Next Please

When I started work at Next I tried to maintain a positive attitude towards it for as long as possible. Now after 7 weeks I can feel my brain turn to mush and my patience wearing so thin that if someone were to sneeze on it it would topple over. I hate consumers. I hate the way people turn into zombies, especally round this time of year. I don't think these people are stupid but I do think that when they enter the shops they leave their brains and their manners outside the door. I am sick of telling the customer that her card is in the wrong way and it goes in upsidedown from that and them taking it out and turning it back to front. How is a card any different from any other object?? When something needs to be turned upsidedown you do not turn it back to front. I don't know why it annoys me so much. Maybe it's because when it's a man and I tell him he always turns it upside down and I feel that these women are leting the side down. Anyway, I reckonl that if you don't know how to use your switch or visa card to pay then perhaps you shouldn't be using it at all and should just use good old fashioned cash.

Anyway, I am sick of cleaning up after the lazy hoors and I am sick of them asking me, 'What top would you put with that' I don't know I am not a fashion expert for children and it is your child your buying for surely you'd know a lot better than me. I even had one women ask me to find her something for a 2 year old. The women looked exhausted and just couldn't be bothered anymore. I thought it might be a bit rude to point out that she was asking me to find something for her which could take up to half an hour and they need me on the till because there's a queue the size of the river Nile so if she didn't mind being such an incompentent lazy cow and let me get on with my job, which is not as her personal slave. But I smiled and helped her.

And then there's the sales. The shop opens at 5 in the morning and people are already queueing to get in. The assistant manager advised me to watch the training video they have to prepare employees for the sales. She said she watched and even she was surprised so she definitely thought we should watch. I said no thanks it would probably put me off working during the sales. I have heard horror stories about people knocking you out of the way to get the bargains and when you come out of the stockroom to fill out the shelves the customers are grabbing things from your arms. I will seriously yell at anyone who does that to me because I can't stand my personal space being invaded. If they do that I will drop all the clothes on the ground and let the mad bitches scramble on the floor for them and laugh at their sad sad sad lives.

Having said all that, I can't wait for the sales to start. Not in Next but Topshop and HMV. I need new jeans and music and I will claw people's eyes to get them. Nah only joking. I shop responsibly and with brains and manners.

Sugar Sugar Sugar

It's a beautiful day and the sun is shining. That's what winter should be like. There's even a butterfly by the window. Harry ze Cat keeps trying to murder it but I won't let him. Yesterday I went to the health food shop to get some healthy sweets. This means licorice and sugar free gummy bears. The sugar free gummy bears aren't very nice. The guy that sold me them said they tasted waxy and they do. So much for my attempts at cutting down my sguar content. I also got caramel flavoured sugar free sweets which taste exactly like werther's originals. But while these sweets are good they wouldn't be enough to satisfy my craving for gummy textured sweets. Or chewy sweets.

Anyway, on Thursday night (music night) we had some real musicians. The Sniper and his wee chum from Cork. I'd never met the wee chum who Nelly reckoned bared an uncanny resemblence to Ewan MacGregor but he had a great voice and him and The Sniper played beautifully together. Nelly refused to make her famous pineapple and coconut scones for fear of spoiling the boys too much. Just right too for they would come to expect it and Nelly would never be done baking scones and tarts and pies. And on the subject of making tasty things I have given up trying to make chocolate fudge. I've attempted 3 times and ended up with kendal chocolate fudge cake, chocolate toffee and chocolate fudge sauce but never just chocolate fudge. So i've given up.

3 Posts in 1 Day

Jamie and my mum have both suggested that I'm lazy about doing my blog. I agree with them. It's because I've been feeling very lethargic recently. I have just about enough energy to get me through the week at work and by the time it's the weekend I'm shattered and just want to sleep the whole time. I've been blaming it on the lack of daylight, working, my diet but today when mum was at work and Bert was out doing errands and getting me sweets, I turned the music up and had a good dance to myself. It made me feel better almost instantly. So that's the problem. I haven't beeen dancing enough.

I danced to Sublime because they're a nice mix of fast and slow. I danced to Beck's new album but not all of it. In fact, I skipped some of his songs altogether. Black Tambourine was the best to dance to. I also danced to Bright Eyes although not every tune is great to dance to so I had some smoking breaks during that. Afterwards I felt rejuvenated and then Bert came back with sweets and chocolate.

IHS: Do You Have It?

I have always been a fan of comics and magazines. When I was younger it was the Beano and Dandy. Our dog Danny and Bert made it into the Beano . I'd sent a photograph of Bert and Danny playing on the beach and totally forget I'd even done it. Months later the next door neighbours knocked on our door to tell us and we went out to the shops to buy about 5 copies of it, all of which are lost now.

As I got older it chnaged to magazines such as Just 17, whih I started reading when I was 13 and stopped when I was 15. I remember flicking through copies of Nellymoms' Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan and thinking they were magazines for 35 year olds butI got into Cosmo just a few years ago and realised there is a lot to be learnt from it.

It was about the same time I got into Cosmo that I started reading magazines like Now and Heat. These are the trashiest magazines ever. Or at least that's what I thought until venturing out in the land of Chat and Take a Break. The reason I started to read these types of magazines is because I had this idea that I would become a professional competition enterer. I read in another magazine about a women who entered 60 competitions a week and was always winning free holidays and washing machines. That sounds like a good job I thought. But I grew bored very quickly and bought the magazines, did the puzzles but never got round to sending them off. Posting things is something I've always had trouble with. I can write a letter or buy a present no problem but when it comes to posting it it can take me months. I don't why.

So I had all these trashy magazines lying around and I couldn't help but read the articles. They sucked me in with their headlines screaming I Hacked My Toyboy Lover into a Thousand Pieces and Fed Him to His Parents. But what really got me about these magazines was the health pages and stories about normal everyday people's battles with rare diseases and such things. It got me thnking about all the unusal ailments out there and all the uusual ailments there could be. Like for example; what if you suffered from a condition where you couldn't eat anything because whatever you ate tasted so bad when you burped it again later that it would make you throw up. What makes me laugh about these things aswell is the names they give for people's ailments. It's always something something syndrome. Like Itchy Head Syndrome (IHS) or Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). FAS is actually a real one. I read about a guy having a stroke and he recovered completely except that he spoke with a foreign accent. The great thing is though, when people have had a mystery illness like this for years and it is finally diagnosed (quite often with no known cure for it), people say they are just happy to finally know what's been bothering them. Now if that was me I'd say, 'Right, so I've got Itchy Head Syndrome? And there's no cure for it? I don't believe you. You're just making this up.'

The Winter Blues

I have never been a fan of the winter time. It's dark and cold. I used to be scared of the dark and I have developed a fear of the cold since all those snowy mornings standing waiting for the bus in my school skirt. Winter is not something I live through it is something I survive. Christmas, on the other hand, is something that makes the winter worthwhile. Don't get me wrong, I hate what Christmas has become but every year it arouses all those feelings I had as a child when the phrase o load of commercial bollocks was not a part of my vocabulary.

This year is going to be an especially nice Christmas. We have a new house to celebrate it in and we have the company of both my sisters and their fellas. Unfortunately mine will not be joining us but he will be hear for the New Year. We have an expert chicken roaster and an expert cake baker so the eating should be good. Bt having said all that, roll on the 21st of March when we all lose an hour's sleep but gain an extra hours daylight. Woo Hoo I say. Can't wait. Only four more months to go. Then it is spring and the wee lambs will be bouncing about.