Time Management

Today is my day off, and I plan on having some fun. Here's my to-do list for today:

1. Pay Rent

2. Clean Car

3. Burn CD's for Anthony

4. Laundry

5. Go Shopping

6. Shower

7. Shave

I should point out that the Three-6 Mafia CD's lying around the house are the CD's in #3 - the one's I'm burning for a friend. They don't belong to me, they're his. I don't know anything about them, I swear!

It also occurs to me, only as I'm about to push "Publish," how interesting it is that "Shower" doesn't appear until #6, after I will have done all the things a shower would be useful for.

Cars

Back at the end of January I bought my first car. It's an '89 Toyota Camry that looks a bit like a moose due to the ski rack, which I can only assume was built for industrial-size wrought iron skis, mounted to the top. It's a stickshift too, which presented a few problems when I first got the car, namely that I had no idea how to drive it and a job that requires me to drive about 6 hours a day like a bat outta hell.
I overcame this slightly embarrassing obstacle after a few weeks of apologetic waves and shrugs to other motorists as I jerked, stalled, and over-revved my way across town. Of course once I became comfortable with manual transmission, I enjoyed the comfort and control of being able to resume my wild careening through the ghettos and hoods of central Illinois (of which there are many, and all happen to lie conveniently in my delivery zone). Oh the joy of cutting someone off again, inducing The Finger once more and laughing madly as angry drivers wishing merely to go the speed limit hurled obscenities at my dust trail.

The best part by far about driving a manual is that, more so than control or intimacy with the car (that sounds dirty, but it's really not), is that it makes you feel like A MAN. I deal with this feeling like most men do: pushing the seat back, rolling the windows down, playing music entirely too loud, and mistaking other men's disapproving glares in my direction as acknowledgement that my penis is larger than theirs.
Recently I've taken to driving barefoot, at the suggestion of my mother. Despite my initial skepticism I've found that it really does add to the driving experience, and makes things a lot smoother in a car like my own (not to mention it compounds the MAN factor). So I'd like to take this opportunity to tell her that she was right and that not all her advice goes to waste.

Sangwiches

Where I work, we sell sandwiches. The menu is simple, and for those who freeze up in indecision when looking at our whopping 16 item smorgasboard, there are a few little pictures people can point at and say "What's that one? Yeah, gimme one of those."
Although some customers don't appreciate our sense of humor, (you know, the stiffs who get all ruffled up when you say "later on homes" instead of "thank you very much sir") most people know what they're getting themselves into when they enter the store. And while these ignorant few who come in thinking we'll give service like Olive Garden can be quite a pain, they are more often than not, quite frankly, hilarious.
Some of my favorite memories from the shop are of drive-thru shenanigans, like informing the customer that "I'm sorry we're all out of 'No tomatoes,'" or asking if they want extra tuna on their italian sub. We've been known to tell people who've been standing in line during the lunch rush for 5 minutes that we're closed, only letting them in on the fact that it's all a joke after they've gotten sufficiently flustered and asked to see the manager. (Which wouldn't help anyway, as it's usually the manager messing around in the first place)

Funnier still sometimes, are the customers themselves, even without our impish pranks. My favorite customer-stumper is the Garg. We have a sandwich, the Gargantuan, which lives up to its name, containing enough meat and other fillings between its doughy exterior to feed an entire pro football team. One such story involves an order for a Garg with DOUBLE MEAT in a lettuce wrap.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't a sanwich with 12 times the normal amount of meat, but in a low-carb wrap seem a little counter-intuitive? My slightly inebriated coworker David sure seemed to think so: he laughed so hard he had to go to the bathroom to throw up.
Perhaps, though, the most enigmatic aspect of the Gargantuan is not it's meaty make-up, but the name itself. Now, I should interject here that my store is located in the heart of the... ahem... poorer and less educated section of town, but even with that knowledge, we like to think our patrons know how to pronounce the sandwich they intend on eating. At least twice a day, someone will order a Garganchew-ON, or a Garganchen. The first time I was on the headset and someone ordered a Garganchew-ON, the conversation went a little like this:

Me: Hi there, what can I do for you?
Customer via Drive-thru: Yeah I need a number 1, a number 4 and a Garganchew-ON.
Me: I'm, sorry I didn't get that last one, what was that?
C: A Garganchew-ON.
Me: One more time please, it's very hard to hear.
C: A Garganchew-ON!
Me: I hate to ask, but I still didn't get that. What was that last one again?
C: Y'all better stop making fun of me or I'm gonna have to come in there!

Now, the first time or two, I really didn't know what he wanted, but by the last one, I admit I just wanted to hear him say it again. My favorite however happened today, when a woman ordered a GarganTuna, and then got angry when she didn't receive tuna on her sub. "I'm sorry," I had to tell her, "but a GARGANTUAN," and I was very emphatic about the pronunciation, "doesn't come with tuna on it."
Later this afternoon, a lady asked for a Ger-ga-tron. Thankfully she didn't put up a fight when she didn't get robots on her sandwich.