Feminine Hygiene and Family Planning

Fresh off my smashing early career success as top landing dishwasher I was ready to tackle working not just as a summer student but during the school year.
My family was friends through church with the husband and wife pharmacist team who owned and ran one of the 2 grimsby shoppers drug marts and even though the last child of a church friend had awkwardly been fired for stealing they agreed to take me on as a stock boy.

"it was really awkward at church when they had to fire Jeff" my parents warned me minutes before my first shift, already im sure imagining workplace scandals i might shame our family with to the admittedly expansive Trinity United Church social network. (shaming my mother at church was also the focus of the previous summers anti-smoking talk).

Jeff had also been my leader into Landing Restaurant Employment where as a bartender/waiter/ sometimes event host he was an even greater success than I had been. His questionable firing should have tipped me off that I was entering a much different work world.

Here are some differences I noticed right away.

1. shoppers drug mart= less hot: way less hot. I guess i could change this to places not employing girls who make tips = less hot but i really wasn't ready for how much less fun my workplace would be when not infused with a rotating cast of 17-25 year old pretty waitresses. At church the week following my boss explained that pretty girls at work usually lead to problems of workplace romance or harassment and that he actually avoids hiring attractive single people in some kind of perverted reverse sexual discrimination. My current workplace features not stop lobbying by the girls to hire more good looking boys and visa versa but we are a bar and I don't know why I would have expected the owner of shoppers drug mart to hire more girls at my request or why i would ask him such a thing at church.

2. Business not run by absentee rumoured mafia types*=more supervision:
In fact on any given day 12 out of the 18 store workers were my direct supervisor. After finishing my regular duties I had to check with all of the department bosses before I could leave and sometimes would stay for upwards of 2 hours later than planned doing random stuff.
Worse than this it seemed like all of these managers were watching me and wanted me to be working constantly. Enforced policies included limited socializing, no reading magazines, lunch during lunch break, and my least favorite, no stackable box art.
Looking back what I didn't realize is what any vanity hire will tell you; if you are hired as a favour to the boss's friend you have to work twice as hard to gain your co-workers respect (I only fell one and a half times short). Everyone would eventually like me but it had more to do with being nice than setting the workplace on fire with productivity.

3. Everyone was sober all the time: unlike the landing I didn't share space with amusing and dangerous drunk people and also when work finished and everyone just went home.

4. I hate light bulbs. This was the first of count-em 5 jobs I would eventually have which required me to climb a ladder and change light bulbs and I have disliked every single light bulb change ever. climbing a ladder and being inches from fluorescent lights is the exact last thing a shaky hung over person should be doing but try telling that to your boss...


i feel like my "initial impressions" list is drifting into the "general shoppers impressions" category so lets change directions and see if I can't put a body and conclusion on this thing while still leaving myself ample time to watch iron-man before basketball (i hope this helps the infrequent posting complainers understand the time conflicts my blogging has with my real world responsibilities)

you know what screw it i am going to get a headstart on today's to do list and watch iron man even though i have some hold-ups which I will now share.

1. whenever i post part of a post and then go back and finish later no one reads the second part.
2. I am kind of tired and might fall asleep in the theatre.
3. Despite %100 positive reviews from friends I am still not sure I am going to like this movie. I
didn't like the preview.
4. most of the people who liked the movie also liked the preview. maybe most of the people didn't like the movie also didn't like the movie.
5. i really am looking forward to new batman I can't help that feel like even if iron man is good it will seem worse than it is since I will be simultaneously comparing to how good I am imagining the new batman will be.
6. I bet they are going to gloss over iron man's healthy drinking problems



ok movie time I will be back





*despite an impressive amount of workplace folklore the only evidence we had that the landing was mafia owned was that like a lot of restaurant owners they were rich and like some restaurant owners they were Italian.