If the other is other than us

2003-12-17 - 9:25 p.m.

You won't believe this, but today I finished my Christmas shopping. That's right, completely done. I've never finished this early in my life! I'm usually out there shopping on Christmas Eve eve. Too bad I haven't sent out any Christmas cards yet...

Yesterday I worked at the closed door pharmacy again. Our only major issue was that when I came in in the morning, the phones weren't working. We could hear the people on the other end of the line, but they couldn't hear us. Minor problem, eh? It sucked because every time someone would call with a new prescription I'd have to drop everything and walk out to the receptionist's desk to take the call at the one functioning phone.

The other thing that happened was in the afternoon another pharmacist came in to work. He works relief with the same company I do and he worked on Sunday in the pharmacy where I worked on Saturday. Apparently when he was there they were saying non-complimentary things about me and he felt it necessary to pass these things on to me. On further contemplation, though, I've decided these things that were said actually show that the manager of that other pharmacy is a dipshit more than it shows anything bad about me. It had to do with the fact that the manager felt I couldn't be left alone because I don't know what I'm doing. Apparently she kept having the techs check up on me throughout the day, although I didn't notice this. The techs were annoyed that they kept having to stop their work to check on me. I worked at the same pharmacy on Monday and the manager wasn't there that day. People kept telling me how quickly I caught on and how much easier the day was because I was very thorough and efficient. Maybe the reason they kept telling me that was to make up for the fact that the manager was saying bad stuff. Hmmm. Well, I've also been told by my scheduler that she doesn't like to schedule me at a certain pharmacy because they say that if they get me they only want one pharmacist but if they have someone else, they'd like two. Giving them me cuts my scheduler's profits in half. So this manager has obviously got a screw loose and it doesn't bother me now, but it bothered me a lot when the other pharmacist first told me about it.

Yesterday my scheduler also called me at work. She asked me to work an evening shift for Thursday. I told her I can't do it. I didn't tell her why, but I hate evening shifts. Then she tried to convince me to work it by telling me that the reason this pharmacy needs a relief pharmacist is because they're planning on firing the pharmacist that's regularly scheduled to work that shift and they need someone on hand to fill in as that pharmacist is leaving. That doesn't sound like something I want to be a part of at all! Imagine if she hadn't told me and I had agreed and I had just walked into the middle of that. Geez.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Yesterday as I was driving home from work there was a really pretty sunset. I took this picture in the same exact spot where I took my previous sunset picture only this time I happened to have my real camera with me instead of just the camera in my Palm. I was driving around the on-ramp loop getting onto the freeway. I was going very slowly, but that motion combined with the fact that my camera doesn't do well in low-light conditions unfortunately made my picture blurry. In the picture you can also see the long line of headlights on the freeway I'm getting ready to join.