Saturday, December 22, 2007

Work Friday

Once again I was able to work at Wendy's. Friday's are usually my most hectic days to work. It is usually on this very day that virtually everyone chooses to come and take part in the most bountiful and tasty offerings that Wendy's usually offers. This Friday proved no different. It was not until the 8 o'clock hour that I was able to move offline and away from the front counter. Of course, at that time I was only able to wipe down a few tables before a new crowd of people came stumbling through the door. Although there was a multitude of people, I did not receive a single disgruntled customer. It was quite amazing actually. The only problem that I had was really with a few of the newer workers. I really disliked the fact that one of them continued to move around and not say excuse me or anything. At one point I wanted to scream! She literally took the hot fries that I was about to give to my customer and took them for the drive-thru. Another worker continued to make frigid fries!

It began to get annoying after I had to keep giving customers new batches of fries. I still managed to hold everything together.

Basically it was a fun day at work. I hope to work on less crowded days though.



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Now playing: Shiny Toy Guns - You Are The One
via FoxyTunes

Friday, December 21, 2007

Fall 2007: It's Over

I went and consulted one of my good friends and I declared to him the information about Fall Semester 2007. He told me explicitly, in his funny way, "Its Over!” In all actuality, it was Reid, a character from Tales of Eternia, a role-playing game that I have on my Playstation Portable.

For the Fall Semester of this year (lasting from August 23 until December 18) I was enrolled in four courses. The four courses were Introduction to Anthropology (3 credits), Introduction to Chinese (4 credits), Introduction to Chemistry 2 (3 credits), and Basic Practice of Statistics (3 credits). In total, this was perhaps one of my easiest semesters thus far. I was only enrolled in 4 courses, which game me about 13 credits. The most that I have ever taken was 15 credits during the fall of 2006.

Most of the courses this semester were quite easy. The only one that was difficult was perhaps Chemistry. I have learned that I dislike Chemistry very much. There is too much in the way of memorizing concepts and then applying these concepts using detailed and lengthy combinations of algebra and chemistry. At one point, I was like, “what are we in, a math class now?” Overall, it turned out well. I do have to give props out to one of my friends. Although I was adamant about studying it all alone, I have to say that whenever I did study with him, that it was quite helpful. In the future, perhaps he will continue to help others in their study groups of sorts. I have to say that I am very much against the idea of holding study groups. They are too taxing on the mind, body, and soul and people begin to rely heavily on them instead of on their own study abilities. Regardless, they seemed to benefit. I could not do it because I felt they moved at a slow pace. I even think they scored higher than I did for a large part of the course, but I got an A in then end, and as long as everyone succeeded and was happy, who am I to get mad?

Ultimately, my GPA is now a 3.837. Following my classic tradition of dropping classes during Add/Drop Week, I will probably not reveal my final schedule until, after Sunday January 20, 2008, which is when Add/Drop Week ends. Therefore, everyone will have to live in suspense until that day arrives. I probably will not drop whatever textbooks I buy for courses. Currently, I do plan to buy three textbooks from Amazon for only about $150 dollars; I hope that the prices do not alter by the time I receive my first check from Wendy’s.


School resumes on Monday, January 14 2008.


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Now playing: The Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control
via FoxyTunes

Thursday, December 20, 2007

What's Good?

One of the reasons why I love Winter Break, is that it gives you time to sit at home and have some good ole personal time. It allows one to be able to think and ponder about all the things they do in life. You get to review the course of the year, make plans for the New Year, and think about all the things that need changing. In my mind, I find that there are tons of things that I could have avoided doing (not that they were bad). There are things that I could do better, and there are people that I could have avoided and left behind. Ultimately, the time for thinking is extensive, and plans form for the upcoming year.

I usually focus during this time simply by not doing anything with friends or family. I like to just sit at home and surf the net, read books, write stuff, watch TV, and play videogames. Why do I do this? Simply put, I am quite tired from the semester of running around. If only you knew how much running around, I do, how much time I dedicate to people and causes, and then trying to sort out issues. That is not even counting the amount of time it takes to even do my own studies (not that I study), but to just review homework and do it. The end of the semester is usually the most trying time because it requires trying to spend time with people whom you may never see again as well as closing the books on several subjects, missions, goals, and even organizations. That is not even to mention the fact that once you get feedback and results back, there is this huge suspense of failure or success.

Mainly, the reason why I do tend to avoid calling people on the phone during this time is that it takes up so much time. It is counter productive to my mission if I pick up the phone and call you. My mission states that this is a time of personal solitude. If I talk to you then I am better off just going somewhere and spending time talking to you; ultimately distracting me from my mission of contemplating my life. Usually during the break, I have only been concerned with seeing only one or two people, and they know who they are. Actually, one of them we do always try to go out to eat whenever I am on a break. This always inspires me and brings me great joy. She is just so amazing!

That is beyond the point. Ultimately, as I declared a long time ago, the purpose of me really writing these notes and such is to give people an entire view of me. After being declared as being sinister and evil by someone whom I have never met, I have had to make it my mission of discovering just why someone would be able to deem me as sinister. In a way I have slightly been able to see why this would be so. Still, I would not have called my total personality as being sinister and evil. Everyone I met has had some sort of "nefariousness" in them (well not everyone).

Today, I do feel like revealing a new quality that you probably would have never been able to see in me. Therefore, I must take my third person approach.

Tristan has been deemed as one who never tells people his true feelings. Sure, he will spend time telling you his problems with others and the world but people usually have to question if he is really being sincere about these comments. It has even been claimed, that he says these things but if he has a problem he will never work to resolve it. He looks to others to solve them; if no one does then he will continue to discuss but will not do anything about it. In actuality, he spends his time building a large and complex tangled web of false stories, mistruths, half lies, tall tales, fables, mysteries, novels, fictional plays, and other such things that will have someone running in circles. It has been brought to his attention as to why he does this. Well he simply does not know. He usually does this to see and hear people's responses. In a way, he is testing to see just how good they are. More often than not, he can predict their response. Ultimately, it can easily be reversed and done to him. In the rare instance that his entire myriad of lies fails, he is revealed as weak, insecure, and ultimately emotionally unstable. Fortunately, it takes a great deal of persistence, trying, and confusing stories from others to deconstruct this web, so no one has ever seen him in his most broke down state. However, in the most recent times, the web's outer layers have begun to disintegrate.

In a short set of words, Tristan is ultimately lost currently, looking for someone to cling to for help and support. After being left with going a year with no friends he is ultimately confused and stuck, drowning in sea waving his hands wildly looking for whomever to cling too. Unfortunately, most people are to slick and he slides right off. Surprisingly this past semester and summer, he did find a few people who have been able to offer him moral fiber and support. They will remain nameless here.

In addition, Tristan, does have one minor confession, he does feel sorry for not going to visit two of his friends at their house before the semester ended. He had planned a day to go over there but the surprise news of an emergency assignment that needed to be done and completed by the next morning halted his plans for that evening.

This one has gotten to be quite long. It will be continued at another time.


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Now playing: Hannah Montana - Start All Over
via FoxyTunes

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Back To Work, Back in Action

Day 2 at Wendy's went exceptionally well. I was able to return to my favorite position in the store and work amazingly well. As you can probably guess, I worked as the Front Register Operator. I believe that there is something special and exhilarating about working on the front counter. The luxury of being able to move at my own determined pace is probably why I love it. At times, I can generally move at a quick pace; some customers have been able to notice my speed because I do slip and slid on the floor, and ricochet off the door handles and counters. It can be so fun. The only two negative aspects with working in the front are that I have to clean the dining room at the end and then I have to interact with customers. Between you and me, I hate person-to-person interaction on all levels, work, play, and even eating.

Working in a fast rood restaurant that has a drive-thru window has one striking flaw. That flaw is clearly, that in most cases, in the winter the cold north wind blows through the window and lowers the temperature of the store greatly. Customers and workers always come in and complain that it is too cold to do anything. I found myself shiver and sniffing because it was so cold with the wind blowing on me as I took and served orders. Customers begged me to increase the heat setting. We cannot increase the heat setting when it will just get colder when the drive thru window opens. I, never did communicate, that fact to the people, unfortunately. At one point, I was going to put a Wendy’s coat on, but I felt weird because the coats were all too big for me. I managed to get over the coldness eventually.

Yesterday proceeded without haste. I was able to secure a raise, so I can make essentially, hopefully, two hundred dollars more than I had originally projected, so I can hope to get new Wii games and such. I hope even to earn enough to acquire Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, if I earn enough.

One of the other problems with working in any place in which customers orders must be taken involves order accuracy. When I left Wendy’s a few months ago, one of the most repeated qualities that Wendy’s Propaganda for employees stressed was order accuracy. I remember one claim in which workers are required to repeat the order three times to the customers. (On a side note, if we repeat it, enough we could eventually trick people who do not remember their order into getting less than they paid for; a truly nefarious thought indeed). For some reason, I felt the need to repeat everyone’s orders because I hate the fact that people forget what they say. The disgruntled customer that I served decided to add to her completed order three small Vanilla frosty’s. I assumed that the new button on the register was automatically rigged to total up three small frosty’s. In actuality, it was rigged to do three medium frosty’s (a flaw of the computer, for the chocolate frosty the computer automatically rings it up as a small chocolate frosty). Therefore, I totally the order up and then proceeded to cash it out. The woman realized that I had charged her for the wrong thing (she was able to do mental math multiple 99-cents by three to get a reasonably price). I followed this and realized my error. I had to race and get the manager to do a void of sorts. My manager claimed that there is a difference of 20 cents, which there is. However, even with this, there is some other problem with the inflation of prices with tax. Therefore, we, even though we were right in that she would get 60 cents back, the woman claimed that we still did not give her enough money. The manager went into the back to verify this on the calculator. In the meantime, I had to stay up front and entertain the customer. By entertain, I mean listen to her tell me and everyone else in line about her struggle with making money and her fight to fight for every single bit of money that she has earned. Therefore, by us taking two minutes to get her an additional dollar, she was claiming that this was a galactic fight of epic proportions in which one dollar would cost her, her entire life savings and projected new worth. I was like, please calm down, it is just one-dollar, you can easily find one-dollar in the bottom of your couch at home. Of course, I did not say that aloud. Overall, everything was straightened out.

The night ended sharply around 11 PM. I was able to finish everything in breakneck speeds; thanks in part to my ability to do the entire dining room clean up in a fast speed. I have it all literally memorized. I get today and Thursday off, and then it is back to the Wendy’s for fun on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.



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Now playing: Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
via FoxyTunes

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Semester Ends

Now I might not have managed to stay on the track as I had originally planned of updating this but now I think I may be able to focus on it. It will be my New Year's Resolution to provide continual updates to my blog. I do hope I can stay on track. I will have to put it on the daily schedule, just as I make time to do surveys, I will have to do it for this too, it seems.

The final grades are slowly tricking in and in the future I will make a specific update for that. On yesterday I went back to Wendy's to work. I was surprised to see that many of the people I had worked with before were still there. Apart from a few new faces, everything for my night shift was just about similar. Surprisingly I still knew about everything to do and managed to still get out at my regular time.

A few things were a bit weird though. First off the computer system seems to have undergone an entirely new overhaul. The font is now smaller and there are about 20 times more buttons it seems. In fact, it is so small that one has to literally pound the keys in order for it to respond. I would have expected them at least upgrade their version of Microsoft Windows (I believe they are either at 95 or NT). Regardless, I worked that out. I actually miss how the credit card thing would automatically accept the card. Now I have to mass a silly Credit Card button.

Secondly, apart from adding a few new functions, everything with the entire way that Wendy's works is still the same. Although there are new menu items, the 99 cent menu has undergone a few price increases, Frescata's and other promo's are gone, and now the drinks and stuff and Frosty has undergone changes. Personally, it was too much to grab at one time but I got it.

I cant believe that they havent been able to revolutionize the art of Fry cooking and make it take less than 3 minutes to cook, lol.

Last night I got about one disgruntled customer. Apparently, after I repeated her order to her twice even after she said okay, once she got her order she claimed that she had ordered another drink and then got so upset that she told me that Im not even fit to even take orders. She even asked me, "Are the nuggets hot?" I was like "If you have a problem with anything on your order bring it back to me and I will fix it for you and give you abundantly more?". She walked away in a sort of disgruntled way, and I felt bad for her because I gave her a free drink and she was still mad. Hm, but oh well, I did get compliments and good marks for the night.

The final annoying thing was that the vacuum cleaner was in a state of disrepair. Even after me being gone for a year, they have still managed to be afflicted with the vacuum cleaner curse. This can be looked at as either good or bad. Good in a sense that we could do less work because we dont have to vacuum the entire dining room, but bad in a sense that we have to use a broom to sweep the food. The broom is more time consuming, and leaves the floor not looking that clean but it manages to get the job done.

Ultimately, I am glad to have returned to Wendy's for it gives me something to do since just about everyone I know has gone their separate ways for this Winter Break. I am hoping to use the (hopefully) $600 or so dollars I gain from this for more Nintendo Wii games in the upcoming months. Hopefully.

Also, lastly, I do not want to hopefully have to keep paying for food from Wendy's. It makes no sense to pay for food from your own employer. But who knows, I might have to do it tonight.

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Now playing: Hannah Montana - We Got the Party
via FoxyTunes

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Another Day Goes By

Yesterday actually saw the first day of school following the ending to the Thanksgiving Break. For Thanksgiving Break, I actually went home and saw my aunts, cousins, and grandma. It was quite nice. The rest of the time was spent studying. I didnt really take a break from studying until about Monday.

Yesterday I attempted to not do much schoolwork outside of the classroom. This proved to enable me to go to sleep at a reasonable time and rest and relax. I began the process of starting up my Playstation 3 fund because I really want a Playstation 3. I just have to try to remain diligent in my pursuit of this goal. As a result of this diligence I should be able to have a Playstation 3 by the end of the Spring Semester, probably about May 1st, 2008.

I dont really know why I woke up this morning at about 4:30 AM. I just couldnt sleep or something, I feel quite refreshed though very thirsty. I may go get water or something.



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Now playing: The Cheetah Girls - Strut
via FoxyTunes

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Its Been Awhile

Whoa it has been such a long time since I even wrote anything here. Rather than going through and detailing the entire semester, I guess I will start beack in my old fashion. The end of the semester is near. It is time for the outline view.

  • Started back with researching with Dr.Stewart in the Lab again
  • Am trying to maintain all A's in my four classes (Anthropology, Chemistry 102, Chinese 101, and Statistics 210)
  • Still hanging out with the same 4 friends, plus 1 more.
  • Traded in my DS Lite, bought a PSP 2000,
  • Bought a new hard drive and a new battery for the computer
  • Help at the elementary school with science labs for physics
  • Cinemas in the commons is dreadful
  • Still an Ambassador

I think that that is just about it. Apart from doing a few other trivial things, that is generally how my semester has been. I hope to continue to update this from time and time again. I cant believe I even remember the login. lol.

Oh yeah my first long term goal is to get a PS3 by Thursday May 1st, 20008. This will take extreme dedication and devotion but if there is a way then it can be done. I think that I will have to be quite diligent with my saving and spending. By only limiting myself to spending 20$ a week at most on items that are entertainment, halting my video game purchasing, as well as putting about 50 dollars aside each paycheck then I know that this can be accomplished.



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Now playing: Jill Scott - Golden
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