Night of the Dead

No, I don't mean the costumes. Only saw a few really good ones. And by "really good" I more mean "cute girls in skimpy outfits", though there were some legitimately good costumes beyond those considerations. One customer had a really good Jack Sparrow costume. Anyway, I expected one of two things to happen last night. First is that it would be super-busy as everyone blew through on their way to and from parties or whatever. Second is that it would be really slow since most everybody would have better things to do than hang around Wal-Mart all night. And as it happens, that's exactly what I got. Plus, Billy was working last night too, so Pets was finished I wanna say before 7:30, despite neither of us clocking in before 4:00. And I still did the majority of the work. The only thing I know Billy did was to repeatedly tell me how the fish tanks weren't getting cleaned well enough, and effectively calling me a liar when I would tell him each time that I've been cleaning them as I'd been directed to do already. It begins to occur to me that he probably thinks the same thing about me as I tend to about him. Namely that he doesn't do anything except the minimum it takes to get by, goofs off, etc. This isn't helped by the fact that any shift we're both working, none of the kinda stuff comes up like it does when I'm working alone. Nearly every night I work by myself, any number of things will come up that take me away from my main job and prevent me from being able to finish early. Billy has commented before that I zone really fast, and when nothing is taking me away from the job, that's true. But he doesn't seem to get that most of the time I can't sit and focus myself on that non-stop until it's finished. I only wish it was possible for me to make all my work in Pets linear that way. Work on zoning the aisle until that's finished, then work on getting fish for people until it's time to clean and close down the tanks, then maybe go help zone somewhere else until it's time to go home. My work becomes weaker, and I think this true of many people, when I have to change to a different task in the middle of one I'm already doing. This is to say nothing of whatever little side jobs my managers decide need doing and that I'm the right person for. But anyway, Billy totally pissed me off last night and I was fuming almost non-stop until we got to go home. The fuming mostly manifested itself as a depressed appearance, though, which seemed to concern any of my friends that I let notice. And one of them in particular unknowingly ends up contributing to the depressedness whenever it's already going on. So, I really wasn't having a fun time last night, and actually for a minute seriously thought about walking out at lunch and not coming back. I felt that lousy last night.

So, it was so slow last night that none of the departments were getting hit very hard, which means zoning went really fast everywhere. In fact, I got sent to work Stationary around 7:00, but it hadn't looked like anybody had touched it at all, so I mostly just walked around the department looking like I was straightening stuff up until it was time to go to lunch. And after I got back, almost everyone was finished. The managers had to keep coming up with busy work for us to do, since nobody can leave before almost 10, and it wasn't even 9:15 yet. I ended up having a group slowly form around me, all wandering around trying to find something to do in order to look busy. It was really boring. You know we're bored when we ask any manager we can find what there is still to do. I half suspect that toward the end the managers were starting to untidy stuff just so they could tell us a minute later to go and fix it. You could see really clearly on their faces that they were struggling to come up with anything to keep us busy. I think they were having trouble keeping busy too. Between how bored I was, everything being finished, and how crappy I felt all night, I was ready to get out when they finally made the call for second shift to start filtering out a little before 10:00. In general I'd have been annoyed at the loss of an hour's pay, but seeing as I'm scheduled for over 38 hours this week, it wouldn't have been a big deal anyway. At this point, I'm looking forward to a normal-traffic night. I just hope Billy's not on as well. If I have to put up with his attitude much more, somebody is gonna hear a little story about Billy. I'm seriously getting sick of putting up with him, and I'm certainly not going to let it go on unknown in perpetuity. Yeah, I know; If I already knew the way he was, why did I ask to stay in the department with him? Fortunately we're usually not scheduled on together but maybe once a week plus a few overlapping hours. Besides, the workload is still preferable in Pets.