The good, the bad, and the incompetent

Today at the office was fairly mellow again, which is always nice. Nothing too crazy going on, but of course I kept busy. Today I had to run some errands and one of those errands was to go to B&B Hardware to pick up some graphite powder and have duplicate keys made for the toolkits in the back office. The graphite powder apparently works great on fixing locks that stick, and it seems several.... or rather, all, of the locks on site need some TLC. The keys need to be duplicated because, well, if we lose them then we have these giant toolkits full of equipment that we can't access. Seems like a simple enough thing right? Well of course B&B is completely out of graphite powder and they don't have anything comparable to it. Okay. So I can at least get the keys cut. Well, there were two guys cutting keys for people. I got the older gentleman, so I'm assuming he's knowledgeable and knows exactly what he's doing. He quickly whips out two sets (i asked for one set, but figured what they heck, an extra set wouldn't hurt). So I start walking towards the checkout and I'm examining the keys. They don't look like they match the originals. Two were somewhat close, so I thought, maybe they are the same. But the one key.... was SOO wrong. For some reason, I thought it would still work. So I left and went to the office, and sure enough, NONE of the keys worked. Ugh! I have to drive all the way back. Then the other guy ends up helping me, the younger one, who I would have figured would know less than the older guy. I was very wrong. The young guy examines the keys, yells at the older gentleman, then informs me that they can't duplicate the keys. >.< !!!! (#*$#! He says go to a locksmith. I guess tomorrow that's what I will be doing. The point of this little rant is that EVERY hardware store (Home Depot, Lowes, B&B...) I have been to in LA is full of people who do not know what they are doing, nor are they friendly. What is that!? You work in an industry where precision and knowledge is a MUST! Why is it so difficult to hire people who know about that stuff!!?? I don't understand.

The good part of my day started when I arrived at Peet's for my closing shift. One of my lovely customers came in and ordered her drink and asked me if I wanted something from Yogurtland. I told her I was broke and didn't have any cash, and she says "I'm buying!" I don't see her very often, and I don't know why she wanted to buy me frozen yogurt, but I gladly accepted and got a nice little bowl of Dragonfruit yogurt. YUM!!!! THEN it got even better when my co-worker informs me that Chipotle was having their soft-opening this evening and he had a card to get free food. What!? Free Chipotle?? Yes please! So I got a steak burrito with lots of yummyness inside.... FOR FREE! Actually once I finish this blog entry im going to finish eating it.

The bad is that I'm really over working there. I love my office job. It's great. We all know I don't get paid what I should, BUT it's a cool gig and it's related to what I want to eventually be doing, so it's totally worth it. The coffee shop has gone to heck though. I used to really enjoy being there.... but things have changed. Management, employee dedication and passion, etc. Now I'm miserable. I had an interview at Intelligentsia, and they called me today and said "We were really excited about the prospect of you working here, but unfortunately because of your primary job it will not work. We need you full time and you said that after training you would only be able to work several days a week." BOOOO!!!!! I had it! It was mine! 15 bucks an hour at a high-end COOL coffee shop where people actually WANT to be there and work hard! Le sigh. I feel stuck.

I suppose I just need to remain hopeful that I will land that design job sooner rather than later. I'm starting the social-media-networking stuff, working on my online portfolio, and always trying to put my feelers out there. I think I will start checking Craigslist every night when I get home and look for postings. At this point even finding a different job to replace Peet's would be fine until I find a full-time design job. I need to get out of there. I'm nearing wits end.

Anyways! I'm going to the Getty with a friend or two on Saturday and plan on taking lots of fabulous pictures and posting about the trip! So look for that this weekend!!!