and tried to tell him no, but he merely waved it off and walked up to the debit machine as I stood there stupid for a moment. I shook myself off, glanced to the woman, then to the man, and went to swipe the card. He shook his head saying. “No, I mean the full bill with everything.” I had dropped the total six something, but I put everything back and he paid for it. He turned back to the woman and her two children, once again with their toys, and said with a large grin. “Merry Christmas.”
The woman tried her best not to cry right there in the middle of the store and said thank-you before taking her children and leaving . He paid for his stuff, nearly the same amount as the woman before him, and waved to me leaving the store saying. “Happy job hunting!”
… Talk about angles on earth…
Comments
god dang it. Best. Story. Ever.
Big. BIG hugs to you and your Mom.
wow.
Here's to hope, Tessa. You will find another job, one that treats you farily and respectfully. You know why? Because you are very, very special. And dear--to me and to others. Not to mention your amazing birthday, the best out of 364 other days. Oh, and that little crush on Mike Rowe. I'm not even jealous....I just stand in awe of your EXCELLENT taste and refinement.
I'm proud to be your birthday twin. Sending you hugs.....
Auntie Mo
Keep writing - I'm your newest fan. :)
Take care, Bob~