Deprived of My Sleep : 04.21.03 @ 5:19 am

This is someone's idea of a joke. It's got to be. Why else would I be up at five in the fucking morning on the first Monday after spring break after only two, count'em, two, hours of sleep?
Because for the second time in the past few weeks, my clock has, for some reason, moved ahead an hour.
This is it. I'm firing my alarm clock and buying a new one. Maybe one of those satellite ones where the only thing I can adjust is what time it obnoxiously blares its wake up call. I wish I could go back to bed. I need that extra hour of sleep that will probably over take me during Chemistry. But it's too late. I've showered, I've dressed, and I've gone upstairs to be yelled at by Mum who couldn't understand why the fuck I was upstairs poking around at five in the morning.
That's all right Mum. I don't understand it either.

So I haven't really updated the last � what, two days? Whatever it was, it was enough to prompt Colby to tell me that I need to update. What to update about though? Nothing has happened. I worked the past two days, a six hour shift on Saturday and an eight hour shift on Sunday.
I was hoping that Sunday, being Easter, was a "Starbucks Recognized Holiday" and that it'd be time and a half, meaning that I'd make $10.88 an hour for that eight hour shift (plus the normal tips).
It's not. It appears Starbucks can make several thousand dollars off of Easter cookies, little over priced Easter finger puppets and little overpriced things for the Easter basket, but they don't recognize it as a holiday. I got a few comments from the customers � most of whom were on their way to or from church, dressed in their Easter finest � about me working on Easter.
I should have said I was Jewish.

I really do like my job. Especially when I look out in the lobby and there's the regulars curled up in the comfy chairs with a book or newspaper with a for-here mug at their side.
Of course, the honeymoon period between my well-paying hourly job and I hasn't ended yet.
Everyone else that works there has worked there for more then two years, some of them make over nine dollars an hour, and the honeymoon period is long over. They all talk of putting in their two weeks, but they seem to have a pact that they'd leave together if they left at all, so they haven't left yet, even though Josh quit awhile ago and James was fired yesterday due to not calling the store before he decided to just not show up to work.
Good jobs for teenagers and college aged students don't grow on trees. If I was making over nine dollars an hour and I had tuition, insurance, gas, and bills to pay, regardless of how much I hated going to work, I wouldn't quit until I had a steady better paying job to work at.

Something that is irritating me about my job is working with ________. He's a nice enough guy and he's worked there forever so he knows his shit like you wouldn't believe, but there's two major things that cause me to not like working with him. One is that whatever his accent is, I have a damned time understanding it. Sometimes he'll say something four or five times and I can do nothing but ask him to repeat it because I just don't understand his accent. Which makes me look bad of course, and I know he thinks I'm an idiot because of this and because of the fact that I was just poorly trained. My boss stuck me at the register and I just slowly picked things up. I've had so many different people telling me so many different ways how to make things, where things are, how to do this and that, that I've had to average everything they've told me and do it my own way. My boss probably should have had my shadow one person for an entire pay period as my training, but meh. I still manage to get the job done.
The other problem I have with him is that he's not very good at constructive criticism. For example, yesterday I let a Mild sit past its timer going off because both coffee brewers were in use at the time and then we got a rush. Instead of noting how 96% of the time I'm on top of the coffee like you wouldn't believe � I have the filters in with their coffee at least fifteen minutes before their timer goes off so they can be switched in a rush, etc. He decides to lecture me on how I should never let the Mild sit because it makes the customer have to wait. No kidding. But the decaf gets priority and the decaf was what was brewing instead of the mild.
Another thing I think I do quite well (as well as such a minimal job can bed done) is lobby slides, which is making sure the lobby is clean, organized, and all the stock is neat. I do them automatically every ten or fifteen minutes, and my other shift managers have expressed gratitude (in that let's give the newbie some self esteem way) that they don't have to worry about lobby slides when I'm working. But no. When I'm working with ______, I'll go out, do my lobby slide, and five minutes later he'll go out and do another one. He does them regular as well and instead of letting me do them will just continue to do them after I've done them to the point where I just stop bothering if there's something else I can find to do. Then he'll lecture me on always keeping the lobby clean.

Ggrar. Anyway. Enough of work. I'm not working until Friday and I'd like to not think about it until then.

I didn't do any of my homework that's due this morning. I probably should have, but it was April Vacation. I doubt many other kids did their homework as well. I'll deal with the repercussions as they come. As it is, my AP US History grade isn't going to get much better seeing most of this quarter is based on things like our writing folder � which I didn't know what things were supposed to go in there and what things weren't, having moved here half way through the year, so yea. My grade is going to kill my B average (that's before I get a point five added to my final grade, so with that it'd be a 3.5 on a 4.0 scale).

I wish I could be one of those people that flat out didn't care what their grade was or what their teachers thought of them. But I can't. The most crushing thing a teacher could do to me is point out the missing homework, the test I did poorly on, or express disappointment in how I'm not living up to my "potential".
I don't know why that is, it must be something left over from being such a teacher's pet up through junior high. I've always loved my teachers. A few of them have definitely had long lasting impacts on my life. So I suppose because of this, my self esteem reeks havoc whenever I know a teacher doesn't like me for some reason, or is disappointed in me. Very few � if any � of my teachers flat out dislike me as a student. I'm open, talkative, mature, and I generally care about my grades even if I'm not consistent about them. And in some of my classes � gasp � I genuinely want to learn. But that doesn't mean I don't get a lot of "living up to my potential" lectures. Yea. I know I could have a B+/A- average with some extra time and effort put into my work. But I don't plan on going to an ivy league school or University of Virginia (whose average entering freshman's GPA is a 3.98 and is ridiculously hard to get into). Infact, quite a few of the colleges I'm apply to have averages that are below my 3.4 GPA and probable 1100 SAT scores. My top choice schools all have around a 3.3 GPA and an 1100 SAT in some cases higher, but it never hurts to reach for it even if your transcript's a mess.

All right. It's now six am. If it was any other day, I would have dragged myself out of bed ten minutes ago and be finishing up my shower right about now. I'm going to leave soon, brew myself a cup of milk, sugar, and coffee (order based on how much I put in to make it taste decent), and sleep walk to the bus stop. I miss driving to school. I drove all last week and now I'm forced to take the overcrowded bus again? Bah. I need a car.

I'm getting a cell phone later this week. Ordered it online from tmobile, and because I ordered it online I get a free $100 phone (view). So I'm happy. A cell phone is almost a necessity down here, and I'll feel much more confident in exploring the area if I know I can call someone if I'm lost.
Have I mentioned before that I inherited my grandmother's sense of direction? Meaning, I have none.

Later.

/A

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