We have a new guy in the frozen department (the old new guy having been fired) from somewhere in the mideast. I can't tell if his English is not that good or if he's a little slow (I'm leaning toward both). In either case, he's a pretty good worker, but is kind of annoying as a person. Today, when he first came in, he started working on the cart I was working, which was the sale item cart. There's a special way to work sale carts which I won't bore you with, but it does take a tiony bit of explaining (obviously it's not rocket science, but still). So I was standing there trying to teach him how to do it for about 45 seconds or so, and he seemed to be paying attention, then he interupts me in a really chipper voice and said, "Hello, how are you doing?" I was ready to smack him.
But then I got to thinking that maybe that's just something ingrained in him by whoever taught him English. All conversations must start that way, and he can't focus on anything else until he gets that one formality out of the way. I mean, just think of the foreign languages you've been taught, and then imagine meeting someone in that country and asking them what they liked to do for fun and they said something other that, "I like to go to the cinema and the discoteque." It's probably throw you off balance, too.
The only problem he has to start practically every encounter with, "Hello, how are you doing?" and neither Hockey Temper nor myself are the "Hello, how are you doing?" types.
Napolean said he was our official "new guy" though, so I guess we'll have to get used to it, or he will.
Oh, remember that woman I was telling you about that dates the younger guy at the store and who loves hip hop? Well, HT came to work one night stoned as hell and she picked up on it, but the told him not to worry because her and the young guy both did a line of coke before they came in. He said, "That amamzes me. I've NEVER done coke, and these people do it EVERY fucking DAY!" Heh. What amazes me is how many people at that store are actively working under the influence of some controlled subsatnace at any given time. And we're the GOOD store in the chain.
It sure would be funny if corporate swooped in one afternoon and announced that everyone there was going to have to take a drug test before they left work. By our calculations, somewhere up around 50% of the dayshift crew would be fired on the spot, including the store manager. I'm pretty sure I would be safe, at least for the time being. I could at least say anything in my system must have got there second hand due to all the other shenanigans going on around there.
Wooderson
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