Bored as hell in suburban Minnesota.

I know, I've been a bad blogger.  I keep thinking to myself, I should update and that I have stuff I could write about, but I'm lazy.  My last day at Snyders was almost two weeks ago now, I started at Walgreens a week ago this past Wednesday.  I was mostly just doing computer training crap for the first week, and everybody was really surprised that I finished so fast, I guess it's taken some people as much as a couple month.  Granted, I'm sure my previous pharmacy experience really helped.  I've only been working in the pharmacy proper for two days now, and I already feel more knowledgable and competent than some of my co-workers.  Some of them even ask me about things, and I just started there!  For the most part I like my co-workers, though. 

Well, I talked to the people at Wallgreens today, and my hiring has been finalized.  They couldn't give me an exact figure (has to be approved by corporate), but they told me I'd be starting at about $10/hour.  I'm really excited, since I was expecting to take a paycut from the $9.50/hour I make now.  Meanwhile, Snyders corporate higher-ups, in all their wisdom, have decided the to keep the store open til the end of May.  We really haven't gotten much traffic, so I hope they're planning some deeper discounts to bring people in.  I need to get an end date for working at Snyders so I can finally start at Wallgreens.

So it looks like I'm going to be starting at Wallgreen's here in Cottage Grove in about a week or so.  I'm probably not going to like it much, but it'll be a full-time job and it's certainly better than nothing.  It's also close to where I live, has pretty flexible scheduling and good transferability.  Guess we'll see how it goes, working for "the man."

Just got back from work today, for the second time.  I got called in because a girl that was supposed to be cashiering was going to be late because her horse was sick.  I only ended up being there for about 45 minutes.  The first round of work was ok, not too crazy, not til we left anyway.  Right after we had gotten the registers taken out and put the closed sign up in the drive-thru (it covers the whole window), somebody pulled into the drive-thru.  This actually happens a lot, especially on Saturdays, because we close at 1 and people are stupid.  We never take the sign down and help them, there's not really much we can do once the registers are taken out, since we can't ring them up in the pharmacy after that.  The lady in the drive-thru started honking her horn, then honking it with more frequency, then she just laid on it.  Finally, she got the hint and pulled out of the drive-thru.  As I was about half-way out of the store, I saw a women storm in and yell, "They closed the pharmacy early!"  I felt bad for the girl that was cashiering up front, but was glad she stuck up for us, "No, they closed on time," she said.  The customer then yelled something about being "ten seconds late."  The cashier asked her if it was something she could get done at another pharmacy, and the lady crabbed, "No, of course I can't get it at another pharmacy!"  She finally stormed off in a huff.  I was definitely glad not to have to deal with her.  The past week and a half has been pretty stressful.  Things have been pretty crazy at work, with all the stuff related to closing.  For some reason, people seem to have this urgent need to get everything they can at our pharmacy one last time, even though they're going to have to go someplace else after Tuesday.  A lot of people are really attached to us for some reason, they've been coming to us for a long time, in some cases the whole 45 years the store's been there.  The mall we're in (Cottage Square Mall) was the first strip mall in the US, built in 1961.  It's a dump now, but it's still kind of closing a chapter in Cottage Grove history.  On Thursday an old lady got so emotional about us leaving that she almost cried.  I was glad she didn't, because she's one of our really nice customers and it would have been a really hard thing to see.  A surprising number of people have asked about what I'm planning on doing after the store closes, and a couple of them have even offered to be references for me.  Guess I must've done something right.  Both Wallgreens and Target here in town have offered me jobs, I'm planning on putting in applications at both places this weekend, need to see which of them will offer me better money and stuff. 

 

A couple days ago, I did have something nice to cheer me up.  babyblueeyesok sent me a really funny Easter card.

Monday: It was really slow at work for a Monday, not a good sign.  Monday's usually our busiest day.

  Edit: Forgot, I also woke up late.  My dad woke me up at 10:15 (usually get up at 9) and asked if I was working that day.  I said. "No... isn't it Sunday?"

 

Tuesday:  I had to work with a really annoying floater pharmacist.  Instead of getting the store's normal stock shipment, we got a bunch of pallets and bins.

 

Wednesday:  My day off... oh joy.  What do you do on a Wednesday?  There ended up being a store meeting to tell us that the store was being closed.   They told us we were closing in mid to late April.  It wasn't a huge surprise, we'd known about the possibility for a while.  Cover a break for someone while I was there. 

 

Thursday:  Another floater, he was annoyingly chatting, but at least he was an alright worker.  We found out the last day the pharmacy will be open is April 11, which doesn't give me much time to figure things out.

 

I also had a really bizzare dream last night.  For some reason I was in in England, and I got word that I had been selected to go to Poland to join the Lancers.  So I end up in Poland playing soccer (which doesn't make sense, because I thought I was headed there to join their military), and the team is composed of a bunch of people I used to play soccer with in high school and travelling league.  After that, I check out my accomidations and the Polish people I'm living with kinda show me the ropes.   There was a really gross shower with maggots in it.  They had me eat this candy that had strawberry and part of a bug in it and was covered in chocolate.  That's about all I remember.