Close the lid in Adventures in paradise

I just got done watching another one of Jacinta Ardern’s Facebook Live updates, and am longing yet again to move across the ditch to New Zealand lol. Man, she just makes everything so clear-as-day and easy to understand for everyone. She’s very relatable. Not only did she do an official press conference this morning and answered every single reporter’s questions being fired at her as they all tried to yell over each other, just a few hours later she’s giving all New Zealander’s updates from her home freaking office. For comparison, I can never imagine my Prime Minister (or even my Premier) doing that. Everything is official, which is all that’s required of them I suppose. I guess I just love Jacinta reaching out on a personal level like she does. I find myself watching her videos more than I do Scott Morrison’s lol.
She even noticed a lot of people were commenting the words “Australia” in her live-feed (which was also impressive given how many people were commenting at once) so she gave an update on that, basically in relation to being invited to the teleconference which is happening tomorrow. She said it obviously won’t happen in the next few weeks, but they are trying to open up travel between our two countries as a “Trans-Tasman bubble.” Anyway, that’s enough on politics.

So New Zealand is moving from Level 4 restrictions to Level 3. Level 3 is what my country has been on the WHOLE TIME, and even some of those rules got relaxed (at least in my state of Queensland) last Friday. People definitely took advantage it seems. The shopping centres were packed. People could now shop for non-essentials and go to the park and drive up to 50km. I ran into a friend at work who had just been to Sutton’s Beach, which is at Redcliffe and within the driving limit, as both the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast are further than 50km from Brisbane. He didn’t say it was overly packed there so I assume he had a fun time.
Burleigh Beach was the only issue I heard about where police had to move people on, but I mean, that’s even MY favourite beach so I’m not surprised there were a shitload of people taking advantage. And people are always saying people aren’t social distancing, but who’s to say who does and doesn’t have bigger families or households? Because in that case they aren’t doing anything wrong. But yeah, benefit of the doubt on my part I guess.

I had a pretty good work-week. It was busy yesterday but not as busy as last Sunday, thank fuck. I got worried because today (Monday) is a public holiday in my state, and given last Saturday was ANZAC Day and we were also closed, people went crazy. I also managed to order in quite a few products that I haven’t been able to for months, so I’m hoping that will get customers off my back a little with the whinging of out-of-stocks. “Umm, bitch, we still in a worldwide pandemic - did you not get that memo?”
We have heaps of toilet paper, paper towel and hand sanitizer coming out of our ass at work now lol. Like one brand we have over 700 bottles of, and there’s about 7 different brands that have come in recently. I spent Sunday putting out 500ml and 1L bottles. I figure the 1L bottles will probably be all gone by the time my next shift comes around on Thursday.
Although I have a very short work-week the next two weeks, because of the fuck-up of management stuffing up wages, I now have to pay for it. Not just me, but it seems most people do. The store manager asked me on Sunday if I wanted to take annual leave, although it wasn’t so much a question as it was “you have to take annual leave”. I had my choice of day, and Thursday didn’t really work so I am taking off my big day on Friday for the next two weeks and having to waste some of my annual leave, which is fucking annoying but it’s not like I have a choice. Plus I’ll get a sleep in. So focus on the positives I guess. I was asked if I had plenty saved up and I’m pretty sure I have enough and it’s not like I had any trips planned (thank god!) so it’s not the end of the world. When she first asked me I said, “Not really, it’s not like I can go anywhere!” and she said, “Well we all have to do it,” - so I guess that was the ‘You’re taking leave’ to make up for our fuck-up. So I guess that extra $300k our store made a few weeks ago in that first CoVid panic-week means fuck-all to wages, let alone how busy it’s been. Just makes no sense to me. Whomever overspent in wages should be the department paying for it. And given how insane the store was last Sunday, it wouldn’t surprise me if it was Front-End. Anyway, so that’s my story - another day of I’m sure sitting around the apartment doing nothing on Friday.
One of my regular customers called me over yesterday and told me she bought a big tub of yogurt and took it home and took the lid off to find that some grub had opened it and EATEN a heap of it, put the lid back on and put it back on our shelf. FFS, these Valley-trash have no souls. I thought our yogurts had seals until then, but nope, they don’t. Just the plastic film beneath the lid, which was obviously broken through on this poor lady’s yogurt. I told her she should bring it back (as we would replace and refund it) but I should have just given her a free one, as she’s been coming to us for years and is a trustworthy customer. I told one of the other staff about her story and she asked if it was another lady who always lies to them at the registers, saying that they can have their milk for 50% off because one of us other staff told her she could lol. Some people are so dodgy. Anyway, I was thinking of getting this nice lady a gift-card or something for next time I see her. I found out in that convo that she is a carer, so bringing the yogurt back would have just been wasting time for her.

In other news, the housemate told me he will be coming back home this week, so cue me trying to get out of the house more so as not to feel like I’m annoying him. I’m getting criticized on here for being far too in my head, but hey, that’s me! Apparently one of the rare Saggitarian traits that actually fit my personality! I’m well aware of that. I don’t know how to go about fixing that. We’re in a small apartment, so unless I’m in my room, or he’s in his, we’re in the communal space together. And I’m just not that good at natural conversation. A perfect example of that was joining my old housemate’s Facebook live chat of him and his friend at at times, I was the only other person in the chat, and when his friend went offline for a bit, the constant chatting back and forth between those two ‘gurrlfriend’ just went silent when it was just Nick and me. And I was just WATCHING him put on makeup with no dialogue, and once again I felt completely stupid that I was even there. Like ummm, what do I say? And I was only typing in the chat as I was a viewer - he couldn’t see me as it was just he and his friend in the video chat. Lord help me if I have to do a video chat. I hate even talking on the phone. I would freak out if I had a job that involved those ‘Zoom’ meetings. People seeing me?? On live camera!? Fuck that! I am so fucking self-conscious, it’s unreal. I barely ever Snapchat let alone Snapchat video. Yet somehow, I work in customer service retail. Ergh. How am I a functioning adult? Just put me in a box already and close the lid.

I just need to try and join Phil more, and if that isn’t nerve-racking enough, I should try to join him NAKED. He gave me a hug that time I joined him and his friend he had over naked here, so I feel like he really appreciated it. I told him how uncomfortable I was the entire time though lol. I wasn’t raised a naturalist. It’s a hygiene thing for me too. I’ve since watched an episode of ‘You can’t ask that’ and it was on nudists which was interesting, and I’ve learned they always place a towel underneath them, wherever they are. I did not know that. I’m pretty sure Phil doesn’t, but I don’t think he’s unclean either lol. If he was, I’d be having more of an issue lol. But, I’ve joined him once. The other thing is, our apartment looks directly onto the apartment across from us, so unless the blinds are drawn, or my bedroom door is closed, they can see EVERYTHING lol. I mean, if I can see them, they can sure see me. Luckily, their building gets the morning sun, so most of them have their blinds drawn and don’t see me sleeping spread-eagled in the mornings in my underwear lol. Sleeping naked is even scary for me because I won’t do it unless I kept a pair of underwear under the covers with me. There’s just not enough privacy, especially with so many people being home a lot more these days too. Phil always closes my bedroom door when he wants to be naked haha. I think a few of the apartments across from us have kids, so that would be an interesting complaint to get. I hope he closed all the blinds when he had that naked party here that time, where 10 gays showed up.

Anyway, I’m still trying to make some sense or normality these days in life. I should probably take advantage of the parks being open again until other people fuck it up for me.