Virtual Work

Facebook is ruined. My boss is on it. Under 'Activities' she has listed "being a bitch" and "ruining Kathleen's life". It actually says "Curling" and "going to the spa", but I can read between the lines. Of the top five fakest conversations I've ever had, at least three have been with her. I ask about her geriatric cat, she inquires about my college classes. We exchange nearly identical pleasantries each time we meet to mask our hostility towards one another. She's the closest thing I've ever had to an enemy. She has an eerie sixth sense when it comes to my job performance and magically shows up when I'm slacking off or negatively representing the store. Exchanges I've had with customers I wish she hadn't heard:

- "What kind of strapless bras do you carry?"
- "The ones here suck. You should go to Sears."

- "I can only take 4 items into the fitting room? But I have 15."
- "Whatever. Just go in."

- "You don't know how the gift registry works? You work here, don't you?"
- "Barely".

Whenever I turn around, there she is. Since I fancy myself an optimist, I like to think her being on Facebook could be an advantage. I hope that by studying her profile, I can determine her weaknesses. So far though it's just been an annoyance having to delete all the incriminating wall posts I've written.

The other day she informed me that I had neglected to do a portion of the required on-line training and that the particular lessons I had to do were supposed to have been done over a year ago when I first started working. I feigned ignorance and said I had no idea, which was a lie; I just didn't feel like doing it. The computer training modules are 20 minute animated pieces of crap designed to inform and entertain. You are subjected to some lecture on a topic like "Being nice to customers" and then you have to do an activity to prove you fully grasp the concept. Your guide through these lessons is a talking cartoon shopping cart who says "Good try!" after everything you do. The activity is usually a game so simple a child of three could master it. Sometimes it's a word search with words like basket and shelf. Or it could be paper doll style game where you dress an employee in the proper safety gear to clean up a chemical spill. If you're lucky, it might be a game similar to Pac-Man where you are a virtual janitor who has to clean up spills and move hazards out of the path of a virtual customer.

The sexual harassment game was by far the most hilarious. To "win" you have to participate in a virtual interaction with your imaginary co-worker Gene (picture Tom Selleck if he worked at Wal-mart and was a greasy cartoon character) who makes increasingly inappropriate sexual advances. After each move by Gene you have to click "Sexual Harassment" or "Not Sexual Harassment". I wanted to see just how far Gene would go and ended up having to repeat the lesson due to my poor score. I was apparently not the only one to have enjoyed getting to know Gene. Someone had written on the wall behind the computer "Gene is hot". Below that someone else had responded "I'd do him".

It's pretty much the most pointless thing I've ever done... which is why I don't know why I've been putting it off. I get to sit out back in the computer room with my snacks, put my feet up and "learn". I learned important lessons like NEVER climb inside the trash compactor and DON'T put heavy merchandise on top of eggs when you are packing shopping bags, neither of which I would even have opportunity to do in my capacity as a slave to "fashion". And I was disappointed to find out that according to company policy, employees are not allowed to date other employees, which is the tragedy of the century. This important learning comes too late for the two (possibly three) staff couples who are expecting babies. And I hope it doesn't negatively affect attendance at the upcoming nuptials of Ken from electronics and Christy from jewelry.

Reading

You would think someone who majored in English and is studying to work in a library would have tons of books but I don't. I have a decent stash at home, but it never occurred to me to bring any with me here. It's never really been a problem, but on Sunday night I was really desperate for something, anything to read.

Besides my textbooks, the most interesting of which is called Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, I have only two books. There's the Everything Bridesmaid Book (thanks Janet!) and an atlas I bought when I was in England because I didn't know where anything was. I really wanted to get all those European countries straight in my head. Monday night I resorted to reading the atlas. It seems I'm just as geographically stupid as ever. As a child, I used to play with a globe. I thought the names of some of the foreign places would be beautiful names for my children one day. Kenya and Australia were two of my favorites. Unfortunately I don't remember anything useful.

I finally made it to the library yesterday where I got Heave and a Sue Grafton mystery novel. Every once and a while I crave a good mystery, but I'm not really a mystery fan. So I always think back to my Women and Detective Fiction course to identify good authors. As a result, I've only ever read mysteries by women.

I started with the Sue Grafton book. On page 3 there was a greasy thumbprint halfway down the page near the spine. I tried to read the page but my eyes kept traveling down to the thumbprint. It was driving me crazy! I tried putting a piece of paper over it, but I still knew it was there. I finally gave up after I had read the first sentence seven times. I've read books in much worse condition, so I don't know why this bothered me so much. I guess I started thinking that if the last person who had this book was the kind of person to leave a disgusting thumbprint, what else might they have done with this book? It made me think of the episode of Seinfeld when George goes to a bookstore and takes one of the books with him into the bathroom. The bookstore makes him buy the book because he had it in the bathroom. Later he tries to return it, but is told the book has been flagged as having been in the bathroom. He tries to donate it to charity but they won't take it either. I can't wait to deal with crazy book shenanigans like that when I work in a library.