WORK FAIL

I am soooooo tired right now. I should be going to bed but I really do need to keep up with posting here, so excuse me while a depart from the merry holiday attitude and bitch a little.

I have a second, part-time job. I need this job, because I want to get some debts paid off in case the main job goes south. Which, considering I work for a newspaper, is not that far-fetched. So I work at the local mall as a janitor. We actually have more than one mall here, but it is actually called The Mall, and everybody knows what you're talking about when you say The Mall. The other mall you have to call by its name, which is really just the name of a nearby side street off the main drag. It's a small town, what can I say?

Soooo, anyway, Friday I go into work -- after putting in a full day at the main job -- and I'm scheduled for my regular hours, 6 to 11. Normally, I get done around 10 to 10:30, so it's not a big deal, but since I work in a different town than what I work in, it is a real drag to be away from my home for that long. Anyway, Friday was a pain because apparently it was "drop off your tweens and let them run amuck" night. Then, when stores finally started closing at 9 p.m., Penny's kept their doors open. I got most of the doors locked, then went by Penny's, and their doors were still open. I figured maybe they were staying open an extra hour. No big deal. I went to ask. "We're open til midnight." Holy crap. At least I got my Christmas cards done.

Then today, I was scheduled for 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Well, today is the day the mall started holiday hours -- 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. There are a lot of stores that don't have their own entrances, so employees have to use the mall entrances. Obviously, they can't do that if I'm not there to unlock the doors. So I went in a half hour before I was scheduled, and there were already a bunch of store employees waiting to get in. And they weren't happy. At least none of them took it out on me. But I knew I'd get home kinda late because there are I things I can't do, like dust-mop the hallways and clean the bathrooms, until we close. And it was really too busy to get the trash before we closed, so I had to do all that after 7 p.m. So with coming in a half-hour early and staying late, plus Friday, I've put in an extra almost 3 hours above my schedule, including a nearly 10-hour day today. That's a hell of a lot to ask a part-timer. Expecially one that makes less that $8 an hour.

There's a new motel being built in the little town I live in that's supposed to open in spring, by summer for sure. I think I might just go apply there when the time comes. It'd be nice to actually maybe have some dinner at home and see Buster before heading to a second job anyway, and not have to drive such a distance through crappy weather, too.

OK, bah humbug over. Back to merry. Maybe.