Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about scumbags.

THE PROMPT: "Here’s a mistake I would love to have a do-over for:"

Wow, what a hard one! When you're as humble as I am, you have a hard time admitting your mistakes . Well, news flash: I'm not perfect. In fact, I've made plenty of mistakes in the last week alone that I'm not proud of, let alone my life's body of work in the wrong decisions department. In fact, here's a short list of recent screw-ups I'd gladly trade for a do-over:

Turning awkwardly at work and tweaking my lower back a little this afternoon. Typing, among many other things, is very uncomfortable right now.

I want a do-over for yesterday's entry.

I also want a do-over for this morning. Not because I didn't want to wake up and go to work so I called and "changed my schedule", but because I only wore a hoodie and not a real jacket...it was a little chillier by the time I got out at 4pm 5:45pm.

I suppose I don't need a do-over for staying upstairs and doing this tonight while the Sabres game is on, but if I didn't want to be spoken to while I'm typing I guess I could go downstairs. So I guess that's on me.

I definitely regret convincing justjessica1 to join Facebook, where she's just posted "My boyfriend just said, 'ok, sexy poopie time'. What???!!! Lol". I'm not sure what the lesser evil is...that or me dating an LOL'er.

These all qualify, for sure, as do-over-worthy. But I do have a real story, for your consideration, about a situation with real repercussions when I actually dropped the ball. A few summers ago I had a second job working the counter at a gas station/convenience mart. Easy stuff, 15-20 hours a week, two blocks down the road.

Because I had worked there about 10 years ago, they figured they really didn't have to retrain me much. After getting the hang of what few things had changed, I was set to go on my own. Now, this is a pretty busy gas station. And they failed to train me on two things that did change: the money order machine, and the prepaid phone card machine.

During an extremely busy night, I received a phone call from a woman who wanted to purchase prepaid cards over the phone with a credit card. Not really knowing what I was doing with this little machine, I should've said no, and little red flags should've popped up all over the place warning me that this was not something we'd refer to as a "good idea". I tried at first to shoot her down, claiming ignorance, but she got pissed and demanded to speak to someone who "knows what they're doing". I asked her to call back so I could call a co-worker (who, ironically, on his way out straight up told me to call him if I had any problems) for some help. I called him, and he was no help...he couldn't talk me through the machine without actually seeing what the screen said, because when I told him what I was doing, he couldn't picture it.

And sure enough, this woman called back. I didn't want to turn her down...for all I knew maybe this customer was an elderly lady who couldn't get out and we always did this for her as a favor, and I didn't want to get in trouble for helping out a regular customer. So finally, I figured out the prepaid card machine on my own, and I was ready to take her credit card number. After the first transaction, she wanted to do another one. So I did it in between the customers I was dealing with in-store. When I went to process the second card, she wanted to use a different credit card number. That should've been my second series of (bigger) red flags, but I was too consumed by all of this by now. In the end, she purchased over $300 in T-Mobile cards, with probably six different credit cards. And I'm feeling pretty good about myself, having put over $300 in sales that would be basically all profit into my day's totals while teaching myself something new and on my own.

That all came crashing down at around 8:30 the next morning. When I explained to my relief the night before why the store looked like crap and nothing was filled, she relayed that on to her relief the next morning. That person happened to be the store manager. I was still asleep, having the day off from my real job, when a very angry manager called me and asked me what happened. I told her, and she wanted me to come down to the store ASAP. I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and ran down to the store, where the manager and a supremely pissed off district manager were waiting for me.

The DM didn't hold anything back. Cussing and swearing, asking me why I'd do such a stupid thing, huffing and howling like I just ran up and punched her mother. Going off on me, while customers are in the store! I was too half-asleep and stunned to even try to defend myself. Turns out the woman was using stolen credit cards . I was scammed. The store was out the $300+ and chargebacks from the credit card companies, plus the T-Mobile card minutes. They'd have to file a police report (not against me) to be able to get anything back (and they were only able to cancel a few of the cards she purchased, plus they had the woman's phone number on caller ID), but they certainly could, and did, fire me.

Would I like to change the outcome of this story? No, I'd prefer to not have this story be a part of my history at all. Trying to go "above and beyond" actually cost me my job. I thought I was doing the right thing (I mean, what company in their right mind turns down a $300 sale that's mostly all profit??) but all I was doing was satisfying a scam artist. I think it was then that I coined the phrase "peoples is scumbags". And of course, I could've shot her down, and potentially gotten a nasty phone call the next day from the manager asking why I didn't help her sick grandmother with her phone card purchase. Maybe that would've at least saved my job at the expense of my service reputation, but that's neither here nor there. Obviously she wasn't my manager's grandmother. I should've just held my ground and claimed stupid and let her take it as far as she wanted to without giving in. Who knows. Oh well.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I suppose I could've really let losing that job bother me (it's not that I've never left a position on less-than-desirable terms and felt bad about it for awhile), and the extra money was nice, but I was exhausted and not yet ready for a second job at the time anyway. So I guess it could've been worse...it could've been this video. You might need to watch it twice to get all of it. And it's a pretty sick song too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOBcagaI22U

VITAL STATS:

Another day, and still no Hockey emoticon. Where's the "protest" link on WDC? They have one for basketball, and they're playing an abbreviated season nobody's gonna watch anyway! I know Julie D - PUBLISHED! is with me on this one.

I've learned that I don't care to write about things when I can't find anything humorous about the subject.

So yeah, woke up this morning and this is how my sinuses felt: like a chain was attached to the cartilage in my nose, while someone was turning a crank behind my head trying to pull my nose through the dried-up matter in my sinus cavities so I'd be able to smell my brain instead of not being able to smell the outside world. Fantastic. Then, after waking up again to actually try to go to work, I felt a lot warmer than I should've. Like, pass out warm. I probably could've, too.

Well, that's all for tonight. Looking forward to sleeping in for a long time tomorrow. No kids, no work, no worries...just playoff football. Happy Sunday! Peace and GOODNIGHT NOW!!

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/chronicles-of-narnia-lazy-sunday/29...