Strange Little Missions for a Strange Little Man in Planting Trees

It’s me. I’m strange little man.

I don’t talk about work outside of work unless I am dragged tooth and nail into a conversation, and even then, I am extremely reluctant.

I also don’t process my emotions. At all. Hm.

That being said, I did want to highlight something that made my night as of two or three days ago. I work retail–and you probably know where–and when I’m not tasked on a thousand other projects, I am supposed to be found in the hardware department. The way this job functions is, ideally, we are supposed to clock in, obtain a scanner from the lockers/cabinets (of which there is a nasty shortage at the moment,) sign in to the Notes app, and see what tasks or projects have been assigned to you that day. You can view when it was assigned, who assigned it, and see pictures if one is available.

I actually did procure a scanner that day… and I was caught off guard. I had five notes in the system… and I generally have one or, more commonly, none at all. Usually I’m kept available because I am approached in person to come help with projects. No, this day, I had five, and I just want to gush about them for a moment, even though I can’t remember what all of them were. (I remember three.)

The first one was assigned to myself and my SO… we had to take four big boxes of pool noodles, empty them, and sort them back into boxes by color. Easy enough, and extremely satisfying to my OCD.

One of the notes was to straighten up the light bulb aisle by the end of my shift. I’d seen it worse off, frankly… so due to their wording, I saved that, naturally, for the end of my shift.

Now… the one I really wanted to talk about was this note that said “dust the tool displays on aisles ##, ##, and ##.”

I have been waiting for this moment my entire life.

The store doesn’t have a duster to my knowledge, either, but I keep an old paintbrush in my cargo leg pocket for the magical occasion I might need to knock the dust off of something. And knock I did. Get a load of this.

Literal strings of dust between them and grainy dust blanketing everything like springtime pollen.

All those nooks. All those crannies. I forgot to take a picture of the third aisle’s displays, which was at least 24 feet worth of hand tools on standing displays that I got to pick up and tidy. My paintbrush got the devil beat out of it, and I may or may not have gotten the black lung after kicking so much dust into the air. It was worth it.

It was pretty much the best assignment I’ve ever been personally given.

It did take a lot more time than I had anticipated, but thankfully, my SO helped me straighten up the light bulbs so I didn’t go into overtime. Very therapeutic. I bet most of the folks would have gotten mad to be assigned that. It’s essentially maid’s work. Hopefully they’ve figured out I am addicted to cleaning by now.

I keep a can of cleaner in my cargo pockets for when paint gets spilled or smeared on things it shouldn’t. I once had a note to clean the paint counter up. I cleaned the surface. I cleaned the sides. I took the lever machine we use to close paint cans and cleaned it bottom to top. I detail cleaned the hair dryer we use to dry paint color samples. I scraped every bit of paint and gunk off of the floor. It was beautiful.

Anyway. Today, I overcame one of the cons of my OCD and managed to call about a prescription that had gotten lost in the system from the sleep clinic. I’m absolutely terrified of phone calls. If I can’t text or email, I’d rather have the conversation in person (perhaps so they can see the distress in my eyes if I don’t know what to say.) The medicine, for a bad case of restless leg syndrome, was supposed to be called in April 22nd. I gave it weeks to show up and even asked the pharmacy if it’d shown up. They had no record of it there or at any other of their locations locally, so it was a screw up on the clinic’s end. I found that out weeks ago… and still it’s taken me this long to call.

Easiest call in the world, as usual. They’re looking into it (it sounded like I caught her away from the desk and computer, she wrote down everything I was saying.) For my SO’s sake, I hope they get their shit sorted. It may end up curing the exhaustion I’ve suffered since I was a preteen, but it’ll hopefully keep me from beating the SHIT out of him throughout the night.

I almost bought over the counter restless leg meds instead of calling, but as easy as it would have been, I couldn’t let it go that there might be something pending in the system that could go off at any moment.

Here’s hoping, and all that jazz.

Also, on an OCD note. I’ve been massively depressed about our bedroom being in shambles for months. Couldn’t walk through it because of how many full hampers were sitting around. I didn’t even know the dirty ones from the clean ones anymore, and if I don’t know with absolute certainty, I am compelled to wash the whole batch over again to make damn sure, even if they feel and smell fine.

Well, it’s clean now. All it took was one of my folks implying I’d left two games/cases for the nintendo switch in the room somewhere. I knew damn well they weren’t, but I couldn’t prove it, either, thanks to the mess. I had that shithole straightened up in one stubborn hour or so. Spoiler alert, neither of the games nor their cases were in there. Doubt my memory again, bitches!

Really though, I think I was the last one to touch them, so I’m still concerned as to where they ended up… but I mean, my sister is here til college starts up, so maybe she squirreled them away somewhere.

I’m off to work on my spotify playlists and creative shit and maybe finish reading that current Sabaton issue of Metal Hammer mag that I’m about halfway through.

Last updated July 15, 2019