Mike Literman

So the second thing. Not that big a deal a day later, but nonetheless, I feel this should be brought to everyone’s attention.

So you go to a store, usually a gas station or something, and buy something. We’ll say that you are in store for a Snickers and an Iced Tea. So where are you? $2? Maybe? That’s fine? What do you care? You’ve got a crisp $20 on you. Alright, let’s go one step further and assume that you had to use an ATM inside the store. You take out the minimum, which is 90% of the time, a $20 minimum.

So you’ve got your items and your money and you go to the cashier, hand him the stuff, they say how much it is, and you give them the $20. No good. They respond with “Do you have anything smaller? It came to $2, do you have two singles? Now, let me as you, public. If I had two dollars, don’t you think that I would have payed with it? Also, is $20 that really a large bill? Everyone has them. It’s not like I’m buying a single stick of gum with a $100 bill. People handle $20’s all the time.

Make more change and don’t give me a hard time when I am trying to buy something from you with legal tender. You’re lucky I don’t pay you in pennies. You’d be thrilled if I did that.

Sometimes, I get irritated in the morning and then by the end of the day, I have a laundry list of things to have a problem with. So let’s get started, shall we?

I went through the toll booth today and scrounged around for the change to pay. I got it and handed the “gentleman” the card and the change and gave him a sincere “Thank You” to which he responded with “Change on top”. Advice? Suggestion? Demand? I don’t care. I don’t like it. Sorry, to play this game, but you don’t really do anything. You do less than a typical shop cashier because at least they bag items. Did you know, that according to two websites that I did a Google search for to find these results, after 5 years of work, and with zero pre-training or schooling, you can make $40,000 a year. That’s right. Bummer. So in closing, that guy was a dick and if I ever see him again, I will give him the card on top and then all pennies on bottom. No more of this “silver change” garbage.

Number two issue? I can’t remember…what was it? It was a good one, too. Well, sorry. I should have written them down. Once, again, I apologize.

For one year, I worked at Pacific Sunwear, now officially PacSun, at the mall. I liked that job. I was very good at it. I was promoted to Assistant Manager within about 3 months of being there. I liked that position, too. I enjoyed shipments, Black Friday’s, promos, bad customers, etcetera.

Ready for a ridiculous story? Well, here goes.

I had a family come in once. A mother and her son and daughter, both 16-18 years old. I have plugs, and at the time, probably had tunnels so you could see through them, which I wish I hadn’t worn. The boy came up to me, stared at my ears, and the following drivel came out of his mouth:

Dude! You could smoke cigarettes out of your ears! You could smoke cigarettes out of both ears. You could have two chicks smoke cigarettes out of your ears. Dude! You could have two naked chicks smoke blunts out of your ears!

I believe my response was something the lines of, “I suppose.” This entire time, his mom and sister were right there, basically approving of the vomit-esque garbage that was spewing forth from his mouth like if you ate a month old raw chicken sandwich. Why would you ever eat that? Why would you ever say what that kid said?

I was in charge of getting some holiday help and managed to hire some kids that I went to school with at the time. All sucked. One kid fell asleep on the racks of clothes. Idiots.

One gripe, which made it easier to leave, was the fact that you had the following tier of management:

Store Manager
Two Assistant Manager
Associates
Holiday

The Store Manager got all the recognition for everything, no matter what happened. So in my case, I got three “perfect shops”. A perfect shop is when the company hires outside people to shop in your store and test the staff’s competency. I got all three myself, and nailed all of them. Because of that, there were not one, not two, but three bonus’ in my boss’ paycheck and nothing for me. That was bogus as she wasn’t even there. I loved her, and have no complaints, and don’t even mind that the only other time I saw her was downtown in front of a bar with some jerk dude who was smoking a bowl in the middle of the street. No hard feelings if you’re reading this right now.

I ultimately left that company for another similar company in the same mall. I thought it would be better…it was and it wasn’t.

Subject: Your big proud friend in the pants will overshadow the Empire State building.
Body: Your member is big, your member is good, your member beats all men in neighborhood.

Thought I’d share that with you all. Y’all. You’s.

Ahh, state work. What a joke. In the summer of…2001, I worked at a college cleaning dorm rooms. Gross? Brother, no way. It was worth it. Let’s go through my day.

7:00 – Get to work
8:00 – Start working
10:00 – 15 minute break…
10:30 – continue working
12:00 – 30 minute lunch break…
1:00 – Continue working
2:30 – 15 minute break….
3:00 – 4:00 – 15 minutes of work/45 minutes of not-work.

Plus, I got paid like $11/hr which was wicked since I still lived at home and didn’t have any bills except for gas for my car. It was awesome. I don’t think that I had a cell phone yet, either. Awesome.

On top of that, everything left in the dorm rooms was ours to pillage. I got a Sega Saturn, blender, and some other random odds and ends. It was so awesome. I also got to learn how to use those industrial spinning floor cleaner/buffers. First time I used it, I turned it on and ran it right into the wall. Second time, I ran the pad up my leg and gave myself a huge brushburn. After that, smooth sailing. I loved that thing.

I started out cleaning. Like really cleaning. Hands and knees scrubbing floors and windows. There was smoking allowed in the dorms and when you did the windows, which have never been cleaned, there was a yellowish/brown water that came from the squeegee. It was disgusting and I think that saw it and smoked would contemplate quitting. As I progressed and showed that I was a good worker, I graduated to the floor buffer, and then started doing furniture shampooing which was just a machine that was pretty awesome in itself.

We were in all the buildings and all the rooms. I must have cleaned over one hundred rooms that summer. The only thing that wasn’t that great is that if there was a show the night before work, I was dead the next day since I had to get up at 6 to leave at 6:30 to get to work by 7. I fell asleep a few times, but there were tons of beds, and, like I said, it was state work so no one really did a full day’s work.

All in all, it wasn’t bad and I would advise any college kid who lives by a college and might have an “in” to try and get it. I might have tried to get it the following summer but I couldn’t get in.