1.23.2008
Christmas day. Its snowing/sleeting. A group of crazy people have dressed up like elves and are playing ultimate frisbee with heavy metal music in the background. Rock on Santa Claus!
Ultimate Christmas
Pictures at Powell's
1.16.2008
Alisha and I never manage to look good in the same pictures,
which is probably because the camera could not handle
the combined power of our fabulous attractiveness.
Griff, on the other hand, always looks nice. Bastard.
Grow a Pair
1.14.2008
“Is anyone actually going to help me over here?” A woman asks me, speaking loudly across the candy aisle. “I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes to ask someone questions about treadmills and no one has even talked to me.”
I say that I will page someone and do so immediately. The guy that works that department is the typical no neck macho man. He wrestled in Division I, until he got in a fight with his coach and dropped out of college. As he carries a punching bag to someone’s car I tell him, “There’s woman who’s been waiting to ask some questions. Could you help her when you get back?” He nods and looks over. “Which one?” I point, “The lady with the green shirt on.”
The woman comes back to the cash register ten minutes later, and she’s furious. “I have been waiting a long time and then your associate guy walks right past me and helps a man who just got here.” She moved towards the door, speaking loudly, “I don’t have to take this!”
I wanted to feel compassion for her but all I could think was, At least you don’t have to work here.
Most of the women in the store work as cashiers or in apparel. I find being a cashier a bit demeaning. All that forced perkiness is exhausting. “You want to sound happy and cheerful,” my manager told me. “Make the customers feel special.” To me, if somebody needs the cashier at a sports store to make them feel special, they might also need therapy.
I think being consistently happy has a bad effect on your hairline. My female manager, a woman in her mid thirties, attempts a high pony tail so tight that it appears her hair is receding and her face along with it. Picture an overweight, white Janet Jackson. She trained the cashiers and demonstrated for us how we are to greet people. In a high girly voice she squeaks, “Well how are you today? Welcome. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” I think she scares the customers. Her face has become skull-like, permanently fixed with a smile like one of those scary clowns in horror movies.
I can’t blame her, I disintegrate in the same way. After eight hours of being upbeat, putting sugar and happiness into my voice, I begin to feel that I will soon lapse into a diabetic coma. There is one male cashier. He had to fill in when the head cashier went on maternity leave. “I hate this,” he moans. “I should have kicked her in the stomach before she left so that I wouldn’t have to work up here.” He’s joking, I think.
That’s a rough space to navigate, the “I think” territory. The head cashier had her baby on Black Friday--the biggest shopping day of the year. “That’s so selfish,” the senior manager complained. “Couldn’t she have put it off or something?” He’s kidding, I think.
But I wouldn’t put it pass him to be serious. I don’t think there’s much he wouldn’t do to his employees if it meant a higher profit or made him feel more powerful. I once had to scrape glue off a printer. A printer that no one even looks at. So I began rubbing at it with goo gone and a rag, scratching at it with my fingernails. It took me forty minutes to get the sticky mess off. All the while, he was talking and throwing footballs with my male coworkers.
“I think my dog is afraid of me,” he told me. “Him and everybody else,” I respond. I said that, really. Out loud. I dream up a lot of snippy little comments, but rarely let them leave my brain. He laughed and looked at me with a face that said, She’s kidding, I think.
I wasn’t really kidding, but don’t tell my boss. No one likes him, not even the males who get preferential treatment from him. In my store, every promotion has gone to a male. And the commissioned departments are staffed almost exclusively by males. This means that, despite the fact that I work harder than all of them, the men get payed more than I do.
And the manager has covered his ass well. I’m not promoting men because they are male, he could say. I’m promoting them because they have more expertise in these areas. The thing is, these men didn’t come in with more expertise than the women, they went through courses that taught them this knowledge. I have asked several times over the past three months to be trained, but I’m told that there is no company budget for it.
Being trained is a bit overrated anyways. A woman I work with has been the unofficial apparel and footwear manager for three months. She knows where everything goes, how to arrange displays, and actively communicates with the vendors over stock. So when it came time to promote someone to Soft-lines manager the position went to, you guessed it, a male. A male who knows nothing about these departments. He shadowed me for a couple of days to see what needed to be done. Me, the lowest level of the retail food chain, and I showed him how to do his job. I actually had to teach him how to fold.
In his defense, he does have a penis. I wore a softie to work a couple days to see if it would help. In case you don’t know, a softie is a sock or an actual fake penis that women wear in their pants for a variety of reasons. Some women find it empowering; I found it difficult to cross my legs. It was annoying to wear but when my boss started yelling at me, I did have the pleasure of thinking, At least my penis is bigger than yours.
My softie did not improve my job prospects, and so I abandoned the project. It turns out that other people have to know that you have a penis for it to work to your advantage.
Its not that being male is the only thing you can leverage in our store, being cute helps too. A new girl just got hired on in apparel. Within a week, she was promoted to cash lead. She has worked at the register all of three times. “I think the head manager is attracted to her,” one of the women in lower level management told me. “She was supposed to be hired on just for the holiday season, but he’s going to keep her full time.”
He did hire her full time. I’ve been working at the store for four months, but this girl gets more hours than me. I began thinking: Am I not attractive enough? Should I do my hair differently? Does my butt look big in my uniform? Then I realized that I was worrying about how I look to a man I have no intention of sleeping with.
Let me repeat: I have no intention whatsoever of sleeping with my manager. The way he tromps around the store, I have no doubt that he’s into BDSM. While I don’t judge others for this lifestyle, wearing a leather studded collar gives me a rash.
And for all the coaching we’re given on being friendly, he is actually quite rude to customers.
“We can’t refund you your money,” he snaps. “You have no way of proving that the item was damaged before you bought it.”
The customer is obviously intimidated but she doesn’t leave. “I didn’t do anything with it. It was like that when I opened the box.”
Normally returns of this kind are processed with out a problem, but this customer bought a high dollar item and my boss doesn’t want to lose the money. “I’ll make some calls,” he says and walks off.
After he is out of ear shot, I mouth to the woman, “I’m sorry.” She mouths back, “Thanks.”
I was proud of her for standing her ground. It's a tough thing to do. A friend of mine actually consulted a civil rights lawyer about the store. Then she wrote an anonymous letter to the district manager. She never got a response but the head manager asked one of the women to inform him if anything was “going on that he needed to know about.”
“I’m not going to rat anyone out,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he said, patting her shoulder. “Just tell me if, you know, you hear anything interesting.”
I thought of a few “interesting” words to say myself after I heard this. For a while, a lot of the women in the store were on edge. Who did they think sent the letter? Would we get in trouble? It turns out that there was no need to worry, management had already decided who had sent the letter. She works in footwear, and she’s butch. “We think she would be the most bitter,” a manager told me.
Not that she wouldn't have good reason to feel this way. I had heard statistics of women getting paid less than men on average, but now the point is hammered home. If this happens at my one store, I can't imagine how many times it happens nationwide. I'm beginning to feel a little bitter myself.
I try not to let it get to me too much. At least, if it does get to me, I take it out on the lazy male employees. I'm in apparel now and it requires the most work. So every night I run around like crazy, trying to make sure everything gets done. My male coworkers complain. We’re so bored, they say. There’s nothing to do. I offer them things in my department. "You can zip up coats if you want," I tell them. "Or fold these shirts." They tell me that they’re not quite that bored.
I take down signs. I dress mannequins. I clean up the mess left by customers. I never stop moving. As we’re packing up for the night, one of the boys moans, “The manager says we have to set this ad tomorrow morning. I hate having to do that, it takes like 45 minutes.”
“Oh, come on,” I tell him. “Grow a pair.”
Or at least stuff a sock down your pants.
This is even more offensive
1.07.2008
Than the racial profiling I'm told to do on my job.
You'll have to forgive me for ripping off Aaron Mesh's comments on Josiah's blog, but it was just too funny.
I like how the ad implies that Rudy is going to kick the living shit out of those Muslim children.
Also he's going to go back in time and prevent the Bhutto assassination. He's just tough like that.
Posted by: mesh
Pizza Man by Griffin Brown
12.05.2007
Griff has been recording his own music on a program called Garage Band.
Here is his latest masterpiece.
Here is his latest masterpiece.
Thanksgiving
11.24.2007
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Ours was a lovely get together of some of my favorite people. Here are a few pictures from Alisha's camera. The rest are on flkr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10249946@N02/?saved=1
Belated pictures of Venezuela
11.23.2007
Since Griff and I had our camera stolen (or, as we like to put it, involuntarily donated), most of our pictures of Venezuela were lost. Luckily, our friend Ming has saved the day. Here are the ones she sent us.
* No pictures of Griff, as he was doing the Louisiana quick step. Or South American quick step. Whatever it was there was quickness and stepping involved.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh
11.19.2007
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within that body.
Jack Gilbert
*From a lovely book of poetry Abe gave me and Griff.
Christmas Presents
11.14.2007
At a certain unnamed retail store where I work, the employees are now allowed to buy Christmas presents at cost (finally, a perk). Usually this means 50% off or more. This event is for one day only, so if you'd like something, let me know soon.
Love you all,
Adelaide
Haute-couture à la Boston
11.09.2007
People are beginning to notice when I walk around town. They stop and whisper. No, its not the ridiculous makeup--its the clothes.
"Who made that beautiful hat for you?" They ask.
I tell them that one of the most exclusive designers in the country tailor made it for me. Not only that, but she includes with every hat a ridiculously cool jacket and two cook books. It all makes me want to say that "There must be more to life than being really, really good looking."
yay! Thanks Kate. You are, by the way, fabulous.
A
In which, I am related to a lobster
11.04.2007
Seriously cute and much more fun than Kafka. For more Wynn Brown, visit Julie's lovely site: thewynnbaby.blogspot.com
![[collage.jpg]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_HX0RmWE3JSQ/Rys5ARF0cEI/AAAAAAAAAM8/jtQUGoA815g/s1600/collage.jpg)
Walt Whitman
11.01.2007
Abe shared this passage with me today. It is stunningly beautiful.
Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks,
stand up for the stupid and crazy,
devote your income and labor to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God,
have patience and indulgence toward the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown,
or to any man or number of men,
go freely with powerful uneducated persons,
and with the young, and with the mothers or families,
re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book,
and dismiss whatever insults your own soul;
and your very flesh shall be a great poem....
~ Walt Whitman ~
(from the Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855 edition)
On kittens and Crackers
This is a true story about my grandfather as told by a friend of the family:
Dr. Ramsey O'Neal was a leading physician in Hattiesburg for many years. His son Kelly, a local OB/GYN, told me this Halloween story about his dad. Many years ago, when Kelly was a child, Dr. O'Neal was left to hand out Halloween candy while his wife and daughter were at a church function. The O'Neal's lived in a safe neighborhood with sidewalks and on Halloween it was full of children. Never having handed out candy before, Dr. O'Neal did not know the "drill" so when kids would come to the door he would let them put their hands in the bowl and get all the candy they wanted. Not long into the evening he ran out of candy so went to the kitchen to see what else he could give away. In no time he had given away all the fruit, cookies, and graham crackers in the house. Next he went through his pocket change. Kids were still coming and he was out of options. He then remembered the six kittens in a box in the back of the house. Yes, he dropped a kitten in each of the next six bags opened before him! Some were handed back to him, but four managed to make it out of his yard (can you imagine the looks on the parents faces when the child got home with a cat in their trick or treat bag). Kelly said the when Mrs. O'Neal got home she was so angry at her husband (she had already promised the kittens to several friends) that she didn't speak to him for several days! And that, my friends, is a true story!!!! Have a Happy Halloween. Babs
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone??
10.26.2007
It’s nine o’clock in the morning and the store is about to open. I have been at work for over an hour counting money and setting up cashier stations. Ace of Base’s song, All That She Wants plays on the loudspeakers. Again. Spoiler alert: all that she wants, is another baby. Welcome to a day in retail.
“I’m sorry we don’t have much to do,” my manager says to me. “Things will pick up later today.” I ask him if it's okay for me to write while I wait. He thinks about it a second, “I don’t think the head manager would like that.” Other associates are talking to one another, bouncing balls, wandering round aimlessly--but it is my writing that would reflect badly on the company.
I am apparently to just stand. Doing nothing. Even when there are no customers in the store.
“Try to look friendly,” he tells me.
It is at this point that I realize that I don’t want to do retail. If I had any doubts about the validity of applying to masters programs for next year, these doubts are now assuaged.
He calls another manager. “Hey, why don't you bring those shirts forward. I’m going to get Adelaide to fold them. Just thought, you know, that I’d give her something to do.”
I decide that I will start working on my applications tonight.
I am the only cashier on duty, which means no ten minute breaks. While these are legally mandated, it doesn’t really bother me. I would most likely be told to do nothing there as well. “Yeah, just sit there. Try not to drool.”
It is surprisingly hard to not drool, I’ve found. Especially when you’re hungry. But every time I take out my lunch, I get made fun of. It’s hard to take spinach and basmati rice into the public without laughed at as a hippy.
Which is surprising, since Portland is one of the most hippy friendly cities in the country. But in the twenty minutes it takes me to drive from inner Portland to outer Portland, there is a serious shift in demographics. Whereas every barista and bag boy in downtown has bachelors degrees, on my job I am the only one.
A fact that doesn’t seem to be helping me much. “Uh, Jennifer, line one. Jennifer, uh, dammit!” In case you’re wondering, cursing over the loud speaker is never a good thing. Nor is failing to hang up the phone so that the entire store hears you ring up the next customer. I didn’t think it was a big deal until the next day when one of my coworkers said to me, “Did you hear that someone didn’t put the phone down after a page? We were all talking about it this morning. Its hilarious.” Yeah, wow, I say, that person must be really incompetent.
In truth, it's not the incompetence that messes me up so much as the forgetfulness. Take today, for example. Our apartment is really cold in the morning so when my alarm goes off, I jump out of bed and put my clothes and jacket on immediately. I drove to work and parked my car only to realize: I’m not wearing a bra. Worse than that, I am wearing a pretty thin shirt and no bra. I wear my jacket into the store, but its down filled so if I wear it all day I will most likely asphyxiate. And people will wonder, why is that girl wearing a jacket if she is sweating so heavily? It’s against company policy anyways, to wear coats on shift.
I run through the women’s apparel section looking for a sports bra, a thicker shirt, any kind of nipple hiding device. I finally settle on a cami, but, as I am the only cashier, I can’t buy it until the other girl gets to work at three. So, I did what any other sane human being would do in this situation--I taped down my breasts. With packing tape. Which is really not so bad, at least the taping part. It’s the removal of the tape process that’s hard. Suffice to say I have only one and a half nipples now.
No one seemed to notice my improvised bra. At least no one that could potentially fire me. I was worried because the population of outer Portland is pretty conservative, a fact that I continually forget. Take gender issues. A young guy brought a balance ball to the checkout. On the packaging was a picture of a woman mid crunch. He said that none of the balls had men on the box. I told him that her pink sports bra wouldn't really look good on him.
“Really?” he responded. “I think the pink might bring out my eyes. Anyhow, I guess they’re just not marketing these thing towards men.”
“Unless you’re a cross dresser,” I say. He looks at me and then moves back a bit. “Or transgendered,” I continue.
He's looking very uncomfortable and I’m beginning to flounder. “You know f-m or m-f. I’ve forgotten. Anyways...” I trail off, deeming that talking is no longer the best option.
I hand him his receipt and he says, “Well, this was quite the gender bender conversation.” I tell him I’m glad we had this talk.
Luckily, none of my coworkers heard me. They already think I’m weird here. I was talking to another cashier when Brittany Spears’ song, Not Yet a Woman, came on over the loud speakers. “If I never hear this song again,” I tell her, “I will be happy.”
She nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, I hate Brittany Spears. Christina Aguilera is sooo much better.” Of course, I mumble, that’s exactly what I meant.
I can’t blame her for liking these songs. I’ve heard them hundreds of times and they’re beginning to sink into my psyche. Our company has a playlist for their stores and it repeats all day. I find myself spontaneously singing lyrics I don’t even like. "Meet Virginia, I cant wait to, meet Virginia, yeah yeah."
Damn you Mac commercial man!!
10.22.2007
I'm typing this from the Apple Store because I've just found out that
My hard drive has died.
Have lost lots of files/photos.
Sadness.
Please send me pictures of yourselves so that I may remember what you look like.
Powells on the Colbert Report
10.15.2007
Powell's Books was recently featured on the Colbert Report! It's the nations largest independent book store and I used to walk there from my old apartment (you know, the one that wasn't an unfinished basement).
Go Portland.
http://www.comedycentral.com
This Old House
9.29.2007
Or basement rather. Apologies on the blogging hiatus--Griff and I have been living in what some might call the seventh level of hell. These pictures are after Griff tore out the carpets and linoleum.
1. Our lovely neighbors who took these pictures for us.
This is the kitchen.
The dungeon--a bedroom with no walls and a 6'5 ceiling.
The main area that you walk into. Note my moderate hysterics.
The first thing you see when you walk into the apartment.
A bedroom.
The mural painted on the wall in the bedroom. Yes, the woman is holding her heart in her freakishly large hands.
The carpet you see in the bottom right corner of the last picture used to be in the entire house. And the ceiling, which you can kind of see in the first photo, is sea foam with plaster clouds and glitter. There is carpet on the ceiling of the bathroom. And don't forget the mural of the naked woman/bird/angel of death and suffering. We suspect the previous tenants were on acid.
We have since spent several days grinding down the concrete to make it suitable to receive stain, which then turned out to be this goldish terra cotta color that we had to paint over. Griffin has removed several walls, I've been battling mold, and we've blistered our hands scraping up carpet padding. Now, its still a war zone but much more manageable.
Yes, we're living here. Waking up each morning high on paint fumes and choking on sawdust. More pictures as things develop.
A
A song about Flipper
8.28.2007
From the desk of Michael Peterson in response to flipper not showing up when Griff and I swam with dolphins:
They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning,
No-one in the sea, is a bastard like he.
And we know Flipper, doesn't love Shelly,
Avoiding her under, under the sea!
No one really knows the king of the sea,
Ever so snotty a bastard is he,
Tricks he will olay when tourists appear,
And how they curse him when he isn't near!
They call him Flipper, Flipper, that fishy bastard,
No-one you see, is worse turd than he,
And we know Flipper, soon will be slaughtered,
Dragged up with tuna, from under the sea!
Fabulous.
Hurricane Dean Update
8.20.2007
Last we heard, Hurricane Dean was bumped to a class 5. So Griff and I took a bus to Cancun and got on a standby list out of Mexico (extremely lucky). We are now safe and in the US.
Faulkner on Mexico
8.19.2007
In Faulkner`s As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren claims that ¨Sin and love and fear are just sounds that people who never sinned nor loved nor feared have for what they never had and cannot have until they forgot the words.¨
Travelling in Central America has been wonderful. Griff and I suspect that blogging was our way of making the best of difficult parts of the trip (notice how many times we wrote about bus trips), but that when we are really enjoying ourselves, we don`t need to write about it because we don`t need words to create the experience for us. For whatever reason, I have not blogged much about the second half of our trip.
I miss you all and can`t wait to get home.
Adelaide
Cutting out the middle man
Griff and I have been robbed in our hotel room twice. As this poses a dangerous situation, we have taken to leaving our valuables in public. Like the camera we left at the internet cafe. We hope this leads to a safer and more efficient form of robbery.
* As a side note, any pictures past Venezuela have been ripped off from friends. To see pictures of Lake Atitlan and Lake Bacalar (where we are now), check out this site: http://coleychavez.com/atitlan/index.html . I talked to the guy who posted the pictures. He`s seems like a pretty cool fellow.
PADI Certified Scuba Divers
After 4 days of classes, videos, and practice dives, Griff and I are officially certified scuba divers. Or certifiable. had to write that to head off any blog comment jokes.
According to the video, ¨scuba divers are more fun than normal people.¨My cool points just went way up.
Here we are studying. Look how much cooler we are.
There are, as yet, no pictures of Griff getting drunk and falling asleep on the side of the road.
Yes, we are safe
Griff and I are now in the Quinta Roo at Lake Bacalar. We were planning to fly out of Cancun, but because of the recent weather complications, Mean, Mean Hurrican Dean, we may have to change our plans.
We are safe, and we`ll definitely try to stay that way. Updates soon.
**We are delaying our flight home until Thursday, stocking up on food and water, and hoping for the best.
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