Another resume horror.

The (fat) (ex-Mormon) (recent social sciences Ph.D. / adjunct) who I know from the local brewery has really been applying for jobs the past few months...  

He has a lot of good quantitative skills, but the economy is really contracted right now just like it was the last time that you-know-who was president.

Anyways, when I saw him a couple of weeks ago, he was saying that there was a recent LinkedIn post about the horrors of AI on the application process...  You used to be able to weed out a certain amount of resumes and responses based on educational gaps that surface on the submitted docs and the emails, but the increased accessibility of Grammarly-type stuff has done away with that, and now you supposedly get people showing up at interviews with clear skills gaps and everyone is like, "What?!".

Yet another resume horror, beyond how many more you have to pump out because electronic applications have increased the busywork on both sides, where people have to submit so many more applications in order to find a job and employers have to review so many more of them.

It really makes me see how wise I was by trying to get into eldercare and then sliding back into restaurant work, because doing that just cuts out that whole source of nonsense and stress from my life. 

I mean, the jobs aren't the best, but at least you don't have to undergo all of that!

It's just draining and severely demoralizing. 

Another Saturday night...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work:

1) It's like not quite 5pm and it's like pre-dinner skeleton staff and there's one table in the main dining room and one in my back lounge area and then another one comes in to my back lounge area, two (neatly-dressed) (mid-40s) women, one (white) with (mid-length blonde hair) and one (black) with (short hair) and (conservative glasses) and the (white) one also has some kind of big cross and motto about freedom on her left wrist and so I assume that they're both evangelical but it turns out that they're both going to some serial killer event later that night and so are pacing their drinking till then but are still drinking a little anyhow to start while they have dinner, at least the (white) one is but the (black) one is a lightweight and so she's waiting, so, we end up talking forever, and then I step out into the main dining room and there's honest to G-d like 30 people who walked in during that brief-ish time that I was talking with them about things like Signs of a Psychopath and how from watching that I realized that I think that I've had customers who were psychopaths, at which the (black) woman was like, "Of course you have," and all interactions like that for like ten or twelve minutes, while the dining room was quickly filling up without me knowing it.

(There was a 7pm concert and a 7pm minor university sporting event that night, it turned out, ergo an early dinner rush.)

2)  This one (older) (white) couple is in who I recognize again, this (slow-speaking) (bespectacled) (blonde) woman and her (white-haired) husband with glasses, and she's at the table for 2 by herself and she says that her husband is parking the car, and I ask if they know about our customer parking spaces in a nearby lot and she says that they don't, so when her husband comes in, I tell him about them, and he decides to go move the car since he wasn't sure about the signage and legality with where he had parked, and so I step outside the door with him to stand on the front steps and gesture to where the parking spaces are and how you have to go around the building in order to access the lot, because the way that you think that you can get in is a one-way street that goes the wrong way that you need it to go.

Later, they say that they have to go because the husband says that he has to be up for work at seven, then he makes some comment like "Look at an old man like me, still working," so I ask him what his job is, and it turns out that he's a retired farmer but he still helps out one of his sons who farms and he's doing that tomorrow and so he has to be up at seven.

They grow corn and soybeans, too, it turns out. 

(I wonder if he voted for the sitting president, though... Best not to ask, and best case scenario anyhow would probably be that he did but has buyer's remorse and so is embarrassed to talk about it.) 

3) The restaurant is surprisingly busy through late at night, and I run in to dump some dishes and then run back out and print a bill, and the garbage by dish is very full and after I dump them on top of the mounded top of the trash the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook calls out to me pissily and is like, "Hey, you have to change that if you have time," even though I've worked at the place for like 2/3 of a year now and I've never seen anyone but kitchen staff change it, and so I'm like, "I'm right in the middle of helping some customers," and I exit promptly and I immediately see my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) and I ask him if that's our duty because I've never done that before, and he's like "It is and it isn't," and I tell him what happened and also that I have to go cash out a table and help another table, and he's like, "I'll take care of it," and he exits back to the kitchen to take care of it, which he does.

Then, later, I have to go get some lettuce for a customer like right before close, and that same cook is now sweeping the kitchen, and the other (fatter) (perky) (white) (female) cook is also not in her typical place because cooking is now over in there and cleaning has now started, but she's closer to the food, so I get a small plate and go up and ask her to get a piece of lettuce for me, and as I talk with her as she does that I take a tiny step in towards her and immediately the one (straggly-bearded) (thin) (white) (stoner) cook is like, "Hey! Don't go in there, there's a line here that you guys should never pass," and he throws a finger out and indicates an imaginary line extending from each end of the kitchen island and he immediately starts going off about how if we do that during the shift it will be chaos etc. etc. etc., so I'm like, "Okay" and I shrug, and I get my lettuce and I run back out while he's still talking, just not interacting with all of his pissiness.

(Later, a call comes in for takeout right before close when all of the cooks had already cleaned everything, and I hear him bitching when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] runs it back to him -- "Why is this happening now", he was like -- and so when my one [affable] coworker who was in the [military] comes out, I kind of speak low to him and am like, "He was kind of being a bitch earlier, so this is like instant karma, I guess?", answering the cook's question to him, confidentially.)

Jigsaw puzzle record?

Like I usually do after I complete a jigsaw puzzle, I kept this one goddess-y one up for a while, which was like a huge woman's body extending up out of a ship's prow with her arms holding up the sails, and then behind her flowed like rainbows and bits and pieces of dreams, including eroticky things like a couple clutching each other and faces with suggestive expressions on them.

The puzzle also included splashes of actual glitter on select pieces, too, like some of those that formed the roiling waves beneath the ship.

Anyhow, after I finally disassembled it, I put my usual note on there that all pieces were present as of that date, and then the next day I dropped it off on the local public library's "take one, leave one" jigsaw puzzle exchange table before going upstairs to do like 45 minutes of computer work (printing stuff, answering some emails, etc.).

Then, when I came back downstairs and went by that jigsaw puzzle exchange table on my way out, what did I discover but that it was already gone.

Less than an hour before someone took it... A new record? 

Farmer's market doings (2 of 2): Tomato dogmatism.

For some reason, I always eat my heirloom tomatoes raw, and I buy regular standard garden-grown tomatoes to cut up and use in salads.

Like a few weeks ago when I ended up taking a quick 2-night trip away, however, I returned home and I needed to use up a handful of heirloom tomatoes that I had boughten earlier that week because they were just then at peak ripeness and besides I was really craving a cucumber - tomato - hot pepper salad with salt and oil and vinegar like I always make all summer long once tomatoes start coming in, so instead of what I usually do, I decided to use those heirloom tomatoes for that, and they were sooo much better in my salad than regular standard garden-grown tomatoes!

It really made me realize how much I've suffered, from my tomato dogmatism.

Farmer's market doings (1 of 2): Cabbage.

So, a few months ago, the guy at the stand with the big, cheap, good cabbages said they'd be having them for most of the season, since they did the plantings where they'd be coming in regularly.

But, now I need cabbages again, for a soup and for sauerkraut, and suddenly the entire stand has stopped coming into the farmer's market!

Like, it's not just them having no cabbages, but they're not coming in at all!

And, right when I need them, again. 

Another day at work...

...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I now work at:

1) I start my dinner shift on the early side at 4pm and am by the host stand wiping menus when my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) comes in even a bit more disheveled than usual, and the smell of liquor just rolls off of him, especially when he speaks, so to be nice about it and to tip him off and keep him from getting in trouble, I lower my voice and theatrically grimace and am like, "Hey, you know, you can really smell the liquor on you..", at which he pauses all woozily and then is like, "And I can still feel it inside me."

2) Since the name of my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military) starts with an "M" and he's been upgraded to management lately, I start alliterating a lot and saying everything is "[his first name]'s masterful management," like how when he's not busy with something he steps in and helps his employees out or like how he got everything together and all the fills were done etc. and we all clocked out early at exactly 8:59pm, so, like, when that happens, I remark upon it and describe the phenomenon and am then like, "Now that is some masterful management," and when the clock-out thing happened, too, I was like, "That is more than masterful management, that is magnificent management."

He was greatly amused at all of that, too, and at one point earlier on he was like, "More like misguided management," to which I was like, "No, at worst, your management is just midd."

3) I grab some food from a reception to take home but wolf down the two-and-a-half homemade cream cheese-and-chicken taquitos cooling in a catering tray right then instead of packing it up, and then the bus driver rides the brakes a lot on the way home and it's all just too much for me and so I have to go lie down for like two hours before I feel normal again, once I get home, and while that's happening I get a post-work message over the work messaging system from my one (affable) coworker who was in the (military), saying how he can't stop thinking about what I said to him when he walked into work and how funny it was, and I message him back that I was trying to be nice and tip him off and keep him from getting in trouble, which he says he appreciates.

Street-find.

Like about two weeks ago, I was walking home at night on the sidewalk that passes by a modern church-addition to a historic church where the offices and preschool are housed, and as I go by the fence by the playground and under the big tree that overhangs the sidewalk and that blocks out the street-lights there, there on the sidewalk in the shadowed area is a mass, and as I get closer, I see legs pulled out, and it's most of a small young rabbit, the back legs and the torso but no front legs or head, and instead just a small crisp bloody twist of flesh that slightly curls up and to the right all in one direction, where the rest of the body should be but is not.