going out of my mind

Restaurant work is tiring, but more in a mental way. I hate incompetence, whether it lies in the workers here, or the customers. Dealing with people everyday from 11 to 10… It’s enough to drive a man crazy.

I’m there right now, and I can feel my anger rising with each phone call coming in.

First of all, ANSWER MY QUESTIONS. When I ask “You want a delivery? Ok, what’s your address?”, it does NOT mean you can just ignore me and go for your order. Minor annoyance, but please people, this isn’t rocket science. I ask the questions, you answer the questions, I get you your food.

Second… What the hell is “H9”?? I know that we do put letters and numbers on the menu (which is a retarded idea because it leads to this), but please don’t order your food like that. I can write down Fried Rice and also automatically know the price (once you’ve been at it a while, the prices become more familiar than family), but with “H9”, I have to take a moment to hunt it down. Jesus, why do you think I say “H9? The fried rice?” every time you use that stupid letter-number combo!? Because I’m trying to hint at you to STOP. I can’t be expected to memorize about 200 letter-number combos, the meal associated with it, and the price too. Sheesh… Just say fried rice.

Third, be direct with what you want. “I want a shrimp egg foo young”. But whenever I ask “Large or small”, they say small. Dude, if you want a small, say it. You’re just lucky I’m nice and I didn’t leave it at that, or else I would have charged you for a large. The customers around here are cheap as hell, so I know they mostly want smalls…

There’s also the “Can I have some more soy sauce?” question.. I don’t mind giving extra, but goddamn, if you want extra soy sauce, sweet and sour sauce, another fork, AND a plate, TELL ME ALL AT ONCE. I don’t want to walk back and forth a billion times for such small things. Grrr…

Stupid stupid chefs. I’m in charge of answering the phones, taking orders from whoever comes in here, AND getting the food packed up. When business is slow, that’s fine. But as soon as people start calling, the system breaks down. All of a sudden, you got people at the front ready to pick up their food, but their food isn’t ready yet because I’m answering phones. As soon as I’m done with the phone, it rings again. One person can’t do all of this. The chefs also idle around when this is happening, because they don’t speak English and so can’t contribute to it. Maybe they pack up the food (one of them knows how to), but they can’t work the register because they didn’t bother learning that. So again, we’ve stopped progressing. It’s annoying to the customers, and it’s annoying to me.

Other stupid things:
Them: “Where’s the shrimp egg foo young on the menu?”
Me: *points at the exact spot, its under “Egg Foo Young”* “It’s right here.”
Them: “And which one is it? The combination?”
Me: “…No, it’s the one the says shrimp.”

Them: “What comes in the lunch special?”
Me: *thinks to myself ‘READ THE GODDAMN MENU. IT SAYS IT RIGHT UNDER LUNCH SPECIAL’* and says “Shrimp fried rice, an eggroll, and a soda. After 3, no soda and add $1.25 to the price”.

Them: “I want a small pan fried noodle.”
Me: “Ok, what kind of meat?”
Them: “Meat, I don’t want no meat.”
Me: “Ok… but you need meat. Beef, chicken, shrimp.. it’s on the menu.”
Them: “No.. I want the side order of it.” (sounds really frustrated)
Me: “Ohh.. Sorry, you threw me off when you said ‘small’. The side order doesn’t come in a large or small. Just one size.” (feeling really frustrated)
Them: “Oh, ok. I want a small pan fried noodle.”

Them: “How much is the large orange chicken?”
Me: *I tell him*
Them: “Well, I don’t want a large. I’m just eating by myself, that’s too much.”
Me: “There’s also a small..”
Them: “Oh, how much is that?”

Them: “The lunch special comes with shrimp fried rice, how about the normal one?”
Me: “It comes with white rice.”
Them: “So just the chicken and sweet and sour rice?” (what on earth is sweet and sour rice?)
Me: “No, white rice.”
Them: “Sweet and sour and rice?”
Me: “White rice.” 

I can not stand incompetence! And I see it all the time.. Sad face here. All this is just the stuff I can remember in a few minutes. There’s a bunch more where this came from. I hate it, it’s making me crazy. So mad. But I do it every week because it gives my mom a break. And she still has the audacity to yell at me for tiny things.. To demand it of me (yesterday, she asked me to work and I said I’d think about it and she kept asking over and over. God, I said I’d think about it), and to say it is my duty.

I don’t get paid for this.. Jessica did, and that is bullshit. She’s family, (uncle’s daughter and my uncle owns half of this) and I’m family, so what’s the difference? Eh, I’ll talk about that another time. Point is, I hate this stuff, AND I get lectured on top of that.

free? free!?

I’m feeling good right now! Not only did my free BusinessWeek (one year!) actually go through, I also got my FREE mousepad tonight! There’s always these little offers for free stuff, and man, I am LOVING them!

What else do I have coming? Entertainment Weekly (6 months, I think), Newsweek (8 issues), Science Illustrated (3 issues), two years to a tennis magazine, a planned one year sub to Wired, and one year to Popular Mechanics. I should be getting a Mountain Dew wristband soon. Heck, I should (if it goes through) be getting a $15 check in the mail! All of this.. free. There’s probably a few other things I’m forgetting too. And as always, I get $5 Amazon gift cards all the time.

Ah, feeling content right now.

sour like lemons

Ok, so today, I was supposed to have a job interview. I showered, got dressed (semi-formal), and was on my way to the train station when the lady called and said that the interview is moved to tomorrow. But I guess that’s fine, cause after hearing what I would have had to do for the interview, I’m kind of glad I didn’t go.

Demonstrate what I can do on the guitar, answer some questions, and then listen to some music and jump in and start playing? Yeah.. I totally can’t do the last one. I have bad ears and zero creativity. So I guess I’m glad there was no interview. But I still kind of wish I had a job.

Oh well. I got my free lemonade mixes and Google Gone stickers in the mail today, so not too bad of a day.

hanging by a thread

Today was pretty amazing! In fact, the whole week was! But let’s just focus on today for now.

So we all went to D&B’s, and the bad thing was that we didn’t have enough adults. We needed one adult for every 6 minors, and we were wondering how we would get past that.

But we just went for it, with all our charm mustered forth and it worked. The guy was pretty nice, and after us promising that we wouldn’t (and we didn’t) get in trouble, we were allowed up!

The best part of D&B for me was the claw machine. I had never won once at it before. I haven’t even tried one since I was about 6, but today, Michelle noticed that one of the teddy bears in there looked like Steve (he’s a stuffed dog), and that Bianca would be so happy if I could get it.

So I asked Michelle if she could swipe her card (I was out of credit), because I just knew that I had to get that bear. It was so close in front of me, how could I just let it go? She swiped, and I aligned the claws painstakingly, looking in front, back, and side.

The claw drops.. latches on to the bear.. rises.. but the bear slips from it. Anyone watching would have groaned, because it was clear that the claw would not be able to grab it. And you know what? I pulled a miracle that day.

Rising with the claw was the bear. No, the claw didn’t actually grab onto the bear, but a single thread from the bear’s jersey had been caught on the claw! I stared in disbelief, and began praying under my breath that the thread would not snap before it got there. And it didn’t. We knocked the machine around, and the bear fell down. It was an incredible feeling!

I have never ever won, but that one time, I knew that I had to, was going to, get that bear. And I did. On my first try. Hanging by one thread. Beat that!

It must have been destiny for me to get that bear. What are the chances?

We (her and I) decided to name it William (Will). I won’t be able to see her much this summer, so I hope that the bear will be a reminder to her that this dorky guy out there really loves her!

the curse of being young

No one ever takes you seriously when you’re a kid. I thought that since I turned 16 two months ago, people would start listening to me more. Nope, I’ve just been disappointed so far.

Two summers ago, when I was 14, I tried looking for a job and was rejected by every store I went to because I wasn’t old enough. This summer, I was interested in writing for Examiner.com and I figured that I’m 16 now, so I should be able to work, right? After all, 16 is when you don’t need a Worker’s Permit to be employed, so 16 is the magical age for working?? Wrong. I hit a snag again.

I applied for Examiner.com, and I actually wrote a decent application. They emailed me back in 2 days telling me that I was accepted. But while I was skimming through the email (it was long), I noticed that they said “All Examiners must be 18 years or older”. Foiled by my age once again.

Look, Examiner.com isn’t even that great of a site. Their content is mediocre at best, and mostly just bad from what I saw. I took a look at what the Chicago Technology Examiners wrote. “I recently picked up a Nikon CoolPix S560 digital camera and I have to say for less than $200.00 it takes great photos.  It has a 10 megapixel zoom..”. Are you kidding me!? What on earth is a megapixel zoom to begin with!? Take a look at the rest of his article over here.

I can definitely write better than he can. I also know way more about technology than this guy does. But this guy was chosen over me. Why? Because I’m not 18. Isn’t that stupid? I’m old enough to legally have sex in over half the United States, but I’m not old enough to write some articles for this site.

No, I knew this site was crap when I was applying. But I was hoping that I could build up an online writing portfolio here and maybe get my name out there since Examiner.com has an Alexa rank of 519. The same company that owns it also owns three newspapers.

It just makes me mad that I can’t write for them simply because I’m not 18. It makes me even madder when I see that crap writers such as Richard Roth get in. Fine, Examiner.com. Go fill up your site with crap. I’ll find something else to do with my summer.

confidence meets reality

The past month or so has been really good to me. I’ve been feeling really incredible lately, and it seems like my luck will never run dry.

Let’s see.. Ok, so I’m doing relatively well in school. Did good on a Pre-Calc test, Mandarin quiz, and I just turned in my WHOLE unit for Physics!! Whoo, talk about overachiever?? Aha, ok, so maybe that’s my duty, but still, I feel good.

Music.. All of the music I got recently has been free, AND it’s legit, AND it’s really good! A lot of independent artists out there have good music, but it goes undiscovered. It’s a shame really, cause what they put out is sometimes better than mainstream music (most is crap though).

And then there’s my job prospects for the summer! I applied yesterday to be a writer at this site (it’s legit, and professional). Then today, my friend referred me to a woman who was looking for music teachers, and guess what? I play guitar! So I quickly signed up, and now I’m waiting for a response.

But life’s never easy. If it was, it’d be great, but here’s what’s probably going to happen. My grades were good for the past few tests, and I might do decent on my finals (they start tomorrow), but my grades will still end up crap.

And those job leads? That writer thing I’ll probably turn down. If I get in anyways. And if I don’t, I’d be pissed because they have a lot of crappy writers writing for them anyways. If I do, they’ll ask for an SSN, which I’m not secure with handing out to strangers. I’m also 16, so they’ll probably reject me as soon as they go through my records. Cause no one seems to want to hire under 18 year olds.

And then being a music teacher would be great, but let’s face the facts. I’ve only been playing for two years, and I’ve never been serious about practicing. So I’m no good at all. If they had to choose between me and the good guitarists, who would they choose? Them.

I’ve been feeling really good recently, but it’s time to face reality. It’s not going to end out awesome in the end. Maybe it’ll turn out decent, but it’s stupid to put so much hope in all this.

rain, rain, go away

Grr, I was supposed to study this weekend and get work done, but I ended up not doing either. Procrastination runs deep in me. So as soon as I’m done with this blog post, I’m moving my laptop upstairs so I can work.

Earlier, I was on the phone with Michelle and I could hear it start raining. And it was raining hard. I told Michelle, but she said it wasn’t raining on her side. Weird? Well, it stopped raining after 15 or 20 seconds. I got up, looked out the window, and it was so sunny and bright. But my window was wet. And then, it started to rain hard at Michelle’s end, but that also stopped after 20 seconds! Freak weather.

Hmm, what else? Well, I finished filling out an application for this site. I wanna be accepted, because then, I’ll be a professional writer with a title. That’s something I’ve dreamed of for a long time, but probably never going to happen.

This has been a mediocre weekend at best.. I guess it’s time to go do that homework. *sad face!*