I really really like where I work and I really like what I do, but at the same time, I kind of wish there was a bit more of a balance of my time in my life. I mean, I guess I use up most of the time I’m NOT at work by sleeping, but sleep is a very high priority in my life (and by high priority, I mean it’s #2, after music stuff, because I will sacrifice sleep to get tickets to a concert or to wait outside overnight for GA queuing and stuff but really for very little else), so if I slept less to do more during the time I’m not working, I’d just hate life because I’m horrible without sleep, so that’s not really an option. I just have so much to catch up on and do and see and write and read that it’s embarrassing, and I have no time to do it in. I shudder to think of what would have happened if I’d been hired as a full-time employee like I asked as opposed to part-time. Part-time IS basically full-time, so I think I’d just pass out if I actually got full-time.
Quickly about today before I keel over and die and hibernate for eleven straight hours:
I think I’m still adjusting being back around people and doing something new, because these days really any time anyone has any slight criticism about the way I’m doing something, I openly accept it but then later imagine myself pummeling that person into the ground inside my head (or not really, but I’m just disproportionately annoyed), and I don’t think I was ever like that, even back five+ years ago when my life was being around people all the time and I liked it that way, for the most part.
To me, this is a very good excuse to get a shamrock shake tomorrow on a break or two because I’m working from open to close for the first time ever and I sense a major human-contact-overload coming on.
I actually fell for this for a second but then learned it was an old April Fool’s joke, but I would die laughing if there actually was a Playmobile Apple Store. Because who WOULDN’T want a doll-house version of their workplace?
Things I need to do for work:
- Get gel shoe inserts so my heels don’t feel like they’re shattering on that fancy limestone floor by the end of the day
- Install Lion on my own computer so I can show someone else how to do all the weirdo gestures after playing more with them myself
- Keep hand sanitizer on my beltloop—a lot of other people do this because we’re touching computers that five thousand other people have touched in the past hour as well and it’s gross
- Get this card I have to carry around laminated and put it on a keychain so I can grab it easily when I need it
- Buy a lot of longsleeve shirts to wear underneath my work shirt because it’s freezing in there
- Learn how to be yelled at by people when whatever they’re mad about is not my fault
I’m going to get so fat on this job because my dinner break is at like, 5, but I don’t come home until 10 and then I’m starving all over again. Two dinners feel necessary, which is probably not a good thing.
Today was slightly less tiring than yesterday, but I still feel like my brain is pulsating with technical information about chips and RAM and GHz, and then stuff like return policy and how wires are supposed to be coiled and how to book appointments. And then someone asks me a question and my mind goes blank and I just go “uhhhhhhhh…”
But we started training on the actual floor today and GOD Apple plays good music. At this point I’m being paid to stand around and learn from more seasoned coworkers, soundtracked by Coldplay and Vampire Weekend and The Black Keys and Sigur Rós. I have to learn not to sing along when “Strawberry Swing” comes on or spaz out when an unexpected “Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur” comes on. That’s not so cool for a customer.
But we had to wear the yellow training shirts and mine is HUGE on me. I’m a very tiny person, if no one knew that, and a men’s large just makes me look like a five year old in a shirt belonging to her dad:
You can’t really tell, but it’s down to my knees and about three inches too wide on both sides. And the sleeves go to my elbows. So for the people that were ALREADY wondering if I’m even old enough to have a job, now I look like a fricking child helping you with your computer. The official blue shirt will fit better, hopefully.
Whenever I’m tired, I always get The National’s “Fake Empire” in my head. I don’t even really know why, but I think it’s just because Matt says “we’re half awake…” and that’s exactly what I feel like. Matt’s screaming it at me in my head right now.
I only worked from 1 to 10 today, which was great because I didn’t have to wake up before dawn like I did last week, but the sheer amount of technical information imparted upon us today was huge and so my brain feels like it’s pulsating. We were told we could leave our huge manuals at home, and instead they gave us these measly little four-page paper packets, and mine is literally black with notes. I’m buying a designated notebook and rewriting all my notes from the past weeks out nicely this weekend because this is ridiculous. The plus side is that I feel like I’ve learned more in 11 days than I did in three years of university and this thrills me.
Also, we got training shirts today so we’re still identifiable as Apple people on the floor, but not full-fledged people that know everything yet. They’re violently yellow, like Spongebob yellow, and are really just leftover shirts that they give to kids when they come to Apple on fieldtrips, but I kind of like it.
Excuse me while I go bury myself in blankets and go die in a tech-induced coma.
Chelsea.
22.
American.
Music is my ultimate concern.
