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On August 10th, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. today, after suffering from heat, annoying customers, horrible smelling and looking customers, being forced to sit through hours and hours of yelling, watching people just stand around instead of doing their job, and working with my ass off with seemingly no reward, I clocked off from my shift of my employer, K-Mart. As I have read in many articles and heard many people say, that the merger of Sears Holding Company and K-Mart was the marriage from hell. Many customers and former employees can contest to that.

As soon as I came into today, I knew that it was going to be a horrible six hours. Even though, I know how to work the register well enough not to get a huge line, and the service desk lady that worked there this morning was every experienced, most of the time the cashiers and service desk people are just thrown in there. I am not saying there are horrible at their jobs, but they mostly had to learn by themselves since we are only trained on register for one day before they say, “Have at it, you screw up now, it is your fault.”

The stress level working the register is greatly, GREATLY, advanced compared to the rest of the store, and they are usually stuck out there with usually only little to no training. And when they are put up there, they are not informed of price changes, sales, special offers for the week, or even know how to use the computer to their advantage. It is not their fault.

As soon as I clocked, I was informed it would only be me on the front until eleven. So, I was told to put up strays until then, and the service desk person would try and keep it safe by herself. This is mostly why you will only find 4-6 employees working in a K-Mart at one time. The few people you might find are usually putting up strays, marking down products, or covering breaks. We are told in the interview and orientation, that Customer Service should be the top priority, but rarely it is. So, most of the time, the reason the typical customer is complaining about cashiers not being able to move the line quick enough, or that there are not enough cashiers is because most of them are doing something else for someone else. And it will never be a good thing if the person complaining happens to be a secret shopper.

Once a month or so, a mystery shopper comes into the store. Life and death in K-Mart exist only for the mystery shopper. Our bonuses, raises, and our store average rating depends on the mystery shoppers score, so, when they come in they are always treated as kings or queens. But, by god, it doesn’t matter how hard we work or the complaints we get that makes it. I basically let that go, because I have a way I do my job and don’t let anyone change that.

About 12:30-ish, I had the unfortunate timing of running straight into a extremely angry customer, complaining about the heat, I sat there and listened as he complained for a good thirty minutes before I could a word in edgewise. The only thing I could do was tell the guy my opinions (basically the same as his) and give him a 1-800 number to call and they will mail him a ten percent discount card for complaining.

But, one thing, when you call the 800 number, your talking to an outsourced call center, from that point, they would e-mail the head manager of the K-Mart, who most of the wads it up and throws it in the trash. You will never talk to a big boss, or anyone in a corporate position. So, you might as well take the big 10% discount and go away.

At one, with my stressed body about to explode with my extremely stressed head, I had the honor of helping some women that smelled of dirty diapers and dog vomit apply for a Sears card. This is a “big” thing that the managers want to push down the throats of our customers and cashiers. You may notice how every time you check out at your favorite K-Mart store, they ask you if you want to use a Sears card or if you want to apply for it. I have actually went to a manager and told them, this was not an effective way to do it, but yet they force us to ask, but three fourths of the employees will not even ask after there first month on the job. The cashier receives the epic amount of two dollars per application for getting some to sign it.

At two, they made me go out and push carts. Apparently, cashiers have to do everything in the stores. Again, when you get a cart from your favorite local K-Mart, you may notice how there is gum stick to them and various places, bee gathered around them during the summer, and maybe disregarded fast food bags with food still in them and a trail of ants. Again, I must stress the low budget of a K-Mart. That is why we can never fix leaking ceilings, replace fixtures, clean bathrooms, or even afford a janitor except on Friday nights.

I will most of the time looking in the carts and find the cases of random objects, most of them stolen. Which brings me to another grap, Corporate has fired all but one of our security personal, the Claypool Hill K-Mart only has one, and they are to busy from running back and forth to random stores in the distract to really focus on one store, so most people end up with a five finger discount. Expect higher prices at your local K-Mart in the future. They think the best way to make money, is to save money. And they’re wrong. You get out what you put into it. If K-Mart had lots of happy faces walking around, clean floors, and knew what they were doing, it would increase revenue. It may take some time for people to catch on, but it’s an investment. It shows when a company has a $2 budget for upkeep.

Another thing is K-Mart has not upgraded at all with the times. If you were Austin Powers and staggered into a K-Mart after waking up from your 30-year nap (Mustafa told you Dr. Evil was a manager there), you’d immediately recognize the place (although he’d wonder who that Martha Stewart bird was) because it hasn’t changed much since the 60s. You literally step into a time warp when you go to K-Mart.

Now from three to four, I sit at my register running stuff through and getting people out as fast as I could because most of them were as frustrated as I was. At that time, we had five cashiers on the clock with many in the registers but, only two were running them, because most of them were stuck running around the store doing helping the people that are too busy moving stuff, marking down items, and doing stuff that the managers told them that had to be done before they could got out of that hell hole.

And finally, at four, I pulled my money, counted and clocked out before I could get asked to work more. I swear, the work schedule up at K-Mart gets changed more often then, an average store should be allowed to do. Every other day, you can look on the schedule in the back and every day you will see another shift added on to someone’s name, most of the time, they don’t know about it until the next day they work.

Although, I complain about working at K-Mart, I don’t mind working at it. Because K-Mart is a sinking ship, ready to get hit by that last strike to push them over the edge. It is so exciting to come into work one day, and just waiting around to see if the next day you are going to pull in the parking lot and a manager tell you that the K-Mart has folded. It is hard, but you push yourself through the day, and just have to psych yourself up for the next.

Well, hell yeah. It looks like Good Ol’ JB, Jake Ball, has finally got a blog up and a going. It’s been a while, mostly because of work at K-Mart and school starting, but thinking about, it Labor Day weekend is the best time to get one going, so we will get the formalities out of the way and get this blog a rolling.

Alot of people will not let it out on a blog, but whatever. Most of you will refused to ever talk to me in public, so I will just tell ya about myself on here. Hi, I am Jake Ball, and I am insane. I am wracked with self-doubt. I have panic attacks. I have anthropophobia (fear of being in company), autophobia (fear of being alone), glossophobia (fear of being alone), laliophobia (fear of speaking), necrophobia (fear of death), nyctophobia (fear of the dark), panphobia (fear of everything messing up), phonephobia (fear of talking on telephone), and phobiaphobia (fear of having phobias). I talk to myself. I talk to three separate shrinks about the fact that often I am depressed, bipolar, and want to commit suicide. And, as I mentioned before, I am insane. I’m narcissistic, I’m pessimistic, I’m obsessive, I’m insecure and I am so afraid of intimacy that every one of my relationships is a journey of self-sabotage that inevitably ends in a black vacuum of shattered expectations and despair.

But, being messed up is my thing. I have learned after the first 13 years of my life, nothing will bother us or mess up are life, because we have seen most of the time when God, or whoever the higher being you pray to is (again, in my case Ric Flair), about to take a big wet massive wet shat on us, we have learned to just step on over to the side. But, normal people that is a different story. Normal people are the ones that will freak over the smallest things. They have not had enough screwed up things happen in there life to know what to do when a problem arises, They just snap. Like this situation, “Oh my god, my Hot Pocket didn’t cook all the way, IS THERE NO GOD?!?, Where is my battle axe? I am going to Wal-Mart.”

I live within the area of Raven, Virginia, but most people don’t acknowledge it as a town, even though we have our own post office. If you have a post office, your a town. But, nonetheless, most people would say I am from Richlands. Well, most of the people in Richlands are snobs, drama kings and queens, and druggies. Most of these people don’t even know the real me because they refuse to even get to know me. D’you know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling. You have no idea what I’m like, so all of your ideas and knowledge of Jake Ball, is from rumors and things people in the high school and others that nothing about me. And most of the people in Richlands love to cause drama and make people listen to there problems, now get me correctly, I have no problem listening to someone’s problem when they have a real one. But, I want you to spread the word. I’ve – had – enough. The next whiny person that comes to me looking to me for a cookie and a hug, I swear to Aisha, I’m going to hurt them. So just take your nonsense blah-blah to the blah-blah-ologist. Because if you are so stupid as to cry over a boyfriend you had for a week, someone talking about you, people not liking you, or people not wanting to be around you, then you’ve just got to go ahead and replace the captain of your brainship, because he’s drunk at the wheel.

Because most of these people live their life according to everyone else’s standards. ‘I have got to have a good job, family, many friends, and not have any problems, because that is what is excepted of me.’ And the fucking insane part is he ain’t even crazy about the any of it, never mind the fact that they got a perfectly fine life right now and even Anne-fucking-Frank can see that they love it, God knows why. And most of the time they have the perfect person right there beside them, but they can’t like them or even bee seen tlakign to them because if they do, they go down into a lower social class. And they actually like you for who you are and not for the social standings or looks or anything, they ain’t trying to stuff you into a box you’ll never fit into. Jesus if you had any sense whatsoever, you’d fucking stop trying to bray it up with the rest of the sheep, and live your life the way it makes sense to you.

I wanted you to think about yourself, and I mean really think. What are you good at? What do you suck at? And then I want you to put it down on paper. And not so I could see it, and not so anybody else could see it, but so you could see it. Because ultimately, you don’t have to answer to me, and you don’t have to answer to anyone in your life. You don’t even have to answer to your family or friends, for God’s sake! You only have to answer to one person and that’s you! People like this, honest-to-God, make me so angry, I’m afraid I just might hurt myself. Okay, think of what little patience I have with people like this as, oh, I don’t know, your virginity. You always thought it would be there, until that night Freshmen Year when you were feeling a little down about yourself and your guy buddy, who just wanted to be friends, well, he dropped by and he brought a copy of The Notebook and a four-pack of Bartels & James and badaow, it was gone forever – just like my patience is now.

And, well about love I have this to say. Relationships are so fragile. It just takes one thing, one… tiny little offense, and it can snowball on ya. And if that snowball starts to pick up speed, God forbid, you’d better tuck and go, my friend. Relationships don’t work the way they do on television and in the movies. Will they? Won’t they? And then they finally do, and they’re happy forever, gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren’t right for each other to begin with, and half of the ones who get married get divorced anyway, and I’m telling you right now, through all this stuff I have not become a cynic. I haven’t. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, y’know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don’t care, because I do… believe in it. Bottom line: it’s couples who are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don’t let it take them down. One of those two people will stand up and fight for that relationship every time. If it’s right, and they’re real lucky, one of them will say something. You know, there’s a million fine-looking women in the world, but they don’t all bring you lasagna at work, and that in my mind is love. Most of them just cheat on you.

I don’t think people are meant to be by themselves. That’s why if you actually find someone you care about, it’s important to let go of the little things, even if you can’t let go all the way. Because nothing sucks more than feeling all alone, no matter how many people are around. Sometimes fate is on your side. Other times well, you’ve kind of sealed your own fate. Either way you have to trust that whatever’s supposed to happen will happen. Besides, somehow you always seem to end up with the person you’re meant to be with.

I have tried to take my own life for some of the stupid reasons I have addressed above, but I want you to know this. Most people want to take the easy way out, because their scared with life, love, and everything else in their life. Their scared because if they fail, they only have themselves to blame. Let me tell ya this, life is scary, get used to it. There are no magical fixes in life. It is all up to you to get out and be someone and live your life they way you want to live it. So, get off your ass and off MySpace, and get out there and do the work. Nothing in this world worth having, comes without hard work.