I had a shitty day. The kind of day that makes you seriously consider that life without parole might not be such a bad thing in the long run if it means you can take out all of this murderous rage on the next person who looks at you the wrong way.
The problem is, my venomous bad mood is triggered by a derpjillion little occurrences that alone are not enough to justify wanting to turn people into medical cadavers. If any one of these things had happened to me--and I experience one or sometimes two of them just about every other day without wanting to start stabbing people with my nail file--I would not have managed to get myself into such an extraordinarily violent bad mood. But because all of them happened, happened in a relatively short period of time, and none of them are my fault and I can't really justify getting this angry about any one of them, I have managed to find myself seriously contemplating that whole life-without-parole thing.
I mean, I used to live in a death penalty state and that was pretty much what kept me from committing all the murders I wanted to commit. (I might or might not be telling the truth here.) Now I live in a non-death-penalty state. So I have to think about this.
But in the meantime, here is what happened today. It all happened at work. The first couple of hours of my shift wasn't so bad because one of the few people who doesn't actively despise me was there and I hardly ever get to see her. Then she left and for the last three hours I was just thrown one shitty thing after another and it only ended when I crawled into bed with my laptop just now. I suspect shit would still be happening if I dared venture outside.
1. Just about every customer left a couple of items at the till or had returns. This is not by itself an annoyance but I had no time between customers to clear stuff away so it ended up being one of those days where I have a two-foot-high mountain of discarded stuff and hangers next to me that not only made me look like a careless slob to my managers, who get on my case all the time about not being able to magically make my counter clean at all times by waving a magic wand or whatever the fuck it is they expect me to do, but kept falling down and I kept having to ignore my mess to deal with the nonstop throng.
2. A woman came in with three different bags of returns from three separate transactions. She didn't have a receipt for any of them. It took ages to look up the stuff, and it was all tended to different accounts and payments. She was really nice about it, even though it took forever, so I couldn't even hate her because she wasn't being a bitch to me.
3. During this endless return transaction, I had to fill out a store credit certificate which requires a manager's signature. I had to call four times--four times--for a manager, any manager, and I tried on my walkie-talkie and with the phone. Nobody came up. I was embarrassed at seeming so incompetent and there was a growing queue who saw me standing there doing nothing and waiting and they probably all wanted me dead. I finally got one manager, who demanded in a very impatient tone if she could do it over the phone. No, I needed her signature. She took another five minutes to wander up to my till. I hate waiting to ring people up almost as much as people hate waiting to be seen to.
4. At some point I was told by my favourite underage lad (he's sweet and he's cute, but he's seventeen and creepily too young for me) that I could go on my break once we got the queue down. But the queue wouldn't go down. The rule is that if there are more than three people in line, you can't leave the register. So I just rang up customer after customer after customer. Adding to my gigantic pile of crap the whole time that I had absolutely no opportunity to clean up. Add to this that one of the new girls was at the till next to me and kept needing help. I have nothing against her at all, because I was new once too and needed help all the time, but when there is a big line of people gnashing at the bit and I keep having to go over and walk her through stuff it doesn't help my already steadily declining mood.
5. Eventually one of the managers yelled at me because I hadn't gone on break because our queue was still many people long. They're really picky about making sure people go on breaks within acceptable time periods, not because they give a fuck about the plebeian register grunts but because they don't want to look bad by breaking regulations. So I basically had no choice but to leave my register while there was a line.
6. An old woman in the line yelled at me for bad customer service as I went back for my break when I knew I should stay and try and thin the line.
7. I got yelled at by the same manager for ignoring the customers and 'not providing a positive shopping experience'.
8. I also got yelled at later for being extremely rude on the phone to the manager of another store over keeping them on hold for twenty minutes. Since I'd been the only one at the till for the last few hours it was my job to answer all the phone calls (which I have to do regardless of whether or not I'm already dealing with an actual real-live customer at the time, which just seems incredibly rude and I apologize for profusely every time I do it). The manager scolding me said it was another store's manager about a specific style of jean with a distinctive name. I would have remembered this. I swore I had no idea what she was talking about. I'd already been lectured shortly after being hired about keeping people on hold for more than sixty seconds (no lie) so I'm careful about that. I'm also as syrupy sweet on the phone as I possibly can be. I have no idea what this phone call was about but it definitely wasn't one I took. The manager admitted that it might not have been me, but considering the only other candidate is one of the store 'cool kids', it was going to be on my head whether I'd done anything wrong or not.
9. Some woman came in with three boys who were throwing metal water bottles around and yelling. It made a lot of fucking noise.
10. I had to beg the new girl to mind the tills so I could spend my last ten minutes clearing up the now tremendous pile of stuff at my register. I told her I'd still be right there so if she had questions she'd have help. There was no line (thank ungod) and I was at my register where I was supposed to be, so technically I wasn't breaking any rules and therefore couldn't actually be yelled at. But I still got one hell of a stinkeye from the manager.
11. Who then got mad at me for having hangers on the floor. I sometimes just throw hangers on the floor and stand on them instead of wasting valuable seconds hanging them under the till (I've been yelled at for stalling when I take the time to do that, but also for standing on my hangers). I was picking them up though. As she yelled at me.
12. Checks weren't in yet.
13. Horrible traffic the entire way home.
14. One of my favourite radio stations was randomly not coming in for 4/5 of my drive home. When it finally came back on, it was playing that stupid fucking 'Moves Like Jagger' song. I hate that song more than I hate Adele's songs. There was also pretty much nothing else on the radio the whole way home.
And finally, by the time this one happened I was already in such a sufficiently black, angry mood that it annoyed me enough to seriously consider committing vehicular homicide.
15. A standard-issue Suburban Mommie SUV was in front of me going ten miles under the limit. It had those stick-people stickers in the back window that people use as a way to tell the entire highway what their family is like because fuck if I know why. It was as standard-issue as humanly possible: literally a mommy, a daddy, two boys, a girl, and a dog. There's nothing wrong with a family like that if that's what you want and it makes you happy, but I resent the fact that it's so expected of everyone and anyone who doesn't conform to this is labelled defective. But that isn't what made me angry though.
What made me angry was the customized license plate.
It read 'UNPRDCTBLE'. Clearly meant to mean 'unpredictable'.
I have no idea who owns that car but I have a message for them:
Fuck you.
No, I am fucking serious. Fuck you. Fuck you hard with a hammer. Go to hell. I hope you die a horrific, painful death. You might be a great parent and a wonderful friend. You might be talented. You might be an all-around great person.
But one thing you aren't and will never be is unpredictable. You are married with a nuclear family and a dog. You are as predictable as humanly possible. You have followed the life script to the motherfucking letter. There is nothing about your life that is unpredictable in any way whatso ever.
I hate you. I hope you die.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is my abysmally bad mood. Thank you for sharing it with me. I am now going to crawl under the blankets and sleep until Friday.
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