And breath

A blog in which I will be quite ranty, but then mellow out and finish with a photo.

I'm having quite a stressy day. Last time we spoke, I voiced my fears about my metrocentre plans being kablammo'd because of work. Guess what? My metrocentre plans have been kablammo'd because of work. If you don't want to read a long rant about work, here's the short version - I find them to be very phony.
Want the long version? Then I'll go on.

So. There I was, having a weird dream about the sea freezing over, followed by a rather nice deam about kissing some rather nice boy, when suddenly the faint muffled pangs of "sweetness, sweetness I was only joking..." made their way through the pillow and into my eardrums. Yep its 9.15 on Sunday morning, yep its my boss on the phone, yep she wants me to start at 10am.

Anyway, on the plus side its extra hours and extra wages which is never a bad thing of course, and it was only until 4. I was a bit sad, and even got a pang of missing being at my aunties after the trip to tesco, waiting half an hour for yorkshire puddings before we can have the roast, and channel hopping between Dog the bounty hunter re-runs and old movies. That was probably my stomach talking though because right on cue at 12.30 my stomach started rumbling. I got a break at 1 for 20 minutes, nipped across the greggs for a horrible pink sausage roll. I would have had a sandwich but I can never eat them fast enough in the alloted time, and I wanted to save myself for warmed up roast when I got home.

Then I made the 5 second journey from greggs back to clintons, I was about to hog the staff room to nosh my saus but was stopped in my tracks by the sound of copious vomiting from the staff toilet. The staff night out the night before was probably the reason, I think they were all hungover. You know especially old(er) people can't drink without voming the next day.

Now, I don't know if I really talk about this on my blog, but I have a "thing" about people throwing up. Almost a phobia, I guess. I suppose its one of those things that you'd only know if you know the real life Bianca and not the Biancapol-Bianca.
Anyway.
I can throw my own guts up and I'm cool about it, but anyone else mentions feeling nautious around me, and I'm off in a cloud of dust. I once almost got off the bus halfway through my journey and considered walking the rest of the way after I heard the chav girl sat behind me saying she felt sick.
So, I was pretty cool at this point, showing that I'm probably not quite at phobic level yet. My thought process went something like

> "shall I just go in the staff room anyway? No its right next to the toilet, whoever it was will come out and know I've heard her talking to god on the big white telephone and then we'll have the akward 'shall I pretend I didn't hear it?' moment and it will be akward"

>"I don't really want to be that close to someone who has been sick so recently, what if she still feels bad and throws up again?"

>oh yeah, Its totally putting me off my horrible sausage roll that I don't even really want in the first place anyway and I don't want to sit eating and hearing someone throwing up at the same time"

So I turned on my heel and went straight back out again. Walked up wellington square and sat on some benches, I only had my cardigan due to the unexpected series of events that had lead me to being there. I was pretty cold, but there was things going on in town, so I sat and ate and watched a cool brass band of people dressed as toy soldiers. Then I scarpered off back to work and avoided any sickly looking colleagues for the rest of the day.

Right, so continuing my work related rant. At the end of the shift I checked the rota, the one on the wall, compared to the one they gave me right when I started, to find that my only day off this week is Wednesday. Bang goes the metrocentre dream.
The thing is, they didn't even tell me. They mentioned the other week to check the rota's because they've all been chopped and changed, but the last time I went to check there wasn't even one up. So basically if I hadn't been called to work today, I wouldn't know I was in tomorrow and would have got to the metrocentre just as I received a call asking me where the dickens I was, and probably told to come back. So its lucky I got called in today. Also the aforementioned jaunt to Darlo with Laura on Thursday was cut short halfway through by them calling me in to see if I could work. That one wasn't too bad, cause she was like "its OK if you can't do it... ..." but I could tell she really needed me to go, so I thought OK I'll be a nice employee and it'll hold me in good stead with them.

I honestly honestly don't mind doing extra hours, but I really wish they'd give me more notice, y'know? A couple of times I've been halfway through a shift and someone will come up to me and say "can you work later tonight?" and I'm always good about it and say yeah of course. But it messes me around, I mean I could bring a sandwich from home to eat on my unexpected break if I'd know, blah blah blah. And they tax me quite a lot. They've said I can claim it back afterwards, bit its Christmas trogfokkit, I need the money now! Its just a bit disappointing working out how much I'm going to get paid, and then getting my wages to find a third of it gone.
Mainly though, I feel like they don't really give a shit about me, about us temps. They're so massive on "customer service" but they don't give a crap about their employees. Not the temporary ones anyway. I can't really explain it, I just feel like there is a lot that we're supposed to know that they don't seem to have told us much about, we're sort of just left to figure it out almost. My first shift I ever worked there, they showed me how to work the till and by about halfway through my four hours I was left completely as the only person behind the till while the others were mooching around the shop floor. It was alright cause it was pretty easy peasy, but just the fact they did that didn't really sit well with me, it was a little bit daunting. Things like that, things like whenever I ask for change half the time I do, the management come, take some cash out of the till then just forget about it. Moving stock around allll the time, all around the store, and not telling us. Things like that. At the risk of going all Holden Caulfield on yo ass, I find there to be an overwhelming sense of phony with them, as a company.
I don't hate the job, and I don't dislike it, but I think that's because I know I'm not there much longer. And when I compare it to being an elf last year, I really really miss it.

The thing is though, on one hand I feel like I shouldn't even be complaining about it, I'm almost obliged to be on their beck and call as a Christmas temp, its my job to do all the dog work and put my social life second at the drop of a Santa hat. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't even be going to the metrocentre at all. I chose to do this.
Well at least this has taught me the importance of finding a long term job that I'll enjoy.

Alright that's the work rant over. In other stresses, I'm feeling really stressed out because I applied for this amazing job that I wont mention too much about at the moment. Spent a long time making the perfect application and putting a lot of effort into writing a good cover letter and all those things, not really ever expecting as much as a "sorry, no vacancies" back. Then they emailed me and seemed to like my application and asked for more reference details.
So I've been running around like a madman trying to get in touch with all the people I need to. I've contacted two of the people from my Romania days and they've been ace and said they would do me references, but I haven't heard anything from them for about four days and I don't want to get in touch with them again being all pushy-pushy, but maybe I'll have to.
The most recent ones though are giving me massive grief, the elf job. I've had a nightmare with them, calling and calling back again and again only for The Mall to say they can't give me a reference because I was only a temp. Well thanks for the slap in the face. I worked my ass off at the job, I really did, I was the only elf who went to the effort of even elfing up - (round blusher cheeks and green eyeshadow AND stripey tights yo!). I was the ONLY person to get there on time last year when it proper snowed and nobody else turned up for ages afterwards.
And they wont even give me a quick reference. I thought I had a backup via the agency but I've called them, the woman was so unhelpful and after I'd relayed everything to her, she told me I'd have to email them. Whyyy! Why do I have to email what I've just told you?! So I was polite and cool with it, emailed them and still nothing back. Tomorrow I'm going to have to get on every ones backs.
I don't want to leave my reference details too late or they'll think I'm messing them about and I'm not interested, and I reallllly don't want them to think that.

Haha oh God. I'm getting flustered even writing all this out.
If you got to the end of this post, let me know and you'll get a prize. If not, I don't blame ya.

(maybe I should get a job as typist, I'm pretty fast!)

Right Dirty Dancing is just about to start and my estrogen is calling me to it.