But that’s fine. I’ve settled into being the guy at work who doesn’t care about anything becausit’s not like I’m trying to move up. Once I finish this month, I’ll probably have a month and a half to work from December-January before I quit for good. Ryan Elmore got fired. That’s unfortunate, I actually liked him.

Also, Kyle and Carly, two people I have historically not gotten along with, are now cool with me. Kyle has decided to start talking to me again, and Carly has decided to not be an angry little gnome 100% of the time (she’s cut it back to 80%).

I guess there’s not much more to say about work, except that now I’m apparently “in the loop” for once. People actually talk to me about stuff, and I got invited to 2 parties after work today. This is interesting because NEITHER HAS HAPPENED BEFORE. I have always felt left out of the group, because it was dominated by people older than me and who had been working there longer. Now, I’m one of the oldest people there and the 6th longest-serving redshirt (David, Megan Conlon, Anisha and Elisa have worked there longer without a promotion and Alyssa was a team leader but isn’t anymore).

I’ve had some good days at work, even without drugs.   :)

In other news, I’ve opened up my 16th domain, OBAMATARS.US.  Here, avatars featuring President Obama are created and hosted.

I will leave you with one last note from Obama: size matters.

• “Can I get 3 chicken selects?”
• “Can I get half caffeine half regular coffee?”
• Would you like any sauce?   “No, I’m eating in the car.”
• “Can I get the kids meal in a bag?”
• “How much is your bacon egg and cheese biscuit?”  $2.92.   “OK I’ll take just the biscuit. Does it come with egg on it? How about cheese? Can I get cheese on it?”
• “Do you sell biscuits as a side?”
• “Do you serve hamburgers?”  No, sir. Only chicken.   “How about fish?”  No, sir. Only chicken.
• “Large kids meal please.”
• “Chicken meal please.”
• “Can I have the spicy deluxe club, no ham.”
• “Can I have the CFA #1 plain… just the bread and the sandwich.”

*facepalm*

I’m not going to get another raise. I’m never going to be a team leader. I have accepted these as facts, just like I readily accepted the fact that I would never see my dad’s new SUV anymore, because last night he crashed it.

I wish the managers would be straight with me. Instead, they say nice things to make me shut up and I never know what’s going on. For example, Brian said he’d “think about” making me a team leader. This means no. Also, Jen told me that I should be a team leader, because I had so many good qualities. She also breezed over a few minor things I could do to improve her performance, but I left that meeting thinking it was a done deal. Turns out, she knew I wasn’t going to be a team leader anytime soon. I took a look at my file and she wrote “Needs improvement to become a team leader.”

I feel bad now for siding with her when she got in fights with Tina. It turns out Tina was right all along. Maybe I just find Tina a better manager now due to my new attitude towards work. Now that I’m not busting my ass anymore, Tina’s approach has really looked good. Jen very rarely talks “bad” about customers; Tina does it all the time. I put “bad” in quotations because if the customers weren’t to retarded to begin with, we wouldn’t have anything bad to say.

Interestingly, talking “bad” about customers was one of the three “areas of improvement” Jen told me about. So this is one of the reasons I can’t be a team leader? Oh I forgot, only everyone else is allowed to do that. For me, it’s just unacceptable. (The other two things were sarcasm and “lack of a sense of urgency.” WTF @ the last one BTW.)

This is one of the reasons I have come to the conclusion that they weren’t going to make me a team leader even if I weren’t going back to school next month. The fact that they listed “talking bad” as one of my improvement areas means they were scratching the bottom of the barrel to find reasons I shouldn’t be TL.

Another reason is that even me going to school isn’t a totally valid reason. They promoted Megan, Sean, and Brian Wain shortly before they left, why couldn’t they have promoted me?

Last Sunday (obviously not this past Sunday, the one before that) I hung out with Randy all day. Randy is another fellow who has been unfairly treated by the management. There’s really no reason he shouldn’t be a team leader. He’s only worked at Burger King for a month now (as a second job) and they have already reccommended him to the manager program. I asked Jen (back when we were cool) why he isn’t a team leader, and she told me it was something about attitude and how nobody would reaspect him. I had accepted that answer, but now I realize it was just bullshit.

Just like when I asked Brian for a raise, he told me no because he wanted to “preserve the structure of things.” The structure of things where people who can’t even work drive-thru yet make more than I do. Me, his best DT register and headset.

The lesson learned is to not be naive. Maybe if my mom hadn’t kept me in a box until I was old enough to move out, I would have known that perception is everything. What the fuck does that mean? Well it means that you can’t expect to work hard and get promoted. You also have to do a tremendous amount of sucking up. If you need an example just look at the two extremes. The reason Randy isn’t a TL is because the managers don’t like him. His file was almost an entire page full of managers nit-picking at every little thing over 2 1/2 years. Randy has spent 2 1/2 years trying to show that with hard work, anyone can rise up. This is totally false. It’s all about perception. Kyle Hunter, for example. Worked at CFA for 6 months. Promoted. Why? Because the managers (mainly Nick, Eric, and Tina) love him. He doesn’t do much work. He actually hardly ever works. When he is at work, he usually just talks. In the old days (back around the time when I started) this would have meant that Rohan would have been a TL for sure.

This week I worked 49.5 hours. Brian Smith is probably going to yell at me when I finds out. I will feel bad if I tell him that when I asked Tina if I should talk to Brian about my excessive overtime hours, she said no. I like Tina. That’s something I would have never dreamed of saying a year and a half ago.

Lately, a lot of the old people are dropping away. Amelya got fired last week. Drew quit. Colleen tried to quit and got fired. Megan Bristow put in her 2 weeks notice.

I can’t help comparing CFA to PoFo. The mods are just the TL’s though, and the admins are the managers. The difference is, on PoFo, I eventually became a mod (after 2 years).

Can I take lessons from this situation? Absolutely. At my next job that I will get next spring/summer, I will definitely suck up a lot more. I want management experience.

Today, I worked 8am-10:30pm. Fourteen and a half hours. After I got off, I talked to Tim in the parking lot. He’s a really cool guy. I think he might be my favorite person to work with, now that Megan’s a TL (plus she’s leaving soon). We stayed until 1:30. That was insanity. But we did get to discuss how much CFA sucks, how much ornery customers suck, who the hot girls are at work, and Guitar Hero. I believe he is slightly better than me. He can’t play the intro to “Through the Fire and Flames” but at least he can finish the song after that part. I can do the intro but fail at Herman’s solo. Plus, he can beat Raining Blood on expert. I still can’t beat it on hard.   :(

So work sucks. But I like money, so I spend much of my life at Chick-fil-A.

• “Can I get 18 of those finger things?”
• “Which one of the number 1 and number 2 is crispy?”    “The number 1 is fried, and the number 2 is grilled.”   “So which one is crispy?”
• Q:  “Can I get you any sauce or condiments?”    A:  “She don’t use condiments!”
• “Can I have one of those meals?”
• “Can I have an order of round potato things?”
• “FIVE DOLLARS FOR A NEWSPAPER??!?!”     “No, ma’am, that says 50 cents but here, it’s free.”
• Q:  “Any sauce?”   A:  “No, just Chick-fil-A sauce.”
• “Can I get 12 pieces of chicken?”
• “Can I get real food now?”
• “Can I get the largest number 5 I can get?”
• “Is that carrot and raisin salad for humans?”
• “I’ll take the smallest chicken meal you got”
• “Can I have 2 chicken biscuits without the pickles?”
• “Medium cup of whatever you call it, coffee?”
• “Sausage biscuit with sausage”
• “Medium splenda lemonade”
• “Can I have one number 1 with cheese on both?”
• “Do you have white coffee?”        [?!]
• “Can I have a biscuit butter?”
• “What’s the difference between an 8 pack and a 12 pack?”
• “Can I get some tots please?”
• “What’s the chance of me getting a bacon egg and cheese with no egg?”
• “Do you have cold coffee?”
• “I’ll take your $3.95 nuggets and a small lemonade”
• “Can I get a 12 piece 12 nugget meal?”
• “Can I have a number …… sorry I am so confused”

And of course there is MORE! To be had next week.

• “Can I get the happy meal?”
• “Whopper with cheese, no pickles. OH SHIT! Wrong place”
• “Can I get the number 3, not the meal, just the 3 chicken thingy’s?”
• “Fruit instead of taters”
• Q:  “Would you like a drink holder or a tray?”   A:  “Yes, that would be great.”
• Q:  “Would you like any sauce?”   A: “No, I’ll just spill it on myself.”
• “Can I have an order of hard grilled chicken?”

Are these hard enough for you?

• “May I have two number 3 fours?”
• “May I have a large ice cream dream cone please?”
• “Could I have some lemon juice please?”
• “I want the most nugget box you got.”
• “Caesar wrap sandwich”
• “Small order of cottage fries”
• “I’ll take a regular chicken.”

?

• “Can I get a portable tray?”
• “Can I have 3 cups of honey?
• “Can I get the three count mini, the breakfast ones?”
• “Can I get just the breast?”
• “I’ll take a Chick-fil-A”
• “Oh wow, it’s all chicken”
• “Are all your fries waffle?”
• “Can I order breakfast now?”   “Yes, ma’am, until 10:30.”   “Well can I order breakfast then?”
• “Do you have any breakfast left?”    “No, we stopped serving breakfast at 10:30.”    “Well do you have any left?”
• A customer came to the counter and asked,  “Do you still work here?”
• “Can I have your basic sandwich?”
• “2 spice sandwiches.”
• “Are you doing the promotion with the free side?”
• “Number 7 combo just the sandwich”
• “Can I get light on ice?”
• “How much is your chicken meal?”
• “Can I get the big one?”
• “Large not sweetened tea”
• “What is in the fruit, just fruit?”
• “Is there fruit on the Chargrilled and Fruit Salad?”
• “Can I get half of a sandwich?”
• “So you get two pieces of bread on a sandwich?”
• “Can I have a box of those chicken rollie things?”
• “Large sweet tea with a teaspoon of lemon on top”
• “Can I get the number 4 but make it spicy and add deluxe?”

There is still moar!!

Some of the things customers try to say to us at work are absolutely ridiculous.

• Crowtans
• Shopem bags
• Q: “What drink would you like?”   A:  “Diet.”
• Q: “Would you like any sauces?”   A:  “No. Can I have some BBQ sauce?”
• “I just don’t understand why I don’t get two sandwiches with a meal”
• “What do you sweeten your unsweetened tea with?”
• “Does the chicken garden salad come with chicken?”
• “Do you serve fish?”
• “Is the number one grilled?”
• “Can I get a number 8 pack meal?”
• Q:  “How many McNuggets come in a meal?”    A:  “I’m not sure, ma’am, I don’t work at McDonald’s.”
• “Can I get a number this one 4 pack?”
• “Can I get a large sweet tea without sugar?”
• “Can I have a hot and spicy sandwich please?”
• “What’s on that there chick fill uh sammich?”
• “Could I get the combo with a drink?”
• “Small order of onion rings please.”
• “Can I have a straw with my coffee so my lips don’t get hot?”
• “2 Chick-fil-A’s.”
• “Can I get my chicken on a honey wheat roll?”
• “Chicken egg and cheese on sunflower mango bread”
• “Could I get some yellow sugar please?”
• “Can I get the number 4…….better make it the meal.”
• “Chicken burrito sandwich only”
• “Can I get an 8 piece nugget?  NO WAIT!! Can I get an 8 pack nugget?”
• Berry Ballsmatic dressing
• “Can I have a free one of them?”
• “Better throw in some taters with that”
• “Can I get ummmmmm… ummmmmmmmmmmmm… ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… never mind”
• 8:30 am.     “Are you all on lunch?”

Thanks to David and Sonny for these. More to come!

KEY:
Green = Arab state of Palestine
Purple = To Syria

Although I have no problem whatsoever with Jews, I think Israel is simply asking for trouble by existing on Arab land, and is getting the trouble they’re asking for. The UN has condemned the Israeli attacks, but of course, Israel doesn’t give a shit. That’s because they know as long as they have America behind them, they can do whatever they want. And I think this is wrong.

I’ve been watching a 22-page debate unfold on the Politics Forum, and the few Zionists who support Israel are coming up with the lamest arguments to defend their precious Israel. One claimed that Israeli civilians were in terrible danger from Hamas’ “deadly and sophisticated weapons,” which prompted this EPIC answer:

EL OH EL. So yeah, plug time. Wanna discuss politics with a bunch of people from all sides of the political spectrum? Come on over to PoliticsForum.org.

But in other news, I went to a party at Bryan’s house to celebrate. Great stuff, I actually got in second place in Call of Duty free-for-all.

special guest blogger andrew lewis here:
at bryans we decided, that over all 2008, sucked. therefore it shall from now on be know as “the year without a santa claus” we hope 2009 will see all of you well, but mainly i dont care. i kinda just typed all this while he was watching bran play little big planet. fun game. we made a level that rickrolls you when you lose, but that doesnt really matter. i dont even know if people will read this blog. i hope so
bloggy blog blog. i may start bloggin, but my lazy ass will forget, or just not do it. i like waffels, and rolf’s so it casued me to come up with, roffles. tasty
bryan keeps losing little big planet, more like little fail planet. speaking of fail, i think aaron is returning
thanks for listening children, now go die in a fire

your friend,
andrew lewis

More bad news? I no longer have a best friend. That’s really depressing to me. So much crap reminds me of her…it’s not like I can just ignore it all the time. I try to stay happy though…

One thing making me happy is this:

I totally FAIL at Photoshop. But give me Microsoft Paint and I make pictures that aren’t too shabby at all. And the one that I made is better than “not too shabby.” It actually looks pretty good! I’m using it as my signature image on our forum.