Last day last day, ho-rah-rah

Precursor: I spent this week in a fog of sickness as the result from Dane dane's most epic bachelorette party on Saturday. It's not so much that I was hung over as that I stopped sleeping, I slept 1 hour Saturday night, 3 hours the next and 4 hours the next. It as wretched and I just kind of sat in a daze at work with a pulsing headache and feelings of imminent vomit.

Story: Today was my last day and it was glorious (we don't think about how I'll be working there next summer...). Every moment was better than the last with the sweet feelings of being closer to the final minutes of my life as an assembly line worker approaching. Leslie gave me a huge hug and invited me and Amanda to her wedding to the guy from prison next summer when he's out (I think I'm going to have to go just to witness such an odd event, but I'm going to need a bodyguard so I don't get kidnapped, molested, drugged or any many of other horrifying possibilities that seem to accompany this woman). Then the day ended and we ran out of there, into the locker room where we hugged all the ladies because they love us and we tasted the sweet sweet freedom of the outdoors and a future where I never have to enter that monotonous place again.

Dana monopolized me

I actually have a legitimate excuse as to why I have been so lacking in updates:

1. Dana's bachelorette and bridal shower was last weekend and I came home from work every day last week to an email from her, her mom and Jenna the other bridesmaid that needed attention and then I had all the crafty things to finish which I had procrastinated (shocker). So I was on super get wedding stuff done mode.

2. I'm working on the Jensen line with my favorite ginger so there really is barely anything of note because there aren't a bunch of crazy people running around and I've been so stressed that I spent most of my days zoning out or hashing out creative wedding ideas with Amanda or having her calm me down that it would all turn out ok.

***THE PAST 2 1/2 WEEKS***

Essentially what has become of me is that I have lost my bloody mind, but so has Amanda so I don't feel so freakish in my fall to madness. This resulted in us bursting into fits of hysterical laughter over the ridiculous things we would dream up, example:

I decided (with your encouragement mandy man) that my life in Point would be made significantly easier if I knew how to ride a bicycle so I decided to ask my friend Becky to show me how. Well when I told the ginger about this she got really excited and started imaginary a scenario to which I voiced my concerns that I would fall over and die. She then said that the worst that could happen was I run into a tree branch, poke my eye out and have to wear an eye patch (one guy working on the line this week has an eye patch). This mental image set us both off into delirious laughter and the tears started rolling down my cheeks and then Leslie wiped them away while shaking her head in confusion.

Another particular occasion when I was getting really excited last Friday about Dana's impending bachelorette party and started singing 'Bad Romance' and dancing around during the last hour when we were broken for 15 minutes. Then Leslie yelled at me to stop dancing and put the leg of my table back on and I said I didn't know how and what does she expect out of me I'm not a mechanic (sidenote: me and Leslie have a relationship where she will pretend to yell at me to do something to which I petulantly refuse, then we glare at each other and then burst into laughter and make faces at each other. don't judge me). Then she yells "Just stick it in and screw it!" to which I respond "That's what she said" and fall to the floor giggling. Then eye-patchy says, "She probably never been screwed like that before" which caused me to laugh even harder and blush and get the same reaction from Amanda. It was ridiculous.

That's pretty much it-I've gone insane. Done and done.

so much can happen in 15 minutes

Today Amanda left on her break and left me to work next to Leslie, who began a lengthy story about how her grandson was in the hospital with an allergic reaction to some mosquito bites. Then who comes over but Juan aka the 30-something-guy she told to ask me out and starts talking to her. When he walked away I was ready for her to make me feel awkward as hell but shocker, she started right back into the story where she left off so I thought I was home free from further awkwardness. Foolish me. A few minutes later he came back. They chatty-chatted for a bit then he left and she turned to me and said "You missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime" I was like "Leslie, he's really too old for me" and she said "Hmmm well see that's what great about Juan he doesn't care about age (sidenote: oh really the older man doesn't care how young the girl is, well duh) or size, he cares about what's inside." Then she went on to tell me her entire relationship history.

The awkwardness continued later on when she came over to me and Amanda and said "So guess what Ray (her fiance in jail for drugdealing) and me were talking about last night, he wants to have a kid when he gets out of jail. God damn I'm 47 years old and I'm fixed so I'd have to get unfixed and I told him hell no." Amanda responded with "and your kid would probably have down syndrome" and I nodded and advised against it. Ok I kind of loved how uncomfortable this was to hear.

the rest of the week

last catching up past...

Tuesday nothing happened of note.

Wednesday I wanted to grab Crystal by the throat and shake her voice box right out of her so she could never ask again what batch we were on. By 7.30am she had asked about it 3 times, because she was told at the beginning of the shift we were supposed to have a short day. My manager is a fool. Doesn't he understand that by telling her something of this import that she would never stop pestering every damn person she saw about when exactly we were leaving? Fool. Literally the rest of the day she bitched about how they kept adding extra batches and the guy running didn't help by lying to her that we had way more to do than we actually did just to piss her off. And as if this was not annoying enough, it was hotter than the pit of hell and we were short employees so on the line it was just me, her and Jason. Jason rant: this fucker is the laziest shit I've ever met, he never stands up, constantly fucks up, falls asleep, doesn't talk so never warns us when shit is happening, doesn't do things my way aka the quickest way and basically just gets in my way. Asshole. Oh and we didn't have a short day. It was really satisfying to see Crystal infuriated that they lied to her.

Thursday: everything was going along in it's usual horrid with spots of joking around with Andrew and Jerry until the end of the day when I look over at the bank of windows that face our parking lot and see a pillar of black smoke. Just as I'm about to raise a cry of alarm I see five guys run over to see it, which I then followed in suit to see a garbage truck on fire next to our parking lot. It was insane, then the firemen showed up and all was well.

Friday the certo line wasn't running so I got to work with Amanda. We talked solid for 8 hours, it made my throat hurt.

Monday gets its own post

still catching up-Monday of this past week

Monday began with a whole lot of sitting around because the guy running the line called in so they were scrambling to find someone to run it so they sent us down to what is called the re-work room. This delightful little space is a giant empty room with an industrial sink and some palettes where they put the products that get messed up and need to be reboxed/remelted/just fixed because the ingredients or machine fucked it up and people get sent there to do it when they have nothing else to do aka us. So we walk into the rework room and our job is thus, there are 100 boxes full of packets of dairy queen's hot fudge that need to be opened and squeezed into barrels and then the boxes crushed. Super fun.

This went on for an hour in which I heard Jason actually speak and found him to be just as dull as I had already stereotyped him to be, really just further proving that being judgmental isn't always so wrong. Here is how the conversation went that revealed his blandness:

andrew "so jason when does your radio show start?" (sidenote: yes the silent and sweaty boy is a disc-jockey. shocking and a waste of a radio spot)

jason "the first week of school"

andrew "do you talk about sports or like what do you talk about?"

jason "no they do the sports on the sports show before me and i try to talk as little possible"

*me trying to stifle my laughter and hide behind andrew so jason won't see me-i mean i don't want to hurt his feelings and andrew looking at me trying to hide his laughter*

they go on to talk about the sports at their schools and were talking about stupid football players and

then I said "yeah bros are the worst"

jason who hadn't heard me said "what are the worst?"

me "bros, you know *insert stupid man voice* 'dude i went to a kegger last night and it was awesome'"

*both andrew and jason look at me in utter confusion and frankly if you don't know what a bro is you probably are one*

at this point i feared having to actually talk to jason so i mentally checked out of the conversation and tried to avoid andrew and crystal getting hot fudge all over me-andrew because he's a weirdo and likes to throw things at me and crystal is just fucking messy.

Finally the line starts so we go back to work without Jason luckily and the rest of the day passed uneventfully.

mortification

still catching up, last week:

I was taken away from all joy and thrust unceremoniously back onto the certo line aka the soul sucking monotony that is slowly driving me to a point of hysteria that borders on insanity, where the heat steals my motivation and replaces it with unreal levels of sweat and despair. The only thing keeping me alive is Andrew who has taken a shocking turn in from the douche bag of last summer to the kinda still a douche bag this summer, but sometimes cool to my best friend/savior this week. Me and Amanda even went and hung out at his house with his roomies on Wednesday and it was shockingly not awkward and completely fun.

So besides realizing that Andrew is actually a really nice guy, this week was completely devoid of any moments to write about.

Except for Thursday (to really express my mortification I'm going to reveal probably more than I should about myself, but otherwise it wouldn't be the same): in a seemingly wonderful twist of fate, I was taken to the Jensen line to be with Amanda for the day and everything was going delightfully until it happened. I let my joy overshadow my judgement and in an honest moment I revealed to Leslie (the lady running the line) when she asked, that no in fact I did not have a boyfriend or have ever had one.

This completely appalled her and resulted in two things. The first being that she decided clearly I had no idea how to flirt and spend 20 minutes explaining it to me. Naturally this was awkward because she is in her 50s and is engaged to a man who is in jail for drug dealing and I was blushing the whole time, needless to say I was sufficiently uncomfortable.

The second thing happened an hour later when she came over to tell me that she is going to find me a man. My reaction-oh good just what I need because naturally not having a boyfriend means I am seeking one, it couldn't possibly be that I am perfectly happy being single-I have enough friends, family, school and organizing to take care of thank you. This of course occured only in my mind and on the outside I joked with her and Amanda about it. yeah.

A bit later this guy, Juan, who always walks by this line went by (sidenote: I know Juan because when my oldest brother Justin worked at the factory when he was in college they became really good friends and hung out for years but have lost touch recently, but me and Juan have never talked or anything) and well let's just be honest he is a really attractive older man (he's in his 30's) and she sighs and goes "oo sexy" and saw that I saw her I smiled and nodded and we laughed about it. Ok. Then she went over and talked to him like she usually does so I didn't think anything of it. So I was caught completely off guard when she then came over to me and Amanda and said to me "so what would you do if Juan asked you out? I told him about our talk earlier and that you are shy and he's willing so you guys could go to dinner, no strings attached and just test the waters" my reaction: I blushed so bad I could feel the heat radiating off my skin, my mind went blank with shock that quickly turned to horror with each passing second because 1. he's over 10yrs older than me 2. Leslie asked him to ask me out (explanation: this is literally one of my greatest fears ever since when I was in middle school and saw all those 90's movies like 'She's All That' where the guy gets paid to ask the girl out and it's really awful and embarrassing) 3. he's my brothers friend (sidenote: it would be hilarious to see my brothers reaction though-I think his brain would explode) and basically I just can't believe this happened to me, this can't be real life, it just can't. This is the point where I look over at Amanda who looks just as shocked as me, is blushing in sympathy and then bursts out laughing so hard she can't even stand up. Now it's been a few minutes of me standing utterly speechless shaking my head so Leslie wanders away chuckling and Amanda finally says "I have never seen you look so horrified in my life, what are you going to do?" to which I had no response since I was busy burying myself deep in denial and trying to stop blushing. This is mortification at it's peak. All I wanted to do was crawl into my own skin and die right there. Why do these things happen to me? Do I just look so desperate and are these people so bored that they feel they must try and set me up? Who wants that? Anyway after about a half hour I calmed myself down and then the last hour of the day Leslie came back over to me and I told her "you are making my day very embarrassing Leslie. You are meddling just like a mom and this is why I never tell my mom anything" and she just laughed and I blushed some more and then the day ended, oh but not without Amanda first telling Andrew all about it when we got ice cream together. During which I started blushing all over again (damn this pale skin of mine) and Andrew thought that was hilarious. Oh awkward life, but I was back on certo the next day so hopefully it will all just blow over like it never happened.

i miss my ginger

To begin with, clearly I am far behind in my posting and this is due to the fact that I've been out of town/busy seeing friends (yay for social time outside of this hell whole of a job)/doing wedding stuff for dane dane/just plain exhausted. So I'm going to play catch up and jump way back in time to the two days I had to work the chocolate line without my favorite work person/one of my three ginger friends Amanda.

2 weeks ago Thursday: I walked onto the line without Amanda and it was a sad sad thing because the chocolate line is just not fast enough to keep me occupied without someone to talk to. I was optimistic as first however, because I found out that Leslie the lady who runs the line was robbed the previous day so she wasn't coming in so the younger guy, Dan, who works third shift was going to stay till 10am and I've heard he is really funny so I thought-yay someone to talk to! Alas my hopes were dashed when I discovered he is painfully shy and wouldn't talk to me at all until I got a "bye" and a smile from him on his way out. This is where the day takes a more eventful turn, Crystal aka one of the other line workers had to leave so we had to run the line with 3 people so one person works alone part of the day and it's just harder when things go badly since there are less people. Then the guy who came in to run the line for Dan hadn't run it in years and the wrappers kept ripping/opening and resulted in there being multiple times when they stopped the line and had 4 men staring confusedly at the wrapping machine until someone knowledgeable could get there. This clear display of their ineptitude made them all a bit cranky, which I can understand their pride and masculinity was called into serious question/bashed into nonexistence. Then the day ended-thank god. I literally talked for 5 minutes all day. On break. 8 hours of silence isn't good for me.

Friday aka the next day: I was very bleak going into work thinking I would be experiencing a repeat of the day before. As this job so often does, my expectations were obliterated-thankfully in this case. Dan actually talked to me and the rumors are true, he is very funny and we had a nice chat. A bit awkward because after I go through the whole "where do I go to school, what's my major, what do I want to do with it, how did I get the job here, blah blah" there isn't a lot else to talk about and all I want to ask is "why the hell is a guy barely older than me and from what I can tell intelligent, doing at this awful job?" and that would be rude. But really I'll take anything over silence, so I told random happenings of my times on certo and I learned about his tattoos. Fun times. Then we got done early so I didn't have to work with the inept guy, which was good but I didn't get paid which was bad.

To sum up: chocolate line = barely tolerable without a ginger to keep you laughing. To better express my feelings I wrote an Ode to a Ginger, in my head on Thursday and but I can't remember it now.

lovely lovely times

Back on the Jensen line aka chocolate bar line with Amanda my ginger friend, there are only wonderful things to report and there aren't so much stories to report as a general feeling of relieved happiness to communicate. Basically I'm getting paid to share stories/general ponderings with a truly good friend, who accepts my weirdness without judgement. Of course there is the unpleasantness of the actual mind-numbingly awful work, with all of it's paper cuts and resulting sugary coating on my skin, but that is easily blocked out most of the time.

But being me, there are some awkward moments buried beneath this layer of joy:

1. The bars were being sent to us with open wrapping but Leslie (who runs the line, see previous posts) wasn't anywhere be found and no one else knows how to fix it so one of the guys paged somebody and then the phone rang and I had to get it. Well it was Jaime aka the 1st shift supervisor who is kinda scary but I'm pretty sure he likes me b/c I can work the awful Certo line, which added to my general phobia of answering the phone made me really nervous. He wanted to know what was going on and before I could explain it looked like someone else was fixing it so I said we were alright and then he wanted to know where Leslie was and I had no idea so I said in the bathroom and then he hung up. Then Leslie walked back onto the line with this lovely quote "It's getting so that you can't even take a shit around here!" so at least I wasn't lieing when I guessed that she was in the bathroom (you see working in a factory makes people crazy with boredom so it's understood that you let each other wander around sometimes and take a bit longer on break and take really long bathroom breaks and the like).

2. actually that's the only one I can think of at the moment. See this line is just lovely.

this is super long b/c i'm stuck in a car

I had no intention of writing anything about this past week except that I have finally been scheduled on the Jensen aka chocolate line again with my most excellent friend Amanda, because it was in a word awful. But Mandy man has demanded an update and I'm stuck in a car driving to Illinois to visit my brother with my parents and my mother's micro-managing insanity yammering in the seat next to me making reading impossible and ranting all the more satisfying, which is what this will mostly be. Admittedly it won't be as heated as it would be if I'd written immediately after the fact, but what can you do. Also for convenience I'm just going to make a list of the slightly crappy things that came together into a perfect storm of crapiness and I love lists.

-crappy thing number one: they gave us another person to train. I'm sure I've bitched about this in previous entries but I'm going to say it again, I hate training people. It's the most frustrating thing because it creates so much more work for me and the others on the line, which makes me all the more sweaty-this is a lose lose situation. On top of that I immediately didn't like this woman-I have no defense of this senseless feeling of dislike towards her all I can say is that she looks like an angry pug dog, has almost no teeth, doesn't ever ask us what to do or how to do it, doesn't help clean, doesn't take any initiative and ok we probably should grab her and boss her around but frankly I just don't give a damn anymore. All I want is to get the work done as fast and efficiently as possible and she just gets in the way.

-this leads nicely into crappy thing number two: as previously established my sanity is gone and I'm prone to bursts of hysterical laughter and gazing off into space pretending I'm in my happy place and not bruised, bleeding and sweating in a factory. This makes it very difficult to deal with an inexperienced worker because I have no patience in teaching/having to think. My tolerance for this line is completely zero, I can't take it anymore.

-now that I'm thinking about it I may have written about Monday so I will jump to Tuesday: it sucked. I was in a terrible mood which isn't just do to the factory, my mother is driving me fucking insane. Everything I say she takes personally and gets really offended easily and micro-manages everything. Also she has continually insulted my taste in furniture/paint color this week and it's just exhausting to be around so I go in my room and read and go to bed and then she bitches about how I never talk to her anymore. Ok angsty rant over. So I went into work pissed off, then I had Crystal incessantly asking what batch we were on, how many pounds we had left, asking me why Manuel (the guy running the line) was doing things the way he was and maybe we should do this or that. What I wish I would have said, “Just shut the fuck up! Get your work done, Manuel is a smart guy he knows what he is doing, nothing is going to make this process faster so just accept it and stop pissing me off!” Instead I just nodded, mumbled, shrugged my shoulders, cast apologetic looks at Manuel and glared at Andrew because he was mocking me because he knows how Crystal is since she goes down to that part of the line and does the same thing to them. Also there was the typical disorganization of nobody knowing how much product we actually had to package and subsequently not knowing what time we would be leaving at, which drives me crazy because I crave certainty. Oh there was one good thing; Manuel is clearly annoyed with Crystal constantly checking up on him and suggesting things so when he needs to tell us something he tells me and pass along the message-this includes how much product we have and it clearly pisses Crystal off and I love it. So that was Tuesday.

-Wednesday: I decided in the morning that this day had to be a good day. I was going to be happy no matter what it took because to be as unhappy as I was the previous day is just not healthy and it makes time drag. This worked out really well actually, I even had a bonding moment with Manuel when we discovered that we both live in Waukesha. Also me and Amanda and Andrew went out for ice cream cones at McDonalds. It was a fun time.

-Thursday: the good mood didn't last, to be more accurate it was crushed beneath the pure rage I felt during this day. What ignited my rage was two things, the first being that when I was at the front of the line the machine was just broken enough that they wouldn't stop and fix it and just made us push through. This means that I had to stop it about every 5 minutes to put these little recipe cards into the box before the packets go in because the line moves too fast to first through the recipe in and then put the packets in. Also half of all the packets coming down the line were empty which I have to throw in the garbage but everyone after still has to fill the boxes. In essence it was constant stopping/starting, empty packets, empty boxes for an hour and it was exhausting. Then we switched spots and I was at the back of the line trying to calm down my temper, which had only resulted in me cussing a lot and ripping out a few boxes in anger but nothing too bad yet. Well then I was sitting at the end and instead of yelling down to me that a bunch of the packets were open and stopping the line, the girls just let them come and in my dazed state of half zone out/half frustrated hysteria I couldn't process what was happening until my hands were covered in pectin (a slimy viscous clear liquid that makes jelly into jelly) holding onto a huge pile of open packets with more unopened packets coming that needed to be put into boxes and that's when I snapped. I grabbed it all, threw it into a bucket and threw it all away then wiped off my hands and the floor/conveyor belt/bucket by me, while swearing loudly with undoubtedly a vein pulsing in my forehead. It was one of those situations where I couldn't see it from an outside rational position, all I saw was red and I couldn't stop swearing. After a few minutes of sitting there pulsing in fury I began to calm down and luckily got to go on break, where Amanda was there and I let the crazy explode out of me and she made me and laugh and calm the fuck down. It was exactly what I needed to realize how outrageous I was being. Then I got back on the line to find them unloading their bins and Andrew was helping out and when we were finished he helped me adjust all the bins and such (I'm not going into the details of the physicality of this line it's boring and useful information). It was so nice. Basically it was just a real bad day but it made me realize that I have pretty great friends at work so it ended on an ok note.

-Friday: they told us the day before that we would only be working until 8am because we only had 2 batches to package and in a day we usually do 6-8 batches so I made plans to go get tea with my friend Sam at this incredible tea room that is only open till 4pm, hence the reason we haven't been yet. Well I get into work and the first thing I hear is that we now have 4 batches to do, which was annoying but not so bad because that was basically work till 10am. No problems. Then the machine broke down for the first hour of work. Again I wasn't worried yet because it looked like we would be leaving by 11am. Then we went on break where I got to eat the peanut butter and nutella on a roll sandwich Amanda made for me-she is pretty much a great person. Then me and all the people on the line found out that we had to do 6 batches which is a full day of work aka leaving at 2pm and we all exploded. It was kind of a great moment-all 7 of us started ranting. Then I spent the next 2 hours coping with the idea that yet again my plans to get to this tea room were thwarted (two attempts had already failed) because no one new for sure how much we had to package, how long it would take so I just blocked it all out. Then I got back from second break to find out that we were done. At 12pm. It was exciting and yet I had already readjusted my plans in my head so lets just add it to the infuriating miscommunication of the factory. In summation I got to go to the tea room and it was everything I dreamed it would be-there were roses on the table, a chandelier, china tea cups and I was surrounded by little old ladies. It was completely lovely. If any body comes to visit me we are going.

-phew that was long.

a breakup letter

Dear Certo line,

I can't say I am sorry to say that I am leaving you for the Jensen line and my friend Amanda, I'm actually quite elated. Our relationship for the past 6 weeks has been rather dismal. You have left me with crippled hands that won't ever work right again, bleeding fingers and never fully heal under your reign of terror and you have given me numerous bruises all over my arms and legs. This is nothing compared to the emotional damage you have inflicted on me. My mind has snapped leaving me laughing in hysteric half laughing/half crying in attempts to see the good in our relationship, but it doesn't exist. In short you are an abusive bitch. I have given you everything; I try every day to anticipate your every need and fulfill it, I may cuss at you sometimes but I also sing to you and before we were together I even said I liked you to multiple people. I looked for your redeeming qualities and continue to beat me. So it is over. It's not me, it's you. I hope never to see you again.

Sincerely,

Aimie

congrats certo line you own my sanity

Official declaration: the certo line has broken my spirit and holds my sanity in it's fist causing me to come dangerously close to slipping into hysterics when asked about work.

How this came to be:

-the heat: it saps all will to move/think/breath/enjoy anything what so ever

-the people: today Crystal kept up a constant monologue about how they should be running the line and made me go with her to essentially tattle on the guy running the line (he's really cool and I enjoy chatting with him so this really pissed me off) for not providing us with a fan immediately when Crystal asked for one, to which the shift supervisor made him give us his fan.

-the lack of social interaction: at least this week I have Andrew (the car guy) to talk to but there are less people on the line so we can only talk when it is broken

-the machine breaks down every damn minute: for 30 minutes today I was in the first spot and had to stop the line every 30seconds because either the recipe weren't falling into the boxes, the packets were coming to me empty, the packets were open and subsequently covering my hands/the conveyor belt/floor in disgusting pectin or all of this was happening simultaneously. It was so overwhelming and frustrating, i couldn't stand it.

the sweat reaches new epic proportions

The past two weeks are a blur of awfulness. It's been so hot that I start sweating the moment I open the door to the floor I work on, the fan just blows the hot air around and my jeans are adhered to my skin within the first hour of work. As if that's not awful enough I've got Jason looking at me, being all creepy and not talking at all. One day we were short people so he had to work directly next to me and honestly if this was the hottest guy I'd ever met I would dislike him immensely after this day-he is a terrible worker, he moves in slow motion, falls asleep, never stands up and is just a big giant lump of useless, sweaty, creepy maleness. It's just awful because I look/feel disgusting and because of him I feel super self-conscience and just blech. It sucks. Anyway the other terrible part of these two weeks is that we keep missing people-one morning this line that takes four workers on my side ran with only me and the spanish lady for an hour, then the shift supervisor came and worked next to me and I could practically feel his anger seeping from this pores. I felt bad for the guy, not only are his workers not showing up but the we are still trying to catch up all the product we didn't make last week because the machine was so broken.

Another crappy thing is that they each week we got a new person to train. Training is terrible because I just want to get the work done as quickly and with the least amount of bruises incurred as is possible and with a newby running around we have to work twice as hard to make sure they don't fuck up and break the machine. It's just frustrating and exhausting and hot and sweaty and there has been no one to make me laugh so I just sit and zone out.

In summation this job has taken ahold of my sanity and up till now was just batting it around like a cat and mouse and now it has taken a firm grasp and is beating it into a tiny ball of crazy. By the end of the day I sometimes run around giggling hysterically about being free.

funny thing Tim said

This is very brief: yesterday Tim asked me how my weekend was aka whether I saw Jason, ok the best way to explain this is to just write it verbatim

Tim: "how was the bachelorette party? did Jason pop out of the cake?" smirky laughter

me: "it was a good time and no shockingly not"

Tim: "you know he really is the quietest person I've ever met, it's creepy. It's like he's a serial killer or something, he's the type that has a house stashed with dead bodies."

me: "yeah and furniture made of the skin of his victims:

Tim: "hmm definitely."

just odd

There are some times when I find myself wondering if this job is my real life because it's just too weird like today. The first bizarre moment was technically yesterday when I got to my locker (which I leave unlocked during the day) at the end of the day I noticed that all of the shirts I had stock piled there were gone with only 1 left. I did think that Amanda possibly took them, but this morning she didn't have any either so the only conclusion to be drawn is that someone took them from my locker. Not only creepy but really just why? They are just shirts that are easily acquired in the office a few floors up.

Then as we were going to leave we found that there were no hairnets to be found so we went up to the 5th floor because there is a bin there too since you aren't supposed to be on that floor without one. Well that bin was empty too so we went back to scour the locker room for a box of them or something and ask the older women, who were just as clueless. Eventually me and Amanda ended up standing outside the 5th floor not knowing what to do because the office with the supply closet is on that floor but we needed them so we just bolted to the office hoping that no one would yell at us. I know at this point in my most riveting story you are dieing to know the outcome, well we got the hairnets you may now relax and breath a sigh of relief.

During my day of 8 hours of box making/filling boxes with caramel packets I was working with an older spanish man named Conrad (yes that really is his name) who has such a thick accent and it was so loud that I couldn't make out what he was saying most of the time and ended up just nodding and smiling most of the time. I think I may have agreed that Stevens Point is right next to Greenbay (he was asking me where I go to school and I think he got it confused with me mentioning that I'd been in the Greenbay area during the weekend..)

the skills i've acquired so far

1. The ability to zone out for hours at a time and feel as if no time has passed. Of course sometimes this is accomplished by shear lack of sleep like yesterday. After driving back from Mandy-mans's bachelorette party at 12:30am I only got 4 hours of sleep so the resulting work day was a fog of certo packets, heavy bins, sweaty knees and people chattering nonsensically at me.

2. Today I learned to identify how a box should look when filled with 33lbs of caramel packets after 2 solid hours of shoving said packets off a conveyor belt into a box on a scale that had to be exactly 33lbs.

3. I am now a master box maker after 8 hours of doing that today. I used up two whole rolls of tape gun tape and my arms are covered in cardboard paper cuts making me look like some kind of failed suicide victim.

a lot of little stories from the past week

I've been really busy this week (aka moving my brother to Illinois, visiting madison and actually having a social life) so there is a bit to catch up on, but not really that much it's been rather dull.

*also I'm going to try really hard to start using capital letters to make this a bit more readable

Friday-an awkward Jason moment: here's a shocker the machine was broken down really bad so I was just standing around talking to Jerry and everyone on the line was just wandering around the floor aimlessly. After a few minutes our conversation hit a lull and Jerry looked over at Jason who was standing a few feet away and did that eye-gesture thing where he looked at Jason and then at me clearly trying to get him to come over and talk to me. My inner dialogue = "shit shit shit, I need to escape right now. I am a flighter and there is no where to go. Crap why isn't anyone here to save me?!" So Jason walks over but not close enough to really be in our conversation and then Jerry was asking him what he was going to do over the weekend and I felt like such a bitch because it was just too uncomfortable for me to try to make small talk with him and Jerry since they had to go and create all of these awkward situations so I just ignored all of this and pretended I was somewhere else. I'm not cut out for this kind of thing.

Today-yet another awkward Jason moment: this is the first of this week because he has been working on a different floor. Well today (still shocking) the machine broke down real bad for 3 hours and we were all just standing around and I was talking to Andrew (a bit risky because there are all of these gossipy women about and I think it maybe looks like me and Andrew have a thing but it's not like that even though Andrew has a really great smile that sometimes catches me super off-guard) because the people I work with on the line are unbearable at this point (more on that later). Well who comes over but Jason and asks Andrew what he missed while on break then proceeds to stand by us as if we are all having a conversation. It was strange because he still wouldn't talk to me really as much as just listen to what me and Andrew were talking about. He did the same thing later in the day, it's weird.

Random moment: recently I have completely changed by whole opinion of Andrew because I realized that the way he talks about his car, which I previously held him in disdain for, is the way I talk about art history, which he probably thinks is just as weird. Example, last weekend he drove to a car show in Indiana and just when he was about to leave his transmission died so he had to get driven home in a tow truck. Well today I asked him how the fix up was going and he hasn't had time for it yet and then he said this "It's terrible, yesterday I just sat in it and it's so clean and beautiful. I can start it but I can't drive it and I just couldn't bare it anymore." I can't help but respect such a clearly obsessive passion for something. So now we are friends.

A rant: this is about the girl I work next to named Crystal who is probably mid twenties. I haven't really minded her up to this point but ya know I can only stand so much and today I just hit my breaking point with her. She is obsessive about knowing how many batches we have done, what time we are leaving, how fast we are moving, what the week goal is, what next week will be like and is constantly sharing all this with me and frankly it's fucking exhausting. I don't give a damn what batch we are on I would like to know what time we will leave but that is impossible to know until about 30min before-we are still getting paid and just get the damn work done and shut up. Ok I do realize that maybe I do this too sometimes and I am going to try really hard not be like this anymore-it's so exhausting to be around. Really she is stressing me out and it's completely unnecessary.

Another rant: I'm on the god damn same line aka Certo next with these supposed "10hour" days that really are just whenever we finish sometime after 2 and before 4. I HATE IT-I need certainty ok? is that so much to ask, I just want to know what the fuck time I will be getting home. Instead I spend the whole day having to redo all my plans in my head-example: today the machine broke so bad they were saying we'd be there till 4pm for sure to catch up, then they thought we just be sent home at 11am since it wasn't getting fixed then they said 2pm no matter what because they didn't want to give us overtime then they went back to 4pm and then we left at 2:30pm.

today just sucked balls

So the machine broke down but not enough to just stop, they had to keep testing it every few minutes so for 2 hours we put the pouches in the boxes which the packaging machine then crumpled, andrew and jason unwrapped the boxes and gave us back the pouches to put back into the packaging machine. 2 hours. This made for a frustrating and exhausting morning but it was thankfully free of mostly any jason teasing. Then all of a sudden the really gross guy i work next to-joe who only has a few teeth and is all puckmarked-decided to start being a huge dick and was yelling at me for stopping the machine and then stole my break time so i was starving/thirsty/super pissed off, which i try to keep to myself but i know when i am in this type of mood it is only too obvious to those around me and then i feel really bad. anyway so i finally got to go on break (never has a lunch tasted so good) and who was sitting there at a table alone but jason. it's like really fate, really? anyone could be on break right now but it has to be only me, him and a random dude. well naturally i sat at a different table and it really wasn't so bad until tim walked in! he looked at me with those eyes and it was so awkward. i could have just died there.

Ok so between the broken machine, bitching co-workers and awkward jason i was a bit frustrated to say the least and i think it was maybe a bit obvious (i think i need to learn to hide my rage) because when i got back onto the floor i was walking past jerry and andrew, who were chuckling together and jerry saw me and held up a sign he had made that said "Smile it's hump day" and then andrew came and asked me how things were going (shockingly perceptive and nice for a car guy) and i vented about my day. basically they spent the rest of the day coming over and joking around with me, it was really nice and then the best moment of the week happened: i looked up to see andrew holding a cat molded out of glue (it builds up on the machine and they scrap it into a bucket) with eyes drawn on and then jerry (visual: he's a big mexican guy with a mustache) started meowing. so the day ended much better than expected.

yesterday the awkwardness continued...

as i predicted this jason issue is not going away, the day was going along as usual when tim and jerry came over and this conversation happened:

me "look you guys need to accept that this jason thing isn't going to happen. i'm not interested. he's not tall enough."

tim "what height has nothing to do with it-it's what's inside that counts"

jerry "yeah don't judge a book by it's cover, you have to open it up, read the subtitles"

tim "i mean what isn't there to like about jason? his parents have a lot of money, his dad's a mechanic so he will fix your car and he still looks good and he's 50 so he'll look better with age, he has a sister you an go shopping with, he's built like a bull and he has a big screen"

jerry "yeah i mean it's not his fault he has 2inches of hair on his back, you won't have to buy winter clothes"

me *pause for blushing and laughter and disgust covered in laughter* "oh well a big screen, you should have lead with that..."

jerry "oh look you are blushing! ok come on i'll pay for dinner, i'll even spring for a limo to pick you up"

me "um no and do i look like a girl that needs a limo?"

tim "well fine go for a picnic, you can pitch a pop-tent"

a day so awkward it will make your toes curl

To begin with: after working a 9 1/5 hour day of no social time because i'm on the certo line where amanda can't work because it makes her barf (she has motion sickness and it's really fast) and it's too loud there anyway to have a proper conversation, i was/am super hyped up and jittery and annoying the hell out of my parents by following them around and chattering at them. Now for the really awkward moment:

-backstory: on the line today i was working with 3 random people i've never met, but andrew (the car guy) was working at the other end of it (too far to talk but we could easily see each other and make faces over how awful it was). with him was another intern jason, who i've never really met but see sometimes and never heard him talk and all i know is that he is the son of one of the mechanics and dan saw him naked once in the locker room because apparently he showers there. basically he's just a weird guy.

story: the line broke down really bad so both mechanics were working on it and when it was finally working they came over and were talking to me (i know them from last year, they are two really funny older guys). the one tim (not the dad of jason) was asking me about school and then he asked me if i had a boyfriend to which i without thinking, just answer truthfully. then he goes on to say how there are a lot of single guys around the factory and well look at that sexy guy down there-at this point he looks right at jason (he can't hear us *hopefully* but can probably easily tell we are talking about him). i want to say "oh um no way. absolutely not, he's a weirdo" but his dad was there so i just smiled and went into denial that this was actually happening. then his dad says "well he doesn't talk" and i responded that this was a major drawback and tim said that maybe i could be the one to make him open up (um YEAH. super awkward) and then said that i should give him my number because he's a nice homegrown decent guy-then he looked at andrew and said that he was trouble. at this point i am sure i was blushing and my mind was a complete blank and i just himmming and hawwing trying to be like "yeah no freaking way man." but i was trying to be nice because again the dad is there and he is watching us and i just kept blushing. anyway they finally left me. well a few minutes later andrew comes over to ask me what that was all about and he clearly knew because later on in our conversation he asked me if i was going to take jason to a bar. clearly this is a joke that will not be finished until we part company. oh dear.

a funny bit from today: since i worked until 4pm the second shift people came on while i was there aka dan and i saw him come on the floor but i didn't know where he went. well a few minutes later i was zoned out working and the woman i was sitting next to leaned over to say "um there is someone staring at us. it's creepy" so i look up to where she is looking and it's dan staring smiling at us until i waved. what a goon.

besides the conversation other stuff happened

1. amanda laid out a detailed delusional future where she studies abroad with her ex-best friend/guy she is secretly in love with while dating a total tool (he recently attached an american flag to his car. dumbass) and falls in love with him, marries him in a castle, comes home and has another wedding which i throw for her using only Michaels craft store items (that is her second job). she knows it's impossible-this is what 8 hours will do you, your imagination goes wild and we completely indulge each other. we are weird. don't judge us.

2. andrew (the super car loving guy from last summer who has a giant ego and always tries to bond with the older guys and is actually pretty funny) stopped by and we found out all he is doing this week is making binders and organizing shelves and he gets a radio. lucky bastard. he chatted to us about how much he loves his car and how he has a car show this weekend. it just too fascinating. then we threatened to write on it in car paint. he scowled and kept asking if we were serious. i giggled.

3. we met the other intern girls, they are pretty cool. the one is totally the madison clone though, she even talks like a coasty. also she is 6'2'' and is convinced she can "only find clothes in chicago at like nordstroms and like through specialty sites" also her parents pay for everything that her scholarship doesn't cover.

4. leslie said she likes and amanda best b/c she doesn't have to worry about any body messing up anything.

a conversation

Yesterday me and Amanda had a fascinating conversation with Colin, here is how it went:

after an hour of me and amanda gabby...

Colin: "man I wish Mike was here so i would have someone to talk to"

me: "fine colin what do you want to talk about?"

amanda: "how about those finals?"

me: "colin look at us, do we want to talk basketball with you? no we don't we told you that yesterday, what else do you want to talk about?"

colin: "....ummmm"

he said nothing so me and amanda started talking again and the subject of Twilight came up

Colin: "you guys like twilight" in a clearly disgusted tone

amanda: "YES!!"

colin just looked sick

me: "have you read them colin?"

colin: "no"

me: "well that's why you don't like it. don't judge us."

amanda: "yeah they are really good.." she went on to explain why the books are so good

colin: "so you probably like harry potter too?"

me: "YES!! do you?"

colin: "no"

me: "have you read them?"

colin: "yes i read three of them"

me: "oh well you need to keep reading they get so much better"

colin: "oh no i meant i read the 3rd book then the 4th book and then the 1st book"

me and amanda share a disgusted look because honestly what kind of dumbass reads a series out of order and then can't understand why he doesn't like it? maybe because you have no idea what is going on and clearly don't understand how to appreciate literature

amanda: "well that's just stupid. why would you do that? you have to read them in order. colin we are done with you."

Colin tries to be outraged but withers under our clear disapproval and eventually stops talking. at this point amanda started talking about something from when she spent a year in germany in high school.

Colin: "you went to germany? i hate germany"

amanda: "excuse me?! (her ginger fury is rising) how can you hate germany it is the best! have you ever been there?"

colin: "no but i've been to england and france and i hated those too. europe just has nothing to offer, what do they even make? i was just born to hate europe."

me and amanda stared incredulously at each other at this point so infuriated we have no words that are rude enough to level this jackass of a boy and then we both start exploding with how amazing europe is and the architecture and yada yada yada.

colin: "well america has old buildings"

me: " you are aware that europe came first? their buildings are thousands of years old. you are being so judgmental today. seriously colin we are done with you."

then we ignored him the rest of the day.

the day from hell

Today was well awful. 6am me and Amanda walk onto the line and spend the next hour and a half on a elevated platform thing scrapping off chocolate molds and taking them out to be replaced by new ones since we are switching from chocolate to vanilla. Then we cleaned and boxed a few of the bars until the wrapping machine took a giant crap and resulted in us having to unwrap a few hundred miss-wrapped bars. Then giving up the wrapping machine our supervisors decided to just have us put all the bars coming out of the cooling tunnel onto this giant table, which we filled about 30/40 bars wide and 10 bars high. It was insane. Then the wrapping machine fixed, we had to empty the table which took an hour. Then we got to go on break and sit for the first time. Then we unwrapped more bars b/c the wrapping machine wasn't actually fixed. Then we filled the table again and emptied it again and unwrapped all those bars we just sent through the wrapping machine. Then the machine broke real bad at 1pm and they just told us to leave and me and Amanda went to McDonald's for 49cent cones to make the day better. It worked.

Ok all of that was really shitty, but there was some fun stuff, especially since me and Amanda were really overtired and prone to hysterical laughter. This then resulted in us trying to stifle our giggles when Leslie went crazy with rage and was cussing and yelling while sitting on the floor surrounded by bars and wrappers trying to fix things.

after 2 days...

After two full days of work these have been my most excellent experiences at the chocolate factory:

-hours upon hours of laughing with Amanda my ginger work friend who is amazing and freakishly like me, which we think has resulted in the two college intern boys we work with to think we are beyond weird

-one of the aforementioned college boys is named Colin and every time anyone says his name I want to say it like they do on Spaced aka in a british accent and yelling it repeatedly but I have so far restrained myself as mentioned in the previous point-everyone thinks I/me and Amanda are strange

-CA Chris from Hansen hall appeared on my floor in a lab coat and took the bars for testing b/c he apparently works there (as confirmed on facebook) and I spent the 5ish minutes he was there trying to decide if it was really him (what with the white hair nets and long white coat it's hard to identify people) and if it was should I say hi or what if it wasn't then I would even crazier so I opted to go into denial (shocking) and didn't make eye contact

-Leslie my crazy ass line supervisor from last year with the tongue ring who hits on all of the men that work there walked by Boro (the crazy awesome eastern european guy who once told me that he used to smuggle jeans and cigarettes into Russia to sell on the black market) and rubbed his stomach-sickmutt

-I scrapped chocolate off of the machine for an hour

-oh and how could I almost forget-when I walked in yesterday groggy-eyed but happy b/c I was working with Amanda, who do I see but Rebecca aka the DEVIL. This is the girl that last summer I had to work with for 3 weeks straight and after the first week of trying to be nice to her I gave up b/c she is just too damn crazy. She asked me questions out of the blue like: what is your favorite color? have you ever had any pets? people say that going to college makes you discover like who you are-do you think that? and so on. Also she told a story once about how she dated a guy who went to the bathroom outside. yeah.

-So not only was walking in and seeing her horrifying enough (I told them last year not to hire her back), but then the girl who had been working third shift with her (she worked last summer so I kind of know her) stopped by on her way out to tell me that Rebecca said she hates me and that I'm really mean to her. Ha! Then today when both of the them were leaving Rebecca came by and I can't even describe what happened, I'll just give a verbatim explanation:

Rebecca to me "So how was the house?.....Like you had one this year right, at school?

Me in confusion ".....oh right, ummmmm it was great........?

Rebecca "how many people were you living with?"

Me "um 3"

Rebecca "yeah I'm getting a house next year in Milwaukee with 6 people so that will be 7 with me"

Me "wow that's a lot"

Reb "yeah I'm really excited. ok have a good day"

and that is how I will leave you-laughing awkwardly.