Apples and Counting

I am sick.

No, not Ted Bundy type of sick. Nor Gacy. In fact, I'm not sick in the head at all (although I am often accused of such).

Nope. I've got that sore-throat, miserably stuffy, nasal congestion type of sick. And I swear, if any of ya'll accuse me of having Swine Flu, I will personally find you and Kick. Your. Ass.

I did everything I could to avoid it - including chugging a few gallons of orange juice and religiously taking vitamin C pills. I know, I know - the human body is supposed to just piss out extra vitamin C. I don't give a shit - my immune system is like a well-oiled machine (I rarely get sick), and I attribute that to my habit of overdosing on orange juice.

However, despite my OJ chugging, I have somehow become sick.

Go figure. Do I let this slow me down? Oh hells no. Like the viral cesspool that I am at the moment, I decided to go out and share with Pookie. He knew what he was getting into. I did warn him.

So now we can be sick together. We went apple picking today at the orchards. I may have ingested a few of their fucking amazing scrumptious apple cider donuts. Here's a couple of pictures! Of the orchards, that is...not of the donuts.



Somehow, the fact that the guy driving the tractor was wearing plaid and a beat up baseball cap made it all the more "authentic."

That's Pookie. I said something dumb witty, and he ran away screaming sauntered down the rows of red delicious apples, marveling at my humor.

So I had a lovely day of apple picking. You, dear reader, may have noticed that up til this point, this post has been lame devoid of any type of mentioning about that hellhole my chosen place of employment. Guess why?

Come on...you'll get a cookie if you do!

If you guessed day off, you're wrong. Today was inventory day - so I didn't have to go in until six PM. My shift hours? Six PM to two AM. Yuck.

I was fortunate enough to miss last year's inventory day - a result of a horrifyingly scary car accident (we'll save that story for another day) that prevented me from driving at night for a year. I sure as hell heard the stories about last year's inventory though...oh boy, the stories.

We use a third-party counting company, and then we go back and re-check everything that they counted. It's boring work that a chimpanzee could probably accomplish.

Apparently last year's counters didn't have the intelligence of a chimpanzee.

It was, as my coworkers described it, fucking hell. So I geared up for tonight, fully expecting hell.

I was so ON TOP of everything, World! You would have been so proud of me. I got my dinner all together (cheap sub from Pathmark - because they're only $2.99), and I grabbed some of the apples and the fucking amazing apple cider donuts, and offered to share them with everyone. I even showed up early! Granted, it was only seven minutes early, but hey, that's better than my usual seven minutes late. I figured that I'd go in, and fix whatever the dumbass counters had forgotten, or missed, or just plain decided not to count.

My first sheet was not promising. I had to count the amount of flea and tick prevention - y'know, the really expensive stuff that actually works. Sometimes.

She missed 7 of our 6 month feline Frontline packs. That works out to approximately seven hundred dollars worth of stuff that was missed (and there's not even that much other stuff to count in the area). I figured I would be in for a long night, and me and Pumpkin (one of my most favorite co-workers ever) sighed in misery.

She said she reads my blog. Hi Pumpkin! (I have to admit, my inner media-whore did cartwheels at her declaration...the only other person that I know in real life that reads this is Pookie, and I think he just does it to humor me).

However, Pumpkin had work to do, so she waltzed off to go do her job.

I feel the need to interject something about the counters here. Whenever they can't figure out what an item is, they yell out "SKU check!" Ordinarily, this wouldn't be so bad. I can forgive one or two of these.

It was more than one or two, World. One particularly enterprising old bat young lady screamed it out at the top of her lungs, and I went over to help her. Apparently they get pissy if you don't show up promptly (wonder why...). She pointed to the item; I pointed to the corresponding label that was right beneath it. I think there was some comprehension in there somewhere, because she scanned it, grunted, and went back to work.

OOOOKAAAYYYY.

I got back down to business. With the exception of having to unlock a case for a woman (and hear all about how her mother has four dogs and how her husband was going to call the SPCA on her neighbor because her neighbor had his dog rigged up to an electronic fence but it was too damn dumb to move away from the boundary line, so it kept getting shocked, and blahblahblah...I guess it gets lonely counting for a living), I didn't have to do much but count.

Eventually I got to go on break, and I got to eat one of my perfect apples. I had what might be considered a Snow White experience. Except I didn't fall asleep, and there was no handsome prince (unless a toilet could be considered princely).

IT happened. That's right World - I'm about to talk about my gastro-intestinal issues.

I think I may have forgotten to wash some of that pesticide off, because about twenty minutes after I clocked back in from break I got an URGE.

I think you know what urge I'm talking about World. Uh-huh. It was bad. Note to self: SCRUB APPLES LIKE HELL NEXT TIME. Pumpkin asked me if I was ok - she said my eyes were watering. I'm not surprised with the way my stomach and intestines were suddenly clawing their way up my throat. Eventually, I did a quick little run to the bathroom (which I'm sure amused everyone in the immediate vicinity), and managed to avoid the disaster zone that my pants would have become had I not heeded the call.

I went back to counting.

And then realized something.

I was counting, fully expecting the counters to be wrong. Every time I would "ah-ha!" at the countsheet, and then double-check myself, I would be the one that counted wrong. Apparently counting skills passed by me in kindergarten, along with manners.

The counters this year did have the intelligence of a chimpanzee! And more! They freaking rocked it. We were out of there around 11:30PM, which if you compare that to our original 2AM deadline is pretty damned spectacular.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you counter people, for making my night drama-free and short. Thank you for not assaulting my ear-drums with whining about how much you hate your job. Thank you for not getting fired.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an apple to eat. Hopefully I'll have better results this time.