Who invited a duck in? It used to be that I would stay up every night and watch TV until midnight and then get up at five the next morning and go off to work. Nowadays, I have to be in to work at 6:45 on Saturday morning and I am so tired by the time I get off at 1PM that I have to come home and take a nap in the afternoon. I feel like it takes me til Monday to recuperate. What's up with that? The lovely Mrs. Sneed, Noah and I went to see the new Pixar feature, UP tonight. As kid movies go it was pretty good, but as usual, I was pulling for it to end about half way through. We had a good time, all in all. Here's something else. I try not to be unpleasant to other people, unless they really piss me off. Then I usually feel bad afterward about blowing up. Case in point. In our store we have a greeter at the door to direct customers to the proper aisle and to summon one of us, via the radio, to assist them. This is kind of an ongoing issue with me because the management places a good deal of pressure on these folks make sure every customer is served promptly. In theory, this is a fine arrangement. In practice, due to over zealousness or stupidity or both, I wind up being barraged with meaningless and time-wasting calls to help folks that don't want to be helped or who have already been helped by someone else. Not to mention that I really don't like being told what to do. These greeeters pace back and forth across the front, looking down the aisle for unattended customers and bark out instruction incessantly. Some of them are so eager to please the manager with their fine performance as greeter that it gets kind of pathetic. This morning, the assistant manager assigned one of the high school kids to the task of greeting customers and annoying me. The annoying me part is just a bonus, not part of the actual job duties. The kid announced over the radio that there was a browser on aisle five. The reason the kid knew the guy was browsing is that the fellow told him, "I'm just browsing." The proper thing for the greeter to have done would have been to say, "Let me know if you need assistance and I will call someone." But that requires some actual thinking. Instead, the little imbecile announced that someone needed to check on the browsing guy in aisle five. I would have ignored him, but once he asks for help, someone has to respond or one of the managers will ask if anyone is going to respond, and that just pisses me off more. Being a helpful guy, I replied that I would go check on him. The browser guy told me that, (a) he was just looking, and (b) that he just told the kid in that he was just browsing. He was nice about it, but it was clear that he didn't want help. So, I went back to what I was doing. About a minute later, the kid called out again for someone to check on the browser on aisle five. Sometimes, the famous Sneed restraint reaches its breaking point and this was one of those times. I relied over the radio, "He told you he's browsing, I checked with him and he told me he's browsing and I told you that he told me that he is just browsing. This is the third time you've called about this guy and you need to knock it off now. You are standing five feet from him, if he wants our help he will tell you." The silence in the store was deafening. The hush was broken by the sound of the assistant manager running down the stairs and hustling over to me. He told me that the owner was in the store and that I should be careful what I say. I told him he needed to do some training with his folks at the front. Then, of course, I felt bad about the whole thing. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky