Month: May 2020

Stuffed Meat in a Bun

May 23, 2020 — Leave a comment

I was such a little shit for my first job. Oh my god, I will admit that. My work ethic significantly improved every single job thereafter. During though?

First, I had my mom give my resume in as I was too damn shy to even give my perfectly typed up resume to the customer service desk. I remember so vividly the feelings of embarrassment but also panic because I wanted money SO BADLY!!! I get the call, i ace the interview, and boom! I’m a vegan/vegetarian/whatever in the deli department.

Wait. I stopped being a vegan/vegetarian/whatever pretty fast.

Gain ten pounds later from stuffing so much fucking meat in my mouth in the cooler. I ate so many stolen corn dogs, buns, feta cheese (straight out of the greek salad bucket), deli meats, cheeses, salads. I worked there for 14 months, and I gave a polite quitting letter on the brink of getting fired. One write-up was for leaving at 9:55 every day when my shift ends at 10:00 (pfft whatever, I had EVERYTHING done! I would be done 9:45 and wait until 9:55). I remember the snitch, too. The older guy, assistant manager I think? Maybe he had an angry crush on me. Another time written-up for leaving the hot chickens on all night. Oops. Third time? Oh probably one of the other. I am sure they knew I was stuffing my tiny mouth with all the meats during my shift. 

 

Reliably Un-reliable Memories

May 22, 2020 — Leave a comment

We re-write our memories each time we access them, and depending on our emotional state while accessing the memory, the narrative can change. Is that terrifying? I’m not sure. Shows how reliably unreliable humans are, I suppose. Certain clients are clear as day in my mind, will that fade? I don’t want to know.

There are the work memories, the quadriplegic client who makes amazing pierogi dumplings and sells them to his neighbours. Running through a forest in god-knows-where, with my bra in hand towards the driver car to get away from the clients that were a little too creepy. The time I fell asleep on top of a client who had also fallen asleep from me giving him a massage. I remember distinctively the “Divorce for Dummies” book he had in his cabin. The time another told you he had cancer and was dying in the next few months so wanted to treat himself.

I obliged, happily.

The volunteer memories, the daughter dying down the hallway from her mother in the Hospice I worked at. The father dying in his thirties while his mother-in-law died months before him, the wife and three kids visited both. The girl I couldn’t visit her room because she was so close to my own age of 21. Talking on her phone, cared about her hair straightener.

Her freshly dyed hair, pink.

The fancy friend memories, the biochemist and naughtiness of breaking into the hot tub room in his apartment building. Oh, before you think it’s too fancy, it had a games room for the older residents that mainly inhabited the building. The ethanol he would steal from his laboratory smells like nail polish varnish, tastes like nothing. Not the college Vodka you usually can afford…