Today Was a Crappy Day

Note: My shitty day in 1100+ words.

It began quite like any other Friday with my morning spent volunteering at Banting and Best. On Fridays I have the grade 7s and 8s and they’re normally a really pleasant group, and today was no real exception. The teacher I’m partnered up with is Mrs. Lee and she is also incredibly nice; I learn so much from watching her work the room. I figured it’d be an easy day since I could just nap after volunteering and show up for my four hour shift at work and be done with it.

Anyway, I’m at the intersection waiting for the bus and here comes an express bus. I put my token in and sit down, and then I see the bus driver on the phone talking to transit control. He calls someone from the back to the front and they talk and then he sits down. He’s still on the phone and the bus hasn’t moved. He calls the person from the back to the front again, and this time I listen in:

“I’m fine, really, I am. It’s my fault, I fell down but I’ll be ok!”
“Sir, this is protocol, I have to do this.”
“But I’m not bleeding or anything, I’m not hurt, I’ll be fine. Let’s not delay this.”
“I have to do this.”

From what I can gather: the guy got on the bus, tripped and fell. The bus driver had to alert transit control to let them know what happened, guess it is protocol since they don’t want any liability lawsuits or anything. Well the person who fell kept insisting he was fine and assured the driver that it was “his own fault” and that it would be better if they just kept going. He kept saying he was “making a big deal out of nothing” and was getting more frustrated at the driver as the conversation went on. This conversation went on for another few minutes when the driver just put the bus out of service, and had us get on the next bus.

Now, it was 3:30pm when I got on the bus, and I needed to get to Yonge/Sheppard by 4:30pm. The express bus takes 30 minutes to get to Finch station, and the regular bus takes 40+ minutes. If I had taken the express bus, I would have got to my destination in 40 minutes, which leaves me 20 minutes of breathing room. The delay caused by the driver’s conversation with the customer meant that I was taking the next bus at 3:45pm, and it was a regular bus, not an express. I would most likely be late for work.

4:25pm rolls along and we’re pulling into Finch station. I will still be late, but only by a couple of minutes, so it’s not that bad. I run down to take the subway, and as I sit down I hear another announcement: “We are currently experiencing a delay southbound on our Yonge/University line at North York Centre station. One of our trains is experiencing a mechanical problem. Emergency crews are on the scene and are working to restore service as quickly as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, and we thank you for your patience.”

Motherfucker!

It’s two stops from Finch to Sheppard, and there just happens to be a delay at the stop in between Finch and Sheppard. ARGH! Of all the fucking days! So I wait, and 10 minutes later the problem is fixed and I’m back on my way. I arrived at work 15 minutes late, which irks me to no end, but the lot’s busy and it’s the end of the month meaning I have to renew people’s monthly cards as well. Within 5 minutes of my shift a lady puts her bent-as-shit credit card into the machine and it not only fucks up the machine, but gets her credit card stuck too. I had to use a pair of scissors to get her credit card out, and then had to stand outside to talk to all the customers and make sure nobody else puts stuff into the machine. I called someone and they sent someone nearby in to fix the machine for me.

Could this be the end of my bad day? Nope! Because at the end of my shift what I’m supposed to do is put the money I earned into a bank bag, and the money that is from my float into a white bag. They were all out of white bags. What I wanted to do was call the supervisor to ask him if it was ok if I put the float into a bank bag, and label it clearly so people can tell the difference. Simple. Real. Fucking. Simple.

I called and it was one of the students on the line and I asked to speak to the supervisor. He told me that he was out and was busy, but that he’d get him to call me back. Ok, cool! Five minutes later I get a call back and it’s the student asking me what’s wrong. I asked him where the supervisor was, and he told me the guy was eating in the office and he wanted to see if he could figure it out with me.

Alright, I’ll play along.

Red: “There’s no more white bags, so I just want to know if I can put the float into a bank bag instead and just label it.”
Student: “That’s interesting.”
R: “Yeah, any ideas?”
S: “Well, won’t the security guys just throw it in without reading? I don’t think they check.”
R: “They do check, they have to make sure that the bags they pick up are the bags that are signed in. But, since this lot doesn’t have a sign-in sheet, it’s the supervisors that pick this up.”
S: “I don’t know man…”
R: “Can I just talk to the supervisor?”
S: “He’s eating. I’ll tell him to call you back.”
*click*

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! CAN’T I JUST TALK TO THE FUCKIN’ GUY?! IS IT THAT HARD?!

Five minutes pass and it’s the student again. He tells me to put it into the bank bag and label it, because it’s the supervisors who pick it up in the morning. THAT IS WHAT I TOLD HIM FROM THE START! WHY DID THIS PROCESS TAKE 15 MINUTES?!

All I wanted was to talk to my god damn supervisor, so I could tell him what I’m going to do. I ain’t asking, because there isn’t any other solution, so I’m telling him because this is the best way to do things. Instead I have to talk through some buffer who doesn’t know shit about the situation or how to solve it, and 15 minutes later get the same fucking solution that I put forth in the beginning.

I am about to go fuckin’ postal. Man, what a shitty day.

He’s Just Not That Into You

I was at work on Sunday and my friend was nice enough to leave his laptop behind for us to watch movies. When I showed up they were watching David Fincher’s The Game, starring Michael Douglas. I watched the last bit of it and thought it was a very interesting film, maybe one day I’ll watch the whole thing, but I more or less figured out the whole film from the ending.

Once the movie was finished and my friend left, my other friend from work asked me what movie I wanted to watch next. Looking through the list, there were quite a few things I had my eye on (particularly Dead Presidents which I’ve always wanted to watch but never got around to), but she suggested that we watch He’s Just Not That Into You instead. Needless to say, I was reluctant, but I watched it anyway, or at least, attempted to.

From what I could gather, it’s about the situations that people get into because their friends sugarcoat the truth for them. The thing the character kept repeating was “we’re not the exception, we’re the rule,” which basically meant that for every situation that has a predictable ending, people tend to write themselves in as the exception because they’re in denial. I don’t want to get all uber-Liberal, but there are moments in the film where it seemed that the women were just screwing things up by making it more complex than it is, while the guys rub their temples in vain wondering just why the hell is this all happening. Men are extremely simple people, they have no clue how to communicate with women because women apparently don’t understand simplicity.

Which is what I understood the film to be saying.

The Jennifer Aniston segment is about her and her longtime boyfriend that won’t marry her. He insists marriage is just a show and that he really loves her anyway. She talks to her friends and they put this idea in his head that this guy should really get married with her because he’s not serious until he does. She breaks up with him, goes to live with her family for a bit, realizes that all the married men are slobs and not as great as her boyfriend and finally gets back with him.

I love how she completely wastes all this time and at the end of it the boyfriend is completely ok with it.

Then there’s this other scene, where a girl is talking to Justin Long about a guy that she went on a date with. She asks him what’s up with the guy, how come he didn’t call, is something wrong? Maybe something happened, you know, all that denial bullshit because clearly, there is nothing wrong with this girl. Anyway, Justin just rolls his eyes and gives the simple answer:

“You know, if a guy wanted to go out with you, he’d just call.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What if-”
“-He’ll call if he wants to. If not then he doesn’t.”

And that’s that! Men call, women wait. That’s the drill, and this girl willingly accepts this. She seems fairly accepting of the fact that she has no say in the matter, and it’s not until she has a talk with another girl at work that she realizes that hey, she can call back too! Like, wow, what else are the numbers on the phone for? Do they make two phones? One for men with numbers and one for women with just the receiver? No! Fuck, she’s retarded. How does something so simple get so complicated?

Then we have Scarlett Johansson and Bradley Cooper’s storyline. Cooper’s character is married. That’s it! That’s how it ends, right? Nope! Of course Scarlett’s character believes that she’s a better fit, and of course she pursues him, and of course he cheats on his wife. Why not? Scarlett freakin’ Johansson is coming onto you! Her friend told her that she knew someone who was married for over 10 years before meeting a woman who turned out to be his soul mate and he divorced his first wife and married his second for the next 20. Scarlett’s character believes this is an ok situation and proceeds to wreck the new marriage in hopes of finding love. Yes, love is when you strip naked in front of a married man and swim in front of him, right? No, that is how you become a whore, not a wife. But of course, she stupidly believes her friend and complicates a situation for no reason, but the movie absolves Scarlett of any wrong doing by showing that the marriage was already shaky before she got there.

Anyway, this movie I endured for as much as I could before I just walked out of the room and called my friend up. When I got back, the movie was still playing. Apparently it’s more than two hours long! Who does that? How do you stretch material so thin for so long? Now that, takes talent. Unfortunately, it is the only talent found and applied in this film.

Side Note: The movie also takes place in Baltimore, which, after The Wire, just looks completely different in this movie. It’s much to clean cut and Hollywoodized, but then again, I can’t picture these actors/actresses anywhere near a corner.