I'm going to ask to go to Starbucks. Instead of Quiznos. I've got to. I didn't have an opportunity to do it before because, well, I was working and every time a manager would come by and ask me how I was doing, it didn't seem appropriate to stop them and be like, um, can I work at Starbucks? This sucks. So I kept on wrapping up sandwiches.

Yeah, that's what I did for seven hours. Well, six and a half. I wrapped up probably 200 sandwiches. While I was there we must have made at least 400, but there were others there who occasionally did it with me.

All I did was put lettuce on it, cut it in half, wrap it and call their number. I kind of liked the monotony, actually. You get into a rhythm of continual sandwich wrapping.

But I know that it's ill-fitted. It's squashing my enthusiasm and my optimism and my professionalism.

And, personally, I'd recommend Quiznos over Burger King or McDonald's. But I recommend Subway FAR more than Quiznos. It sucks there.

So I got home at 10:30. So sore. Because my body has issues, it gets sore very easily. Seven hours is not easy, so it was more than sore. In Starbucks it will be the same, but I'll deal.

So I felt like dying for a while. I changed my pants but I left my shirt on. Knowing that I would go to sleep and wake up to go back to work. It didn't seem worth it to change. It's baggy and comfortable. Though I am essentially going to change for my shower.

I would have stayed up longer but I couldn't because my shins were killing me. Off to a bad start. I've practically cursed the rest of my life. Because this is not how I want it to be. I thought I hated college? I was BORED there, and disappointed. But not miserable. However, the deadline to sign up is coming up in a week or two. I don't think I'll be able to live on my own if I work part time. Not until I finish my book and get the ball rolling.

I find it hard to imagine that I can finish my book while I'm doing this.

It's the epitome of the life that we usually live. Not the service sense of it. But the idea that we merely interact, and never reflect. That we're always acting and reacting. Not acting and understanding why we've done it.

You're too busy doing the mechanical part of it, not realizing that your personality, your identity is far more than your interaction with others. It's far more than your reactions. Because your reactions are not mechanically produced. There isn't a manual of functions for your personality. In other words, it isn't set. It wasn't set when you were born and it isn't set now. It reflects more than just your physical identity, even. It reflects lifetimes of physical identities, the collective personality that has been created from lifetimes of CHOICES.

And that's the key. You are the product of a choice. But not another's choice. Your choice. And when all you're doing your entire life is acting and reacting, as if you have no choice, as if you're just following the functions you were given, you're not going to fulfill anything.

And working all day, that's all I could do. Of course that's mostly because I was in service of strangers. But I was so busy in service of strangers that I found all I was doing was acting and reacting. Not even the way I'd prefer it. It's a place where, although you can have friends (I never make friends), it doesn't really show off who you are. You're just a mechanical sandwich maker. And it's hard doing that for 8 hours, five days a week. A chunk of time that I don't want to give up.

Of course, I shouldn't be so black and white. Part of the problem in service industry is not merely the job, it's those who fulfill the job. You're the one bringing it to life. You make the decisions.

The girl who taught me to make the sandwiches, incidentally, her name is Melissa, was a bit unprofessional and sloppy. And she didn't have good customer skills. But oddly enough, it irritated the hell out of me when the other two were there. Mostly because Heather was correcting my mistakes but in kind of an odd way. Like sometimes I ask questions and they answer me but with only half of the answer. Like I'll say, What should I do next? And I'll here "murmur the bread box." And I'm like, what about it? And then they have to explain in detail that they want me to take the bread out and clean the insides and the windows and the handles.

So it was kind of like that with Heather, she didn't fully answer my questions and we were under a little bit of pressure and she was kind of snappy.

And then the other girl, I think her name was Ashley, but the other girl, who I thought was Heather is named Ashley. I thought there were two Heathers, not two Ashleys. I don't know, I'll have to ask her her name. In any case, she had great customer skills. She was very efficient and businesslike, she was also a good teacher - so much so that she explained to me how to do things I already knew. Unfortunately, she would catch me sometimes when I wasn't doing them. Like for five hours, I brought the receipts with me when I called out the number, but the six hour I was working alone and I left the receipts where they were and she told me to bring them with me.

I didn't say anything. But she was kind of bossy. She even moved my slips at one point and told me not to have them by the garbage can in case they fell in. Which is sound advice, but if I want them there, I'm going to put them there, thanks.

And you have to take the clip things whatever they're called and take the subs from the oven. It's hard to grip them, you have to do it really tightly. So instead of doing that, I just took the sandwich off the grill with my hands (gloved, of course). It worked, except when the girls who made the sandwich had broken them in half, then the stuff would fall out. But the bossy girl told me not to do that, because they would pile up. I would leave the little.. whatever they are, the metal grill things that the sandwiches would sit on, on top of the... I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANYTHING IS CALLED.

Anyway, I would leave them up there and then other sandwiches would come through and be blocked by the empty grill. But all I have to do is take the grill off after I set the sandwich down. I was taking the grill off after I wrapped the sandwich up. It wasn't like that when I was working with Melissa. It seem unnecessary when there are two people on my side but only one making the sandwiches. But when there are two people on the other side making sandwiches and only one of me, that's when I made that mistake and Heather came over and fixed everything in a snappy way.

So, yeah, it's annoying when Melissa isn't professional. And annoying when Heather and Ashley are. I liked Ashley, though. If that's her name. But she's also a little bit... condescending. Because she's so efficient, she knows that she's more efficient than other people, so she talks to you like she's more efficient. And that's slightly irritating.

And yes, I will fully admit that I do the exact same thing. :) At least, I was like that before. These days, as with Melissa, I keep my mouth shut. I'm not a manager. And although Melissa taught me to put like a spoonful of lettuce on a fourth of the sandwich, I began to do things my way, and that's fine. Sometimes, you realize that there's so much to fix, that you can't imagine trying to fix it. Because to critizise someone so completely would be pretty awful. Personally, it was most likely make them worse. Because she already watched a three and a half hour video, and read and hours worth of 40 pages of rules. And had numerous interviews with managers. So if she hadn't gotten the point by now, it was because it wasn't in her nature to do so. People will act in accordance to their nature.

If there nature is to do what's expected of them, to be compliant - then it will be in their nature to be compliant. But otherwise, some people don't care and you can't make them care. But pressuring them in a bossy, condescending manner will most likely make them care less, rather than more.

Although I'm really just judging a book by its cover. I didn't see Ashley do that to Melissa, I don't even know how long Melissa has worked there. And, of course, Ashley was helping me out because it was my first day and three of the girls that I worked with earlier on had already gone home. If she had offered me the advice in the beginning, I would have liked it more. But, I learn quick enough... in most cases. :)

I did this time. I got in my own groove. So her coming to give me advice while I'd already established my own groove was a tiny bit irritating.

But sometimes I acknowledge situations more for what they meant to me in the past, rather than what they mean to me now.

I know that in the past I would have seriously resented her. I don't now. I don't feel warmly towards her but mostly because I feel that she doesn't respect me. Because she already thinks she's more efficient than me (if I can presume that, it's at least how she acts). I felt kind of inadequate. At the end of the day when I had nothing to do and I didn't know what to clean up.

She called me kid. And I said I wasn't. And she apologized for offending me. It felt good standing up for myself. Because she said, How ya doin over there, Kid? And I said, who, me? And she said, kind of condescending, yeah, you're the only one over there. And I said, But I'm not a kid either. And she said that she was used to everyone being way younger than her here. And I said that I probably was but I still wasn't a kid. And she apologized for offending me and I said, it's fine, I just didn't know who you were talking to.

And I think that's the key. Being bothered by her behavior doesn't change it, especially if I don't voice my opinion, but one of the morals of the story is that I didn't like her bossiness, and I can't condone that I should go to her and tell her how to behave anymore than I would her telling me how to behave. And I realize that she's not responsible for how I feel. If I'm adequate, nothing she could do or say could make me feel otherwise. It's my own resistance to standing up for myself, because she has a personality that does not except argument, and I allow it. So I let her say things and I don't stand up for myself. Like I told her that I could not handle the tongs and the grill (and I was thinking, most ESPECIALLY, when I'm busy. It will take me much longer, and make things less productive - although I did end up learning by the end of the nigh.) And she told me, that I needed to learn, why not now?

And I was thinking, well, because I'm going to ditch this place and go to Starbucks. And because I was also thinking, I'm really busy, I don't have time to try something less productive, and it will, in my opinion, not make me more productive in the end. But I didn't say that, it would have been an argument by that point - just back and forth. And that's not what I need to do. But instead of showing her my weakness and saying that I was doing it for an unproductive reason. I should have boldly said that I preferred it this way and that I could handle putting the grills aside before they piled up.

And that would show that I did not make the decisions out of a weakness, but out of a strength. Something that I have been talking about with my driving, showing Amelia that I am not making decisions out of insecurities, but out of prudent decisions. At least, for my context. One that Amelia does not comprehend because she is very stuck in her own context, and cannot put herself in my shoes and understand what I have to work with and what it calls for.

Learning that made me second guess my going-to-Starbucks idea. It really did. I feel that I've now made roots in Quiznos. And Starbucks would take from me the significance of those roots.

I have to leave before that happens more!