Of course, this raises the spectre of gunblade-wielding emo-boys.

Stupid aside: Those have got to be two of Weedmaster P's best lines ever.

News: I've been offered an interview at the Potentially Non-Horrible Other Job. This is the office job for the county libraries coordinating bureau--the ten hours a week at $18/hour one, which would nicely complement the 22-30 hour/wk at $8/hr bakery job. This is big, because I went something like three months without an interview before Rustica--I guess getting rid of that air of desperation really does help. Also, the other day when I was foisting bread off on the Over/Under lads, Dan dropped the news that his workplace* has an opening for a job with similar hours and, uh, probably similar pay. So I'll be applying for that, too. (I've gotten rather mercenary of late; one thing I've learned between June and now is that if you're expendable to them, it's utter folly to let them be anything but expendable to you.)

Okay, and an actual post.

So work at the bakery is proceeding apace, and I've actually developed some pride in working there, since they make really good bread.

There are two shifts at the bakery: opening (5:30–12)** and closing (12–8). You'd guess that closing would be the less painful of the two, and if you ended the discussion at the hour one has to be up at, you'd be right. 4:30 is definitely earlier than I've had to get up since high school,*** and it can be a little bit rough. (lexicology nailed it yesterday when she said it's a great hour to be awake for and a foul hour to get up for.) But as it turns out, opening shift is easier. Why? Time Kompression.

Here's how it works. In the morning, you have three main jobs: Arrange the retail space, get wholesale orders ready, and manage the tide of pastry-hungry customers. If you have any time left over, you can rip paper for tomorrow's non-restaurant orders, but the combination of all that will keep you on the run until you leave. On the other hand, the afternoon is divided between managing the remaining trickle of retail customers, finishing up any prep for the next day that hasn't been done yet, and, in a lame and uninteresting burst at the very end of the day (aka once all your energy is shot), clean up the store and shut everything off.

Anyway, even closing isn't all that terrible; if there's no one in the store and you've dealt with the prep, you can just sit there without being hassled. (I can stand having nothing to do, but I hate having nothing to do and being required to *look busy.*) But there's this weird emergent property that comes from getting up at four frikkin' thirty and having a constant stream of insanity thrown at you: the first three to five hours feel like about half an hour of real time. That means I'm only actually in "BLARG WORK" mode for an hour or two.

Now granted, there's a bit of weird that comes from watching pieces of your life just... disappear. (I'm starting to feel some camaraderie with Emma in Sin Eater vol. 2, for one thing.) But at least my job isn't making me want to die, you know?

_____
* Which is also a cool organization. They, um, how to describe it. They teach the signs and shibboleths of corporate culture to poor and borderline-poor city highschoolers, then help them get summer jobs that can actually be parlayed into something non-shitty somewhere down the line. And while I've a low opinion of the signs and shibboleths of corporate culture, I only have that luxury because I already (kind of, sort of, through second-hand sources and osmosis) know them; whether or not you choose to play the game, knowing the rules is important.

** Or 6 on a Saturday, and 6:30 on a Sunday.

*** Even then, I was getting up at 5:30 in order to be at school at 6:40.