Melantrys’ Page

Thankfully, not my boss or some of my colleagues.

I’m starting to fear Orlando must have stumbled onto it, and is now living in mortal fear of the cashier lady of doom. Haven’t seen him around since the day he wore that Slayer shirt.

The Muffin Man is addicted enough by now to leave comments pestering me to write on.

The Dutch faction…. hm, dunno, I’m not sure.

My sister is reading even my link list; and I think she might be willing to talk to me again come Christmas.

And this weird Australian dude still has not left a comment. Tch.
If he did I might link to his page, but then again, that hasn’t been updated ever since it was created I think…

I was having a hectic week, and don’t really know what to write about, but the Muffin Man’s will is my command (at least in a very few very minor matters).

Today I learned something about my colleague, Ç, which I had not known before. I did know that her eldest daughter had to be treated for cancer a few years back.
Today we somehow got into talking about that, and she told me that the girl had had a brain tumor and had needed an operation, followed by radiation and chemo therapy. A very frightening thing to go through for any parents I’d say.
The girl is normal, pretty and healthy these days, but I’ll never forget the small pale thing, bald head wrapped up in a colourful scarf, tiredly looking at people out of dark-rimmed eyes.
Every couple of months the doctor who treated her phones them up and arranges for them to talk to other families who are facing the same frightening experience. And Ç says she gladly talks to these people, giving them the hope that everything will work out for the best, as it did for them; that things are not as frightening as they appear to be.
I think that is a very nice and brave thing to do; it can’t be easy having talks like that on a regular basis.
*hands out medal to Ç*

What else is new?

Şişko (please pronounce as Shishko; thank you) is a very…. unique… person.
Almost 3 years of our new currency, and she still accepts dud coins, like 1 or 2 Pfennig pieces. The worse thing is, if she notices (with a strong emphasis on the “if”), she tries to pass ‘em on to customers.
On Monday she accepted a 25 Øre piece as a 2 cent piece. I suppose I’ll never know if she finally realized while counting the day’s earnings, or if she accidentally chose that one to go into the deposit box. Fact is, it was lying on the table, and I immediately saw that there was something very odd about those 2 cents. When I told her what it was she told me to put it into the deposit box anyway. Yes, I am sure our boss would have appreciated getting a call from the bank, telling him to drop by and bring them 2 real cents please, thank you. I almost asked her if she thought that the people at the bank were imbeciles who wouldn’t notice, but checked myself barely in time. After all that would have implied that she is one as well. I did bring the point of thorough checks across though. So she decided to put it back to the change money and hand it out to a customer.
Me: G, (I’d never dream of calling her Şişko to her face; she might ask what it means…) are you aware that the moment you realize that it’s no valid Euro currency you are committing fraud by passing it on?
Şişko (*smiling cunningly*): Yes.

No worries, faithful readers; the coin is enjoying a happy retirement on my desk now.

Talking about funny money…. Today I fingered a 1 Reichsmark note from 1904 and a 100 Reichsmark note from 1908. A colleague got them from a relative and intends to sell them at one of those antiques and second-hand fairs. *drools* She has no idea what they are worth yet, but when she finds out I suppose we’ll both know they’re worth too much for me to want to buy them.

So we had elections two days ago.

What a waste.

For those who don’t know much about German politics: The next elections were only due next year, not now. But our red-green government coalition (SPD & Die Grünen) was having some serious trouble lately passing their reforms because their opposition was very big.
Furthermore in most of the last regional elections the CDU (Christian middle right wing party) had won.
And last but not least, a new left-wing party was forming by merging the PDS (remnant of the East German SED) with a brand new left party (WASG) under Oscar Lafontaine (ex-SPD member).

Fearing a strong enemy in the new left-wing party (Die Linke) in next year’s elections, especially since the SPD had ceased being “the working man’s party” and turned into a slightely more moderate CDU during their almost two terms, the SPD - or rather the chancellor (Gerhard Schröder) - disbanded the parliament and used the first two of the above points as reasons for early elections.
Schröder’s hope possibly was that this way the new left party would not have enough time to really form (picking name, compromising on agenda, etc, etc, etc) and campaign before elections. Another year might have established them as a serious competitor for the left votes.

The public was none too happy with the SPD’s reforms, which hurt the lower income classes. That is something that is historically incompatible with the SPD….
Being re-elected again was far from being a certainty. With a not-yet fully formed new left party the SPD’s chances would be slightly better - or so they thought.

Polls showed they were dead wrong though. Most people thought of voting for the CDU.
Thankfully Stoiber (CSU, Bavarian branch of/coalition with CDU) provided the public with some interesting comments - like his dissing of the East German counties - and Merkel (CDU) was - although being better than expected - the absolute loser of the tv duel between her and Schröder, which shifted the public opinion yet again.

I say thankfully because, even though the SPD is a cheap copy of the CDU these days, the CDU is still worse. If they can rule as they please, people will not be better off, oh no.

So Sunday’s election leaves us with….. nothing, really.

35,2% voted CDU (black)
34,3% voted SPD (red)
9,8% voted FDP (yellow)
8,1% voted Die Grünen (green)
8,7% voted Die Linke (deeper red?)
——————————
45,0% black-yellow
42,4% red-green

Both coalition factions are dead against working with the new left party. Both CDU and SPD claim the right, nay, the comission, to have talks with other parties and provide the chancellor.
The way they’re talking now no real majority can form either way.
Furthermore one division has not voted yet for some reason that doesn’t quite make sense to me. So maybe things will change yet again and give the SPD a slight majority after those last people will have cast their vote as well.
Not that this would really change the whole no-win situation.

What will they do now? Disband the parliament yet again and hold new elections???????

And on a lighter political note, Alba, die Wurst, will be slapped around with a large trout for daring to ask if I voted FDP.

Practical poll:

You work at a shop with a flagstone floor. A small puddle of rainwater has formed overnight. What do you do?

a) Leave it. It will dry up eventually.

b) Get a clean floor-cloth and mop it up.

c) Disappear for some mysterious 7 minutes to fetch a bucket of water, a scrubber and a floor-cloth.

I told Mr G. today that the people at central must have gotten it wrong about us having to count the bottles with expiry dates after the 15th of this month and putting them back on the shelves instead of giving ‘em away, as it said 16th on most of ‘em, and it wouldn’t make much sense to put off goods back on the shelves and raise the price. Well, our talk about this was a tad longer, because it went back and forth a little. He was pretty sure we had to count all the off bottles and sell ‘em. While I was voicing my “doesn’t make much sense” opinion he loudly snapped at me to “get this into my head”, only the expression he used was more unfriendly than that…
Still, he decided to give central a call.

Hours later he informed me that the lady there hadn’t been aware of there being bottles with a slightly different expiry date, and that we had to give all of them away. Which surprised me a little, because he of course did not apologize, but actually telling me to give ‘em away sort of meant admitting the fault.

Oh, for those of you who care, I resigned my post as mod on that anime forum. I did not really feel welcome there, and…. well…. it’s not as if I ever gave a rat’s ass about anime anyway. It’s just sad cos in the beginning it was more fun and I felt as a part of things. Oh well, the merging of several forums brought a whole new group of mods and even admins along, who knew all and sundry, except for me, that strange woman Nana seemed to like to have as mod.
And then things changed. If the “rulers” of a board always act like they are so old and wise while many users are childish, they should maybe refrain from hoisting a weird macho up into their midst and publicly insulting a 9-year-old kid, who surely spammed and wrote crap, but there’s just ways and ways of treating children…

Wow, it’s late; I’m off to bed.

Oh, and Drew: If this keeps you up to date concerning Melantrys-related topics, how about keeping me up to date on Drew-related topics with some comments?

Some things just make you feel old.
Like, when a woman not much older than yourself gives your t-shirt a thoughtful look and then says: “Korn… Our Florian has just started listening to Korn.” And somehow you get this feeling that “our Florian” is around 14 years old.

Or of course, when you’re crawling around in the garden, pulling weeds, and your back and knees are hurting like the blazes.

Or when you almost knock out your front teeth with your bottle of beer/orange mix cos your aim was off. Must be old age setting in.

*feels teeth with tongue*

I feel there was a lot more I wanted to post before the drizzle outside washed my brain out of my ears this afternoon.
Yeah, it drizzled all the time I was slaving in the garden. And it was coldish. Looks like the Indian Summer is over.

This beer is…. odd. Coke-beers by almost all brands are fine, but this orange-beer by Warsteiner….. dunno, dunno, dunno. *takes another sip* Bluh. Huh. Half-way through the first bottle I thought it wasn’t that bad after all. But half-way through the second now…. nah. Not so yummy.

On a concluding boring work note - I am almost done with “my” department (yeah, besides doing the till I’m also responsible for foods reaching their sell-by date, ordering cosmetics and cleansing agents and keeping the shelves of the latter two in order, which isn’t exactly easy when you are shackled to the till 4 days out of 4.5 days per week plus having to catch up on the holiday during which colleagues put it all in the wrong places. But I’m almost done with restoring order, yup. Hooray. All hail me.

And now I’ll end this post, before I start telling you about what I had for dinner.

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only sane person alive. Let’s skip my being annoyed at my colleagues’ incapability of differentiating between shower gel, shampoo and body lotion (each has its fixed place on the shelves, and they always mix ‘em up…) and go straight to the lady who right after paying peeled off the price tags, rolled ‘em up and dropped ‘em onto the floor and unpacked something she had bought, liberally throwing styrofoam around, that - from the look of the floor behind the till - she must have actively been crumbling to pieces while unpacking. When the boss kindly suggsted she use the bin at our door, she practically exploded. Ohhhhhkay….

Yeah, right, the boss is back. But he seems to be happy with the job we did of getting along without him, so maybe he’ll go on holiday again soon.

Right, enough boring shop talk.

I think the Muffin Man left a few weird comments that I’d like to understand better or answer with an annoyed “What do I need wallpaper for? These colours are my doing, you Canuck!!!” Or were you talking about my renovation?
So what do you not understand about the super-sexy Turkish lady in Amsterdam? Or was it the Enschede that confused you? Frenziebot resides in Enschede.
Last but not least I’m wondering who the hot mamma is this time. Still me or my sis for killing Sims like that…?

Wow, my sister wrote a comment on my blog! Hooray!!!

Suppose that putting her on here as a co-blogger won’t be much use though. Dunno how I arrived at that conclusion.

So what’s with my colleagues and this blog? There’s only one colleague who shouldn’t know about it, and only cos she’d tell the boss. I didn’t diss any colleagues. Ok. Until now. But they all don’t know any English anyway, so that point is mute. (They should pay me extra for every time I’m required to speak English at work anyway.)

Furthermore, it looks like my sister is in need of a new graveyard; she’s killing poor, helpless Sims again. What’s wrong with that woman?

As for my day…..

Wow! Orlando Bloom flashed a radiant smile at me and wished me a nice day. I will treasure this moment till the end of my days. *siiiiiighs*

No, I did not lose my mind; we’re just having a few actor lookalikes in this humble village here, seriously.
Though Leonardo DiCaprio is looking less like “himself” with each passing month. Hard to tell yet whether that’s good or bad for him; the poor dude still looks rather bad, but less and less like Leo.

Hope “Orlando” will never change.

And if he smiles like that just for me giving him his change in the small coins he asked for, what would he do if he, like, wanted something that was sold out, and I’d order it for him? Do a striptease?
Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmm…..

I feel as if there was more I wanted to say, but as Christian says: If I forgot it, it can’t have been that important. Well, actually he doesn’t say that. He says: Wenn ich’s vergessen habe, kann’s auch nicht so wichtig gewesen sein.

edit: Coooooooool, my first spam comment. I’ll keep it to celebrate the occasion.

*rofls a bit*

Ok, instead of correcting yesterday’s post I will set things straight in this new one.

Those customers I was talking about…. they don’t look particularly Arabian, but I saw no reason to doubt the boss’s wife when she referred to them as such.
My Turkish (at times Kurdish) colleague Alican knows almost everyone, and she had been talking to him beforehand. I didn’t really hear anything, but I did catch that he was informing her that they were not Turkish.

Only…… what he actually told her was that they were Armenian, not Arabian. Hm. Does she need a hearing aid, or didn’t she know the word?

As an aside, what he also told me today was that those people are totally nice and hospitable, as happen to be all the Armenians he has met so far.

So finally the boss is on holiday. Hooray. About time.

Sometimes I am so ashamed of working at that crappy store.

So, ok, that Arabian family tries to get stuff cheaper at times, like those plants a while back. Well, and why not? It’s not as if our plants are the freshest. And the boss can always say no when they ask.
But if foreign people ask, it’s because they’re foreign, and would like to cheat us of our well-earned money. While their money of course is not well-earned at all because they’re all drawing our welfare money anyway. (Hey, stop throwing your rotting garbage at me; I was just quoting.)

Anyway, I’m getting sidetracked.
Those Arabian customers don’t speak German that well, plus, well, people make mistakes. The man meant to say that they had 1.50m of sold by the meter tablecloth. What he actually said was that the cloth was 1.50 Euros. The boss’s wife already started making a scene because of that.
While I took over the till (yeah, ringing up the sold by the meter stuff is d-i-f-f-i-c-u-l-t, so she can’t do it ) she saw that they had already carried 4 garden chairs through without letting ‘em get scanned. Which of course was an attempted theft. After all, it was already clear what kind of people those were, right? The scene she made then made me want to state in a loud clear voice that I just work there and need the money, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
I mean, hello-o! They didn’t grab the chairs and run, they just did what for some bizarre reason tons of people do, which is assume that “large” goods like that don’t need to be scanned, and that it is enough to say at the end “oh, and those 4 chairs, please”.
(Do I have to point out that not only foreign looking people do that? Well, I’ll do it just in case. Not only foreign looking people do that.)
In addition to it being common behaviour, those people are regular customers, and apart from daring to be foreign and - very occasionally - haggling over the prices of not quite ok goods they never did a thing.

And to make it an all perfect day the boss himself gave a customer false information on the phone, causing the poor dude to drive quite some way in vain. He had specifically said that he wanted a red one, but the boss only called down and asked me if we had the product at all. So I innocently told him, yup, two. They were both blue…
People usually cuss a bit and then leave, and anyway, what’s wrong with telling the truth? When I fuck up, I bear the consequences; when I don’t, I don’t see any reason to. So I said that unfortunately the boss didn’t tell me I had to check for red ones, and that I was very sorry about the whole incident.
This customer though sought out the boss to heartily thank him for the false info.
After that he came back to me and informed me that my boss had just told him that I was full of shit, and that he had specifically instructed me to check for red ones.

I don’t earn enough money for this.