It’s still Sunday. I clocked out for the shift I mentioned in my previous post. I stayed about 12 minutes later because one head cashier was on lunch and the trainee HC had to got fetch a pick up grocery order. She wanted me to stay to cover that. No problamo.

I’m still at the fork in the road. I’ve been at this fork for about eight years and I’m tired of it. I’m just so drained. I feel like I make a decision and it doesn’t pan out in the expected fashion.

I was so happy to get paroled from Walmart. I never liked that company, and when I took that job it was supposed to be my emergency replacement job because of my Boar’s Head demo job moving one county to the northwest.

Once I started there, it was a huge happy surprise. It was still a pretty new store. It was extremely clean. It’s a small Supercenter, so it’s not too annoying to shop, or learn the layout to be able to help customers find stuff. Almost all my co-workers were liberals—even most of management. Managers were well on top of giving breaks when they were supposed to be given. We got a break/lunch every two hours, and only on rare, busy times did break times get skewed. We had decent bonuses four times a year, and hours were plentiful,

Then COVID hit and all that went to hell. The store is no longer real clean the company took away bonuses for parttimers, but raised the pay rate to $15 per hour—if you were below that. If you were at $15 (rare occurrence), or were already above that, you got nuttin’.

Of course, that went into effect just after I paroled myself to my current job, which allegedly was a better company. I left Walmart at the end of December 2020. I began working at Sprout’s on January 4th, 2021.

I had two excellent interviews with the front end manager, and one of my former Walmart buddies was already a head cashier here. She’s since moved back to Baltimore.

But, the happiness very quickly soured as it turned out the front end manager was one side of the triangle I still call, the Trio of Terror. The manager I had great interviews with doomed showed herself to be a petty bitch, the second store manager was also a bitch, and not real good st her job. The third one was the most distasteful of them all. She was our AC (assistant coordinator), a position that includes HR duties, introducing new Sprouties to the company and store, and coordinating other tasks between and among other managers. That last POS was just mean and nasty and would gossip about others. She once tried to make a joke about something when we both were on lunch at the same time. I remained expressionless except for the evil glared I gave her. All three of them literally shopped during their shifts, while NOT on a break. Yet, if anyone else did something evil like punch in and then go to the bathroom, that was, “stealing time,” from the company.

In February of that year, my body decided to rebel. My most pressing health issues for 61 years had been being diagnosed and medicated for bipolar II disorder at age 40-something, and having a cervical cancer scare in my 20’s, which necessitated a cervical biopsy, which then produced happy results of: no cancer. I did have two skin cancer lesions removed, which were terrifying at first, but my dermatologist Dr. Jeff (Moskowitz, he prefers Dr. Jeff), elegantly explained the stages of skin cancer and assured me I was getting them cleared up extremely early. They were nowhere near the melanoma stage. Thank God! I’ve since come to realize that if you’re going to get cancer, skin is the easiest kind to deal with, if you pay attention to your body.

Anyway, that February into March of 2021, I went from having 4 doctors to having 8. I had five new issues, four of which stood a four-to-good chance of being cancer. Luckily, the only one that turned out to be cancer was another patch of squamous cell carcinoma. The stitches in my left shoulder were two days old when, in August I was in a four car accident caused by a criminal who got shot and thought it was a good idea to drive down a very busy highway in Metro-Orlando with a bullet in his side. Wrong. He bled so badly he went unconscious and rammed into three cars, totaling his Ford Ranger and two others, including mine. We were innocently waiting at a red light. No one died. Thank God, but three of us went to hospitals. I was one of them. That’s how I got doctor number 9.

So, I missed five months of work and that job I thought I was so going to love (the one I have now) was hopefully going to be replaced. I worked the computer looking mostly for at home work. That was easier said than done, and it turned out that the Trio of Terror became extinct. The second manager (assistant store mgr) was let go, the front end manager quit because, she said, the new assistant store manager was, “too mean to her.” That was rich considering all of my co-workers, except one, thought she was a bully. All of us peons loathed her.

When I returned after my accident-induced broken shoulder, and torn rotator cuff, I only had to deal with the very nasty AC for three weeks because she retired. Yay! EVERYONE was happy to see her go.

So, we got a great new assistant store manager who I will call, Rick. He was awesome: hilarious, great with customers, and employees, great with dealing with problem customers who needed to be trespassed. And, he worked his ass off. The man was never still. Plus, he gave away a lot of dying plants to employees. I swear he thought I was operating, “Plant Rescue by Pam.”

Then, March of 2024 our well-liked and respected store manager retired. I liked the replacement manager, she also has good people skills and is smart and works hard. But, because the top manager was being replaced the company, “had,” to move Rick to the Oviedo store. I work in Winter Park. The rationale is the with a new store manager and same assistant, employee loyalty might get split. I get it, a lot of retail entities abide by that piece of pop psychology, but it hurt morale around here. The store lacks a fun atmosphere. I miss getting the occasional hunk of dead vegetables thrown at me by Rick. He teased a lot of like that.

It’s just not the same and now hours are tanking. For the latest schedule posted, I got 18.25 hours. Good thing I have Social Security. Oh, but bad thing, we have an orange dung pile fucking up our country, including letting a foreigner run an outlaw organization that is literally only functioning to fire federal employees to loosen the purse strings to give money to ultra-overly, and undeserving wealthy.

Yeah, this has rambled. I’m mostly trying to work through this in my head. I’m sure I’ll edit this tomorrow, when I go to the library to do two years worth of taxes. This post sure mushroomed. It was going to be itty bitty. Now, it’s 9:14 pm and I have to get out of here.

Basically, I just wanted to demonstrate how stuck I feel and have been and I’m just so exhausted and drained to really sit and figure out my next steps. I’m also exhausted and drained by just feeling that way.

I know life could be so much worse, and I’m grateful it’s not.

I’m lucky to have some beautiful people in my life who are best friends. I’m lucky to not be homeless. I’m lucky to have a vehicle, even though it’s temporarily in Auto ICU. I’m lucky I can buy food, electricity, and water. And, I’m super grateful we have central air conditioning at home., BECAUSE WE LIVR IN OBNOXIOUSLY HIT AND HUMID FLORIDUH.

Well, heading out.

It’s 9:32pm.