Well, I've been working at Big & Huge Electronics for a few months now, and let me say, it's been an experience.
This is my first retail job. Previously, I had experienced the holiday season from the outside, as a consumer. Let me tell you, it's craziness.
First off, Big & Huge hired me as a product specialist, specifically to sell security cameras. So naturally they stuck me in Pro Video, where I had zero knowledge. So I hung around and watched the other salespeople and learned a few things about film making and cameras and workflow and non-linear editing and so forth. I've broadened my knowledge base. And I've learned some valuable things. Specifically, I've learned how to be a BS artist. At least once a week, someone asks me what camera I shoot with or offers me a job on a movie shoot. And I have to tell them that I have only the sketchiest idea of what it is the cameras are for.
I've also learned a good deal of human behavior, working at Big & Huge. Specifically, I've learned that people are nuts. Over 5,000 people walk through our doors on an average, off-season day, so if even 10% of them are nuts that's still 500 whackadoos and half of them seem to want to talk to me. Seriously, I keep a bottle of Purell in my vest pocket, and frequently feel the need to wash my hands. Working in the security camera department I get a lot of perverts who want to buy cameras hidden in teddy bears. Which I then sell them, of course.
Bottom line, though- this is, by far, the best job I've ever had. I'm happy. Not content, or too lazy to look for a better job, or apathetic- genuinely happy in my work.
Ain't that something?
Sunday, January 20, 2008
What's worth doing is worth doing for money.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
Alone in the dark with my thoughts.
Being a father is seriously weird. It seems as though my wife was born knowing how to do all this stuff- as if motherhood is hardwired in the female DNA. I, on the other hand, am flailing helplessly through a sea of diapers and bottles and teeny tiney itty bitty little clothes.
First off, the hospital. After 30 hours and two epidurals, we have a screaming, slimey, blueish purpleish screaming thing, with toes that resemble nothing more than corn niblets, microscopic brownish-red nails, way more hair than I expected, and enormous dark eyes.
He looked at me. Right there in the delivery room. Everyone told me he wouldn't open his eyes for a few days, that he won't be able to see much more than light and dark for the first few months, but dagnabbit that boy looked me right square in the eye and held my gaze, like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes he star'd at the Pacific and feverishly calculated the cost of all that beachfront property.
He looked at me as if to say, well, here I am. What are you gonna do now, tough guy?
First off, I blubbered like a beauty pageant winner. And then I got to work.
Here is this tiny person, I mean an actual functional tiny human being, completely helpless and totally dependent on you for all his bodily needs. That right there is an enormous amount of pressure. That's why I got this new job at Big & Huge Electronics. Good pay, good benefits, good promotion prospects.
I'm hoping I don't screw it up.
What would happen if I lost my job? What would happen if I got hit by a bus? What would happen if there was a sudden zombie apocalypse and we had to make a run to the Arctic Circle, shooting thousands of zombies while roaring through Canada in our armored Winnebago packed to the roof with canned food and diapers and ammo and Adam Sandler DVDs and perhaps a fellow survivor or two. Hell, I don't even have life insurance or a machine gun.
These are the things I worry about on the 2 hour commute home from work. I sit there in the dark, crammed on a bus with my fellow proles snoring around me as we barrel down the Garden State Parkway at a speed just a little over the limit, leaning side to side as we zip in and out of traffic. I sit in the dark and I worry about economic downturns, and biological warfare, and terrorist attacks, and why the bus driver feels it necessary to smoke all that crack right before we leave the Port Authority bus terminal.
I worry about being a bad father. I worry about the screaming, irrational, abusive maniac I know is buried somewhere deep inside of me, and whether it will ever come out. I worry about not being able to provide for my son.
I worry about being a bad role model.
But then I come home, and I pick my son up, and he smiles at me. Honest injun. I know, it's just gas, but it isn't, because he only does it when I smile at him.
And everything is alright.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Thursday, June 14, 2007
I've had a tough day, due to lack of drugs.
Hate.
Anger.
Rage.
Murder death kill.
My back is somewhat better, so I stopped taking the Flexeril my doctor prescribed.
And now I want to set people on fire and punch buildings.
I know what I typed. I want to punch buildings right in their smug little cornicing.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
A guy cut me off in traffic. So I pulled into the oncoming lane, cut him off, boxed him in, and parked my truck so I could yell at him. Unfortunately, he got away, and I don;t have a gun. Instead, I summoned all my psychic energy and focused all my hate on him, trying to hate him to death.
I don't actually have any psychic powers but tried it just in case any latent psychic abilities chose that moment to manifest themselves.
The guy's head did not explode but I think his car's blue book value depreciated a teeny tiny fraction of a penny, and I'm going to have to settle for that.
Then I went to a pizza store to move a perfectly good camera, just because they decided to move the cash register.
I had my MP3 jammed into my ears, listening to Eitan Katz, in a desperate bid to lower my blood pressure, and also so no idiots could talk to me.
An idiot came up to me, and started talking.
I glowered at him, but he seemed unperturbed, so after about five minutes I took the headphones off and snarled "what?"
"What kind of calzones do you have?"
"I don't work here." I said. I have a drill in my hand and I'm wearing my company's uniform shirt with the name and logo on it, not the pizza store logo. Also, I wasn't wearing an apron.
"But I just want to know what kind of calzones you have!"
I did not leap over the counter and throttle the man in order to keep him from reproducing, but it was a near thing.
Then three more people did it to me- asked me a pizza related question and then argued with me when I explained that I did not work for the pizza store.
I need a drink.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Shock Report: Goyim may actually be human beings, new study suggests. Satmer not convinced.
A Conservative Rabbi from Minnesota has come up with what he calls a "hechsher tzedek", a certification testifying to the company's commitment to social justice issues.
Now, I've said it before and I'll say it again- hearing "justice" from a liberal is like hearing "freedom" from a conservative, a code word meaning you aren't going to get any. And The Forward is the one hyping this, and their beef (ha!) with Rubashkin is well known, as is PETA's.
Now, as an evil neocon, I support the abuse of workers and the torture of animals and burning orphanages and so forth. Also, most if not all of the meat in my freezer is from Rubashkin- they are, after all, the largest kosher meat company in the US. But, as much as I hate hippies (and Rabbi Morris Allen seems like a prime example of the type), he might have a point.
I am an alarm installer, and I do a lot of installations and maintenance work for a lot of Jewish owned businesses in New Jersey and New York. Many if not most employ illegal immigrants, and treat them like dirt. I know they get paid peanuts and get abused constantly.
How do I know this?
I never quite learned the trick of treating certain people differently, I guess. I know you are supposed to treat your social inferiors a certain way, your peers another way, and your social betters yet another way, but I've never been able to pull this off.
That's right. I talk to Mexicans like they're human beings, not like they're horses who have unaccountably learned to talk and wear clothes but are still fit for nothing but drudgery.
I get told things most employers never hear.
This hechsher tzedek may not be a bad idea after all. Maybe a movement in the heimishe velt to learn how to treat other people like human beings btzelem Elokim (see this post) is something that is sorely needed.
H/T Y-Love
Monday, May 14, 2007
Ye Olde Security System
I have a professional interest in crime, being a security systems specialist. So it was with great and geeky joy that I found these examples of early CCTV systems, which were so expensive that only banks and other high risk targets could afford them. Now, of course, you can get a top of the line hardcore security system for your business or home for less than five grand.
Price is not the only thing that has changed. I liked the people who, after a robbery, picked up cash dropped by the perps and put it back on the counter.
Video One
Video Two
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Which way do I go, which way do I go?
If not for my Garmin, I'd be lost a lot more often than I am. Unfortunately, here in Lakewood NJ, they are building faster than the map people can draw. I hate going to a customer and the thing says "Driving off map!!!" in a panic, like my GPS unit is actually sentient and doesn't want to die because it's stuck to the windshield of some moron who's just driven into the woods.
I know for a fact that my GPS is self aware by the smug and condescending tone of voice it uses when it tells me how big a moron I am for making a wrong turn anyway despite its best efforts. It sounds like Alfred when Bruce Wayne comes back to the Batcave with his Batsuit in tatters and the Batmobile is smoking and the Batsciatica is acting up again.
Maybe we could give all GPS units little arms so they can steer the car themselves and little legs so they can jump out of cars being driven into the woods by an achy Batman. I don't know how it would work with the Three Laws but the Garmins sure would appreciate it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make a left turn onto UNKNOWN
