I can't stand people that bring their own bags.

Moreso if it is to the grocery store that I work at.

Now, I don't mean the title of that in any personal attack or anything. I am very certain that, those who bring their own bags for grocery sacking, that they themselves are very nice, upstanding citizens of our society. But, really, allow me to give you some insight into why this bothers me so much.


As a sacker for a grocery store, I am expected to complete my tasks with an order in a swift, timely manner. Even more if the checker in front of me also happens to be in the Top 3 Fastest Checkers in the district. This means that, as items come down the conveyor belt and reach my area of reach, I need to get them sacked up in, circumstance depending, an amount at least 5 or higher, and get them into a shopping cart behind me, ready to do the same immediately after. The plastic bags we have are set up in such a way that we can do this efficiently, without having to worry about opening cloth or paper bags to make way for the variety of foods and boxes that are accumulating slowly in a gruesome, conglomafuck in front of us. We establish a sort of rhythm, if you will. A concept that...

I...

... am quite...

... familiar with.

Needless to say, I find my groove, and things get done.

How

Ev

 

Er 

This becomes increasingly, stupidly difficult when I prepare to start stuffing cans and veggies into plastic bags, and you decide to drop a pile of cloth bags in front of my workspace, and then expect the order to get done in just as much of a hurry.

Whenever you present to me these particular bags, this brings up several annoying factors that slow the assembly line down tenfold.

1. The bags tend to be of many varying sizes, none of which actually will fit onto the stand set up for groceries to rest comfortably while bagging ensues.
2. The bags tend to lack any necessary hooks or loops that will fit the holder for the plastic bags and keep them open, thus, the bag keeps folding in on itself, and I keep having to waste time to reopen it.
3. Sometimes, they don't even have flat bottoms in them, to give the groceries (75% of which tend to be in jars, cans or boxes) a foundation of which to rest on, and sometimes aren't even designed to be flat on the bottom at all! This adds clutter and makes for a very difficult task of keeping things organized and balanced, and keep them from spilling out at random.
4. Sometimes, the bags smell, because you never wash them. Ew.
5. You either have far too many, or far too little, and expect me to make magic happen with whatever options are available. While, as I've mentioned, I am struggling to fit the bag down, keep it open, keep it from falling off the stand, put items in, while it still refuses to stay open, and attempting to complete the task as quickly as you would expect it to otherwise take.

My preference, personally? I wish that folks would just deal with the fact that grocery stores have bags, made specifically for the use of bagging, that help the whole process go by a lot faster. Granted, I wish they were slightly larger as to fit the alarming amount of very large meats from the back of the store, but either way, they fit onto the stand for which they were made, they allow for quick speeds, and they are good for the organization of items, which I take advantage of to ensure your groceries do not smush and/or climb around all over each other while you try to take that sharp curve on the way back home.


I can sort of understand that there's, like, some kind of environmental advantage to this 'bring your own bags' thing, but... man, to me, the guy doing all of the packing, it really just doesn't seem worth it, especially if it means that dealing with these aggravating bags results in your dissatisfaction when I can't match up to a normal job that would usually come about with the plastic ones.


I have other work gripes, but I think I'll just hold off on those until later. We get to discuss the parking lot issues, guys!

 

Hey, I ain't dead.

To be honest, I'm just unsure about what to put here as of late. Life's been such a blur. I will say, though, the grocery store job's been going well! Just... y'know, not very stellar pay, but hey, take what you can get in this economy, right?


I might actually make this a placeholder for comic concepts and things like that once I start getting that project into full swing. That'd be kinda cool.


Well, either way, t'is 3:06AM. I'm gonna doodle and then sleeps.

I love my sister.

The last few days have been a bit of a blur. I've finally got work sorta going at the Kroger grocery store, although I have yet to really do any "work", yet. Just a bunch of training modules on their computer system teaching me about shoplifting, chemical cleanup, great customer service, all filled with delightfully bland CDi-quality animation.

Though, I'm pretty sure these guys would have made things more entertaining.

On the plus side, despite how simple these modules were designed, it took me an extra hour to finish them all off today, so I got a little bit more pay set aside for my first paycheck later on down the road.

But really, the one thing that I've been pretty chipper about has been a visit from my little sister. Granted, growing up, we were practically at each others' throats on a constant basis, and hardly agreed with anything. She wanted to chill, I wanted to chill on the computer. She wanted to play with figurines, I wanted to stick with my video games. She wanted to hang in my bedroom, I liked keeping things to myself. It was a rocky relationship that hardly ever worked in synchronization between the two of us, but over the years, I'd like to think we've improved slightly.

Nowadays, that I'm not at the house anymore, she'll come around (she drives now, too!) and hang for the weekend whenever she has off time from the high school. Our main pasttime? Why, videogames, of course! And how! Mario Kart, Pokemon Puzzle League, Mario Party 2, a ton of Gamecube favorites, and more. We rock that multiplayer stuff like none other, and we have a blast.

As of this moment, though, she's toying around with the Chaos Garden in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. Such was another pastime back in the days of our childhood. Most of the time we played, we paid plenty of attention to making sure these cute, bubbly monstrosities grew up into bigger, stronger bubbly monstrosities.

I mean, how on earth can you say 'no' to this face?

And all I'm really doing right now is just watching her have fun, occasionally stepping in to lend a hand if a particular stage happens to be kicking her ass around. Which, if any of you have ever played the latter half of the game's space stages, you guys will know what I'm talking about.

I think while she keeps herself busy for now, I'll get back to sketching and being a dumb ol' artist and all that nonsense. I will say, at some point, I'm gonna have to make things happen with this artsin' shtick I have for myself.

So, with that, I bid y'guys adeiu.

[ It should be noted that the above images are copyright to both Nintendo and Sega/SonicTeam, respectively. Just sayin'. ]

Man, this thing's hard to write for.

What's the point of the whole blogging thing, I wonder? Well, some people use it for idle passing of thoughts. Some people use it to build up a base from which they can monetize and profit (which, admittedly, I might try way later on, maybe, what with the AdSense and all), and some folks have a need to inform the public about their daily-to-semi-daily lives.

For me, this is something interesting I can do from time to time, especially when something chaotic and/or interesting happens to me. Even though I'm uncertain about who all actually reads this right now, it kinda feels good to pretend I just have this large and boisterous crowd to which I can pander to about my life events. And pretend that they enjoy every moment of it.

You love me! You -really love me-!

And, I guess, until that happens, the only thing I really can do is just write a bunch of stuff, and perhaps somebody with that special google search will somehow perchance stumble upon these ramblings. That'd be pretty cool, actually!

At the moment, I've just finished off some chocolate wafers with a glass of milk, and as late as it is, I probably still have an hour or so ahead of me. I should probably use that time to write up a script or something! Productivity is the best thing to have. Although, I do have orientation with the local grocery store tomorrow evening -- I'm a liiittle nervous, but... it'll be my first job in a while. Money is good!

But dealing with the public really sucks. I wonder if I'll really be okay...

We all gotta do it at some point or another, right...? I just gotta bite the bullet, and do my best to make money like no other.

Yeah. Grocery sacker can totally do this, right? I'm down.

You can't beat a good cup of ice cream.

As of this current typing, I have in my hands a mammoth three-scoops-worth bowl of Reese's Ice Cream, topped with Reese's peanut butter sauce, sprinkled with a crushed variety of Reese's peanut butter cups. It is a sweet tooth marvel.

Look at this masterpiece. It is an absolute treasure.

There's something to be said about ice cream like this. Baskin Robbins has always been a childhood favorite, and I was ecstatic to learn when I moved out here three years ago that there was one just a fifteen minutes' walk from here/3 minutes drive from here. And they still have all of the wonderful flavors that I can recall from my growing up days in Houston. Of course, I recognize that changes have come with the times, so not every flavor is still present. But, at the very least, the good ones are.

Like, you know, triple-scoop Reese's ice cream topped with everything else that can make it that much worse for me, but better for my taste buds.

My roommate lamented upon witnessing my marvelous ice cream, after he had just gobbled up the miniature chocolate cone with Reese's ice cream and sprinkles. He had apparently forgotten that you can pretty much do the whole sprinkles thing with even the ice cream of my own choosing, and thought it was just cone-specific.

So, to better help remind him for his future purchases, I gave him my own little tidbit of knowledge in regards to the glorious Baskin Robbins;

"Baskin Robbins is very much like Subway, except in that it's not really good for you."

'Nuff said.

Now, I must finish my unhealthy dessert. Cheers!

GUYS.

HEY, GUYS.

It's totally International Pancake Day at IHOP.

Dude, just look at that short stack. Delicious.

You know what I'm gonna do? I'm totally going to go out there and go get me a free short stack, and enjoy it like none other. Because the best things in life are free, and when those things include free pancakes without question, there is no other recourse than to just pounce on the opportunity, and never let it go. And eat it.

Eat. It.

Which is what I'm going to go ahead and go do, now.

GO TO IHOP, GUYS. 

Trying to sleep sucks.

And I only make it worse on myself by ingesting such wonderful things such as coffee and Dr. Pepper.

It is now 2:00 A.M., and I'm still wide awake. I don't really feel like accomplishing a whole lot -- honestly, all I really wanna do is just sit here and listen to music until I get tired, I guess. Which kinda sucks, because there are pictures I owe people, and it'd be great to actually get something more done than just "listen to video game music and stare at the T.V. expecting something to change".

I also have a large-scale story that I want to tell ze world, but I'm having major difficulties just pressing forward and getting started with it. And I have to ask, why do I struggle so hard to just get to work?

Partly, it seems to just be that I have all of these story arcs in mind, but no fluent way to put everything on paper so that it all flows along like a perfect stream of water. A current of H20, if you will.

You know, one of these things.

(Y'know I spent about five minutes trying to find a good picture for that? That's what I'm preferring to do with my time, apparently. The mind boggles.)

But, silly analogies aside, that really is one of my major hang-ups. I have a lot of cool settings for story material, but stringing them together is proving to be, apparently, too intimidating for me. I guess I just fear putting the pieces down in the puzzle, only to find that I'm missing a few, or that I tried to shove a four-pegged jigsaw piece unceremoniously into the corner instead. As successful as I would like my story to be, I have to understand that it all can't be perfect, but damn it all, if I won't do my best to try to make it so.

The only other thing truly getting in my way (aside from the lack of other conceived character designs, antagonist or otherwise) is just the opening to the whole thing, which, I must admit, is almost 100% figured out. That part's simple enough. It's just a matter of actually sitting down for a day and doing it, really.

Oh, right. Backgrounds and perspective. That's another thing I consider myself absolutely dreadful at, that I don't want to do a huge, epic story with when the skill level is so heinously low. But, other major series have done well with some aspects that I would, after serious thought, consider to be worthy of some improvement.

I guess the only thing I should really focus on is simply getting started, and then afterward, work on improving my skill level from there. After all, one of my favorite web comics started off pretty low on the bar right at the start, and now, it brandishes proportional and colouring skills that I envy so hard.

So, who knows.

Maybe I should get started tomorrow...

Or tonight, if I don't get sleepy for another two hours...

Perhaps some scriptwriting would do.

   

Thank you, Dr. Pepper, for your wonderful caffeinated properties!

Let's be productive.

I can only imagine how many people will actually see this.

Perhaps more than just one, I would think. But, for now, this is merely a test-post just so I can proclaim to myself, "hey, I made a post, how about that! Now maybe I can be happy I did something, today, in addition to reading other more humorous blogs and playing Wind Waker all day!


And now, I shall spend the next few hours conjuring up some amount of caffeine. Maybe from a soda. Or a coffee...

Whatever's healthier.