First day of my Sophomore year of college...

was STUPID.

The only kind good thing about today was that my math professor (actually I think she's a T.A.) seems really nice, and the class seems really easy. BUT. For half the class I had to pee so badly that I would have left, if I had sat in the back.

OH, AND NOW IT'S GONNA RAIN.


I'm probably going to yell at some stranger today because they do something like accidentally step on the back of my flipflop.

"WOW, I HOPE YOU'RE GOING TO BUY ME NEW SHOES BECAUSE YOU JUST DEFILED THEM WITH YOUR SHOE, YOU DISGUSTING SWINE."

When I'm angry I sometimes demand people buy me things.

I worked from 7:30 to 11:30 and that was mostly pleasant. I didn't even get one annoying customer telling me that the bundled price is less than the books separate, but we're out of the bundled package and WHAT THAT'S SO WRONG HOW COULD YOU BE OUT WHEN SCHOOL'S SO SOON. IT'S NOT LIKE PEOPLE PROBABLY BOUGHT THOSE BECAUSE THEY GOT HERE EARLY BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT IDIOTS.

So that was nice.

I came home from class and was going to watch something on Netflix, only to discover that it's not streamable on my computer. Oh, but I could watch it on a Netflix enabled PHONE, or an IPAD, so that's cool. Because I have those.

At first I was pissed because I PAY FOR THAT NETFLIX, and it doesn't even WORK.

But then I remembered that I don't pay for that Netflix.

I thought I had a meeting from 3:30 to 5 for The Florida Review today, but I DON'T. So I took the stupid, hot bus to campus and walked in the hotness, and climbed eighty stairs and almost DIED, only to discover that the meeting is tomorrow.

I came home on the stupid hot bus, walked to my car, and drove the the main office in my apartment complex to get a form to defer my rent until I get financial aid. There are about ten sets of speed bumps on the way there, and every time my car goes over one of those speed bumps, or turns slightly, it makes a horrible popping sound that make me feel physically ill.

After I got the form, I drove around and around the complex, looking for the gate that opens up to the little set of stores that has the Subway in it. When I got there (approximately five sets of speed bumps later), the gate was locked. I wanted to kill every one in the entire world.

But I DIDN'T, because I'm NICE.

I can't park in the parking lot of the set of stores because there's a Moe's there, and oh my GAAWD it's Moe's Mondays, so you can save two dollars or some shit on a burrito, and every one in the entire world needs to get a freaking burrito so badly that they'll park on the SIDEWALK to do so.

When I got home, subless and angry, I checked the status of a package I ordered about a week ago. Now, when I went to the mail center earlier today, the angry little mail center man was like "NO YOU DON'T HAVE ANYTHING." And I was like :(

But according to the USPS website, my package was delivered at 10:11 AM.

I almost walked over there and punched that liar right in his face, but then I remembered that it's hot, and I'm lazy, and I wouldn't do that ANYWAY.


I have to go back to the bookstore to return my books that I ordered online, and buy them BACK, so I can use my 20% discount or whatever. I don't even know if that's going to work, since I used financial aid to buy them, and I don't think that it's magically automatically refunded to my account when I return something.
If it doesn't work, though, someone is going to get punched, or ordered to buy something for me.


I would make a fantastic diva.

The Help

I want to see that movie.
So I ordered the book.
That makes sense, right?


Today I did things that mostly consisted of sitting in Jason's car while he drove, and we both yelled things like "WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT, YOU BIG STUPID IDIOT? DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO DRIVE?"  
The answer is no, I don't think most people do know how to drive.


Last Saturday, when I was staying at my mom's house, I went to a hookah bar for the very first time with some friends. 

When we got to the "bar" there was only one spot in the whole parking lot that was for five establishments. Unfortunately, this spot was in the very back, right across from a garbage can that probably had a dead body in it. Not wanting to get car jacked, or raped, we drove to the Walmart across the street and parked there, waiting for the others to arrive so we could all walk to our destination together.


Once inside I was instantly hit by a wall of smoke and not-good music, but it was cold inside and hot outside, and I see these people maybe once a month so I was going to endure the atmosphere.

We picked two tables next to a giant fountain that had bubbles in it, for some reason, and ordered some sort of flavor hookah that I don't remember. To me they're all just tablets of firedeath, anyway. I ordered a Pepsi even though it was $2 because I was out on the town and wanted to live a little. Also I was pretty sure I was going to be murdered that night when walking back to the car, so what was $2, really?


Half an hour or so after sitting down, we were served our beverages, and almost immediately after that half our group left. One of them had work at nine in the morning, they said, but actually I believe they just wanted to leave before the scary rapist criminals left their holes and vans with blacked-out windows. 


Fearing for our lives, since the two boys left our group and only four of us girls remained, we asked the server (I use that term lightly because I know what a good server is, and she was poop) if she could just cancel our order because we wanted to leave.

"Oh, you leave now? But why...? It is right here," she said, pointing somewhere behind her. Really, though, I believe she was lying and hadn't even set it up or told anyone we'd ordered it at all.

Us being polite ladies, we told her alright. We would wait.

Fifteen minutes later she brought it out.

After waiting forty-five minutes plus, I expected some magical contraption to come out, so I was disappointed when a regular-old hookah pipe thingy was placed on our table. It was kind of teal-colored, but other than that it was boring. It wasn't even at all sparkly. I rubbed it a little bit, even, and there was no genie.

Everyone else was smoking, and initially I was going to try some because sometimes I like to be impulsive and do things I usually wouldn't, but that's how my hair ends up brown. Most importantly, though, I'm allergic to smoke. I bet you're thinking "THEN WHY'D YOU GO TO A  HOOKAH  BAR, STUPID?" Well! I'm allergic to cats, but I can be around one and hold one. I just can't rub it on my face or inhale its dander.  
There's also the thing about how tobacco is bad for you, and even though there's not nicotine in hookah, it's still not good for your body. So, really guiz, stop saying "IT'S NOT NICOTINE IT'S OKAY." No, it's not. Stfu.
I'm destroying my body enough by drinking soda and eating fresh fruits and vegetables maybe once a week.

After they finished, or got bored, I don't know, we walked to the car as fast as we could, keys in hand, ready to stab an attacker at any moment! Ahha!
 
We weren't attacked, though, and we all made it home alive, unraped.
 
Success!

NOTE: Don't you legally have to be eighteen years old to do hookah? Because that lady didn't card any of us, and some of us look like children. This contributed to the shadiness.


BAI.

 

JOB

I have one of those.
A job.
It's exciting.
To have the job, I mean. The job itself isn't that exciting. Especially since it's probably only temporary, so I MIGHT get hired as a seasonal employee, after Rush and stuff. It all depends on how good I am, and how much everyone else sucks.
Not that I hope everyone else is really bad, necessarily. I just hope I'm better.
It's kinda like when there's a really cute cat that you and everyone else want to hold. You don't want the cat to scratch everyone's faces and pee on their wounds, necessarily. You just hope the adorable kitty hugs you instead of those other less-worthy people.
Actually, that's exactly what it's like.

Anyway, I'm a cashier. I don't know why.
I interviewed for a cafe job, but they didn't want me to work with them, I guess, so I was hired instead as a cashier. On the application I was supposed to select any jobs I was applying for, but I think I was supposed to number them from what I wanted the most to what I wanted the least. I just put X's.

I'm not saying I have a problem with being a cashier. It's super awesome to have a job, and I'm grateful. BUT. Dealing with money makes me very nervous because sometimes I can't even count it. I lose track because I get distracted by anything and everything, and then I have to count all over again like twelve times. This is kind of okay when I'm counting it to hand to a cashier who I'm making a purchase from (even though they're glaring at me because I'm an adult who can't count to $35.76), but I don't think it would be okay when you're counting change back to an angry customer who thought that that shirt was $15, but actually it's $18, so they're already angry AND NOW I'M COUNTING WRONG BECAUSE I'M STUPID AND SHORT.

Math is hard.


Luckily, though! most people will be paying with their credit cards or magical Financial Aid because books cost hundreds of dollars.
I think if someone hands me $600 in cash, and it's not in mostly one-hundred, fifty, and twenty dollar bills, I'll have a panic attack and pee myself.
BECAUSE COUNTING IS FREAKING DIFFICULT.


So.
Since they hire very few seasonal employees, and so many temporary ones (around forty), for them to want you as a real employee your cash drawer has to be perfect all the time.
And today after my shift I counted my drawer wrong and thought I was off by a dollar. (NUMBERS ARE HARD) I was so nervous and embarrassed that I almost asked if I could just put in a dollar of my own.... What actually happened, though, is that there was just a dollar bill stuck to another dollar bill.

And now I'm afraid that when I give change back to someone, a dollar bill will get stuck to another dollar bill.

Now I'm nervous and I hate myself.

Also the buttons.
Some of the buttons are confusing and there are so many.
And the bagging of items... How do you bag and scan things at the same time? I know cashiers do it, BUT HOW? I am confused.

I don't know how to make this more interesting.

Here are some ghosts I drew a while ago... Two of them are pregnant and two of them aren't.
Yes, ghosts reproduce. Duh.

"Please leave, I'm naked."

The move-in date for my apartment complex is soon! Hurray! You know what that means don't you? (No, you don't)
CLEANING TIME YAAAY!


Management hires tons of people to come in and clean our apartment, whether we want them to or not.

I know what you're thinking. But Haley! That's sooo cool! People clean your home for free! YOU DON'T HAVE TO CLEAN IT YOURSELF.

Yea! That would be totally cool, and I cared SO MUCH that I didn't clean my apartment myself, and if it was a huge deal to me to pick up some stuff, sometimes. And most importantly, if they weren't totally rude and didn't just barge into our rooms.



It started yesterday morning.

I was woken up at around 9 AM, terrified that I was going to be raped and murdered, and that the apartment was going to be ransacked. After I got through the initial shock of hearing strangers banging around in my home, I figured out it was probably maintenance coming to fix the AC. LOL THAT WAS SILLY OF ME. They don't fix anything EVER. I should have known it wasn't them.

A couple hours later when Jason got home from school, I groggily asked him "Who are those people?" To which he replied "They're cleaners. They're cleaning the stove and stuff."
"Well they're loud and I hate them!" I cried, and tried to go back to sleep.

For the next two hours or so, I tried to sleep. Every time I'd drift off, one of the cleaners would bang something, or drop something, or yell, and I'd wake up.
THEN
AND THEN
A lady knocked on Jason's door, opening it immediately. Because that's the purpose of knocking on a door. Simply to announce your entrance; not to request permission to come in.
When she saw that we were "sleeping," (I was pretending because I didn't want to acknowledge her existence), and she hopefully felt like a huge pervert, she left. But still. What if we were naked?


So life continued like this for hours.
At about 1 PM, they cleaned the bathroom in the vacant bedroom of our apartment and left.
It was at this time that I noticed the six or so blinds they somehow managed to tear down from the sliding glass door and didn't put back up, the giant shoe prints on the kitchen tile, that they had opened a new kitchen sponge for whatever reason because it's not like they washed our dishes, and that they had thrown away the recycling we had in the laundry room. My only guess on why they threw out our recycling is that they thought we were just hoarding empty plastic bottles and cardboard, and that they were helping us improve our psychological state by getting rid of it.



Most importantly, though, what if we had been naked?



And this morning.

This morning when I had just gotten out of the shower, I thought I heard voices in the apartment, so I turned down my music. I was correct; there was a person shouting something. I went to the door in my room and listened: "Carpet cleaning! Hello! Carpet cleaning, hello!" I locked my bedroom door and went back into the bathroom, turning on the fan and locking that door.

The carpet cleaning man entered my room (they give all the cleaning people master keys to everything).
I was trapped.

He had to have known I was in there because I was making loud noises, messing with the hairdryer and the cabinets, and for God's sake the fan and lights were on in the bathroom. But he still cleaned the carpet for ten minutes.

Don't get me wrong. I love clean floors. I really do appreciate that they hired people to clean the carpets because they're so dirty and the vacuum we have doesn't work all that well. But SERIOUSLY. Okay, he announced his presence, unlike the cleaning people who were here yesterday, but he still stayed in my room when he had to have known I was trapped in my bathroom.

And once again.
What if I was naked?
And I was.  I was naked, hiding in my bathroom because some stranger, who was potentially a rapist, was in my bedroom, cleaning the floor when I never asked for this to be done, and none of us were ever even told it was being done.

I still feel violated.

As I was cowering in my bathroom, I angrily texted my sister what was happening. She suggested I ask him to leave. Normally this would make sense, but. Really. "Please leave, I'm naked," is even more awkward than staying in my safe bathroom while he does what he came to do.


She also suggested I put signs on my bedroom door, which I just might do.

How To Work Everywhere

Or at least make people think you work everywhere.

All you have to do is wear the uniform. Kind of.

When it comes to a drug store, really any type of semi-dressy clothes will work. Black pants and a button-down shirt of any kind will make most customers think you're an employee. You can be texting on your cell phone, carrying a purse on your shoulder, and a customer will still approach you to ask where the toilet paper is. Then when you reply with "I don't even work here..." they will look taken aback, as if they believe you are lying. When you go back to looking at your phone, the customer will scoff at you and walk away. How dare you not know where the toilet paper is, fake employee!

For Target, any khaki bottoms and red top will do. Even if the bottoms are shorts, and the top is a hoodie. A customer will almost always tap you on the shoulder and ask why this dish detergent is on sale, but this other dish detergent is not. When you tell this customer that you do not know, and they ask WHY, you will respond with "Probably because I don't work here. I don't even have a name tag." Looking a bit embarrassed, but still mostly rude, the customer will inform you that she wasn't sure if you guys  had to wear name tags or not. You guys.
No, customers are not required to wear name tags.

Practically any restaurant is the same as a drug store. Black pants and a button-down top will usually suffice. If you don't have a name tag, or an apron, and you're not carrying a tray, that's alright. It's not like restaurant employees do any of that ever. If you walk by a table on your way to the restroom, you may very well be waved over to a table by fellow guests. Reluctantly, you will go over to them, where you will be asked for a straw. "I don't work here," you'll say. "Oh, well... you look like you do," the guest will reply. "K bye," you'll say as you walk away from the table full of idiots, cursing their mothers for raising such ignorant little creatures.


And that is how to accidentally trick people into believing you work anywhere, and a few scenarios you may encounter when it happens.