5.17.1992

I just got home. I've been out of the house since shortly before nine this morning. Right now it's past midnight. My shift at Petrini's was from 9:30 to 2:30pm. I attempted to get up extra early this morning so when I got to the store I could wake up with a cup of coffee in my hand before going through my usual ritual of putting on my apron in the men's bathroom and straightening my tie in the mirror over our grungy bathroom sink. I was thwarted in getting to work early by the parade. I didn't realize it was today and they blocked off most of my neighboorhood. I had a frustraing time trying to find a way out and it took me a good fifteen minutes. I tried driving out by Jacinda's apartment (she lives a few blocks away from my house in the same neighborhood) but that was all barracaded off. Really annoying.

So I didn't get to work early enough and I rushed through my usual routine. Apron and tie on in the bathroom, then hot foot it up to the booth on the front end of the store to sign my timecard and check the day's bagger lineup to see which worthless baggers I have to work with. Browsed the spot-mop sheet to see if I can sign in for one right away and avoid being up on the checkstands for a while. It sucks having to bag groceries all day for obnoxious housewives and the elderly nuisances we always get from the nearby retirement community. Those old folks enjoy terrorizing us with unreasonable demands, I think. What I really hate is when they call me "boy" instead of mister or something. I get hit up alot by them on the aisles because I'm so tall. They always demand I get a can or a box of something off the top shelves for them. I wouldn't mind so much if even one of them would be polite about it once in a while. Sheesh. They also seem to take great pleasure in asking us to locate items we've never carried. I got an old lady the other day who demanded I produce a jar of pickled pineapples. Never heard of such a thing and I've been working here for a couple of years now. I told her we didn't carry anything like that but she got more and more uptight about it. Started yelling at me actually, and said she's bought it here a bunch of times in the past three years. She must have confused us with another chain store I think. I dumped her on a manager and let him sort her out. It was wasting my time.

I crushed a couple of wooden pallets in the trash compactor behind the store. It was fun. The nails in the pallets groan really loud as the compactor mashes them up. It makes me smile. Senor 23 likes to crush our metal shopping carts. That's pretty funny too. I've watched him do that once. Laughed my ass off. There's all sorts of mayhem to be had with a good trash compactor. Actually there's all sorts of trouble to get into behind the store. Rad Rob showed me a pretty good trick the other afternoon. He grabbed a two liter soda off the shelf and had me follow him outside the store. Nobody was around so he shook the bottle up for a minute and then threw it up in the air as high as he could. He tossed it up a couple of times and nothing interesting happened so I asked him what he was trying to do. Rad Rob said if you can get the bottle to land right on the screw cap it will bust off and the bottle will shoot up in the air like a rocket. I chuckled. After a few more tries he got it right and sure enough the two liter took off like a missle and flew up over the roof of our building. We won't be getting that one back anytime soon. Hehe.

I made an interesting discovery in the warehouse the other day. Somebody busted a bag of BBQ charcoal and left the bag open in the back room. It was slow and no one was there so I started throwing coals at the other end of the warehouse where all our pallets of canned soda are at. Weirdest thing happened. If I hit a can with a piece of charcoal the can would explode violently and shoot the charcoal all the way across the back room to me. It's a long distance. I told a couple of the guys about it and they've been trying it too. It's hilarious to watch. The cans look like Alien because they burst outward and the aluminum rips up. Oh and there's a soda spurt about six feet long on the floor. One of the store managers noticed a number of cans have been burst out in the past couple of days, but he can't figure out how the hell it's happening. Hope nobody finks on us.