126 Bus | johnozed

Wow. It’s Thursday. It’s interesting for me at the cigar shack. There are days when I feel I have a grip on things and I think things will be alright, then I go in the next day and all that is forgotten and tossed in the rubbish pile. Today is one of those days.

Yesterday was good, me and Calvin and joined by Jerry Vale, then today with Bradley & Thomas. Thomas is great, Bradley has the amazing propensity to be a pain in the tuchis.

Just had an interesting chat with Jimmy Seltzer who basically schools me on matters economic. He says things are going to get worse than they are now. I can see it, I can feel it. I used to look at Don and Raymond and wonder how they could work in the cigar shack for two years, and now I find myself in the same position.

No, it hasn’t been two years but I am over one year. That is simply the situation I find myself in. The mantra continues ‘at least you have a job’. Some people don’t. Some people are still looking. Danny the K and Greg Stevens have not responded to my email. It’s disappointing but what can you do?

More disappointing is the twenty something young man who was so fucking self absorbed, he wouldn’t move half an inch so someone could sit next to him on the bus. He was so fucking engrossed in whatever stupid game he was playing on his cellphone. A regular C U Next Tuesday type.

I was the unlucky guy to try to sit in the seat next to him. Oh how I wanted to punch him in the skull, but instead decided on saying ‘wanker’ when he got off the bus at 14th and Washington. He probably didn’t hear me and if he did he didn’t know I was talking about him, or more than likely did not know what a wanker was. Go ahead, look it up, I’ve got time.

It could have been a better day, but it wasn’t. Calvin was out of the cigar shack most of the day, attending a meeting across town. When he did eventually came back he was all doom and gloom which did not help matters in the cigar shack with Thomas and myself. Bradley usually plays the role of being aloof so how he felt was relatively unknown.

On August 22, the staff has to meet at 8AM across town to renew our tobacconist licenses. I don’t have a tobacconist license and frankly I wasn’t looking to get one. Perhaps I should. It doesn’t look like I am going anywhere else really.

A friend of former co-worker Raymond stopped by, Frank. Nice guy, he’s been out of work for nearly three years, and he has a wife and kid to support. He was looking to buy a gift for someone and after looking at a few items, said he would come back another time.

Before that I had to look at pages of what might be ordered for the store, such expensive items, no one I know would want or buy these things, but I guess a $14,000 humidor is just right for some. It really is a tale of two cities.

Bill just came home from rehearsal. He was feeling ill most of the day, took off from work and slept a lot. I checked in, in the morning and told him I would call again at lunch time. And I did just that, only I got his voice mail at the beginning and ending of my lunch hour.

So he’s alive and able to go to rehearsal, and leave me wondering if I would be coming home to a corpse in the bed. But he’s fine and I guess feeling a whole lot better.

Squirrel!

CVS Careers.net is a scam. Chris at vidivo.net writes like lazy teat Greg.

It’s a Monday and it’s a day off. It’s been a pretty mellow day, last night I took off my wrist watch before I went to sleep. I always sleep with it on but last night I wanted no ties to the real world or real time. It worked well, and waking up was certainly different. But I got out of bed and started the day nicely.

Some coffee, some bagels and a nice breakfast. I decided to just clean up the apartment today, which meant mainly cleaning up the table next to the desk on which this computer rests. Lots of mail and bills that needed to be shredded. I did that for a while, filling up a few bags of shredded paper. It was certainly a better way to start the day than yesterday.

Yesterday started out alright, met Bill at the bus stop for a few minutes before I boarded. Bill had just gotten home from driving a bus to and from Atlantic City. It was too short a time but better than nothing. The bus soon filled up somewhat. I was sitting in the middle of the bus, across from the back door.

Next to me was a guy who promptly fell asleep after a minute. It was crowded as we drove through the tunnel. As we were exiting the tunnel there was a commotion. A passenger, seemingly from Europe accused a black man of taking his wallet.

The black man said that it was his wallet and the European yelled for him to show it then. After a very long minute the black man said he was sorry and offered the wallet back. The European said he was going to call the cops. The bus approached the bus terminal and the ramps leading up to the gates had quite a few Port Authority police on them.

There was a construction project going on and the cops were there to make sure no cars were going through as well as making sure the buses would queue up correctly since there was only one ramp available. The bus driver signaled the police and they came over to see what the problem was. Both the European and the black man got off the bus to tell their sides of the story.

Other buses passed us going in and out of the bus terminal as we sat on the ramp for about twenty minutes. After that the European got back on the bus apologizing for the delay and outside the black man could be seen walking up the ramp in handcuffs with a Port Authority police officer on each side. It was a strange situation, since there was no escape for the black man.

We were on a bus in traffic and there was no way off the bus until we got to the gate. It seemed to me that he almost wanted to be caught. Needless to say I wound up being late for work and texted Bradley to let him know. It was only about 15 minutes but I do not like being late at all.

The day was a breeze and it was fun competing with Bradley for top sales. At one point I was in the lead by about $30.00 but I wasn’t having that. It was too close a margin and I have to admit I became a shark, greeting customers as soon as they stepped into the cigar shack.

At the end of the day I was in the lead by about $300.00. I did lose the coin toss and wound up having to close, but since it was a Sunday and the cigar shack closes early on Sundays- I really did not mind.