I've worked a lot of hours in the past couple of weeks, hence the lacks of posts. So here's a short summary of things that happened:
- my boss managed to be doing a compo job with her "sore back", be a biatch, and cry in the toilets on Christmas eve because she's incompetent simultaneously. Seriously, I'm so sick of that woman, I think the following story will explain. To preface, all of last week I worked until close, which was 1am, midnight, 9pm and other ungodly hours past my bedtime and in the course of the week I had ended up doing much of the setup for our post-Christmas sale without any help because our manager was at home with her "sore back", as a result I was also tres tired.
So anyway, Christmas eve comes around, all of us are running around crazy-like to get things done so we could leave sometime before the clock actually ticked over to Christmas day. In she swans, at 12.30, after three days at home sitting on her ever growing fat ass. She's throwing attitude all over the place and generally being an incompetent biatch and so when the store closed and we just wanted to get things dones, she kept screwing everything up. Basically, in the end she stormed off twice in tears to the toilet. The second time we left her there and went home. I also shed a few tears because I was so tired, and for the whole afternoon had been directing people who couldn't use their own initiative to figure out where to put a 50% off sign and SHE was the one crying?! On Tuesday when we were really busy she finally swanned in at 2.30 and we ignored her because she had been so out of line on Christmas eve. So then later I was just about to go on my dinner break, half an hour late, when she calls and says I have to go and help her in the reserve. I say I'm just about to go on my break. She doesn't care. I go to the reserve and realise that the 'urgent' thing she needs my assistance with is something she could've done herself but probably couldn't because she's too stupid to look for a number on a list. Sigh. So then I find her the thing she urgently needs to know and call to let her know, what follows is pretty much verbatim, brackets indicate my own interpretataion.

Me: "they're 30 dollars (you could've worked that out yourself surely)"
Her: "Oh great, that means I can (pretend to do some work) put them out. Ellie, I heard you were a little bit upset on Sunday night, are you ok?"
Me: (pause) No, I felt that I'd been put in a very uncomfortable position because I had to setup the stocktake stuff by myself with no support and then had to direct people who were asking me what to do, where to put stuff, what should I do with this sign. I am just. a. casual. Like everyone else."
Her: (pause, tick tick tick) "Oh...so..oh ok, you're telling me you couldn't handle the pressure (oh good, it's not my fault)."
Me: (so angry here) "Actually, this was nothing to do with me feeling pressured (since I didn't), but I was supervising staff (because you are incompetent), and that is NOT MY JOB. I am just a casual. Like everyone else"
And so it went on.

-I came home sick today, felt like shit. Slept for a few hours. Still feel like shit.

-I worked on Boxing Day at a different store and it was so busy that when I came back from lunch I couldn't get in because the police were blocking the entrances.

-I contemplated just walking out of work since I hate it so much, above mentioned manager is being a biatch, and I have reached my target amount of savings for next year.

-I'm going to Sweden in exactly two weeks.

-In spite of everything, life's looking up.

I can't remember if I wrote anything about going to the zoo a few weeks ago, but it was fun and I put some photos on my Flickr. Here's a taster.





Ooh, and I got my Swedish residence permit, hooray for me, and I handed in my resignation from work, hooray for me even more. Tra la la, I'm going to Sweden.

Well..after that, ahem, somewhat emotional outburst.

Nothing really that interesting has happened lately, since my exams finished I've been working heaps because of the whole moving to Sweden thing. I got my residence permit on Friday which was tres exciting, and finally booked my ticket from London to Stockholm, yeehee. I have some photos to post later, but in the mean time, here's a story for the road:

Julia, who worked as a Christmas casual last year but then didn't get re-employed as a normal casual for reasons unknown to many, has returned this year to work as a Christmas casual- much to the pleasure of many. She's fun to work with etc, but unfortunately she's leaving in a few weeks because she's been offered a real job in radiography at Prince of Wales and let's face it, a life of retail doesn't sound nearly as good in comparison. But I digress, the point of this story is not about Julia as a person, it's actually about what happened to her on the way to work last week. She got on to the bus and there were already about 10 people standing, but she noticed one seat vacant toward the back of the bus. Note that at this point, no alarm bells were ringing, but when you think about it, it does seem odd that there was a seat free and people standing.
Anyway, so she's just sitting minding her own business when she hears a rather strange noise, as well as feels something hitting the hair at the back of her head, followed by a sort of...maniacal snigger. She turns around to find out what's going on, to find that the reason why that particular seat on the bus was vacant, was because the lady directly behind greatly enjoyed spitting on the person directly in front. That's right, dear reader, Julia had been spat on by a crazy lady on the bus.

I feel that the moral of this story is not a warning to beware of strange ladies on the bus, but a friendly reminder that Sydney public transport commuters, of which the bus was full, are bastards. There was a reason that seat was empty, but that busload of people didn't say a peep. Oh, the state of humanity.