I just got a text from a client. It is 7:30 PM on Friday of a holiday weekend. In the past two weeks, I have sent this client no fewer than three emails detailing exactly what they carry from our portfolio, and what they need on their shelves. They had a very large turnover of staff recently, and the owner is now running his own wine and spirits department.

The owner, I should mention, is a very wealthy young guy who, despite having absolutely no experience in the industry, decided to open a restaurant and grocery store.

The text reads "hi heybartender – Sean so-and-so from such and such business here. Do you happen to be around this weekend and have a few cases of XYZ Wine handy?"

And some people wonder why I drink and cuss so much.

Today was one of those days when I had to convince myself not to quit my job. 

The really difficult/beautiful thing about this particular job is that no one is actually looking over my shoulder. I could conceivably just go fuck off for an entire day, or hell an entire week, and as long as I put the orders through at the end of each day, nobody would notice. Unfortunately I have an actual work ethic, so the likelihood that I will ever take advantage of that is remote. 

Four more weeks until the BH and I have a four day weekend. We have zero days off together right now, and that has been very difficult. He's not very happy with his job either, and there's really no way for him to change his schedule right now, so were kind of stuck where we're at. 

I'm certain that I failed to mention the excruciating trips I have recently taken to the chiropractor. I injured myself a couple of months ago when I fell on the ice outside the house, and I pretty much ignored the pain that I was in until I started to wake up every morning with my left arm completely numb. I haven't even gotten adjusted by the chiropractor because I'm in such terrible shape, but I am doing physical therapy and things are getting better. I feel 100 years old.

Goddamn I am so boring.

Now you see why haven't been writing.

I'm having a hard time feeling motivated to write. It's not that I don't have anything to say, I think it's just that with Twitter and Facebook, I feel like it's already been said. Blessing and a curse, those two additions to modern life.

We haven't had a holiday of any sort in a while, and the BH and I are planning a trip to Nashville at the end of May. A much needed respite, and he can't come to soon.

Wyatt is having a terrible time adjusting to life without Kilgore. When he's left at home for any amount of time by himself, he howls and cries. This of course is going to be a bigger problem with the warmer weather coming, since we will have windows open. As long as the weather is cool, I can take him with me. He loves the car, and he's an easy companion. The problem will come when it gets too hot to leave him in the car during my sales calls. I'm trying to get my head around the idea of getting another dog. Not ready for it in so many ways.

Still not seeing much of anyone, but we are getting out more. Happy that the playoffs and started, though it this rate they do promise to be the death of my liver.

Gods I'm boring.

Homesick

I know I'm technically home now, but most of the time it really doesn't feel like it. I love the feel of the city, the fact that I can essentially have any kind of food or entertainment on any given night. Recently the b.h. And I have been making an effort to get out more and try restaurants we haven't tried, maybe get a drink somewhere different. It has been fun, and we have found some great places and revisited some if my old favorites- dive bars to bakeries. 

All of this is great, but we aren't seeing much of our friends. I don't really even see my family. I don't feel any sense of community here. I'm sure that's largely our own fault. For the first year we didn't have any money and found it difficult to get out, and once we started making money we really didn't have any time. Your money or you life, they say, and it was never more true for me than in the last three months. 

History Buff

So I'm at a client's retail store. It's the Saturday between Christmas and New Year's, and I am pouring a selection of wines, plus one type of spirits. The idea is that people are more likely to buy if they have had a chance to taste. My job is to show them the stuff, talk about attributes and origins, and, in some cases, justify the price. ("Yes, there is a difference between the ten dollar and the fifty dollar Cabernet")

So this particular day, the spirits have an interesting origin. Made in one if the country's oldest distilleries, recipe passed down for generations, same family making it in New Jersey since 1780. There are opinions expressed, questions asked, and one woman, standing in the back of a largish group of tasters, exclaims with wonder and obvious skepticism 

"There were people in New Jersey in 1780?!"

Negative. 

The weight of the word was compounded by both the discomfort and distaste with which it was uttered and the shock of the realization that a person with whom I had always felt so comfortable, been so candid, and felt so close to didn't really understand me at all.

You're so negative. 

Wow. Has this been brewing long? Has it been there the whole time? Are we not as close as I thought we were? Will we ever be? And, perhaps most importantly, will I ever truly be myself with you again?

The answers to those questions have yet to play themselves out, but in the time since they were uttered, I have certainly censored myself, and there have been multiple occasions on which I wish I had. It took me until tonight to realize that this is the place where I can safely put the things that I can't always put out in the world. 

For the record, I don't consider myself negative. I guess that I have often used this as a space to note things that are negative, and in my walking, talking, non-digital life, I note these things as well, to certain people. But talking it out is the way I deal with negativity. I think shitty experiences shared become less shitty somehow, and often take on a comical aspect. I think I've always been this way. At least I have for as long as I can remember. Only rarely have I felt completely misunderstood about it, and only three times can I distinctly remember being shocked by another person's response to it. 

I feel quite shaken by the whole experience. I've been meaning to get back here anyway, but now I feel it is a matter of need more than desire. I'm hoping that getting back to writing will keep me off of the therapist's couch, because frankly I have better things to do with my money.

Apologies for the abrupt seriousness. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as I've gotten some sleep. For now, I'll just go ahead and slip the mask back on...

Well, it seems that there are actually a few of you still out there. Fabulous.

Apologies for my crappy lack of keeping up. I have only just published comments for the first time in months because for some reason they don't appear on my phone. Huh. I learn something new that makes me feel like an idiot every day.

Anyway, Christmas was fine. Christmas eve was ridiculous, with the store staying open until 7pm and us having to chase out customers at 7:20, but the b.h. and I managed still to get out to my aunt and uncle's house to spend some quality family time. I have no idea who these people are that wait until not only the last minute, but frankly way past the last acceptable minute to get their shit together for the holidays. The nice thing is that most people in a panic are fairly willing to trust my recommendation and just feel relieved that I am there to help. I did have one customer who asked me first if we had

"A wine called Chocolate, from California?" I replied that we did not, and she repeated the name, this time adding "Chocolate Rouge. It's from California. It is so Amazing. You won't believe it." I was sure that I wouldn't, I told her, but I had no such wine, nor anything with the word chocolate in the name (because honestly, who would?!). I asked her if she knew what kind of wine it was, or where in California it was from, thinking that perhaps I could perhaps help her find a suitable alternative. She had no idea, and she wanted that particular wine, so she was going to go top a competitor's store to find it. Okay, then, let me know if there's anything else blah blah blah, I was saying, as I walked away.

"Oh WAIT," she said, nearly shouting across the department. "Do you have one called Sexual Chocolate?!"

Every two months we have a new Big Dumb Wine promotion, and at this time I am shipped a metric fuck ton of mostly shitty to mediocre wines which I am responsible for placing around the store on large displays. Often these wines are not popular with my clientele and so do not sell very quickly.
As an example, there was a promotion in June with a has-been band from the late nineties and early part of this century. This mediocre band named after a mode of transportation had a couple of catchy pop tunes that went high on the charts, prolonging what should have been a quick flash in the pan and adding to the general suffering of people with discerning musical taste who nonetheless fall victim to the constant repetition of shit and get it stuck in their heads - me, for example. Anyway, this band, having more money than sense, decided to get it the wine business. They therefore invested what was likely an assload of money into the production of crap wine and marketing to push it. My company, in all of it's hip, knowing what's "now" wisdom, signed a deal with the band to be the exclusive purveyor of said shit juice, and set about foisting large loads of it on every single store.
And so I found myself one morning in my first month of work last June staring down the barrel of fifty eight cases of it. Mine is a very small store with almost no area for backstock- I know people with walk-in clothing closets as large or larger- so I was really, really not happy. It was a day that I wished I could quit my job. But I didn't, and we put the wine out and there it sat. Even now, six months later, it haunts me still, mocking me from the discount bin, all flabby, buttery oak and sinister fruitiness.

Where was I? Oh yes, the Promotion. The current Promotion is called T0p Ten. We do this twice a year, apparently, the last time being just prior to my arrival at the store. There are, inexplicably, twelve wines in the TT Promo, and a couple of them are actually pretty good. So good, in fact, that sales have gone way beyond our original projections and supplies have run out. When this happens, I am left to figure out how to fill the holes at a moment's notice (sometimes less). The understanding is that whatever I use to fill said holes will immediately be pulled from the shelves when the TT wine is available again, regardless of how much I have, and it will be up to me find storage for it and eventually sell through it all. This week, in addition to being incredibly busy, I was forced to find a replacement for one if the TT wines. It would be at least January, I was told, before we would have access to more. So I found a great wine at a fabulous price to put in it's place. I jumped through hoops and plowed through red tape to get it in, put it on sale, and request proper signage. It would take until Friday for this to go through, because hey- we're a huge corporation! We can't get anything done in less than a week. Anyway, I have to explain to The Mustache, my Manager, that the display in question will be a bit thin until I can get all of the pieces in place. He is not happy but he understands.

The wine is delayed until Wednesday. I get in on Thursday and it is waiting. I have an order to put together so I plan to put it out in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I get an e-mail from a higher up saying that twelve cases of the TT wine will be sent to me automatically on Friday morning. I inform The Mustache, telling him that I don't want to waste time putting out the good wine only to take it back down on Friday when the TT wine comes in. The display looks terrible, but he agrees. Comb it over, he says, until the TT arrives.
When I get to work on Friday, the TT wine is nowhere to be found. It never arrives, in fact, and I end up building the display with the emergency wine that I ordered, which I am happy about, because the quality is better and the price double.
What I'd like to know is how could a distributor not know that a French wine was coming until the last possible moment? Shouldn't they at least have been aware of when the truck was leaving New York? Why do we reward this kind of fuckwittery by paying them for such shitty service?
And what do you want to bet the TT wine is waiting when I get to work today?

In other news, I sent out a résumé last night to a company I would really like to work for. Fingers crossed.

*UPDATE The TT wine was, in fact, waiting when I arrived at work on Monday. Of course, the special weekend sale pricing was over, as was the contest (with monetary rewards involved) to see who could sell the most, so I will probably still have some if any of you would like to holiday here this summer. 

In a stunning display of Corporate Assholery, Whore Foods rewarded us for our record breaking sales week by cutting our hours. Seriously.

What Fresh Hell is This?

Today began the cycle of Christmas music.

That is all.

We sold almost seventeen thousand dollars worth of wine on Wednesday. I worked for nine and a half hours. Now I am very seriously looking into a bar job. I asked around and a friend of mine told me his brothers own a sports bar not too far from my house. Madness? Perhaps. A bad idea? Possibly. But I can't shake the feeling that I am being had at my current job. The corporate fuckwittery is bad and the pay is worse. I'm going to meet one of the guys on Wednesday and see what it looks like. If they will give me a shift or two a week to start I will take it. If I am forced to decide between knowing how much money I will make every paycheck and hoping for enough, I'm going to have to think very hard about it. Also, my health insurance just kicked in.
I don't know what to think. Wish me luck.

The rules are very clear. There are a lot if them, and there are a lot of employees at my National Natural Grocery Chain, so everything is cut and dry: skirts, dresses, and shorts must be of a length that is no more than three fingers above the knee. This is an enormous relief to me after my last job, where young women (girls, really) would come to work wearing the equivalent of a diaper and scream to the union that they were being unfairly treated if anyone dared to suggest that they might want to cover themselves a bit more while working in food service.

I never really take much notice of what my co-workers wear. We have people from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as all ages and levels of fashion sense, so it really takes something extraordinary to catch my eye.

The girl in question is not small. She is not short, nor thin, and she was nowhere *near* to fitting in the dress. Add to that the fact that her tights were sheer and purple, as opposed to a more sensible (and flattering) thick black pair, and my eyes could not help but be drawn downward when she walked past and bade me good morning. I bid her one also, and then immediately fired off a snarky text to Pat, the beer buyer, who was due in later that day.

"You might want to bring an extra pair of pants for your not girlfriend. She seems to have forgotten hers."
His response was a shudder. They had been out on two pseudo-dates some time ago, and he had since been keeping her at a polite arm's length. (He felt guilty about that and I occasionally had to remind him that on both occasions she had gotten drunk and loud and spent all of his money.)

Within ten minutes I saw her leaving the building in tears. Management had sent her home. I did feel slightly bad for her, but at the same time I think that by the time one is in their late twenties one ought to be able to dress oneself.
Pat came in an hour later. She had called him, crying, on her way home. So many ways in which she doesn't get it.

Yes!!!!

Cautiously optimistic as polls close in the East and results trickle in. That douchebag in Indiana lost his Senate seat, which is a relief. Aghast at how many co-workers did not bother to vote, but not surprised. I'm hoping this night doesn't turn into a nail biter. Scary to think what might happen if this thing is close. Fingers crossed, beer poured. Wish us well!

The woman looked just like the bus driver from the first season of SOuth Park. She was wandering through the aisles like one of the zombie extras from a bad movie, shuffling along and sort of grunting to herself. Next thing she has taken a sample from a demo that my co-worker is doing, bites into the baguette smeared with onion jelly and cheese, and breaks a tooth.
First she says she doesn't need any help, doesn't want to talk to a manager.
Then she stands around with her fingers in her mouth for a few minutes, and then she charges back over to the demo table.
"You're going to have to pay for this. My modeling career is ruined."

A manager is summoned. A very long conversation ensues, during which the woman demands that he take a picture of the rotten stub of her tooth- he does, with his cell phone - and tells him that she is going to call the company that makes the jelly that was on the bread and tell them what we've done. I am on the periphery of this entire episode, trying to commit her words to memory while fantasizing about eavesdropping on that phone call. This kind of crazy doesn't happen every day. Not since we left Vermont.

Pardon my dust while I figure out how to make this blog look better. I actually kind of hate these templates, but I have neither the skill nor the time to deal with trying to customize right now. And apparently I can't even get the easy template right. Blah. Oh well- maybe I will come back to it when the election is over.

This may come as a shock to you, but sometimes I think I can be a little too nice to people. At my Big Stupid Corporate Store, there are over two hundred employees, with regular hiring and firing making getting to know people a bit difficult. I have, therefore, made it a habit to say hello to everyone that works there, every day, and to pay special attention to new people, making sure to introduce myself despite the fat that are all all required to wear name tags.
One woman in particular seemed very shy to me, and for some reason I just liked her, so I have been especially friendly. We don't have real conversations, mind you, because we work in very different departments and only cross paths at the time clock and in line for the ladies' room, but I usually try to at least remark on the weather, or how busy the store is, or whatever. I might be completely wrong, but she strikes me as rather isolated.She is probably in her late twenties, tattooed, cute, and very friendly. The other day she asked me if I would help her pick out a beer. I took her over to the cooler, asked her what she liked, and talked to her for probably five or so minutes about the various offerings I thought would suit her. She picked one and thanked me and I went back to work. A few minutes later I was in the back of the store and she approached me again.

"Actually, I had an ulterior motive for asking you about the beer," she said, smiling and looking at the floor. Then she looked up at me again. "Would you like to go out sometime?"

I was so stunned that it took me a second to figure out how to answer. Then I said

"Um... maybe? I mean, I guess that depends on what you mean. I'm married."

Which stunned her. It was hilarious. She looked so surprised. She apologized, and I said "Don't apologize. I mean, if you wanna go out for a beer, I'm all for it. But if you're looking for a date, I can't."

I can't even remember how we left it after that. It wasn't all that awkward, considering, and I'll have to admit it was quite flattering. She is much younger than I am, and much cooler, and very cute. If I were single and a lesbian, I would have jumped at the chance.

Added to the usual joys of working for a Giant Corporation is the fact that mine is prone to using meaningless titles for all of it's employees, making it very difficult to discern the pecking order. It's not that I find terms like Vice President or General Manager particularly meaningful, mind you, but calling employees "Team Members" and "Team Leaders" and ""Coordinators" is annoying in some cases and borderline patronizing (not to mention disingenuous) in others.
Hilariously, I have been thinking for the past couple of months that one guy that I report to is the assistant of another woman I report to, when in fact it turns out that he is her boss. Fortunately I didn't completely embarrass myself, but I have certainly included him on e-mails that I never, ever would have bothered him with had I been aware.
My enthusiasm for the job waxes and wanes, and I can already tell that this holiday season is probably going to kill it completely. The great thing is that I am racking up (literally) a whole lot of free wine. I have several stored in the basement, and the makeshift rack I made in the dining room is overflowing. When I know I won't finish something I've opened, I leave it in the back hall for the neighbors, who also happen to be our landlords. They appreciate it very much.
I went to a fabulous wine dinner the other night at Gr@ham Elli0t Bistr0, courtesy of a winemaker from Oregon. The woman that I buy his wine from is one of my favorite reps, and I can't remember having more fun with strangers in a long time. The other buyers all begged off at the last minute, which was so rude that I was embarrassed about it even though I didn't know any of them. When we arrived, the sommelier asked me what I wanted to start with and I told him to surprise me with any white he would like, so long as it wasn't an oaky California Chardonnay. He was pleased at that answer and poured me a very generous glass of something French that I had never heard of and therefore can't remember. When we sat down, The Winemaker ordered a bottle of white Burgundy for the table. I asked A, my sales rep, to help me out with my first glass since I had to drive. She gulped half of it obligingly. We giggled. The Burgundy was outstanding. I left myself in their hands for ordering, asking only that they get a few vegetarian options so I could soak up enough wine to stay sober. The food was remarkable, conversation flowed easily, and I kept wishing that there was somewhere I could dump my car legally so I could stay late, drink lots, and take a cab home. Instead I skipped the oaked Burgundy after just a sip, brushed off the Pinot Noir (which I have tasted plenty of times and already carry in my store), and focused on the Pinot Blanc, which was not only delicious but also conveniently low in alcohol. After dinner the others all had aperitifs. I tasted each of them while judiciously opting for water. I slept like a corpse and went back to work hating my job slightly less on Tuesday.

I cannot fathom why I am awake right now, unless there is a full (or nearly full) moon out there above the thick rain clouds. I was nearly asleep on my feet at work, came home and had a fabulous glass of Vaqueyras while reading the day's news, then took a hot shower and turned in. The b.h. Is sound asleep, which is a good thing since he will be getting up for work on three hours, and I have been laying here listening to Derek Jacoby read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for hours.
I've made plays on all of my Scranble games, caught up on Twitter, Facebook, and blogs (yes, I'm still reading despite near total radio silence on my end), and I just can't fall asleep. If we didn't live above our landlords, I would be sweeping and mopping the whole house right now, since that was my plan for the morning that I will most likely sleep through now. This is so dumb.