SEARiously?!

Things I didn't like about today:

-Orientation at work
- Dexter being a douche
- Knowing that I have to go back to orientation again tomorrow

Damn it. I'd thought of more to list, but I forgot them. Perhaps I'm more positive than I'd realized. HA.

It's been a week since I last wrote. Indeed, I did start my new job. As my supervisor told me at our lunch a while back, "Orientation is intense." By intense I thought she meant hard. No, she just meant crammed full of stuff for ten freaking days. In fact, much of it is information that one would learn in most MSW programs. It was in mine, which makes it not new to me, and thus mostly redundant. That in itself might not be too terrible, but the room we're in for eight hours a day has blacked out windows with curtains over them. I guess it used to be a treatment area or something back in the day. It's awful - no sunlight. I experience a lot of rage in there.

I should mention that on my lunch break on my first day of work, I managed to lock myself out of my house and car. I actually had to ask a neighbor I'd never talked to before for a ride back to work. Thank goodness she was sweet and without hesitation, drove me over. (I literally live two minutes from the gate, so it wasn't a big inconvenience.) Still, I thanked her repeatedly. And so amidst work the rest of that day, I negotiated both a way to get a key to my house free of charge (thank you property manager) and to get to said key and back home (thank you Sarah). I took care of it, though, without any of my supervisors at work ever being the wiser. Whew.

The rest of the week went fairly smoothly, though I'm not used to this eight hour day stuff anymore, so by Friday I was pretty tired. I had a glass of wine and watched stuff I'd DVR'd. It was grand. My plan for Saturday was to mow the lawn with my new lawn mower that I'd picked up on Thursday, and then after doing a little research, go plant shopping and do some gardening. That's definitely not how Saturday went.

After I'd unloaded the lawn mower and set it up, I realized one of the wheels remained up in the air while the others were all down. Not cool. I had to take the damn thing back, and new push mowers are HEAVY. Since Joe's still gone, I had to load the damn thing alone. So anyway. I took it back to Sears, where I found that this particular Snapper model has a manufacturer's defect. Sears knew about it way before I picked it up, yet they still let me take it home. First strike. With the help of the first loader dude who got (and not easily) the defected mower out of the car, I got hooked up with a dept manager to pick out a new one. I felt a little weird about picking out a new mower without my research handy, but I did it anyway. Then, as I was being checked out, it became very apparent that the cashier lady was rushing me to get to lunch. She was very curt, and as I tried to ask a question about the transaction on my receipt, she cut me off saying, "It's all there!" She then rushed the manager who came back over and was talking to me some more, as they were about to go to lunch together. Second strike. I tactfully let someone know about that before I went back to the pick-up area. Then, back at the pick up area, I got back in line to wait for my new mower to be loaded. I'd been assured by the manager that the loader would take it out of the box for me and give it the once over. Well, when it was finally my turn, I politely asked the man about taking it out of the box because the first one was defected, to which he replied, "I don't have time for that." Dumbfounded, I informed him that a man inside said I'd be helped. The loader responded with, "Yeah, inside they'll tell you anything." Third strike, and with that, I lost my mind. I literally chucked my purse down, and started simultaneously crying [read: sobbing] and yelling at the man. I told him that it was in fact his job to help. I then told him to just open the box for me and that I'd do it myself since my husband was gone doing military training and no one else would help me. I then told him to get away from the mower because I didn't want his help. He then had the nerve to tell me that I must have already been upset, and I told him yes I was due to the cashier inside. He then told me not to take it out on him. I then reminded him of his own part in things in that he'd informed me he didn't have the time to help me. He responded with "I never said that." I then yelled, "Yes, you did! You just did! Verbatim." A few more words were exchanged. Customers were watching. The loader, scared, hurriedly unpacked the damn mower. Finally, a manager appeared, and so helpfully reminded me that they wouldn't be able to crank it because the mower didn't have gas in it. NO FUCKING SHIT YOU FUCKING IDIOT. ALL I WANTED WAS TO MAKE SURE ALL FOUR WHEELS TOUCHED THE GROUND AT THE SAME TIME. THAT'S IT. Any once over stuff that could be remedied on the spot before I unloaded and reloaded this damn heavy thing by myself all over again was all I wanted. That's it. And maybe to be treated with a teensy bit of respect. I did apologize for yelling at the man. I so wish I could have handled it calmly. I continue to replay it in my head. I'd just never been on the receiving end of so much blatant unkindness in such a small amount of time before. My last words before I left were these to the manager: "A little empathy goes a long way." I later got a phone call from the nice loader who helped me initially, Ed. He'd noticed I was upset and called to apologize and check in on me. I told him everything that happened, and after a few more phone calls on Ed's part, I ended up getting an extra 20% off the mower. When I went back to the store for them to credit me, I gave Ed a big hug. The monetary compensation from Sears was nice, but just the fact that Ed called made all the difference. It's also possible that the big hug I got from that 6'4'' muscular, good looking black man helped tremendously as well. :-)

Then on Sunday I punished myself by going to a yoga mixed with pilates class "Centergy" at Gold's gym. And that was my weekend. I hurt.