Adventures at the Buy Food

It's amazing how busy one gets with the whole working for a living thing.

Life at the Buy Food isn't so bad. The shifts blow. It takes all week to get my sleep schedule back in order just to go back for a couple of weekend midnight shifts! Plus I'm never home for proper dinners.

But the work is OK. Boxes come in. I unload the skids and stock the shelves. Most of the time the customers are pretty nice too. If the pay was better I'd even be OK with staying but minimum wage is pretty minimal. I hate stocking cat food though. It all looks the same (picture of a cat) and the flavours are chicken, beef, tuna, liver, beef and liver, chicken and tuna, seafood surprise, mariner's catch (and the difference is...?), salmon, tuna and salmon, beef-chicken-liver with gravy, turkey, turkey and wombat, panda and dolphin, unicorn and pony, and then repeat but add 'grilled'. Get the idea? The little beasts would be happy with diced rat chunks anyway.

Dogs are simple. Chicken, beef and lamb. There you are. We got kibble too. I have noticed that food specially marketed for small dogs is very similar to cat food. Which, I think, speaks more to the owners than the dogs. Interesting pop-psych study in marketing I'm sure. Then agian, maybe it's already been done and that's why small dog food is the way it is.

I am constantly amazed at what people will eat though. I was stocking boxes of mashed potato flakes the other day. $2.49 a box. You could buy, like, 8 POUNDS of potatoes for that much! How hard is it to boil and mash some potatoes? Need some zip? add some garlic salt or herbs, or both. We also sell bags of 'Just Potatoes.' Yup. Bags of frozen potato cubes for those who are too lazy or inept to peel and cut up their own potatoes. I can understand the pre-cut turnips, because cutting turnips can at times require a Viking broadsword and a tree stump, but potatoes?

I also have a nightmare in which I come to work and everything is in either pizza, chocolate or coffee flavour. I know I'm not the most normal guy, but if I want a coffee I'll buy a coffee. I don't want coffee in my yogurt or icecream. Probably why I don't have a career in product developement I guess.

Most of my co-workers are good too. I'm getting a different view of my manager and department manager from the one my daughter (who works in the deli and bakery) has. The Boss is doing the best he can with a limited budget and demanding corporate bosses. Most of the kdis are OK, but wierd. But they're teenagers. They get easily distracted and still need to learn how to talk and work at the same time. But steer them n the right direction and they do fine.

The other thing that kept me away from blogging was Hotlead (http://www.hotlead.ca/) 2010. Another resoundingly successful weekend of more miniature war gaming fun than you can shake a pair of d6 at. A regular attendee donated a really large nicely handmade terrain piece which we raffled off for $2 a ticket. I over anticpated it's appeal and bought a couple of rolls of raffle tickets. I think we only sold about 600. But that and the cut we take from the Bring and Buy raised an even $2000 for charity.

Everything rolled along with minimal headaches and hassles this year. I didn't have to do too much to get the event schedule filled with 50 events ranging from ancient pike phalanxes to spacemarines. Which was good, since I was pretty distracted with school and then the frantic job search. No complaints. Everyone had fun and even my Snugglebunny who holds down the door for me thought the show went well and the gamer funk was lower this year. She thinks the new venue being a bit nicer has scared off our sketchier attendees. Or else everyone has matured and learned how to bathe...

I even played a game Saturday afternoon. Here's me explaining why our Soviet armoured spearhead is smoking:

Too bad I had to work. But this weekend being Easter, the Buy Food is closed today and Sunday so I get two days off (one of which I even get holiday pay for!) Plus all minimum wage earners in Ontario get a raise to $10.25. So life is looking up.