The Shuttle Bus From Hell (Part 2)

Sorry this post has been severely delayed; intense week, but I'm sure you know better than anyone that life is generally stressful. Welcome back to my evil shuttle bus re-telling! Last time on my blog, I talked about the types of people that would take the bus, and ended with the angry dbags that would delight in throwing things everywhere. I forgot a few types of people on the other list:

6) The Troublemakers. The ones who start drama before the van even leaves the parkinglot, or those who knowingly exchange glances with other people on the van that there is someone on there who is "like totally not cool". I think the most infamous time I had with troublemakers was when there were international students on the bus, and some people on both sides started with racist comments. I was over-tired, not sleeping enough, barely eating to the point I lost thirty pounds, never catching a moment to myself, and bitter and annoyed at how my circle of friends was crumbling. So when they started with the racism, I snapped. I said if they didn't stop with the racist comments, I'd drive off the road and we'd all die together, racism be damned. Of course I didn't mean it. Let me stress this again, I had ZERO intentions of driving off the road with a van full of people. Are you still reading? I would NOT have driven off the road, but they were drunk, so yeah, they believed me. And if they didn't believe me, they now knew I was bat-shit crazy and that they should probably shut up. Either way, it worked. Do I suggest doing that to help in future situations? Hell no. Don't do it.

7) The Ones You Worry About. They're kind and excited for the evening; too excited. You see them coming back to the van, bouncing off their friends like a ping-pong ball and giggling and hiccuping old rum. It's someone's birthday, and the birthday girl is goooooone like the wind. I'm so worried about this particular girl who can't even keep her eyes open, so I ask if they can let her sit in the front seat instead of the often loud and boisterous backseats. The girl in the passenger seat is so silent--an oddity in a group of people who are still excited about the evening. I try to keep the music to a dull roar since the others want to keep their good time going, and I don't want the girl next to me to be sick. She curls into a ball, wound around the seatbelt uncomfortably, head pressed against the cool glass of the window for some blessed relief from the nausea and the heat of one too many drinks. Each bump I drive over sends her head smacking heavily against the window, but she still doesn't move. As we stop at a local gas station for munchies, her friends try to give her water, but her stomach threatens to rebel. In a van full of intoxicated young adults, the last thing you want to do is have one person be sick. It'd be a catastrophic domino affect of putrescence.

You worry, but as long as they're not in danger, there's really nothing else to do but to go back to campus and sleep it off and accept that there's going to be a crappy morning ahead of you.

All in all, the whole job wasn't too bad. It was a paycheck. I got to listen to the radio all the time, so I got to listen to all the music I wanted (now I have no idea what's popular on the radio, which I guess is sometimes a good thing, ever since freakin "Call Me Maybe" exists), and the job definitely worked around other things since it happened in the middle of the night. Definitely not the worst job out there, but I still think the newbies have it easy since it was myself and the others who got the brunt of the assault. :P until next time--and again, sorry about the delay.

The Shuttle Bus from Hell (Part 1)

One of the worst jobs I've ever had in my life involved giving up my weekends to bring other people out to have a good time. It was a simple job really; basically an over-glorified taxi-cab, but instead of the usual New Yorker passengers, it was a bunch of college drunkards. And instead of a stereotype with beaded seats and hard to understand accent, there was me: awkward underclassmen who needed to grow a pair and lay down the law but never did.

My weekend consisted of: coffee shop from 6am-noon, then the shuttle job from 12:45-6pm, and then again from 8:45pm-1am-ish and then pass out for a couple of hours to repeat the whole lovely thing for Sunday. It was awful because I'd be so tired that I'd fall asleep at the wheel (Oddly enough, I'd only fall asleep if it was only me in the van, and I could still drive/sleep with my eyes open). It was awesome because I didn't have time to think between school and work, so I stressed myself almost 30 pounds lighter. My coworkers and I were the first ones to do the shuttle ever, so we got the short end of the stick. I'd talk to people after who had my old job, and they'd say how fun it was, and how it wasn't that bad.

Clearly, it was because my coworkers and I were the ones the got shat on because we were the first and didn't know what to expect. I'll give a few scenarios of a typical night:

1) Fifty thousand girls in the tiniest dresses ever fabricated by Malaysian sweatshop workers, who decided to don these second-skin outfits in the middle of February. Okay, admittedly I'm exaggerating. The van only held about ten people, and barely 1,300 people even attended the school. But try telling 18 pushy, angry, pre-gamed undergrads that there's no more room when it seems like everyone had supposedly been waiting in line before someone else. Even when I'd tell them I wasn't allowed to have more people, they all squeezed their giddy, horny, drunk selves into the seats and bellow at me to crank the tunes. Good times.

2) Was money ever collected? Funny. Instead of a normal number, the fee they'd have to pay was $4 or something equally asinine. So no one ever had change, and they didn't trust the drivers to be able to make change for a $20, so it was either all or nothing. They'd all tell me they would pay for the ride on the way back, and then none of them would take the shuttle back.

3) The Hyper Ones. Shrieking at the tops of their voices, butchering every pop song and squealing "this is my songggg!!!" to every song, it was easy to get a headache. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't get excited. Their happiness was infectious. For a moment I felt part of the crowd and that we were all going to have an epic time downtown. For a moment, I didn't feel like I was at work, I didn't have to worry about my social circle back at school crumbling at the foundation, I didn't have to worry about homework, bills, classes--you get the idea.

        This was a song everyone was obsessed with and made me hear it in my sleep:

4) The Rule-Breakers. She lights up a cigarette as I'm telling her that she can't smoke in the van, and calmly tells me she's going to open a window, so it'll magically be fine to let everyone else freeze to death while she turns her lungs into a withered black organ hanging pitifully like a rotten grape left on the vine. The rule-breakers believe they are cool; above the law, and most definitely above a goofy underclassman in her pajamas driving a van full of people dressed to the nines. Flash forward a few hours: it's the middle of the night, and two girls are the first to show up to go back to school. They're giggling uncontrollably, and it looks like they became spontaneously pregnant in the 3 hours that they were out partying. They reveal their babies, which turns out to be two full unopened bottles of alcohol that they lifted from a local club. My eyes bugged out of my sockets; was I going to be seen as the accomplice with the getaway vehicle? Did they have videocameras and could they identify the girls? Were they so drunk that they didn't remember actually buying the bottles instead?

5) The Angry Ones. As we're moving, he stands in the center aisle between the driver and passenger seats, and beams empty shotglasses at point-blank range into girls' faces. Why? I have no goddamn clue. Were these glasses stolen as well? Probably. What could I do? Not much. On an unrelated note, I got to show my crazy side when one group of kids started being racist towards other people in the van and I informed them that if we couldn't all get along, I would drive off of the steep roadway and we could all learn peace and acceptance in death. (Yeah, lack of sleep is a scary thing, I don't advise it) Needless to say, they all thought I was batshit crazy and in desperate need of some kind of medication, but it worked! No more racist comments!

That's all for Part 1 of this rant, more to come in the near future. So tired.

Fantasy-Destroying Mom

Every once in a while, there are very lovely people that come to visit at work to make my day just peachy. I don't claim to know all the answers at twenty-two; in fact, I could claim soundly that I know less than an eighth of all the answers.

On a given day last summer, I was pretty proud of myself for transforming a bleak hallway on the way to the bathrooms into a colorful, child-friendly haven of marine bio-based educational posters and animal exhibits. I liked  to include my own geeky passions to make it more fun for the kids: including posters showing the difference between the fins of different fish, featuring Nemo, Ariel, Bruce, and the importance of spiders, of course featuring your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

My happy feeling was obliterated on a sunny day when I still wore a smile to work and didn't understand that some of my coworkers were forever stuck in asinine high school drama and would frequently force their idiocy upon others. But that's a whole other story in and of itself. On this day, I was delightedly pointing out the difference between Nemo's rounded caudal fin and Ariel's forked fin when a voice interrupted me.

The voice came from a young mother who looked like she spent more time at the gym than spending time with her daughter. She was constantly looking around to see who was noticing her, but for once, she was still, and speaking loud enough to her daughter to make me pause mid-sentence.

"I think she's a little confused," the mother said in an overly sing-song voice that sounds like something reserved for an actress at Disney world. "The fin would actually move up and down, not side to side. And actually, a real animal should've been used. Mermaids aren't real."

Telling a little kid that awesome things like mermaids aren't real is less of a crime than the Santa ordeal, but it's still ripping a part of childhood away from them. Plus, the posters were to get kids to pay attention via Disney characters. I honestly don't think the little girl is going to say ten years from now, "Gee, I totally remember that hand-made poster and that forked caudal fins do not represent fictional animated characters that have more cetacean-like movement."

So no, Mother-who-has-nothing-better-to-do-than-try-and-make-people-feel-bad-about-themselves (whew), I'm not confused. I got your daughter's attention, and she enjoyed learning. Even if it was slightly wrong. Who has the time to nit-pick over such specific things? Jeezum.

Besides, what's so wrong about mermaids? They're a staple of childhood (see video below), literature, and mythology! So here's to all you who still let your kids believe in mermaids, unicorns, faeries, and dragons until they're old enough to figure it out for themselves.

Voodoo!

In commemoration of the resident Milk Snake's skin shedding, I thought I would share a story about a recent group of teens/young adults that came in. Not seeing the connection? It's coming. You should play this song while reading the article:

They were a friendly bunch; very animated and full of questions. Quite honestly, they were the nicest people all day. The younger guys left, but there was one tall gentleman who stayed behind to chat it up with me. He joked about his weight and how he could stay buoyant effortlessly due to the fat content of his body, but I was so awkward about it. If I laugh, will he think I'm laughing with him or at him? Gahhhh the torture. So I did my best awkward laugh. It worked. We talked about a whole slew of other things: pythons, minerals, precious stones, swimming, piercings, gay marriage and how his religion is very accepting of all people, no matter what their sexual orientation.

...And then he glanced over at the snake tank and was excited to see the snake skin pinned under a rock on top of the tank. I didn't understand why he was so happy to see the massive papery flake of old snake skin flapping in the breeze, but he treated it almost reverently.
"This," he said, "Is why I want a snake. For the skin..."

Stupidly, I had an odd image of him collecting skin in a mason jar like some other OCDs of gathering every single toe/fingernail that has ever been clipped off in a perfect crescent moon shape. Sensing my confusion, he added.
"I practice Vodou. Haitian Vodou*."  (*Haitian is Vodou, Louisianan is Voodoo; still said the same way)

I stared at this six-foot-tall white male in goth-ish clothing and wondered what he had to do with enslaved and impoverished Haitians and Africans, or how one would even practice an Island religion in the middle of the United States. I asked him how popular Vodou was in the states or even globally (surprised that Vodou was actually centered around love and caring and looking down on greed. My bias had me thinking of dolls with pins stuck in them). I also asked what exactly he uses the snake skin for.

"The snake skin is to make curses. I'm not a traditional Vodou priest, they would actually look down on what I do." He said matter-of-factly with an unsettling smile. The warm, friendly, bubbly, kindhearted man who was teaching a young girl the importance of reading mere minutes ago was telling me he enjoyed and routinely cursed people.

At that moment, the room filled with a lot of people asking questions about our shark exhibit, so I excused myself to go help the visitors. Again, I could hear the young man stressing the importance of reading to the young girl. I turned around after educating the people to ask the man another question, only to find he wasn't there. He vanished; a six-foot-tall 250+lb man disappeared from a room without my notice. I dashed over to see if my snake's skins were still where they had been left last.

They were still there, fluttering in the crossbreeze, looking so innocent and inanimate despite their dark purpose.

Let's Take a Stroll in the Woods...

The job I do now is great; it's fun and rewarding most of the time.
But before I was transferred, I got a never-ending line of people who would tell me that the program was (1) run much better ten years ago, and that (2) we used to have such cool things, and (3) we used to do such cool things.

(1) The Program Was Better Ten Years Ago

People of an older generation think everything was better ten years ago. Even now, in my early twenties, I think of things when I was younger as being far superior than what the young'ns today have. Also, the program had more funding ten years ago when we actually charged money for visitors. Things change when it's free, that's for sure.

(2) Used to have "cool" things

By cool things, they mean large tanks, big flashy fish, laminated posters. All of these things require money. Which the state doesn't have. Over ten years, a fifty gallon tank WILL break, I don't care if it's made of glass or diamond. By the way, if a living, breathing, adorable seahorse that saves other fish in the tank from being sucked in the filter isn't "cool" enough for you, then you can go screw.

(3) Used to do "cool" things

By do cool things, they mean going for guided nature tours in the woods. I'm not an idiot. I can ask the parents all they want if I have permission to take their kids into the woods--alone-- because the parents refuse to go, and as soon as I disappear behind the first tree, they'll be on the phone with their lawyers about how I kidnapped their kids.

Also, every-freaking-time I leave my tanks alone, things, including wild animals, get stolen. Signs get ripped and defaced, weird crap gets put into tanks, some ass-hat decided to flip the tank vertical just "to see what happens". (Yes, this did happen)

The number one thing why I'm not going in the woods alone isn't because of some kid, it's for my own safety. Maybe that's selfish, but you'll see why I have a high sense of self-preservation.


It was a typical summer day, blue and breezy by the bay (yay alliteration!), when a man commented on my exhibit that of course, there weren't impressive enough specimen. I told him I was hoping to go to another town soon to do some collecting, to which he half-jokingly chided me for not going and collecting things here at the beach where I worked. After explaining that the other town had better nets and resources for me to use, he still didn't want to hear it, and thought I was half-assing my job. The real reason I didn't want to collect at this beach was because I wrote a paper on it in college about how horribly polluted it was. I remembered the day I went in up to my knee and couldn't stop itching for the rest of the day. No freaking way I was going in that water.

I decided to go freshwater fishing later, and to my chagrin, the same man from before decided to follow along with his daughter and her friend. The two girls ran around up ahead while I made small-talk with the guy. He kept talking about how much he rode his bike everywhere to stay in shape (he walked with a limp, was slightly overweight, and was breathing deeply just from walking), and that his wife wasn't making the same effort. I tol' her I don't date no big woman! was his righteous cry. Friendly most of the time, but tried to cover up his breaking wind as he was walking with sudden grunts.

Fishing went okay, and I decided to head back; which he continued to go on about how his love life was failing because he wasn't attracted to her anymore and he could get a younger thing, and talking about how pretty he thought I was. I walked faster, but trying to be polite as he fell behind due to his limp, caused me to stay pretty much in tandem with him. He had me guess how old he was, and was delighted that I guessed lower than he was. (he was in his mid fifties)

Ooooh!!!! She like meeee! Imma touch her!

Back at my exhibit, he stopped past me to wish me a good day, and tenderly squeezed my shoulder. I froze, but didn't think to freak out even though my insides were somersaulting. He stayed away after that, but I was not happy with how the afternoon went.

How do you be genuinely nice to someone without leading them on/asking for the entirely of their life story that is none of my business?

Creepy touchy guys = never in the woods alone. And that's final.

You'll be Beautiful in 10 Years...Just not now

The world of fast-food is a pain in the ass. It's not really fast, it's not really food, and the brief interchanges with people are often shallow and superficial.

The particular coffee place I had worked at in the past was all about quick efficient service and good products. The employees there were all about the almighty dollar via tips, and at a job that pays minimum wage, I don't blame them. Girls would come into work to make coffee like they were going out on the town. Makeup painstakingly applied to highlight gorgeous eyes, a hint of lip gloss to lusciously frost the cake that was her lips framing her mega-watt white smile, nails flawlessly painted in whimsical patterns over acrylic rectangles on her real nails, top buttons of the shirt carefully cut to reveal a hint of the goods as she leans out the drive-thru window. It was an artform. These girls had to pretend to be happy at work and that everyone that came through was God's gift to the world so everyone else could bring home enough money to pay the bills.

On this particular day, the Pretty People weren't working, so it was my chance to shine at drive-thru cashiering! I was...awkward, even moreso than now, but back then I was a late teen, slightly heavy and constantly fighting a body image issue. I wore men's shorts to work, a baggy shirt, and a low ponytail. A deterrent for any male in the area, but not some women, if you catch my drift. Anyhoo, I was convinced I had a huge body and a passable face. A reverse-butterface if you will. Do you remember the term butterface from middle school?

Tool: Ch'yeah Brahh, d'you see Julie* at the beach yesterday? Sooo hot.
Douche:  You're kiddin, right? You could enter her in a dog show with a mug like that. Whaddaya blind?
Tool: N-no she's like a 6.5
Douche: Dudedudedudedudedude. Dude. She's a total butterface.
Tool: bwahh?
Douche: Everything's hot, but. her. face.
Tool: ....
[ten minutes elapse]
Tool: AHAHAH I GOT IT! You're funny brahh!

*Sorry Julies of the world!!!!!

So yeah, a reverse butterface, which doesn't have a catchy name, would be a pretty face and a mehhhhhhh to blargh body. Which is EXCELLENT for a drive-thru window, because they can't see past your boobs anyways!

So, this day was to be my day! I would get the dollar bills! I would get the quarters! I would get the knowing stares of oh hayy gurl hayyy. The day was going just fine, not raking in the big bucks like usual, but it was passable  enough that I wasn't wrenched away from the window. Finally at one point in the shift I have a very  kind man at the window. I smile and make the usual pre-prescribed coffee house lines, and he keeps staring. And smiling! In my head, I feel like I've sealed the deal; dollar bill, here I come!

He gets ready to leave and my heart falls, being nice for nothing! How dare he waste my forced niceness without paying me that completely optional tip! He hesitates and says, You're going to make a beautiful mother some day.
He drives away.
.   .  .
no tip
.  .  .

                                            You're going to be a beautiful mother some day.

What?! W-well yeah, that'd be nice, but
 NO

My head was reeling; does that mean I'm not pretty now, but will only be pretty when there is a parasitic life form inside of my womb forcing my skin to split and my weight to increase even more?!?

Yeah. I watched Alien. I KNOW what parasitic life forms can do.

 What does that mean? I'll look great driving a minivan full of kids on their way to soccer practice? I'll look supersexy with high-waisted jeans?

Delicious

 WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
It's really not something a teenager on the cusp of going to college wanted to hear. End of rant. See you next time.

"It means when you have a baby you're gonna look like me, Dearie."

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Photo From Fashion Blog <--Mom Jeans SNL photo source!

Umm...Naturalist?

If you include all the different franchises and other jobs I've had, I've had about 11 different jobs since 2005. It's not that I'm a bad worker, I've never been fired, but these days, working two jobs at a time is pretty much the norm.

One of the jobs I've had, and the most recent, is being a State Park Naturalist. The job is fun and rewarding, and it requires basic knowledge of biology, marine science, marine biology, fisheries, or an enthusiasm for fisheries and marine life is sufficient. While the term, "naturalist" should apply to many parts of the park and different life forms, there has been a recent focus on marine life. Why is this important? It's coming, don't worry.

A normal day at the park usually involves answering the same couple of questions again and again, but it's offset by gorgeous ocean views, cute animals, and kind people. On this particular day, an older couple beckoned me outside to try to identify a plant. Immediately worried (I can barely identify grass), I assured the couple I would try my best. They pointed out a lethal-looking rose plant that grows frequently near the sea. Before it blooms, large, ugly bulbs form before the bright fuchsia flowers.

I told the couple that I was sorry, but I wasn't sure of the exact name of the rose bush. To my surprise, the man gripped my shirt and forcibly turned me so he could read and show me the Department of Environmental badge on my shirt. With a sneer he said as he gestured to the patch, Uhh....Naturalist?

Uhh...douchebag?

At the time, I was too shocked to do anything but smile and laugh nervously. But once I got home, I realized how upset I was. It's one thing to be upset that I couldn't identify a plant even though I could identify a room full of fish, but it's another thing to lay hands on another person. There's plenty of other ways to let me know of my inferiority with botany.

It's never okay for someone to put their hands on you if they're a stranger, meaning you ill will, or simply unwanted contact. How much would be too much to let that man know he can't do things like that? Am I just over-reacting? Have you ever had a stranger grab you / invade your personal space? What's the right protocol?

Uhh...Naturalist?

Uhh...touch me again and see what happens.

#1 Sir, Please Step Away From the Counter

Hello there, and welcome to my very first blog. I have no profound words of wisdom, no political ramblings, no clever "witicisms" on today's society. I have anger and honest confusion.


I've worked in customer service for over seven years at a certain place that America runs on. Don't click away just yet! It's not a career I want (did not get 40k in the hole for student loans and two degrees to be working there forever), but it has been a very flexible and convenient job. It's also a great place to meet loony bins, perverts, snobs, socialites, wannabees, know-it-alls, jerk-offs, and occasionally nice people. Every job involves dealing with some other human being, so there are bound to be problems. No one can avoid it. No one is safe.


 To start my blog, I'll relay a bedtime story for those of you on the east coast of the 'ol US of A:

Once upon a time, there was a young girl who worked just like many other people to make ends meet. One night at work, a man came to the counter to order his nighttime fare of an artery congealing donut and a coffee that had past its prime by an hour. The girl noticed he had a bar pierced horizontally through his forearm, and being curious and friendly asked, "Did it hurt to get that done? It's in an unusual spot!"


The man smiled a slightly off-kilter smile and the girl got a twinge of unease. He spoke up, animated and sociable about how he runs a piercing business and does all sorts of piercings. Unbidden, he even mentions he's pierced his....as the donut shop might refer to it, his cruller. Twice. 


The stupid girl thought she could get a good tip if she kept chatting with the man, who was fiddling with his arm-bolt piercing, and asked if his wife liked the pierced cruller. After more information about the topic than she ever wanted to know, he finally leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially:


My favorite piercing to do, is nipples. I really love holding a woman's chest and inflicting pain at the same time. Would you like yours done?

What my face looked like after his question

Turning several shades of red non-existent on Earth and laughing nervously while backing away, the girl hides in the back room until the sadistic man leaves. She learned never to deviate from the prescribed Hi, how can I help you? again.


The End.

Now, as much as that ordeal scarred me, I'm sure there are many many of you out there with more terrifying or enraging stories. How we make it through relatively okay, I'll never know. How do you make it through tough days with trying people?


What got me through that day was the joy of knowing I was not that man's wife.