Good news, bad news.

http://imgur.com/nYl6h  Guess who wrote that….

The single most incompetent and lazy employee who ever worked here (who was released into the wild years ago by the precursor firm, at which news I danced at my desk for it was glorious in my eyes) is in the building for an interview.  This is what lies on your LinkedIn profile will do, sweetcakes.  I need to be self-employed, this is bullshit.

I have had a very restful and yet sociable weekend.

This is a lovely combinertation in my view.

 

(Excerpt from The Warlord’s Cook)

I had this story from my mother.  She said it was from a book that was burned, but she read the book many times before she was fifteen and swears this is how it went.

Once upon a time, there was a man seeking employment speaking gibberish.  He could have gone into guild politics, and it would have been easier yet to go into religion.  He was an honest speaker of gibberish, nothing more, and he asked only that he be given an opportunity to practice his trade.

It was his job to hang around a certain rich man (actually, it was a group of rich guys who took him on as a kind of time share court jester but that only becomes relevant in a different story)- and while he was hanging around a certain rich guy, he was brought into the company of those who, for whatever reason, the rich guy wanted to mock and bewilder and otherwise mentally mess about with.

In those days – which weren’t that long ago, truth be told, although how far away it seems now for those of us too young to have been there – the rich man would have business meetings and the man who spoke gibberish would sit in a corner of the room, out of the way, and occasionally say something quietly but clearly in gibberish, and the rich man would pause, and say, “I will definitely have to consider that.”  The negotiations, of whatever form, would stagger along for a few moments and then there would be another outburst from the corner.  The rich man would pause, and say something soothing again. The fourth time this happened the rich man looked at him and paused long enough to eat a whole nut, and then said,

“Now Blib, you’re disturbing the work we’re doing. You’ve given me enough advice for tonight.”

Glaring (he had a ghost white face and big googly eyes) Blib would leave the room, looking like he was ready to kill someone.

“I hope he doesn’t mean to come back,” the rich man would say and then only the strongest minded individual would be able to continue along the path he had set for himself prior to the meeting.

Blib had similar sorts of jobs with other rich men, and he would sometimes pretend to be a soup-spilling waiter who also spoke gibberish, which caused no end of hijinks.

Abruptly one day the rich men all decided they wanted to spend the same amount of money for different things.  Blib had no work. One by one each of them turned to paying someone else to amuse them.  One preferred sex with men, one sex with women, one took up exotic drugs, one consumed more alcohol, and the last became depraved in the company of sheep. The moral of this story is very simple.

Depending on rich people is like building on sand.

 

If I think the warlord is being an ass I tell him one of my mother’s Blib stories.  She had a lot of them and they all ended the same way, hell for Blib.  He always managed to get another job though; Blib had a facility for survival that I always admired.

 

If I ran a grocery store…..

Customer service rules for Allegra’s grocery store

1.  We’re here to sell you items and services you need at a sufficient profit that we can pay ourselves, our suppliers and our taxes, and do it at competitive prices.  When prices are higher than at competitors, we want to believe that this store, as a shopping and working environment, is worth the extra money.  If you think it isn’t, we believe you have the right to shop elsewhere.

2.  Everybody who walks into this store is assumed to be a decent human being.  If you act as if this isn’t true, you will be directed to this code of conduct and you may be asked to leave.

3.  The washrooms and a glassed-in soundproof box (The Silent Zone) are close to the front of the store.  The washrooms are there because the older the managers get the more they appreciate a clean handy washroom.  The glassed in soundproof box is for those times when children and persons with developmental or psychological disabilities just decide to scream for a while or need to be in a less stimulating environment.  It has reasonably comfortable plastic chairs, there’s nothing in there that can be broken (easily) and no piped in music.  It is not a place to park unsupervised children.  It is a place you can go sit down if you feel dizzy or tired.

4.  The staff in this store are trained and expected to be clean, courteous, accurate and professional.  Let us know if they aren’t.  Complaints about piercings and tattoos will be cheerfully ignored.

5.  The staff is encouraged to make decisions concerning their own safety and the safety of patrons in accordance with their training and their best judgment.  If you are stealing, hitting children, or doing anything that will make you famous on the internet, please don’t pull that “The Customer is Always Right” nonsense.

6.  The music in the store is chosen by agreement among the staff, as they have to put up with it for long shifts.  You only have to put up with it for an hour.  There are studies that show that canned music makes patrons spend more money, but our goal is to have happy repeat customers, not shave every dime we can from every person who comes through the door.  If the music is particularly bothersome please ask a cashier to reduce the volume.

7.  Studies have shown that you make more money if you put the highest markup items at eye level.  This store is set up so that the most commonly purchased items are between eye and waist level on an average adult.  We face up the goods so you can read them easily and will do our best to accommodate shoppers with special requirements.

8.  Persons caught consuming non-prescription drugs, tobacco or alcohol on the premises will be fired or banned.

9.  Please have your money or payment method ready when you come to the till.  As far as we’re concerned you can take your time, but the customer behind you will want to kill you.

10.  To the maximum extent possible, this is a no drama zone.  We all want to get in and out of here as fast as possible.  Feuds and domestic disagreements will be asked to move into the Silent Zone, and from there, right out of the store.

11.  Every staff member who deals with the public gets one free “Go F*ck Yourself” every year.  This means that if you are particularly threatening, physically dirty or notably unhygienic, creepy, homo-, xeno- or transphobic, sexist, trying to convert anybody to any religion, racist or otherwise persistently obnoxious, they may tell you in colourful language to leave the store.  If you get two free “Go F*ck Yourself” moments from two different staffers, you will be photographed and permabanned.

12.  Yes, there are security cameras.  They are kept in good repair, and they overlook the parking lot as well as the store.  They are reviewed after every incident and we keep copies off site for three years.

13.  Serving public employees in uniform and staff members get free coffee.  Everyone else will be asked to purchase their coffee or tea.

14.  Tampering with or damaging goods, whether you do it or someone in your care does it, means you have purchased them.  Repeat offenders will be banned.

15.  Persons who are arrested for theft from this store, or pass bad checks, will have their pictures posted and be asked politely to leave if they are foolish enough to come back.

16.  Patrons must wear footwear and keep what goes under a bikini covered while in public areas of the store.  Two seconds of nipple while nursing an infant gets a hall pass; anybody who complains about women nursing their infants will be cheerfully ignored.

17.  Consensual sex in the store or the parking lot which makes it onto the security cameras will be viewed and mocked by a select group of employees. Participants will be banned. Non-consensual sex will be immediately reported to the authorities.

18.  There are two ways of framing the golden rule.  Do not treat other people how you don’t want to be treated yourself, and behave to others as you want them to behave to you.  We want this environment to be safe, clean, welcoming, honest and, dare we say it, fun.  We will take health and safety seriously, and pledge to do our best to be honest and kind.  So, no firearms.  Please.  Except as carried by on duty professionals.

If you don’t feel obliged to hold up your end of this, Go F*ck Yourself…. and have a nice day!

Lovely New Years

Katie dropped by briefly at Mike’s place before partying elsewhere; Paul and Keith and Jeff and I hung out for a while.  We basically laughed, ate, talked and drank.  Just before midnight Keith and Jeff headed out on foot; just after midnight Paul gave me a lift home.  It was all very convivial and relaxed.  Tom U was there!  it was so nice to see him.  I took bubbly and coconut curry chicken with onions and taters in a crock pot as well as two six packs of beer. Other folks provided fresh cooked salmon with tons o garlic, awesome corn bread, lasagna, meatballs etc.  Trent thanked me for cooking something with no added salt as he isn’t supposed to have any.  He also gave me underwear (but I forgot it at Mike’s).  (He gave some to all the women – it’s folded and packaged to look like a rose.  Katie pounced on hers and pronounced it awesome.)

Today there’s the New Years drop in at Cindy’s place which will involve music and singing and playing and yummy cookies.  Also lots of boring laundry and cleaning before I go.

I consulted the tarot about which vice to attack this year and the result was an extremely annoying “Whichever is the most burdensome, and you have a few to choose from, have fun, and quit whinging.”  Sometimes I wonder about that deck.  Anyway, it’s clear to me what it was trying to tell me and I’m just pouty.

 

Lovely long break

Well, I have taken a break from blogging and a four day break from working, and let me tell you how things went….

Saturday last I did the shopping, picking up a small fresh turkey at Choices plus fixings.  Sunday I cooked for a good chunk of the day and Keith and Paul and, later, Katie, came by and ate what I had been slaving over.  Which was not as juicy as roast birds of yore but still damned good and the skin was amazing.  Monday I spent the whole day with Tammy, who was visiting from out of town, and what a lovely, lovely day we had; I went to pick her up with Katie in tow at 9:30, and then we went to Metrotown and had a chai latte and a bit of a gab fest before Katie went into work; then a quick stop at London Drugs where despite all of Jeff’s dire warnings I purchased him (and Keith) matching birthday presents, being RC helicopters; then since the rain quit for long enough we walked down at New Westminster Quay and then met up with Keith for a late and fabulous lunch at Balkan house (the pork fillet with mushroom sauce was spectacular!) and thus Tammy got to see both kids, which is great since she’s known them for 20 years and has much enjoyed being an ontie to both of them.  Then, we went back to Geekhaus and I sang and played (not long enough to be boring I hope) and drank beer (I was being good because I had to drive) and played with Tammy’s torch phone (I got some songs and video thereon)  then long about 8 I drove her back to her mom’s place in Granville Island environs.  The weather was foul for driving and I hit hydroplaning conditions BOTH ways on the highway, which sucked the proverbial, but made it home in good shape, only to find Katie anxious to catch up on Homeland.  The darned shows are so good that despite having watched all three of the last episodes of S1 I had to watch them again.

Today I am running laundry and dishwashers and dropped off Katie (who has sworn a mighty oath to come home tonight which just makes me laugh my ass off, because she’s going to go out and hang with friends on her Friday night no matter what she says to her mOm on the morn) and picked up food and drink and painkillers and had a facial at Cecil B, which was absolutely wonderful until the moment I realized I’d put Ziva in short term parking at which point I couldn’t relax cause I thought my damned car was going to be towed.  She wasn’t.  Then I realized I hadn’t put the alarm on at the house and rabbited home, and all was well there, so I scraped about a bunny’s worth of fur off Margot while she made her ineffectual and entirely pointless growling noise, and cleaned all the cat litter off her paws and the grunge off her bum, and when I came downstairs to collapse in front of Plants Vs Zombies for half an hour, ended up scraping hair off Eddie, who for once seemed to be okay with it.

Now I am contemplating a late and leisurely lunch of leftovers and honestly, I don’t think I’ve felt this good in ages.  Oh, and I sent my spare fascinator (there’s a combination of English words you don’t hear frequently) back with the lovely Tammy so her mOm could wear it for New Years’ and at some point Keith will go collect it as he can see her condo from where he works.  My cunning plan to have people meet each other at my behest when I’m not around continues!  And Tammy’s mOm is extraordinarily well connected in the arts and fundraising communities in Vancouver, so you can’t say I’m providing an introduction that won’t be to everyone’s benefit.  I briefly saw her condo which was resplendent with Christmas decorations of subtlety and taste.  Hell, someone’s got to do it.

I send all who have been wondering where I’ve been the best of the season, and I hope you all have a safe and comfy New Years’ Eve.  And may the blessings of temperance, civility and prosperity follow the excesses of the season.

Mike’s hosting this year’s partay.  It should be a modest and jolly affair.

Happy Sigh

Patricia just showed me a lovely Art Deco platinum and diamond engagement ring.  Yup, her wild Australian laddie has made it official; they’re getting married later this year.

 

I wore my cloak to work.

 

I paid Katie $50 to call me when she’s gone from the house for 24 hours.  I was not worried (seriously, I wasn’t), but I prefer my housemates to not make me wonder at what point I’m obliged to call the police.

 

I will be singing “Dandelions Dreaming” at the Christmas Eve service at church.   Sue is worship leader.