I'll drown my annoyance in free tea, now.

Yesterday night was just *keyboard smash*.

I usually start my shifts pretty good. I know what's going on, I can get it all done. Then I get overwhelmed, especially since customers have picked up all of the sudden and all the usual cleaning has to be completed just the same. Also, all my shifts lately have been with the person who trained me, so she takes everything I do wrong a little personally. Her manner reminds me a bit of my 10th grade English teacher who wrote fairly harsh criticisms on my papers, followed by a rather condescending smiley face. Yesterday, she told me I needed to be nicer to customers because I don't come off as friendly enough (earlier this week at the library, I was told the same thing but I was ok with it). I'm taking this more personally than I should.

Also, every single person that works at my store is female and there is usually one shift manager and one barista working at one time. Therefore, there is an obvious hierarchy and some unnecessary politics. It's kind of hard not to take things personally, which somewhere in the midst of several years of IB classes I thought I'd learned not to do. But I guess school has never required me to be friendly and observe social niceties under supervision. At work, they're moving on from seeing me as that new girl who hasn't figured everything out yet to my personality flaws of being an asshole sometimes (see previous post). I can't wait until I've been there long enough to not be under the same constant scrutiny. The ever present hierarchies are terrible and remind me too much of my previous summer student job at the church.

I know that I'm not the nicest person. I asked my dad about it and he replied,"You're not hostile. You...ah...speak your mind." So I'm really bad at social niceties. I'm at this weird point where I need to think before I speak because I'll probably offend people that I don't want to offend because people just have a lot of feelings and insecurities, dammit.

Then when I got home at 10 (after taking way too long to sweep because glitter was everywhere from the Christmas decorations) and wore plaid on plaid out of my pointed rebellion against social conventions. Then I realized that ranting to people with bigger problems than yours makes you feel a little more content with your life, but super worried for other people. There was a lengthy, civil conversation about religion between me and one of my atheist friends. Then weird conversations happened. That lasted until 2am.

Now I really don't want to go work for six hours on a Saturday night with people who may or may not judge me as being completely unsuitable for interacting with people. I'm so bad at being employed. I just want to crawl into my introverted little haven, or utilize the healing powers of laying on Tatyana's floor while watching a bad 80's movie. That would be nice. This responsibility thing is shitty sometimes.
Hearts,
-J-