A Major Confidence Blow - The Plan's First Hurdle

Wow, what an amazingly depressing weekend this has been.

On Friday I decided to call it a day and throw in the towel to my part time Wal-Mart job. It is just much too depressing. Yes there were 400 applicants and I was one of the lucky 40 to get a job in this god forsaken jobless economic climate - but it is compromising my happiness and my standard of living way too much. It has me so depressed that it has even become the cause of turbulence in my private life by becoming the root of many arguments in my relationship.

It has been nice having money in the bank, but it came to the stage where it just wasn't even worth the money anymore. I have 2 weeks left to work there now. I have not quit completely, rather changed my status to 'seasonal worker' so that if my plan fails me and I need work again, I still a foot in the door there to fall back in on.

So, this Saturday, I had another job back at what I consider my 'real job', working as a sound technician for a local theatre. Working in Wal-Mart has really encouraged me to hold on to that opportunity and make the most of it as a career possibility. However, I consider myself and in-experienced apprentice at that job still. I have a lot to learn about working in a theatre environment and I am really not confident enough yet to be left to my own devices with professional clients.

This is what made Saturday night HELL. This is supposed to be the job I LIKE, this is supposed to be the job I WANT. Instead, Saturday night made me so embarrassed and humiliated and un-confident that I feel like I want to turn my back on my entire sound/music career which I have studied my way into for this last 5 years. :'(

It all started when I arrived at work only to find only one of my two bosses working. Usually one boss is in charge of lighting for the show, the other is in charge of sound... this leaves me as the assistant to both their needs. I like this because I get to watch them work with bands and theatre companies and learn a lot.

This time however, my Lighting boss threw me completely in the deep end and made me in charge of the entire sound for the whole show. My heart sank but I kinda thought in the back of my mind that it will all pan out fine and things will work out. I kept telling myself to not panic, be confident, and that it'll end up revealing itself as something I will feel silly for ever having worried about. Boy was I wrong.

I bashfully Mic'd the band up on stage, doing what I 'presumed' was what was expected, not having the guidance of my peers to point me in the right direction. That part went pretty much fine. Then, I kind of lingered around, pretending to set up odds and ends hoping my boss was going to come along and do their sound check for them.

Eventually, that turned out to never happen and I soon found myself behind the main auditorium sound desk, feeling quite nervous and intimidated behind the helm of control equipment while the band on stage looked up at me at the back of the hall, waiting for an indication on sound checking.

I felt very vulnerable and helpless back there by myself. I tried to calm myself and not over think it and reassured myself that this would be fine, I can do this, I am trained to do this, I should be able to handle all of this. I know that the more confident I could act, the better job I would do, but it was hopeless - I didn't have the attitude in me that was necessary.

I timidly asked the drummer to begin hitting each drum as I adjusted and tweaked the sound of each part of his kit. It sounded HORRIBLE. I have no idea if his kit was just badly tuned or if the room sounded that bad, but it was very difficult to get a good sound from it.

Then I began over thinking. The band all stared up at me as I sound checked each of his drums. I began to think, "SHIT SHIT SHIT, I'm taking too long at this, I bet they're thinking I don't know what I'm doing". Because of this, I couldn't concentrate. The sea of knobs and controls which normally make sense to me in my calm state suddenly appeared as an overwhelming intake of information that sent my mind into a spiralling fluster.

I left the drum kit with a passable, but very poor sound. On to the guitars, I asked each guitarist to play a bit and adjusted each sound. Without my boss there to confirm if I had a usable sound, I presumed it sounded fine to me.

At this stage I just panicked and thought to myself, "Fuck it, I'll get them to run through a song and while they do that, I'll set the levels for everything else like vocals and keys"

So I announced they should run over a song. Then the lady on keyboards shook her head with her hands on the side of her face as though to say 'Oh lord, this is a mess'. She interrupted "Look, can I soundcheck my keyboard please?".

"Oh eh, yea of course, go ahead" I announced sounding totally ignorant and unprofessional as though I'd forgot about them.

The keyboard was a cheap, terrible sounding instrument with terrible preset sounds. She complained instantly "No, that sounds horrible! More low end, more high end!" etc etc.

To me, it wasn't going to sound much better. The first major humiliating event then happened when she shouted to another guy with the band "Look, will you go up and sort my sound out please, he can't do it". That was shouted out right in front of me. Instantly I was undermined and looking totally incapable.

The guy who came up seemed like a nice enough guy, certainly more experienced than I am. He whispered to me 'Don't listen to her, thats why I said I was busy later and can't do the sound for them tonight'. He pretended to fiddle a control and said 'There ya go!'. 'Much better!' she announced.

The infuriating part for me, was I had not yet turned on the musicians monitors to allow them to hear themselves. On stage, they are behind the Front Of House speakers and can not hear what the audience and myself can hear.

The guy then went back to the drums and more calmly he went around each drum, taking a little more time at them and just generally making slight adjustments to the settings I made to improve on them. "Don't panic" he assured me, "It'll get there in the end".

See, this is the confidence I need!

Then another guy they knew stood half way up the hall between us at the back, and the band at the front. He paced back and forth, resting his jaw in one hand. "No, no that sounds terrible" he would proclaim. "No, there is a... what could you say.... tube like sound of that". Then "THERE! Keep that there, that ones a better sound, what did you do there?". "Nothing, I haven't touched it yet" the other guy would answer.

It was a mixture of the band being very poor, myself being inexperienced and my total lack of confidence and attitude that lead to such a disaster of sound.

More problems ensued as I mixed their monitors for them to hear themselves.

Anyways, on the night, despite having that guys help with sound check, the problems continued. The main singer asked me to keep his voice very low in the mix and make the music slightly louder than the singing. He also wanted lots of reverb and echo. This basically meant you couldn't hear what the guy was singing very well at all. Well, you could hear singing, but words were inaudible. Not having confidence to do what I thought was best, I thought I'd please the client and do what he asked.

At half time break, the lady running reception approached me to say there is a lot of complaints from the public. 'Oh god', I instantly thought. I didn't need this. 'They can't hear the singing', 'Theres gonna be a lot of complaints about this', 'they say the music is too loud'. Then my lighting boss came over and turned the main volume UP saying the singer thought it wasn't loud enough!

On the next half, I turned the vocals up nice and loud, and clear. The music I actually brought down slightly.

This still made them sound rubbish because they had NO mic technique at all. Mic Technique is basically when you sing something loud, you back away from the mic a bit, when saying lower things, press up against the mic more.

I had this guys vocals up loud and he would mumble words two feet back from the mic so you couldn't hear him, so I'd turn him up. Then he'd ROAR into the mic at point blank range cause the volume to knock the socks off the audience.

The final straw was when the singer and the lead guitarist started turning their amps up louder and louder, and the keyboard player turned her amp up louder and louder. Eventually, I had them all turned down FULLY on my end and it was still wayyyy too loud because of what they had done to the sound at their end.

TOTAL DISASTER.

After the show, there was an air of unhappiness in both staff and public, and the tension between myself and the band was thick. I felt like just crying and giving up. I threw my headphones off and cowered behind my sound desk with my head in my hands. Of course, by again loosing my cool like this I forgot to jump into action with all after show jobs needing to be done. Suddenly some member of staff told me my boss was shouting for me to answer him. I suddenly realised I had thrown my headphones off. I put them back on again to hear "HELLOOOO! FUCKING WAKE UP WHERE ARE YOU!?". Great, now I've also pissed my boss off.

I ran onto the stage to begin packing everything up. My boss came down and helped me. After about 20 minutes of silence he half whispered to me "Hey, you are being very quiet". I grunted.

As I stepped around the band members, gathering up equipment around then, not one of them said anything to me. I felt awful. Even though I know it was probably mostly their fault, I didn't and still don't have the confidence in myself to admit that and I feel I was totally to blame.

The lady on the keyboard never showed up from backstage and had other members pack up for her. I presumed because she was so livid with me, thinking it was all my fault.

Eventually, the singer approached me. Surprisingly he hadn't been hard to work with as he seemed the most technically ignorant out of them all, himself seeming quite unconfident in what they were doing. So he hadn't been as intimidating as others who had been there.

"So, what did you think?" He said, neither smiling nor frowning - making it hard to read his sentiments behind such a statement.

"Oh, umm, yea, yea it was good man, thanks!", I said, for some reason. I think I was trying to not seem pissed off incase it seemed rude or something. I'm not sure. Really, I was absolutely furious at several things... them, me, my boss, my life, ARGH!

"Well, what would you change" he asked.

"Errrr, uumm, aaah", I stumbled. This question made me reaaaally uncomfortable as I was literally shaking with such rage and mixed emotions that my mind battled whether to take a risk and go off on a rant that couldn't help but to stink of anger and frustration, or just avoid a highly potential, socially awkward situation and say "Oh, nothing".

"Come on, constructive criticism" he encouraged me.

"Well, one thing you might want to keep in mind, something I myself find it hard not to do... don't turn up your amps throughout performance, it means I loose control of sound"....

"And... perhaps you might want to think less about keeping the singing low in the mix because to be honest, the people seem to enjoy hearing lyrics they can sing along to so they complain when they can't hear it', I furthered...

"Oh and just another little detail, in between songs, you announced over the main speakers for me to give you more reverb and that you sounded much too dry.... that was only because I turned your reverb off while you spoke between songs"... I concluded.

He nodded, still neither smiling or sulking. His indifferent facial expression troubled me. I wondered had I went too far or said something too unkindly, giving away my current, strong, inner feelings on the situation.

"Ok, well... good to know, yea, ... ok". He seemed a little disheartened. I guess it was perhaps an anticlimax for him after the adrenaline run of a big show, still dripping with sweat and for me to be so honest. But I really didn't tell him half of what could be done better.

Again, my lack of a thick skin and confidence failed me as I felt bad for now having said this all to him.

My boss who was on lights tried to assure me by saying statements like, "Its not your fault, you can't polish a turd". Which gave me a glimmer of hope, but then also said things like "You'll be fine, go home and pour yourself a big drink, we have all had disastrous nights like this in our careers" ... which I over analysed into ... "See, he said this was a disaster, this is a night I turned into a disaster". I even had to tell him that I almost felt like apologising to him. He said that my sound Boss who wasn't there, had done sound for them already and said 'They are a bar band, they aren't professional enough for these venues'. The band said they will be back next year. I think February. I hope I am not there again :(

As well as the obvious. There are several reasons why I feel like crying ever since that night. Its not Monday and I still carry a strong lump in my throat and and flutter in my chest as I cringe in retrospect each time I mull it over my head.

The bad Wal-Mart experience gave me encouragement to make a go at my sound career. I really wanted to catch that bull by the horns and try to be my best at it. I really wanted to show my boss, and all the staff at the theatre that I am someone who is up to that job. I wanted to prove myself and show that I can do it. Instead, I feel like I have shown myself up as someone who is the opposite of all that.

Whether my boss really believes it or not that it was entirely the bands fault, I am not sure - but the other members of staff who know nothing about the technical work in the theatre probably, like the audience that night, are talking about me behind closed doors.

In my last post I discussed my plan. My get out of jail card. My way to make a go of doing what I want to do in this life. This is a plan I've been working at for years. Its what I worked my way through a relevant HND and a Degree for. And now, after Saturday night, I feel like I am not up to the challenge, I am neither confident enough or experienced enough for it all. It makes me feel like turning my back on the whole business and that leaves me completely lost in life. Back to not being good at anything and having a directionless life with no goals and aims. I need goals and aims in life to keep me going and keep my mind working on something. It feels like its all crumbling.

Sure, I am a neurotic guy. It seems that this is just me over thinking it all again... but realistically, I do believe this event and how I am even handling the aftermath, raises plenty of questions. If I was the right minded person for the job, even if it was the disaster that it actually was, I'd be dealing with the aftermath better. I'd be thinking 'Well, not my fault".

Instead even though my plan relies on me continuing to work there and keep my foot in the door in that place, I feel like turning down any hours I ever get offered in it. I feel like running away from a repeat situation.

All I can think is, this was bad, this was one of the most majorly humiliating, and embarrassing events of my life. Confidence blowing. Self esteem wrecking. If it is THAT BAD, what on earth is going to happen to me if the next job I accept there turns out THE EXACT SAME!

I am terrified now. Terrified, depressed, embarrassed, humiliated.

I have so many emotions on full blow since Saturday, that it has been really messing my mind up. I keep thinking to myself 'What the hell is it that I am feeling here?! What is this overwhelmingly odd sensation lingering around me constantly?!'. Its as though there is so much going on in my head right now I am becoming confused. I actually started to think I was coming down with something like the flu or the cold. However, I think its just that I haven't slept much since this and I am exhausted and my muscles and limbs are only aching because I've been so tense.

Of course, this all happened as I handed in my Asda/Wal-Mart leaving notice. So now I am thinking to myself, 'Ok so now am I not up to going on with my plan? Should I have left?! Was that a terrible idea?". I haven't told anyone I left yet simply because this has made me wonder what the hell I am doing.

********** ICING ON THE CAKE !!!!!!!! ***********

Because I was working in the theatre that Saturday, I was unable to attend the Asda/Wal-Mart Christmas staff party. Of course, that was the LAST place in the world I'd ever want to be. Even if I wasn't working, I'd not have attended.

However, because I was so visible distressed and pissed off or whatever after that disaster of a night, my boss said I could go home early during the packing up at 11.30pm. I got a taxi straight to the party, which was being held in a nearby hotel with the main intention of getting myself a very large drink.

My girlfriend was at the party and had begged me to go several million times. I refused profusely each time. I knew she'd also be delighted if I showed up.

And delighted she was!

A major problem in our relationship is that although we are both social drinkers - she has a problem in relationships in that if she gets much too drunk, she becomes very aggressive and violent only to her boyfriend. Obviously, this has been one of the major stigmas of our relationship and over the years it has caused me to develop an irritating fear of her getting way too wasted. Due to this, I always monitor her alcohol consumption, and she has woke up many mornings feeling terrible with herself and made enough really embarrassing drunken social scenes that she has become better and not getting that drunk.

I warned her several gazillion times to not get that wasted again at the party, even though I wouldn't be there, because I don't even want her coming home like that. When I got there she was fairly drunk, but nothing too bad. I started drinking quite fast considering the hellish night I'd just had. However, being a party and all, many, many wasted people began pushing shots and all sorts of drinks into her hand.

Long story short, she got completely hammered and started being really aggressive towards me and calling me all the names of the day, telling me who all she thought was hot to make me jealous, etc etc.

I can't tell you how not in the mood I was for that bullshit. I called a taxi straight away and basically carried her into it. The best thing to happen was for her to pass out and sleep the rest of the night to put an end to the oh so predictable bullshit I've had to endure from her over the years when she gets in such a state.

It doesn't really matter to me anymore how much she has worked on it all and how less it happens now - it still happens and its too much after 4 years.

It has just added a whole other dimension of bullshit to my current mood.

WORST WEEKEND EVER.

I have no idea how on earth I am going to pull myself out of this current state of mind, and how long it will take for me to feel normal again.

RANT OVER.

What's a boy to do.

I think I have purposely been avoiding updating this because it general transcends into me listing out the various reasons I am not happy with the current state of my life. Going into it all again usually renders itself the opposite of the therapeutic reasonings that made me first think about starting a blog.

I spend most of my days now thinking up various plans and schemes to act as my 'get out of jail' card. Some sort of plan to not only make my lifestyle a bit more pleasing but to also provide a liveable income. As sad as it sounds, that seems to be my main goal in life right now; to work at and have money coming in through something that I am happy to do.

Lets face it, I'm never going to be wealthy. I am guessing I am never going to even be financially comfortable. I just want to be able to scrape by, providing for myself, doing what I want to do.

Working for Wal-Mart has been very destructive to my life and my personality, but one good thing to come out of it has been the massive spurt of motivation it has gave me to get up and do something with myself. I have been taking risks I'd never have dreamt of doing considering how neurotic and overly cautious I naturally am.

Pooling all my resources together and working hard at doing so is the main agenda. I really, REALLY hope this doesn't turn out to be yet another thing which I think and talk a lot about but never seem to materialise. I am determined to make things actually come to light this time.

I have worked so hard over this last 5 years achieving the highest level possible from a HND in Music Production a BSc degree in Music Technology. I think these are great qualification to have to back myself up in doing what I want to do. Theres a lot of people out there trying to start up recording studios with no prior education or proper qualifications, so why can't I try it and make the most of these skills?

All I really need to do is find a new house with 3 bedrooms and start advertising. Since I've started in Wal-Mart I've basically spent all of every pay cheque on the best pro studio equipment I can find. It is very scary, and its the start of the 'risk taking'. But it has felt good, it has felt really good actually starting to do something about it all rather than just talk about it and think about it. At least now that I am gathering 1000's of £ worth of equipment I am having more and more motivation and push to do something with it.

I must say, I am actually getting very excited. Its scary, its very high risk, but its thrilling. Its thrilling to think about actually properly doing my own thing. It keeps me going through the days of working in that hell-hole stacking potatoes and bananas all day. I just day dream about starting up, things I could buy for the studio with my next pay cheque etc. Without this, I'd be on a downward spiral of depression. Its some kind of light at the end of the tunnel for me. Even if eventually I find it didn't work out, I at least will be able to say I tried it this time.

I know of some people scraping by through just recording the occasional band, I know of others scraping by through playing the occasional gig. I'm going to try to combine the two. I have also been working hard on starting up a little pub band. This is not playing for pleasure like I have done in the past, this is playing for cash. So yea, its pretty much selling out, playing the big cheesy hits everyone wants to hear. But hey, at least I will be getting paid for playing guitar, even if the music is shit. That's a lot better than stacking bananas!

So as optimistic as it sounds, the plan is to start a recording studio, play gigs for cash, and perhaps start offering guitar lessons again like I used to do. If I get at least a band to record per month, a gig every two weeks, and a guitar lesson session per week... It should be enough to scrape by. I will, of course, have the benefit of having my girlfriend to share the burden of paying for the bills. Without her, and her support for letting me squander all my cash on this, it wouldn't have been possible. I really appreciate how un-materialistic she is. She really doesn't care that I am now always broke and never have money to spend on her. Low maintenance all the way!

Generally I'd be much too scared to take any of these risks, and much too intimidated by the established competition out there. But again, perhaps that is the only silver lining of currently working in such a crap job.

Also, the other positive thing is that I have been getting more hours offered to me by what I consider my 'proper job'. The theatre I am employed by has asked me in a few times for sound tech. work. Its been great doing some relevant work for a change. Thats another thing, while implementing my plan - I will hopefully also be getting more hours working there too, which will help a lot. Come February they will have lost a full time employee who is there on a 6 month training program. Once that happens I hope for more work to roll my way. It will be welcomed.

COME ON THE PLAN ! ! !

A Venting Rant about ASDA/WAL-MART and another reason to boycott such places.

To find myself in a situation where I must take on a second job in which I find unbearably depressing, irrelevant, tedious and depreciating has been bad enough to deal with this last month. The random bout of insomnia made 9 hour shifts in the hell hole even worse, sometimes having not actually managed to even grab 5 mins sleep since the previous days shift. However, I'm only in it for the money which I need, and I had decided to grind down and bare it for the time being as the current economic climate has made finding a job painfully hard. I must always remind myself of how depressing it was enduring unemployment before this.

However, the scales have suddenly tipped. The balance has been offset. Up until now I was trying to mind my own business and just work through my shifts regardless of how soul destroying it is. However, how do I find anymore motivation when whilst already dealing with this bullshit I have a confrontation with an out of line manager who blatantly calls me a liar and a slacker?!

Whilst working my ass off on Friday morning, the start of another gruelling 9 hour shift, I kept my spirits up by reminding myself that I had finally reached the end of the full-time week which I had ignorantly agreed to work (9-6 five days that week). Lingering in the back of my mind was the thought that it would be just my luck for something completely shit to fall my way now that I was so close to the finish line. I was right to think that.

I completed the mornings usual laborious tasks with a speed that only reflected my desire to get it done and dusted as soon as humanly possible as prolonging the monotonous tasks would only further piss me off. Upon finishing what needed done, I took my usual route to the chiller to pull out the first of todays stock that needed shelving (another glorious duty). While maneuvering a huge wheeled cage of goods towards the doorway of the chiller, I was confronted by the massive, obtuse, walrus-like shape of my very flustered looking manager. His large, bulging face red and sweating with rage. "What is going on in the department?!" He shouted.

Hmm, whats going on in the department. It was something I really didn't compute. "I dunno?!"

"Its an absolute disgrace! What have you been doing all morning?!"

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the lecture. "Well first I done this..." I would say, to which he would reply "Ok, so thats 10mins, what then?". This exchange of evidence and denial went on until he estimated an hour was accounted for. Doing everything I had done within an hour was humanly impossible.

After being questioned about my activities and accused of somehow wasting time doing something else, I was then called a liar.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, I've been working as hard and fast as I can since I've got here today" I proclaimed. To which he stated...

"No, no you haven't".

To which I stated... "Yes, Yes I Have".

Then he came up with "No, no you haven't..." and while scanning me up and down with a condescending, sarcastic smirk "Look at you, I can tell just to look at you that you aren't working hard".

At this stage I was getting very irritated with having to repeat "I don't know what you want me to tell you, I have been working hard".

Finally he said "Well if that is you working hard maybe this isn't going to work out", to which I was left to reply "Maybe your right".

At that precise moment I have never been closer to walking out of a job on the spot in my life. As I stood there in the chiller, shaking with rage instead of cold, I knew that had that argument went on for a matter of seconds more, I'd have thrown my gloves at him and walked out.

It is not the first time I have had a confrontation with him after the canteen incident where he came running in looking for me, questioning me on why I took a break so late.

As I stormed out, back to work, I spoke to my colleague. Only him, and myself are working in that department all week. I asked if he also had a confrontation. "Oh he just told me to keep it up as he walked past".

I would have came to the conclusion that this particular manager has developed a disliking for me had it not been for another nasty incident I witnessed on the shop floor. While already furious at the ordeal I went through, I stormed through my work duties thinking up all those things I should have said. Whilst storming my way down one particular isle some hours later, he was standing there with the same red, sweating face, yelling at some very timid looking female colleague. As I past all I could hear was "... AND THAT TOOK 25 MINUTES?!"

Feeling sorry for her, I went out of my way to walk back that way several minutes later and asked her was she ok. As she looked around at me to answer, her lip quivered and her eyes began to fill up with tears. "Its ok! He was a bigger asshole to me earlier!" I quickly interjected, more as a means to stop the seemingly impending waterworks from causing a spectacle than to consolidate, admittedly. She was quite shook up though, I did feel sorry for her as she reminded me of myself several years ago when I would have been too timid to stand up for myself.

The only other time I spoke to him that day was while stacking a shelf he ushered me over to a front-of-shop display of produce. "See this is what I am talking about, it looks disgraceful, its a terrible first impression upon coming into the store", he said as he pointing to a solitary, empty crate going completely unnoticed by the hoards of shoppers bustling by.

People skills matter more than that empty crate. He is not going to lose a single shopper over that, I can guarantee him that. He will however lose more money over disgruntled ex-employees subsequently boycotting the store along with their families. He didn't loose any shoppers that day at all. His tone and ignorance at dealing with me lost him my weekly shopping there, my parents weekly shopping there, and both my sister's families weekly shopping there. Consider yourself a grand a week down for being an asshole in how you treat staff.

The reason I know I have a valid point which allows me to rant about this being out of order - is because I know I am a non-biased person who is brutally honest to myself. Had I not been working hard this would have been another story. For the fact that I was working much harder than I can understand why for a job I despise to deeply, it was infuriating to be accused otherwise.

As a 'Manager', I am perfectly aware of his rights, and I am perfectly aware of his duties and roles and the various red tapped crap he must highlight as his duty. I am perfectly fine with receiving angry lectures - this is life, this is what happens. I am fine with someone angrily shouting at me about how something needs to be rectified immediately, how something just isn't being done right. That is all fine and above board.

You cross a line when you start accusations, when you start calling workers liars, when you start looking down at them, when you laugh in their face, when you humiliate and condescend. There is a boundary that can not be crossed. There should always be a mutual understanding between worker and manager that each has an equal amount of rights within the workplace. They are above you in job description but they are not a member of authority - as a worker you have the power to bring them down if they are out of line. With this in light, upon leaving I plan to put the problems into writing, people are beginning to talk, people are beginning to think about leaving. If more than myself leave without stating a reason, a problem will never be brought to light by other fellow managers within the building.

I have decided to take this weekend to think about whether to return to work or not since that day. Instead of walking out - I decided I would simply wait until the shift was over and at least get my pay for the day I'd already half finished. However, my only concern now is that if I decide to not go back, perhaps I wont receive my pay for that hellish week I just endured. This is the downside of a 'monthly' payslip.

I am now considering working my 4 remaining shifts over the next fortnight until the month is at an end and I have the money in my account, then leave. I am not handing in any form of notice. I am not writing a letter to say I will be leaving in a number of weeks. I will simply not return and the problems caused by a sudden lack of staff and undesignated shifts can be a small punishment for poor managerial people-skills.

I will however, write a letter putting my thoughts on the mounting situation on paper.

I have read up on several ex-employee stories on the internet similar to this. There are a lot of horror stories out there. ASDA, Wal-Mart, Tesco... all the massive companies are developing a very unhealthy image for being market bullies, using brute force tactics to power their way to staying on top by means of the massive amount of money behind them and a top level committee of greedy, filthy capitalists. Support the local corner shop.

This blog was originally supposed to be wrote to put aspects of my life that actually matter into writing, but instead I am depressed that it has become a collection of rants on meaningless events that happen in meaningless places by meaningless people carrying out meaningless jobs.

This is not a way to live, dreading the next shift to such an extent that the days off in between are ruined. There is more to life than making money, before this it seemed to be the main goal on my mind - an income. Now its back to my happiness.

There is job seekers allowance actually...

Bureaucracy Grinds Me Down

Massive corporate conglomeration sometimes feels like it has the same effect on me as being positioned at the centre of the CERN particle accelerator so that my face is at the centre of a massive proton collision leaving my soul obliterated into shear anti-matter.

Quite the over exaggeration to some - not really to me! Having trudged through another 9 hour shitstorm of total and utter bureaucratic monotony, I find myself returning home completely spent of life with a measly couple of hours to myself, doing things more important to my wellbeing than supplying the demand of the ravenous consumer on behalf of the bastard son of Wal-Mart.

Today, I sat in the grey sludge filtered world of the canteen. I sat there with a pounding headache brought on from retinas burnt through the artificial, fluorescent strip lighting that sears overhead from morning to evening, the constant burn of tiered refrigeration units combined with dry and cold air-con, hoards of screaming kids and nattering imbeciles and the never ending ritual of stacking the never replenished towers of banana and potato crates.

I often sit back on the sofa panning the canteen; dubbing the sound of tumble weed and fluttering shutters over the scene in my head. Generally, it is very fitting. A lifeless, sterile and baron wilderness sparsely populated by withered and enervated members of staff who have taken on the chameleonic shade of beige as their backgrounds.

However, today, as I pan the landscape, something sticks out. Protruding from the normally immutable scene. From amongst the tables of grazing staff drones, a sternly faced manager marches directly towards me with an air of importance. This is a man on a mission. He is now pulling up his sleeve to reveal his watch. He doesn't look at it, but its obviously the opening gesture to his announcement.

"I have been informed that you are due back?" He says, as though it were a question.

"Nope, started the hour break at quarter past, its only 3 - got 15 mins still"

"3:15 ?? 3:15??" He says twice, trying to comprehend the unusual addition of 15 minutes.

"I started at 2:15, so my break ends at 3:15", I respond.

"Oh! Hmm... well why did you take your break so late?!", as he struggles to understand.

"Ugh, because thats when the guy before me finished his break - doesn't matter it's just 15 mins, I'll just go back to work now" I say, finally getting frustrated at the enormity this mundane event seems to have taken on.

"Oh no, finish your hour if thats when its over" he says while fidgeting and slightly mumbling as though his brain is quickly trying to conjure up a something more to say.

He doesn't need to say more, I realise what he is getting at. I realise what he is doing is trying to enforce some kind of regulations that are supposed to be in place. I realise this added 15mins has loosened his preferred tight working schedule up.

Its only been a few seconds since his last words, but the fact he has not started to walk away combined with the fumbling means he feels I actually do not realise and he needs to hammer the point home by saying something a little more. I help him by giving him a line to respond to - either that or I just want him to hurry up and end the stupid bureaucratic showcase.

"Sorry, I didn't realise we had to finish our lunch break by 3 on the hour", I said politely.

"Oh yes, certainly... certainly" He finally says whilst walking away and pretending to look at his watch repetitively in quick succession.

I realise I took what seems like a very long winded route to describing that altercation which in real-time actually only lasted about 30 seconds - but it at least reflects how much my brain made of such a seemingly small situation, allowing me to manage to stew and fester over it in my thoughts for the rest of the day. Getting through a shift in that subhuman world of subhuman costumers and subhuman co-workers is depressing enough to make that one hour lunch break the one thing to anticipate and subsequently feels like the one lousy 'hiding-place' I have. That event more or less obliterated the idea of the hiding place, the untouchable zone, the hour of rest, the 'leave me the fuck alone' part of the day.

Yea - I let these little things grind me down too much, but at least I can feel a bit better resting assured I am not that managerial figure who seems to have an almighty abundance of meaningless things to worry about for each second of the day.

Goodnight corporate world - sleep tight making sure all emergency exits are clearly lit, free from obstruction with hi-vis vests and hard hats worn at all times - and not forgetting to SMILE :P

The "5 Year Plan" is a pointless exercise

'Always Wear Sunscreen'... its far from the work of a poetic master or musical genius. If anything it mildly reeks of sanctimonious pretension and a well matured brie rather than the dusty pages of a wise wordsmith. For whatever reason (for now we'll call it nostalgia), the informative rantings which form the enlightening lyrics have stuck by me since I heard it so many years ago.

As the neurotic mess I have allowed myself to grow into, with the help of this fertile soil of anxiety and worry, I find it soothing to remind myself of a few quirky but never-the-less true lines found in the song:

"Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum."

"Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life... the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't"

These days in particular, I find myself incessantly repeating those excerpts in my head. This is not to say I have allowed the neurotic development of my being to expand into an iconic Woody Allen stature, but much more to do with the fact that those lines are probably more relevant than ever before in my life. I mainly say the first quoted section to myself when I start thinking about the latter quote.

Worrying about what to do with your life is probably something everybody does. However, I am in a particularly good position to do so. Having completely finished with education after successfully completing a diploma and a degree, I am left with the task of what to do with the rest of my life - the majority of it (one would hope). Ironically, I have the ideal job. I probably couldn't have asked for much better. Even more ironic perhaps is that they have completely stopped giving me any hours to work. I don't think I've been in the place for a few months now. As I heard a comedian once say while talking about Alanis Morissette's song 'Ironic', "Thats not ironic, thats just really shit luck". Yep, pretty much.

So is it ironic that while I have this well paid, dream job, I don't get any hours to make use of it - instead finding myself a new job carrying out monkey-tasks with spotty 17 year olds stacking shelves in a monotonous, tedious routine that destroys my soul? I can tell you, I am quoting those lyrics over and over in my head when I am working there, trying my very best to search for the silver lining around a cloud thats lost in a pitch black night sky.

The inner-bureaucracy of your run of the mill shit hole workplace is starting to make itself obvious now, in my second week there. I haven't worked in a place before that doesn't have any of that staff drama, so I had been waiting for signs of it since I started. Your general bullshit hierarchy of various members of staff displaying the immense power behind their magnificently over zealous job titles i.e "Head Line Duty Manager", as apposed to the regular 'Duty Manager' who will have to walk two steps behind the Head one and only get to tell half the people he does what isle needs urgent mopping. I always find, people with such positions in a workplace feel the necessity to randomly remind themselves and others what their job roles require them to do or say. For example, I could go into that place with my shirt not tucked in for weeks (such a crime), but one day will arise when said 'Line Manager' has nothing much else to do, he has already completed his incomprehensibly complicated daily chores of talking on two phones at once. He will then take the opportunity to tell me to tuck my shirt in. Rules are out there, I'm past my teenage angst driven rebellious phase long ago and know that you just gotta run with some rules to get through a day without an almighty scene arising, but I do despise rules which are enforced out of boredom, or someone randomly remembering they have to say these things.

Another interesting event has started to come up during my lunch breaks. I say interesting, I mean as amazing as it gets in a mind numbing grey hellhole. I tend to find that in that canteen, I am the only person who brings a book to read while the others look at the Page 3 boobs on the tabloid papers and catch up on which lower division soccer team swapped a player with some other club no one cares about either. Thats fine, what do I care who reads what, or who doesn't at all. However, I'd appreciate if everyone else felt the same and didn't feel it necessary to point out that I am reading a book, to me, the person who is clearly reading it and therefore should be very self aware of the observation.

An ex-marine works as security guard and I find myself coincidentally sharing lunch breaks with him. Some people feel it necessary to make conversation if only you and one other are sharing a small space. Personally, I don't suffer from such awkwardness and can very easily not feel the need to waste energy on pretending to care about how their day is. This guy finds that he not only has to make conversation and pretend to care how my day is, but also demand my amusement at his god-aweful jokes, farts and anecdotes. I can only 'fake-laugh' for so long before I just get very tired and irritated. Now I just look as deeply into the pages of my book as I can, and hope that if I refuse to crack a smile at his first few farts and terrible jokes that he will get the message. A very awkward event occurred while I practiced this new social prevention technique. He has cracked a few jokes, then cracked a few farts, then cracked a few jokes about the farts... then I cracked a window, but refused to laugh as planned. I could feel as I read that he was just looking over at me desperate for some kind of response. So, he looked at the tv for a bit, took note of a particularly idiotic character on screen then insisted on yelling to me "you know what I hate, stupid assholes maaaan! Yea haha, stupid assholes who like wouldn't know what a book was man. You could like throw a book at this guys face and he would be like, hey!? what is this maaan hahaha".

The very obvious attempt to try to find something to connect with me over was crushingly cringeworthy and I felt my toes curl and dig into my insoles as I held the book with a sheepish grin that reflected how sorry I felt for how much he is unwittingly embarrassing himself rather than the context of the statement itself. I actually almost felt like putting the book down because it was so obvious that the book I held seemed to be the prop for this whole unfortunate social disaster this guy had clumsily deployed in the room.

I used to worry I was becoming arrogant, snobbish or condescending. However, there is a line between being that, and just being observant about true idiocy and stupidity unleashed to the public through peoples ability to constantly out do themselves by bringing down the entire race.

Tomorrow I will work on the idea of happiness and being positive - maybe then I will write a blog that doesn't sound so angry. "SUNSHINE, LOLLIPOPS AND RAAAINBOWS LALALA!"

A Little Introductory Summary

I will never be able to summarise the shape and content of my blog. I can tell you what kind of person I am, and as a result, what general tone it may take. The subject spectrum will be broad, varied and unspecific, and I am sure, quite inconsistent.

I am a moderately neurotic individual; I worry, I stress and I generally spend a lot of my procrastination over-anaylizing seemingly irrelevant aspects of my life that I can blow out of proportion to become unnecessary obstacles in my pursuit to happiness and wellbeing.

I find, that I often loose grip of who I think I am, again, this is probably a direct result of over-analyses of my thoughts and actions, and probably a leading factor into writing this blog as a way to write out my thoughts and untangle this ball of muddled up feelings and opinions floating around in the abyss of my brain. What I am trying to say here (I think), is that I probably perform some kind of amateur psychology on myself to the extent that I am confused as to the truth behind what my opinion of myself is.

Being in a turbulent relationship, I often become confronted, in the heat of an argument, with my beloved girlfriend convincing me I am bullshitting her. 'That is rubbish and you know it" she would say, "Don't try to tell me thats how you feel because I don't believe it for one second". This will result in me convincing her that I stand by my opinion, my stubbornness not giving in to defeat. I summons all my most fiendish debating techniques to win the day, to come out as victor and to highlight just exactly how much I am being honest and just how wrong she is that I am bullshitting about whatever supposed flaw of my personality is in question.

Of course, as the blood switches from boil to a slow simmer, and we have went our separate ways to cool off; I find myself sitting by myself thinking of all those golden lines I could have said, and eventually, questioning my own argument. "Yea, wait a sec... was she right? Actually, wasn't I in the wrong and knew it, have I allowed my stubbornness and eagerness to prove her wrong actually inadvertently convince me she is wrong too!?"

This is a very hard concept to follow so the above paragraph may have made little to no sense. One thing is for sure, It certainly sounds to me like the rantings of a schizophrenic lunatic. And this may be what this blog takes the form off. Perhaps I should have called it "The Insane Musings of A Confused Schizophrenic"?

Well, that is why I have decided to write this blog. A means for me to read over my own train of thought, having it all laid out in front of me in a clear easy to understand format that even a dimwit like myself should be able to understand. Thats the theory, instead I am sure it will just become similar to the hoards of irrelevant, sanctimonious blogs of pretension that engulfs the online blogging universe.

I guess, to simplify things, I sometimes become confused as to if I am indeed correct about all those things I start out so surely about. Im a two sided coin perhaps. I could describe myself as a fairly confident, outgoing person - sure and ready to back up any of my opinions on anything. On the other hand, I could think about other aspects of my life, and describe myself as having a self esteem, and self confidence that has withered itself away in recent years to the point that I think of myself as an absolute nonentity. Maybe my brain is a microclimate that changes spontaneously. Depending on my fragile mood I can one minute decide I want to be confident, then the next minute dwell on growing negativities of my life and retreat into a shell of self pity before kicking myself in the ass to not become one of the angst ridden youth that has taken on some sort of fashionability in today's society.

Theres another two sided coin for you, I hate those who outspokenly wallow in fabricated self pity - while I find myself writing a blog about how many things piss me off and irritate me.

Yea, see, am I now convincing myself that this blog is somehow going to be more than just another bitch and rant forum like every other individual on here who has no one else to listen to them as they struggle to come to terms with the meaninglessness of their life?

This is all getting very emo, yikes. I'll come back soon when the next specific topic troubling my feeble mind pops up. Until then...