DISPATCH 7: BULL MARKET PT. 1
RE: MOUSE OMENS, SCHEDULING REQUESTS, TWO WEEKS NOTICE, AND THE MICHAEL CERA/KIERAN CULKIN/TAVI GEVINSON TRIFECTA
I wanted to start with the mouse. Or, maybe, with how my car was almost stolen. Or the most beautiful piss of my life. But instead, this post, like many of my others, will start in the restaurant I’ve worked at for nearly a year now; a restaurant which for legal purposes is fictional, but may resemble a certain popular soul-sucking dessert-based chain.
You know your employment situation is dire when you spend your time writing hypothetical jeremiads about the workplace. To give you a sense of the establishment I’ve spent 30+ hours a week at for the better part of a year, here is a note which I wrote about three weeks ago, but never passed on to my managers:
Hi,
I wanted to reach out with a quick scheduling request. I'm looking to tone back my hours a little bit. When I initially started this job, I was looking to work 20-30 hours a week. Since the spring, I've mainly been working 35+ hours a week. I know there's been a lot of unforeseen circumstances among the staff and we've all had to cover for each other, which is why I expected my scheduled hours to go back down eventually. However, the past few weeks I've been scheduled for ~40 or more hours, which obviously is less than I will actually work because I am a cashier and have to stay longer than my hours. It's not sustainable for me to continuously work 45+ hours a week because I have other commitments outside of this job that have fallen by the wayside due to my schedule.
I also wanted to make a request in terms of what shifts I am scheduled. Currently, there are 5 staff members who are only bakers, but I am consistently scheduled 2-3 shifts a week of both opening the bakery and to-gos. To be clear, I do not mind opening the bakery and will gladly do so, but it's very difficult to balance both that position and to-gos. I know we're concerned with accuracy in to-gos at the moment; I'm sure any manager or staff member has seen me running (literally, at points) around the restaurant during this shift in order to accomplish everything I need to do. In short, I'm sure the drop off in to-gos accuracy is because I'm scheduled to work this shift.
Further, it's offensive to me that I appear to be the only person in the bakery who routinely works the opening baker/to-gos shift. I know Amy works the same shift occasionally, but never more than once a week. It makes me feel as though I am being taken advantage of when I am the only person who has to work this bullshit shift.
One last point regarding opening the bakery. I hate to complain about things of this nature, but the situation has become borderline untenable. It is extremely unfair that the newer hires are subject to far more lax standards regarding pretty much every aspect of the job from the managers. I know they say you can’t fix stupid, but unfortunately we work in food service, so you guys are going to have to find some way to manage it. It’s unacceptable for me to come in, as I did last Wednesday, to half the case empty, none of the toppings stocked, no back up berries pulled, and all of 10 capped and dried berries, especially with the expectation that I’m supposed to make 36 slices of 3 berries each, plus the berry mixes. What that meant was that I was entirely unable to work on to-gos because I was covering for my incompetent coworkers, and moreover, I had to stay 90 minutes past my out time to get the bakery into workable shape. In addition, I was admonished for not having things prepared and, for example, missing a phone call, even though I was entirely tied up in the bakery because it was left a mess. I am unsure why the closing manager allowed this to happen when they checked out the closing baker.
I know that we all make mistakes, but the people I work with should, at this point, be past certain mistakes. I had a coworker who has been here 5 months ask me how to make a kids’ scoop the other night. I do not understand how it is possible to not know how to make a kids’ scoop when it is something we make multiple times a day every day, and also is simply two scoops of ice cream with whipped cream on top. What could possibly be confusing about that.
The last straw was seeing a coworker put the new Super Berry cheesecake on a round plate instead of a square. This was frustrating because we have all known about this cheesecake for an equal amount of time, and so we should all be equally comfortable knowing something as basic as what plate it goes on, but apparently my coworkers are incapable of even that. What makes this more confounding is that we have at least two printouts of what the new slice is supposed to look like in various parts of the bakery. What this shows is that in addition to being fucked on the schedule, I also have to work with imbeciles, which is also unfair to me.
The cherry on top of the cheesecake was when an unnamed manager relayed to me a complaint the other night about the espresso machine not being cleaned correctly, and asked me to follow up with my coworker. As a cashier, I do not close the espresso machine. If such a complaint exists, it should be brought up with the closing baker or the pre-close baker, as well as the closing FOH manager. I cannot come up with a single reason why this would be my problem — I am a cashier, and it is not my job to manage the bakers. In fact, there is an entire group of people who are employed at this restaurant who have this job: managers. It is your job to inspect the closed bakery at the end of the night with the baker and determine what should be cleaned up or fixed. At this time, I have to be back in the office counting my drawer. If a baker is in some way inadequate, it is their superior’s job to follow up with them, not a coworker’s. This is demonstrative of the ways management has totally abdicated the responsibility for the bakery as it continues to flounder.
In short, I am just one person, and I can't be expected to work multiple roles at once, more than 40 hours a week, and also be asked to clean up after every other fuckwad I work with. I appreciate your considering my scheduling request. I hope you all explode. Thanks!
Best,
Foamite
I think food service gets a lot more tolerable if you like the people you work with; or at least, I’d imagine so. In this note, I limit myself to professional qualms with my coworkers. For example, I didn’t mention how, around that time, a coworker told me that she was going on a cruise but wouldn’t get off when they stopped at Haiti because “there’s cannibals there.” Given the political headlines of the past few days, it appears she was an early adopter of extremely racist anti-Haitian stereotypes about eating; either that, or all this vitriol can be traced back to a single bartender I work with1.
I didn’t mention how one of my coworkers gave me the silent treatment to punish me for something I didn’t do and then held me up at work an hour and a half past my out time on the day I had a job interview so I almost missed it. I didn’t talk about the mute dishwasher who might have sexually harassed me (unclear; it was mainly gestural), or the other dishwasher who DEFINITELY harassed my coworker. I didn’t mention the manager who called me a ‘dirty little girl’ as a joke, or the coworker who on multiple occasions made me cry for an hour straight, or the manager we called ‘Junkie Cheese’ because he sold coke. I noticed said manager has had a consistent case of the sniffles; I almost commiserated about allergies, but then I heard about his nickname2.
So, in this way, the note that I never sent was actually probably friendly and helpful feedback, and I probably should have sent it. But I didn’t. So instead, three weeks ago, I was still working terrible double shifts that nobody else had to work. It was a Tuesday3. I was lying on the floor between my doubles, eating a sandwich and trying to steel myself for another shift in the cheesecake mines. And then a tiny baby mouse ran at my head.
Upon seeing the mouse, I hollered and jumped straight up in the air. I then called my boyfriend immediately. He laughed at me and told me he’d get traps on the way home. I evacuated because despite being the apex predator in this situation, I still apparently have the ability to be scared by a tiny mouse.
This is actually not the first time I’ve dealt with mice: once, when Mary and I lived together in college, we were both sick and working our way through wretched assignments (as I remember, Mary was working on a class project about the Holocaust, and I was trying to resolve some major student organization-related beef). Then Mary received sobering family news. I told her we ought to just lay low because clearly luck was not on our side that night. That’s when the mouse chose to show itself in the bathroom. Luckily, it appeared only once more after that, and then disappeared into the wilderness.
At my current apartment with my boyfriend, there’s been some murine foreshadowing: when the exterminator came to our house to deal with the pigeons, he told us he found mouse droppings, so it’s been a longstanding possibility. Like the first time, the mouse appeared at something of a crucible moment. But this time, it wasn’t so eager to leave. By the time I got back that evening, my boyfriend was preparing to give me bad news.
“The mouse kind of owned me,” he said. “It was so fast and little! I tried to catch it with this bowl but it just ran right past me.”
Had he not told me this, I probably could have intuited it myself from the bedroom: all kinds of objects were knocked over, a bowl lay upside down on the floor, and the Swiffer was leaning across the bed (our bedroom floor is carpeted). This was apparently one of his mouse catching tools. I’m going to put on the record now that we did not want to kill the mouse, but rather pick it up and bring it outside if possible. That said, we would quickly optimize for not having a mouse running around our apartment over keeping it alive.
At this point, I had to go to the laundromat and thus couldn’t deal with the mouse anymore4.
We ended up going to sleep Tuesday with the mouse problem unresolved. Did it potentially run over the mattress we sleep on (raw, no bedframe) in the middle of the night? Sure, but I can’t really handle thinking about that right now. And besides, when the mouse showed up in Mary and I’s apartment, it was right at the beginning of one of the best eras of my life; perhaps having a tiny rodent squirming around in the laundry on the floor of my apartment was some sort of blessing.
It’s at this point I should mention that I applied for a real person job in early August. This was the job for which I almost missed an interview because of my shitty food service job. That week, I had had my final round interview. It went well – I knew I was one of four people left out of a pretty big field, and had gotten good feedback from the committee. I’d been rolled and smoked in a finalist round before, gone through 3 or 4 interviews just to get a form rejection or hear nothing at all. And yet. This job felt different.
On Wednesday, I got an encouraging enough sign that I did the unthinkable: I quit my fuckass cheesecake job.
I QUIT!!!!!!!!!! I FUCKING QUIT!!!!!!
Was this a bad idea without having another job formally lined up? If you asked a professional, probably yes; but I truly would have rather scraped gum off bus stop benches than continue knowing I had to go back to my current job. I walked out of my second shift on that Wednesday, drove home, went straight to my laptop, and sent in my two weeks’ notice.
Growing up I often heard that quitters never win and winners never quit. What is lacking in this phrase is the sheer elation of quitting, the pure joy of hitting send on the note that will end something for good. I did a little dance, knowing there were a finite number of days left that I could be bullied by 40-year-olds pissed that their Santa Fe salad was five minutes late. Then I lay down on my floor mattress that Wednesday night, thrilled at the thought of my impending escape.
Which is, of course, when the mouse reappeared and ran across the floor.5
I don’t usually put a section for what I watch because I don’t tend to watch things. But I did this past few weeks! See below.
SEX AND THE CITY SEASON 1
I started watching Sex and the City with Mary. What the fuck, guys. I kind of thought this was going to be a #relatable show about being a young woman in the big city. It’s not!! It’s really not. Everyone in this show is actually deranged except Skipper, who’s valid at this exact point in the series (he did use the term ‘horndog’ in the show, which gave me pause. Is that something people usually said? Like in conversation? Was there a period when you could say ‘horndog’ and be normal?) Anyways, despite dating a man for half a decade now, I truly think I am not heterosexual enough to understand anything happening in this show.
I also made the mistake of doing some research about this show on Wikipedia. If you didn’t know, SatC was based on a real newspaper column, which was based on real life woman with some details fictionalized. This led me down the rabbit hole of the guy Mr. Big6 was based on, Ron Galotti. In the show they compare Mr. Big to Donald Trump (favorably). Here is Ron Galotti with Mr. Trump in real life. Wow! Also his Wikipedia page is insane. It’s not very long but it includes just enough for me to know that real life Mr. Big served in the Air Force, became a loan shark in the Philippines, and then started a brothel with his usury money, all before founding a magazine backed by Harvey Weinstein. Woah! What a hunk!
A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT
Likely the only film I’ll watch this year that handles both Iranian oil relations and skateboarding vampires. My boyfriend watched this in his Iranian cinema class and said his classmates described it as “very 2014 Tumblr.” I’d be inclined to agree. I liked this movie a lot and also I’m including it to say sorry to my boyfriend for falling asleep twice during it. To be clear, the movie was not boring and very good and me falling asleep was circumstantial. A hijabi vampire with cool eyeliner killing men who misbehave is a very dope concept for a movie.
SUCCESSION SEASON 4
I don’t watch TV but I’m a Succession freak, I’m sorry. Fell for it the moment Cousin Greg vomited in his costume at the amusement park. My hot take about this show is that they should have just let Sarah Snook and Matthew McFadyen have their accents and not come up with a reason why. Would be truer to the reality of the Murdochs anyhow! I think an underrated moment so far in season four is Connor Roy doing Leonard Cohen karaoke. Next time I’m forced into a karaoke situation I’m surely whipping out ‘Famous Blue Raincoat.’ No spoilers, please — I haven’t reached the end of the season yet, and at the pace I’m watching, I probably won’t until December.
ASHLEY ASKED ME - THE DALLAS COWBOYS
I am in love with The Dallas Cowboys. ‘If at First You Don’t Succeed, Pack Your Bags.’ starts with a math rocky riff before the characteristic autotune vocals and meme samples kick in, then we transition to upbeat synths, then ironic claps and ‘WOO!’s à la much of 2000s pop, all while keeping the crunchy, distorted guitar. This is not a track on ashley asked me and instead from this year’s EP God Save the Scene, but in a way it feels like the apex of The Dallas Cowboys’ style.
On ashley asked me, the duo bounces between hyperpop, indietronica, emo, dance, and Dracula Flow samples. On ‘Floss Your Heart Out Bitch’, they take a PC music beat — think GFOTY or Hannah Diamond — and scream over it. All of their songs are titled things like ‘Holy shit we’re gonna put Matt and Kim out of business’ or ‘If I were that quirky I’d kill myself’. Their sound feels like it inherits something from Metro Station and 3OH!3, but somehow even less serious.
POET’S TOOTH - TELE NOVELLA
Tele Novella has been described as ‘medieval pop’. This is likely because of the haunting melodies, as well as the whimsical and sometimes aphoristic nature of the lyrics – on ‘The Unicorn’, vocalist Natalie Ribbons sings, “While in our very city/there lives a unicorn of old/The Queen that holds the unicorn/Will be reborn.” The sound itself is mildly western, an influence acknowledged in song titles like ‘Vampire Cowboy’ as well as in the ‘Funeral’ music video.
I’m surprised this album didn’t get more buzz last year. Ribbons sounds like a cross between Caroline Polachek and Fiona Apple – her voice is addicting. The whole album has something of a storybook feel to it. My favorite track, which is probably going to be one of my top songs of the year, is ‘Eggs in One Basket’. I’m beginning to enjoy consuming content about virtues. This song tells you how to act: “You must have integrity/as you go after/that which your heart seeks/until it's mastered.” Hell yeah. I can get into integrity.
Apparently Mount Eerie has a new album coming out in early November. Mountain climbers rise up. Anyways, I found this album because it was on Mount Eerie’s Bandcamp page, and Stretton has Elverum’s ear for soundscapes. Her gentle folk songs are buoyed by soft nature recordings layered in among lush strings. This album reminds me a bit of Adrienne Lenker’s songs but with more nature sounds. The end result is a rich, calming folk record for fans of Lomelda, @, and Starry Cat.
OTHER NOTES OF INTEREST
Been looking at the ‘List of unusual deaths’ on Wikipedia recently to calm down. Imagine my surprise when, while on the phone with my friend, I picked one at random to read and they said “I think I knew about that, actually.” (This was my friend Diego and the death was that of Constans II, who was assassinated with a bucket.)
Just found out about the stage production with Tavi Gevinson, Kieran Culkin, and Michael Cera…yeah. And then I listened to the Longform podcast episode with Tavi Gevinson, in which the host says he saw this very show, which he frames as being before Kieran Culkin was cool or famous. Like, okay, This is Our Youth was four years AFTER Scott Pilgrim, but go off I guess. Also I just showed some friends the Michael Cera cover of ‘Clay Pigeons’, and I recently read Tavi Gevinson’s brilliant new zine7, and I’m of course watching Succession, so it’s safe to say I’m going through a very Tavi Gevinson/Michael Cera/Kieran Culkin era in my life.
Mark Robinson is an evangelical Christian running for governor in North Carolina. Despite his family values-forward campaign, he was recently accused of frequenting a porn shop in the 90s; you might have heard about this because of the New York Mag tweet below. What you might not have heard is that the porn shop employee who said Robinson was coming in as many as 5 times a week ALSO wrote a song about the situation called ‘The Lt. Governor Owes Me Money.’ It’s a banger about how Robinson got all these custom bootleg porn tapes and didn’t pay for them. I wish I could chill with those guys in the music video so bad but in my heart I know I wouldn’t be able to hang.
I recognize that this is probably just my bubble but I feel like I’m not hearing enough about judicial reform in Mexico. That article’s old — the legislation has since passed, and now is just waiting on a signature from AMLO, due tomorrow. It’s kind of crazy that their judges could soon be elected instead of appointed. Sound off in the comments on what you think about judicial reform in Mexico.
Been really into emojis recently like some kind of lowdown dirty millennial. For example for the last bullet point I almost put 🗣️🇲🇽. Used this one the other day to express getting my ducks in a row: 🦆🦆🦆🦆. One of my favorite emoji combinations was cooked up by my friend Judah. We tried to come up with the most creative emoji synonyms for 🍆👌, and he came up with: 🤾♂️🤸♀️.
Not really a “news item” but sometimes you have a post that’s famous TO YOU but wasn’t that famous in real life so you can’t reference it out loud because no one will know what you’re talking about. One I’ve been thinking about a lot is “She can’t afford it.” This is a post that didn’t actually change the lexicon, but it should have.
MORAL OF THE STORY: QUITTERS ALWAYS WIN. IT’S NOT ALLERGY SEASON, DON’T ASK ABOUT THE SNIFFLES. YOUR MANAGER ISN’T GOING TO DO ANYTHING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT YOUR STUPID COWORKERS — PUT IN YOUR TWO WEEKS NOW!
I did provide some light pushback to this in the moment, but if you're at the point in racism that accusing an ethnic group of cannibalism is just light conversation, your brain is probably too cooked to handle logic. As expected, when I pointed out that most of the famous cannibals were American, she brushed me off.
And perhaps learned a lifelong lesson about smalltalk!
The Tuesday after I published my last post, if you want to be precise.
At the laundromat, a woman who identified herself as a storyteller struck up a conversation with me. I met her companion and mentee who said he was a poet. The storyteller saw I was reading The Odyssey and helpfully corrected my pronunciation of ‘Telemachus.’ I later called Mary and told her that I met a storyteller and a poet at the laundromat and she called that a “tarot card-ass interaction.” These two people have no relevance to any other part of the newsletter but I wanted to shout them out because they seemed cool.
… Fade to black. End of post. If anyone WAS genuinely curious about what happened to the mouse, my boyfriend and I used a variety of creative tools (including, yes, the Swiffer) to barricade it in the corner with the poison traps that night.
For the uninitiated, Mr. Big is a primary love interest of the protagonist. He's supposed to be this rich mysterious hottie.
Everyone read this I liked it a lot!!
“Tarot card-ass interaction” and “the most beautiful piss of my life” were truly the greatest lines I’ve ever read