Kreeg rules and jobs suck!

Another day of blogging and I still have several suggestions to tackle.

Quickly I'll cover a few things that Jenni just brought up. The name "grapenuts" is clearly just plain nuts and there is nothing else that can be said.
There are several reasons pants split. Maybe the pants shrunk while they were being worn. Maybe you sat on a nail. Maybe you were wearing Dansko's on ice and your feet slid in two different directions.
And to make split pea soup you have to split the peas. Duh!

Now on to previous suggestions.

Today I'll start with Kreeg. He is my best friend and biggest fan. He always sits with me while I'm writing and he never has any bad comments about anything I read to him. There are so many good things to say about him that it would take forever. One important thing about Kreeg is that he too is a writer. Although he is a dog of few words he does blog those few words on dogster.com .

Now I guess I'll cover the jobs I've had to work while I struggle as a writer.
My first job was as a waitress in a pancake/burger style diner. I worked there for three years. I met some great people as far as customers were concerned and I got to work with all my friends. The only thing that sucked was my boss. He was a real strict, cheap ass. He would charge little old couples that could barely eat one fry a piece for an extra plate if they wanted to split a meal. He would tell the wait staff to ask people to leave if they stayed too long and were just drinking coffee, even if the whole place was empty. Once a woman found a hair in her food that was clearly from his balding, uncovered head and he wouldn't give her a refund. I saw him slap someone that worked there. He made his employees cry all the time and never apologized. He let his wife take all the tables and leave all her dishes to be bussed by the other waitresses, leaving them with no tips and a ton of work. He once fired a girl because he wouldn't let her take drinks to a table since it was his granddaughter(who worked there)'s turn for a table, and the girl told the customers why she couldn't bring them out when they were yelling at her for their drinks. He had a guy who was his manager for sixteen years and one day he told him "I'm cutting your pay and hours so my grandson can be manager". Once he told me that if I didn't like the way he treated me I could walk out the door. I quit in the middle of my Sunday morning shift and by the end of the week had convinced seven other people to leave with me. Damn the man!

I once worked for another diner with a creepy boss who wrote me a bunch of bad checks. It took the credit union three months to notice his account was closed and by that time I was over $2,500 negative.

I also worked on a dock of a department store. They kept promising to promote me to the sales floor but that never happened. They would ask me to skip class or call into my other job when they had extra large shipments. They gave me a five cent raise. I also got expired coupons to their store for my Christmas bonus.

I worked at a restaurant where I had to dress like a milkman and dance every half hour on the half hour. People get pissed when they have to wait for their ketchup because you're dancing.

I also worked at a bar where the owners were evil. No joke. They called me stupid because I once put the wrong drinks on the wrong bill and the manager had to take ten seconds to fix it. They charged me for a mistake order when a cook put sauce on something, that the menu didn't mention came with sauce, because I didn't specifically ask for "no sauce". They made people pay for an appetizer when it came out after they were done eating their dinner(you can imagine what that does for a server's tips). When I started I told them I was in a wedding and needed a weekend off three months in advance. The week of the wedding the schedule went up and I was scheduled; I went out to "lock my car doors" and never came back.

Those are just the highlights of the jobs. There were more awful moments and more awful jobs. I could write a novel and I'm sure I will. Now I sell shoes which isn't too bad.

My favorite job was working at KB toystores. I had no complaints except that they went out of business.

Oh what a wonderful dream of being able to write full time and not have to have crappy jobs. Although they have given me wonderful ideas for writing. I can think of at least one situation or person from each job that has given me a great idea for a story.

More from the suggestion box tomorrow.