For 6.25 An Hour..

I am allowed to have my world rocked by the Prejudiced Guy In the Busted Honda Civic. Perhaps having that shitty automobile makes his attitude understandingly rank. I had the pleasure of meeting this stooge at about 5:30 one morning on a Thursday. He was our first car, and sounded sweet on the earpiece of the system. When he got up to the first window and our eyes met, his expression changed from a smile to a grimace worthy of someone being given a lemon-juice enema from a rusty dildo. (He was the first to say this.) "You sounded like a white girl on the speaker." At first, I chuckled and said, "Well...." and "Hehehe." But he wasn't laughing. I was confused, and was stupid enough to say "Sorry" as he raced off to the next window after accepting his change as though my hand were diseased. I overanalyzed it over the next few hours. Sorry for what? Sorry for my voice belieing my skin color? Sorry that you were raised by parents who taught you that minorities should be treated like slaves? What in the fuckity fuck was I apologizing for? Sadly, I realized that this snarky bastard is a "regular". He generally came as soon as we turned on the parking lot lights, and loitered at the drive-thru board for as long as he possibly can and acts a motherfucking fool when somebody has to prod him to order. His total is never more than $1.07. About a week ago, he returned, and I really did not give a shit. I try to go out of my way to seem unaffected by his hateful aura. To avoid touching his hand, I folded up his .93 cents into his reciept in a neat rectangle and gave it to him. He responded by snatching it out of my hand and throwing the change into the passenger's seat of the car. I felt vile words bubbling at the back of my throat like Steel Reserve (next day) vomit, and I reeled away from the window, shocked by his disgust. I called Dilbert over to the window to pass out his Ham Omlette (Now, I've catagorized this as the Redneck Sang-wige). Dilbert gave him (or had it snatched) the sang-wige, and it's been about a week since I've seen him. He's one of the first true examples of racism that I've had directed toward me in my short life, and it made me feel dirty.

A Hot Stankin Mess.

Hey, I love you guys. Thank's for being patient (kinda) about my absence! My cooking journey screeched to a halt as I hit a female bail-bondsman as she tried to turn in front of me at an intersection. I actually was just leaving Auto-Zone, seriously frazzled because I found out my exhaust system needed a $50 part. Anywhooo...

Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Listening To: The Silent Treatment
Current mood: okay
today was a slightly awesome day...... waiting on the manager at harris teeter to get up with me on that criminal background check, so i can get this drug test over with. thank goodness i passed on that reefer last week!!!! lol.

That was a post I made last year on my myspace blog. Jeebus, I was happy! On May 5th, 2008, I celebrated(suffered through) my 1-year anniversary at the Hairy Peeter. I got my bonus check. We (Hee Haw) failed another fuckin LP audit. He's good for a chuckle or two on a seafood-related work blog, but he is not fun to work for. I saw his cheap ass in drive-through one morning at the Fling, where he ordered two Ham Omlette ($1 for each one and you buttfuck us about using too many DISPOSABLE gloves? Miserly ass-goblin.) sandwiches and a "swait tay".
Dammit, I need to stay on track. I wish that the Teet was a music-free establishment. Muzak is one of the worst methods of torture I can think of. That, combined with a 5 hour shift is enough to make me want to kill myself by wandering around a busy highway while blindfolded. The music of the moment is completely up to the MOD. When Slim's aggravating ass is working, the Muzak is tuned into a station that sounds like a compilation of "forest scenes" of every Disney movie ever made. One busy Thursday, Tattoed Tim looked up from the pile of ribeyes he was trimming to ask, "What the hell is that? Isn't it from Bambi?" Next, if Hee-Haw is calling the shots, it's straight up hits from the 80's, highlights being "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" and "Yah Mo B There". Not the worst ever. Frangela, however, takes it upon herself to "update" the sounds a little, with the tired-ass "Pop" station. I swear to fuckity fuck, if I hear this song three times in one hour again, I'm leaving the Teet and never looking back. I had to go and make it ten times worse by looking up the video on Youtube this morning. Now I'll be able to picture the douchebag at the end of the video bouncing his ass on an excercise ball when I hear this shit. The squid is coming! Also, reviews of some Burger Fling Food...

She's Baaack!

Happy Fun Times in my 97 Sebring.

Just posted to explain my (usual) tardiness. More posts coming very soon!

Alrighty Then....

When I started this site, part of my goals for it were high. For being named "The Seafood Department", this site has quite a lot of bitchassness going on. Where is the seafood?? I've lost sight of my goals... :( Hence the poll to the right side of your screen.) At the time of this post, you have a few hours left to vote. I have not cooked anything consisting of seafood since the last time I opened a can of sardines. After the votes are tallied, I will choose a recipe and cook it on Saturday night. Pictures will be posted. Opinions of Stevity Steve and possibly others will be taken into consideration. Difficulty level, taste and appeal will all be ranked. And I think that I will also have a Fish/Shellfish of the week, coming soon. Feel free to suggest any fish you are too nervous to cook yourself for me to assasinate (er, prepare) or any cooking methods, or special recipe. Here's to a bright future for this bloggy!

Burger Fling Therapy

You know something? In a twisted, mean and probably harmful way, the Fling is theraputic to me right now. I go from a job where I am afraid to say anything but "Yessuh Massa", to a job where I could probably tell a customer "Fuck You" and return to work the next day with no ill will from anyone. It makes my bitter little heart smile. I was in the "Present" window, where you pass drinks and food to the customer, yesterday. I was having a pretty sunny day because I was supposed to be off, but was covering someone's shift, and didn't have to wake up until 8 AM, instead of 4:30. The Burger Fling bigwigs were coming to check out the store, but amazingly, I was due to leave before they arrived. And then Hoemiesha arrives.. I hate to stereotype, but she is just so average! Just by looking at her, I imagine her as at forty-year old single mother, working at a Section-8 office and complaining about all of the trifling trash that she has to help find housing. She reeks of self-righteousness. She was expediting(putting the crap in a bag or a tray and putting it in the right place.) and we got in one of those trainwreck-waiting-to-happen rushes. One minute everyone is standing around drinking soda and the next, six Triple Floppers and eight ToughGrills cover the board. After about a one-minute lull after the first rush, I hear Hoemiesha sneakily (and yet still loudly) saying to an employee at the broiler, "Yeah, she's bringing it back because Shuflayn passed the wrong thing out the window." Ugh..... I felt the pinpricks of irritation at the back of my brain at hearing her words, and when the lady got back to the window, her face was scrunched up with a bulldoggish look. "I wanted a hamburgah kids meal. I didn't ask fo no dayum chicken nuggets!" I apologized immediately and let her know we would replace it ASAP. I waited, and about a minute later, Hoemiesha daintily placed the bag upon the counter. "THIS is the hamburger kids meal." She then snobbishly twirled around to go back to her station. Oh hell no... I essentially sailed the woman's meal out of the small window and wished her a happy/wonderful/sanctified afternoon. "So I guess I'm the only one to ever pass the wrong FUCKING thing out of the window?" She stopped with her only-present-during-lunchtime diddybopping when she heard me. "It's not MY fault, YOU are supposed to look in the bag before you..." I started tuning her out after that. She was starting to make no sense, and also sounded like Butters from the T.V. show South Park. A few minutes later, I had to ask a car to pull forward because we were cooking something and the drive-thru is on a timer; having them wait at the window would have killed whatever relay race we were going for. The next woman had a Double Cracker value meal with Onion Rings and a Sprite. That's it. So when Hoemiesha threw a bag next to me that contained chicken nuggets, I blanched. I started reading the screen with orders, trying to figure out where this needed to go, when I heard her say, "It's a Double Cracker Meal! Get it out the window!" I flipped out. "Well what the hell are chicken nuggets doing in here?" I tossed the barely warm package onto the counter. She ran over, ready for a confrontation. "No, you can't do that. You....." I looked back in the bag and saw fries instead of onion rings. "This whole order is wrong! Get your shit together!" I responded, and almost flung the bag at her. The lady at the window's jaw dropped. I saw Hoemiesha's bottom lip quiver and I knew I had won. She assembled the order correctly and stalked back to the kitchen, presumably to tell a manager. Surprisingly, the store manager made her stay back in the kitchen and work, and nothing was said to me at all. And I don't feel worried. Damn, that felt wonderful.

The Seafood Department That is My Brain

What you see is row upon row of gleaming fillets of halibut and grouper and salmon. You see the shiny scales of fresh rainbow trout. The fluffy pieces of catfish, begging to be battered and deep-fried. You see the neatly arranged shrimp, waiting to squirm their way into a bowl of pho or a stunning shrimp cocktail. You see the majestic king crab legs, full of lucious meat...

What you don't see is the struggle to lift heavy boxes of fish and the pain of falling with said boxes on an icy cooler floor. You don't see the scars on my brown hands from being stabbed repeatedly with shrimp tails, crab legs, and sharp knives. You don't see my ashy, puckered fingers at the end of a night, wrinkled from chemicals and cold.

You hear the loud hum of bone saws, cutting your porterhouse steaks, bone-in pork chops, and depending on who's there, frozen salmon. The friendly, helpful banter between employees and customers, and the P.A. system advertising the pharmacy and the discounted chickens in the Deli department.

What you don't hear is the soft, under-my-breath swears of frustration, the muted moans of pain as your muscles slowly cramp due to months of refridgeration. You don't hear the hateful shouts from the management that make you feel worthless and dumb. You don't hear my unconsolable, child-like weeping in the arms the love of my life, hopeless because he can't heal me.

You smell the ocean-y scent of fresh, succelent sea scallops, and the clean, watermelon-like odor of organic Irish salmon. You smell the honey-soy-ginger marinade of chicken and vegetable kabobs, and the coconut and oreganato panko coating of the probably too old mahi-mahi fillets. You smell the strong, mouth-watering affair of steamed peel-and-eat shrimp and snow crab clusters, heavily spiced with Old Bitch Seasoning.

You don't smell the ammonia-based cleaner on the bathroom floor, snorted in, because of the severity of your sobs. You don't smell the expensive cologne on the store manager as you essentially beg for some type of feedback on what kind of job you are doing. You don't smell my nervous sweat as I wonder with every small mistake, if this will be the straw that broke the camel's back.

Because you don't have to. Every time I work, I deal with a fierce internal struggle between my pride and my common sense...

Fo Shizzle...

I hate music where white people are trying to sound black. The white music I like is white.-Kanye West

This also describes my feeling of "black" speech from someone who has admittedly never spent a day outside of the suburbs. And don't get me started on the issue of white/black "speech. If I had a nickel for everytime some redneck remarked, "You sayound lahk a whaat girl on dat speaker!" while I was in drive-thru, I would be able to turn my back on bullshitting fast food jobs forever. It saddens me that speaking properly and cohesively is considered "white" and "high siddity". My huge vocabulary often surprises everyone I meet. But karma comes back to bite me, I suppose, as the nOOb, Josh, was suddenly thrown into my department. This is where the management's poor communication skills come into play. I felt horrible, insecure, and worried. Why am I out of the loop? I found out shortly after that one of our most loved butchers was packing up his knives and getting the hell out of Dodge. God Damn! I suppose it has to happen, every department has to change eventually, but it's scary. Especially when your own job is threatened. By Josh. A wigga in every sense of the word. But, he seems to retain most of his ethnicity inside until I clock in. It was midly amusing at first, but he started getting aggravating at a breakneck speed. By the fourth time he asked a customer "Yo! Can I help you?" I wanted to slap the fuck out of him with a hammer. "Ayo; I'm about to take a break, yo. Is dat cool with you?" Me- yes, that's fine. "Aight, when I get back, I'm going to gangbang some of those leg quarters." My eyebrow shot up as I immediatly pictured him howling in agony as huge frozen leg quarters in assless chaps pistol-whipped him. He shuns anything that I try to teach him, in favor of any bulky, inconvenient method that Clay has taught him, from wrapping frozen shrimp, to defrosting large crabs before you put them in the display case. So I just gave up. I essentially became his little bitch who does everything at 3 or 4 that should have been done hours before I got there. I saw my fearless mentor, BayBay, a few nights ago, and he spoke one of the truest statements I've heard in months. "A.R. is not seeing you for who you've become, or any progress you've made. He is seeing you, still, as how you were when you started this job (complaining about not getting breaks, taking lunches that lasted more than 1/2 hour, being late because I did not read the schedule correctly, ect, ect, because I can't ever do anything right.). He is not going to consider you for a full time position." He kept getting passed over for management, so he moved on, too. It might be time for me to make that switch back to Hell-Mart before it's too late.