My Co-Workers

Hi all,

As I have established in previous entries here, I work at a large grocery store called Giant Eagle. I have worked there for entirely too long, and I hate it with a passion. Until about six or seven months ago, I worked nights, and that effectively crushed my soul and screwed up my health for a while. Since I've switched to mornings, I've met a lot of new folks. Some are nice, some are annoying. Here's the rundown, using nicknames that I have created:

-"Gung Ho"--> This guy is OBSESSED with the military. He's in the reserves. He spends those monthly weekends sitting in a booth watching TV, but he acts like he's been in the shit or something. He will start talking about 'maneuvers', or 'regs', or the 'CMH' at a moment's notice. Honestly, most of the time we won't even be talking about military stuff and he'll just say something out of the blue to change the subject. He especially likes to do it when customers walk by, and he'll be louder about it if said customer happens to be a young woman. I feel like the Dude in Big Lebowski when Walter starts talking about Vietnam. He purposely says things in armyspeak. He refers to our starting time as "oh-seven-hundred". We have to wear walkie talkies. He LOVES that. He always keeps his turned up REALLY loud, too, so customers can hear it and be impressed, or something. If someone calls him on it, he'll make a huge deal of retrieving it from his belt loop, cock his arm really fast, give a cool, casual look to the nearest individual and say, "Go ahead." He comes back from breaks early, too. Who the hell does that? Honestly.

-Mouth #1--> This lady thinks she has to know every single goddamn thing that goes on, ever. She is quite possibly THE biggest gossip I've ever come in contact with, and I used to go to church! She'll always walk up and start with the same phrase--"Did you hear what happened to...". She loves all of those VH1 reality shows. I think she kinda gets off on 'sniffing other people's dirty laundry', so to speak. That brings me to...

-Mouth #2--> Okay, this guy's almost worse. He talks relentlessly about everyone on our shift, but he'll act like he doesn't. I made the mistake early on of telling him something mildly personal, and the next day an employee I didn't even know approached me and started giving out advice. From then on, I knew not to tell him anything. Sometimes when I'm bored, though, I'll tell him a total lie and see how long it takes for it to get around. It's a fun game I like to play sometimes.

-Captain Paperwork--> This guy is a joke. According to him, everything has to be done according to these stupid lists they've been trying to implement. If the list says one person has to do a job in one hour that it would normally take two people an hour to do, then there's no reason why one person shouldn't get it done in that hour. Make sense? Of course not. Nothing is designed around common sense. This guy sits in an office and makes and laminates charts, then comes down and bitches at us while he posts them on our walls.

-Deliverance--> Total redneck. The first time I met this guy, I said hi to him. He stared at me, breathing through his stupid mouth, and did not say ONE WORD. He continued to stare at me until I walked off. Since then he's asked me if I'm a "faygeet", and told me if I was to stay away from him. One of the very few people I would like to hit. I wouldn't, but it's fun to think about it sometimes.

There are actually a few people who work there that are really cool, too, including my former co-workers from the night shift, and a very lovely young lady who works in a different department. She's insanely nice and really fun and easy to talk to. She's also very attractive. And, of course, she has a boyfriend. With my luck, I'm becoming someone who's "like a sister" to her. It's not like I'm trying to put the moves on her or anything, but damn.

Wrapping up, the moral of this story is that I need to quit working at this place and move far, far away. Also, I'm kind of hungry.

'Til next time...