Christmas 2022

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

Merry Christmas! This year has been busy on the job but I've surprisingly been able to make time for a lot of reading, practicing different instruments, as well as writing.

Christmas is that special time of year. Why? 

"Christmas is a holiday that is celebrated by many people around the world, and it holds great significance for many people. Here are a few reasons why Christmas is so important:

1. Christmas is a time of love and generosity: Christmas is a time when people come together to celebrate the love and generosity that exists in the world. It is a time to give gifts to loved ones, to spend time with family and friends, and to show appreciation for the people in our lives.

2. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus: For many people, Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who is considered by Christians to be the son of God. The birth of Jesus is seen as a miraculous event, and the holiday is a way to remember and honor his life and teachings.

3. Christmas brings people together: Christmas is a time when people from all walks of life come together to celebrate. It is a time when people put aside their differences and focus on the things that bring them joy and happiness.

4. Christmas is a time of tradition: Many people have long-standing traditions that they participate in during the holiday season. These traditions help to create a sense of community and bring people together.

Overall, Christmas is a special time of year that is important for many people around the world. It is a time to celebrate love, generosity, and the birth of Jesus, and it is a time to come together and create lasting memories with loved ones." [openchatGPT]

I've been somehow able to have a great time this year despite working nonstop with no vacation. You see, it all starts with the individual. I'm happy despite working all the time because I have the capacity for happiness. I've created time outside of work to create a persona, the persona of an artist, that is what I've done.

I've started doing a lot of AI art, ever since the AI art generators came out two months ago. I've even started using openchatGPT here in this blog post, practicing drums, piano, guitar, singing, writing blogs here and there, as well as reading a lot, the latest edition being historian Will Durant's Volume 2 of his Story of Civilization Series, The Life of Greece. So I seem to be awash in activity, but the activities give me a sense of who I am, and help with my capacity for happiness.

It seems that the older I get the more I realize you can't escape from pain in this world. But you can learn to be resilient and improve your capacity for happiness to live through it. Work seems more vital than ever, especially in California, where every man seems to have to prove his worth by having to earn more and more money, but I've also realized that work is essential to the intellectual artist outsider life as well.

"Work is important for many reasons. It provides individuals with a sense of purpose and meaning, as well as a sense of accomplishment. Work also allows people to contribute to society and make a positive impact on the world. In addition, work provides people with financial stability and the ability to provide for themselves and their families. Finally, work can also be a source of personal growth and development, as it allows individuals to learn new skills, gain experience, and expand their knowledge and understanding of the world." [openchatGPT]

On Christmas Eve I was joking around with a customer and he liked my sense of mirth on the holiday and he tipped me $100, not too shabby! This year the family and I ate lobster at a wonderful Chinese restaurant. If you need me, I'll be practicing drums and piano or reading more of the Will Durant series.

image ai generated

Holiday Retail 2022

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

It's been a while since I wrote one of these. Here I'd like to explain to you what it's been like working the retail gig this holiday season. 

First, the work has been intense and nonstop. I've been working 42-48 hour weeks since November and the work isn't letting up even going into this week and Christmas week. The good news is that the pay is decent but it's tough making it through the slog every shift. I've been working five days per week with only two days off since the summer. 

Second, cold/flu and covid season is here again, and with that brings sicknesses, mostly of a respiratory nature. For the first time since covid began in 2020, I finally got a regular cold. It only lasted a day or two but it was setback from my usual day to day routine. I still went to work as I felt well enough, but I probably initially got sick from work, from customers and/or employees. 

Third, my job has become easier but its still grueling. I've sort of graduated from having to do regular checkout scanning large orders. Rather, my management has decided they want me to run self-checkout for my eight hour shifts, as its mostly machine button pressing menu, and the older cashier employees who aren't used to computers don't want to do it at all. So I sort of lucked out. Because the older employees don't want to do it, I end up doing it, and I get to avoid doing all the heavy lifting $400-$600 holiday orders and bagging a million bags. Not too shabby! 

Fourth, the type of employees that get hired and stay on the job has diminished immensely. Right now, they want anyone they can because they need cashiers. So they hire them and immediately promote them to cashier. The problem is that none of them stay. There are two other young people my age, two girls, who are very good cashiers but all of the other young people are baggers or other positions that work menial side jobs in other departments. A lot of them are special needs and the regular ones seem to have a lot of behavioral issues. I've had to learn how to talk to these kids in a certain type of way to get them on my side and help me out. Not ideal to getting the job done everyday! 

Fifth, management seems to be good this year at getting the job done. But they have done a horrible job in encouraging mask wearing so oftentimes the youth get sick easily and spread it around so that's concerning. My main problem with the management is that since day one in 2020 they weren't enforcing mask wearing either by customers or employees. That has been a problem since the early days of covid. The actual boss and co-director never wear masks and have had covid already several times. They probably spread it. One of the sales managers has had covid several times as well. I keep my mask on and keep my distance from all of them for my own safety. They all have failed horribly on this one simple task. 

Lastly, the job has become more machine-like. You really get a sense that you're a cog in the machine in there nowadays. The upper management lack empathy, but you also see it at the lower management level as well as from the customers, that that's expected from customers at this point in the game. You have to really dig deep to see empathy and compassion from others there nowadays, but it is still there in small doses here and there. It's not the worst place in the world, but you can sort of see that one day this entire operation, this job will eventually become obsolete if replaced by machines. The self-checkout tells me that everyday. 

All that being said, my personal life is quite magisterial. I learned how to play piano, sing better, and drums. I can speak Spanish pretty well now, as well as a little French, Italian, German, and even Portuguese. I'm still reading the western canon and loving every minute of it. C'est la vie. 

Happy Holidays!

image ai generated 

Lebensmitteleinzelhandel

Gute Abend, 

Here I thought I'd share a post about what it's been like working the retail grocery store, this far in the game, two years into covid, after working there for nine years. Buckle up, here we go. 

Okay, so let's start with the good. After busting my ass working hard for nine years, on the ninth year I finally got promoted to full-time status as a full-time cashier. I no longer have to push carts, take out trash, do carryouts, or open the gate for the truck driver. My pay went up slightly but it's really not all that and a bag of chips by any means. 

Now for the bad, get ready for chapter and verse. 

For starters, my management has become more aggressive and intense towards me. One of my managers has formed an active dislike for me and yells at me across the front end to shut up, and threatens me that she will talk to my store director unless I actually do shut up. So that's a new one. The other managers let me do my thing most of the time, one of them actually puts me in charge and he goes on about doing his own thing the entire night. 

Second, my overall eight hour work days have become much more intense. We lost a lot of employees. The ones that get hired quit once they see how hard the work is. Not many of the young bagger kids want to be promoted to cashier because they know dealing with the customers is tricky and difficult especially in combination with dealing with the sales managers, front end manager, co-director, and store director. Consequently, I end up doing a lot more work. 

Most of my shift now includes running seven self-checkout machines by myself for eight hours, usually from three-thirty pm to twelve am, five to six days per week. I get two ten minute breaks and one thirty minute break. The machines are glitchy but I've already figured out some ways to speed up the machines manually if things get too busy. When you're helping one person, another person needs help on another machine, then another, ad infinitum, per eight hours. 

So there's the machine I have to deal with, as well as the customers themselves, as well as the money and cash handling. I've done the work piece meal here and there over the years but I was only part-time and wasn't working many hours. In comparison, I used to work about 28-35 hours per week for many years, and now I'm working 42-48 hours a week, sometimes six days a week. I never thought I would become a shopkeeper. The joke is that I've become petite bourgeois. 

Third, more good. I get to meet many new and different people each day. My money addition and subtraction skills are instant. I can read people now. My customer service skills and dealing with the public has improved. My paychecks are larger. My job has stayed the same but the same old has surprisingly become better. I got a snare drum, cymbal, and two guitars from customers. And not only that, but the other day, a neighbor, who's a customer gave me a ride to guitar center.

There's always two sides to the coin. Retail is very intense and unforgiving, but me, being the person I am, surprisingly I've made it work all these years and I've been at the company since 2013. In 2023 it will be ten years and I'll get a small pension out of it. 

Lastly, there's one critical element that we're missing. Can you be happy doing something like this for employment? 

For me, yes you can. Because, using the free time I have between shifts, I've been able to become a better musician [I now can sing, play bass, piano, and drums], and I've even become an intellectual [I've read the western canon, philosophy, history, and learned languages]. 

But it's still a tough job. In fact, the first five years were brutal and I had to do a lot of life learning to get past those first five years. But now, I'm older, tougher, but yet fundamentally still the nice guy with the gift of gab. 

In terms of covid the stores are doing much better but I'm still wearing a mask for personal safety.

Happy holidays!

image ai generated 

verändert sich durch Sein und Zeit

Gute Abend, 

Things are changing so much and so rapidly it's almost as if time itself is a blur. In the blink of an eye, we are born, we grow, we live, and we die. 

Mortality and fate are intertwined, although the moderns have never been able to quite explain or understand it no matter how far they get in doing so. The Ancients had an easier way of trying to understand it, but they too failed in this fundamentally human question. 

I've lived in Los Angeles for ten years, have had a great life, made some friends, partied and chilled with a lot of people, became a better musician, and even became a part of these rock and roll after hours parties by playing Hendrix for drunkards and druggies. 

Life is good. But fundamentally I realize I'm right back where I started when I first got here. Trying to make it in Los Angeles through music, my own wits, and whatever talents I may have in any other areas. It's rough. It's rough for anybody out here. 

The pandemic made life for a lot of people much worse. Their children have become stay-at-home malcontents that can't handle working, or worse, they just do drugs and alcohol and have no hope of ever succeeding in life, let alone holding onto a job without switching every 2-4 years. 

There are new strains of corona out there and there's more of the threat of respiratory diseases for infants and young children. Politics have become embroiled and republicans are content to make fun of Pelosi's husband pretty much getting murdered. 

To be alive in the bitter sea. 

What's a guy to do?

Run the changes again. 

Play the same old song but in a different way. In order to live in this decline of western civilization, you must learn to find a new way to live. 

For everyone, this will mean something different. For me, I had to learn to stay away from problem people and their problems, and stay focused on my job, music, reading, eating better and losing weight, and maintaining, making, and improving relationships. None of it is easy. In fact, it' grueling and mind-numbing. 

For years and years I used to be content to sit in my room and play video games, not caring about anything going on outside my window. Then the pandemic kicked in and somehow I became more serious. I realized how fickle life can be. 

I started taking music more seriously, deeply trying to understand everything I read, rather than just reading for pleasure. I started learning languages like Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. I learned how to play jazz guitar so I could get out of my rock guitar virtuoso lizard brain. I started playing piano and drums and even singing. I even did a lot of open mics where I was playing electric guitar plugged into a PA, and singing along to my guitar. Scary! 

Today, I took the bus to guitar center and bought a pair of drum brushes, brushes, used to play more mellow soulful jazz patterns and ballads, even swing.

So there you go. Find your way to live. The meaning of life is that it is meant to be lived. 

You got this. 

[photo is ai generated, created with stable diffusion, android playing jazz saxophone] 

Live Performance! Jazz! 5/25/2022!

Hello, everyone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3NyHISwV8g&t=1097s&ab_channel=MegaFigueroa007

This is a livestreamed performance from yesterday featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and yours truly, Orlando Figueroa on guitar. We played some improvisations and jazz standards. Take a listen to the music, leave a comment, and make sure to like and subscribe to my channel. 

Thank you!

Dehumanizer [Retail Grocery]

Good early morning to you all. I've been on a bit of a hiatus in terms of writing but I'm ready to jump back into the saddle again. Here I'll go into some more details about what the retail grocery experience has been like lately, on the second month of 2022, with covid still rampaging throughout the lands. 

If you want to read about what it was like at work during the worst of times, make sure to read this post here. That was the worst of it. But things aren't perfect the way things are now either. 

A lot has changed in the world of retail grocery in the beginning of 2022. The place is being run less like a business-employee-bosses-customers routine and more of a sweatshop. Our union is fighting to get us employees a better contract. It remains to be seen if it will really be that much better, but it is guaranteed that our wages will get a slight boost. Modest progress. Slow hand clap.  

The departments and the front end department is being run by skeletal crews. Most of the time overtime is being rejected and refused and a lot of hours across the board have been cut severely, despite the fact that the store needs more help and needs more boots on the grounds to get the job done. 

Because of the fact that the departments are more and more being run with fewer and fewer people, the building has taken on the image of more of a sweatshop style environment. You have be very fast paced and not make too many mistakes. It's almost like Amazon or something now. Management demands it.

In the morning, the front end gets three people to work with until 10 am, and later at the evenings, say 8 pm or later, its being run in the same fashion. This has created a sweatshop environment where one employee is forced to take care of tens of dozens of customers singlehandedly, oftentimes with no baggers, so not only are they ringing up the orders, they're greeting the customers, cash handling, as well as bagging the items-whew! 

As if that wasn't enough, upper management seems to have taken up the stiff upper lip direction of managing workers. They're rude, they're pushy, they don't respond when you say hello, how are you, they're pushing employees to do more work during their eight hour shifts but insist on no overtime, they're in support of cutting hours, they don't give much leeway in terms of calling out sick for colds or covid, the list goes on and on. In a way, in short, I want to say that they've engendered a work environment where they try to dehumanize the employees, and sadly, from what I see from my coworkers, they've succeeded sometimes. 

But there's a light at the end of the tunnel isn't there? Of course. Although this industry seems to have been dehumanized and turned into a sweatshop by upper management and their meandering response to the pandemic, for me, the job has only become better. 

You see, I've become simpatico with lots of customers and while I've walked the Earth I've engendered reciprocity, made friends, and influenced people. Its not even about the money. Its about making friends and influencing people. Hard lesson. But well earned and deserved. 

Covid cases are down at the store but there's always at least a good six to seven cases on the board. Meaning there aren't too many new ones but there are still a few infections still getting into the store. Got to be safe and be careful. 

Customers have become especially unruly and offensive with ignoring the mask mandate and being pushy, aggressive, and rude. 

A long time customer is donating to me a Fender Stratocaster. Even if it really was the worst of times, it doesn't get any better than that. The satire here is that we're living during a modern plague, and its still the best years of our lives. 

queue Dehumanizer by Black Sabbath

Covid in the Workplace

Good evening ladies and gents, a happy dawn to you. 

Here I'd like to talk about what's been going on so far at this point in the pandemic. Okay, so we've been at this pandemic for nearly three years now. A lot has changed at my job, I've had to readjust mightily and heavily and I faired pretty damn well, I might add. 

But let us get to the heart of the matter. There are currently fifteen recorded covid-19 cases at my store, and that's only going back from the first of the year, AND that's not including cases that are probably there right now but haven't been reported. 

The new store director has been commissioned by the company to order everybody to be vaccinated by the 24th of the month with an electronic verification online. This doesn't include booster shots, the only requirement is at least the one shot vaccine of any vaccine from 2021. Things are finally moving, but wait, why wasn't this set in place by the company in year one?

I know for a fact that a lot of my coworkers/management weren't vaccinated, yet I've had to work with them all this time, myself being put at more risk. While I do find it comforting that everyone will at least have to prove they've been vaccinated once, it still bothers the hell out of me that this wasn't a requirement on year one. One step forward, two steps back. It's a lot like getting a gunshot wound and putting a band aid on it. 

With so many call outs from colds/flu and covid-19, the store is being run with much less staff and most departments doing earlier closing hours. Social distancing is nearly impossible in our narrow aisles and small front end. Tons of people come in without wearing masks all the time. The unmasked are a nuisance and get aggressive, sometimes physically aggressive and taunt other customers. Some things never change. 

With all this covid in the workplace, I'm more weary than ever about catching the virus. It's not really myself that I'm worried about because I have good health and am still young, it's more my stepfather. In terms of the climactic moment of this plague, and my own personal plague journal here, I would say we've hit the climax in terms of covid disrupting my place of employment with high numbers of cases, and counting. 

It's like a movie. I almost still can't believe it. Two years and counting. Welcome to the plague years. The best years of my life. 

New Years Eve, Reflections of a Retail Employee

Goodbye 2021! 

Here we are, the last day of 2021. Covid is still rampaging through the lands. Just this past Thursday there were 20,000 new cases of covid in Cali. Some things never change. But we strive for a better day, and will work towards creating a healthier, better world with all those happy things. Here I'd just like to recap a couple of things about work and life that took place over this year.  

First, work has surprisingly become better, much better since the initial wave of the virus. Things are much more streamlined and there have been no employees that have come down with the virus, [to my knowledge]. As a cashier, I'm encased in a box covering me from being too close to customers. It's hard to hear what they say, but it's improved my hearing tenfold, especially hearing all the many different tones and accents throughout LA. 

The store still has its problems: not enough employees to work, customers coming in not wearing masks, no social distancing, not enough raises for employees, not enough help to get all the work done for a typical eight hour shift, disgruntled lower management having disagreements with upper management in the way they deal and manage employees and customers. As one of my line managers says, "it's a shit show." But I would say, "but the show must go on and it ain't over till the fat lady sings." 

I think the last two years of covid has really changed the way we see work in all its vicissitudes. What I'm finding is that a lot of employees and management I work with are very disgruntled about having to work retail. What can you tell these people? The sad part about it is that a lot of these young people I work with have degrees and have finished college and they're still chipping away at retail gigs like retail grocery. The short answer is that it's tough out there. Life is short and then you die. Here's a dull knife. 

Here's the way I see it personally. I don't look at my retail grocery job as something I do for money OR something that I do for fun, although it's definitely those things as well. Rather, I see my job as a reliable go-to safehouse that provides me social interaction, money, and good vibes. Why would anybody care about something as hippy dippy as good vibes, almost with the same tier as money? 

Well, I'm kind of a wild child hippy guitar kid from Wisconsin, so you might not "get it," or maybe there's nothing quite to get, but I think there's a strong lack of capacity for happiness going on super strong in this world, intensified a thousand times by the countless deaths and infections of coronavirus and stagnation in terms of careers and relationships. Believe it or not, being happy might be more important than getting rich, or getting the hottest wife, or 2.5 kids, or even gasp, a great career. Simply put, although we all will continue to strive for more and better, we all have to learn how to deal with less during the plague years. Painful to hear yes, hard to understand, no, difficult to put into real life practical experience, yes. 

What I lack in a real career over there is more experience than most other workers in retail. More experience in dealing with real people with real problems, and more experience in learning how to continue being happy on a daily basis. It ain't special and I'm no guru, but I am the philosopher in aisle 9.

I see my job as more of a social construct I've created through hard work and goodwill. I'm Orlando Furioso and I've created my own knight errantry story on the job. I'm my own character, complete with virtue, personality, and reciprocal goodwill to others I meet there. 

As I look over 2021 I think about the destruction of American institutions, government, the chaos and divide within the system, the civil war-esque aesthetic, the coronavirus killing lots of people still, new infections going on everyday, the lack of goodwill and generosity within this social construct, and you know what I get out of it? I see the world, and other people, much like myself. Nobody is completely happy and in every life in this world, there is a lot of suffering and pain. However, the cure is to keep chipping away and improving your capacity for happiness. Some people get it right away and you can see it on their face. Others are Debbie downers and try to get others to feel the same way or playing the crowd like a fiddle for sympathy. There's this magic forcefield within the universe, it's within yourself, and you can see it in others, "I am the walrus!" 

But what do I know? I'm just a grasshopper, you can tell by the way I walk. 

Thanksgiving Covid 2.0

Whew! Wow! We made it past Thanksgiving! 

Retail work at the grocery job during Thanksgiving Covid 2.0 was intense. Out of all my years at the company since 2013, this was the hardest Thanksgiving that I've ever worked since I started working retail back in 2009 back home. What made it so different from every other year? Not enough staff, not enough baggers, management constantly mismanaging employee breaks, no social distancing, no limit or cap on number of customers or any of the items they buy. In short, it was a circus show. But that's okay, that's life, that's work. But is it though? Is it something we, as workers have to become accustomed to? 

Covid has unquestionably made an eternal impact upon the world of retail grocery. It cannot go back to the way it was before-albeit still poorly mismanaged by upper and lower management, but Covid has unveiled something much more menacing-the dark heart of human nature in the workplace. I can always take time to look at what's truly there but hidden, the dark side of human nature.  

As bad as Covid in the workplace has been for us at my store, what has arguably become much worse is the attitude and mentality of customers, and lower and upper management. I've increasingly seen over these some ten years that they are the ones hurting the employees the most. 

Now that Covid has been raging for two years, the customers at my store have become more unruly than ever. This might be the height of American retail ignorance, the worst I've ever seen. They aren't willing to listen or take other considerations, instead their go to is to become aggressive and/or start yelling like a child when they don't get what they want. 

On the opposite spectrum lower and upper management have become so cold to employees to the point where it's become obvious that they don't give a shit about what's going on, what's really going on behind the scenes. They aren't ignorant, rather they're negligent, unforgiving, and just generally don't care. 

I work for the Local Union 770 and I can tell you this much, our union doesn't do much to help the morale of the average UFCW worker. These employees are left to fend for themselves, fighting for scraps of whatever little hours they can get per week. The sad irony is that in the past these jobs used to count for something because they were reliable and were supported by a much stronger more influential union. What we have today is a shell of that stable job and strong influential union. However, I must admit that I'm pro labor union and pro employees despite what may be written here. 

Going back to this Thanksgiving week. This has been one of the most brutal holiday work experiences in my lifetime. During the first year of Covid it wasn't this bad. Which goes to our original question, how did things deteriorate to this level? The easy quick answer is antipathy, utter lack of care from management, which begs the question, will work become a lesser entity within our lives as Covid progresses through its many stages and mutations? Will work not even matter at some point? Will money become a much more valuable commodity because less people will be working and/or quit working these types of jobs? In the end if everybody stops caring about work, will the quality of work and jobs in the different fields naturally deteriorate to a low base level? 

The value of work and labor is up for grabs. When you see the working conditions at my store you will very easily be able to understand why most of the staff have quit, why they can't get people to stay at the store and continue to work for very long, in essence why they can't pay someone enough to even care about anything that goes on there. They can't pay them enough to even care. 

Which makes it very easy to see why record numbers of Americans quit their jobs in October. In addition, even office workers are getting fed up because under Covid conditions they're expected to be on the clock 24/7, even installing apps on their phones so that their upper management can keep tabs on them and force them to keep undergoing training modules. 

Is this the future of labor in America? If so, America has ultimately failed its citizens and my entire generation. It's no wonder that Americans have become fools, getting wasted on alcohol, drugs, wild parties, hazing, fast cars and fast women, growing fat off the bourgeois comforts of America, not caring about their jobs or quality of work, only to realize that the abyss is staring at them in the morning as they head off to work or clock in at home. 

Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse Virus pt. 10

It's 2021/11/9 evening. Covid is still running strong after nearly a year and a half of divisive health guidelines from doctors and politicians, and misinformed idiot citizens who don't want to be vaccinated. Our government is run by two parties, one of which denies climate change and has rallied the Trump demagogue to vote Republican, no mask, no vaccines. Jobs are hard to come by, good pay and benefits have gone up in an era where its a struggle to get people back on track on a working career in their respective fields. Climate change and global warning is a hot boiling point issue but the worlds powers can't seem to get it together. A billionaire nerd plays with the idea of ending world hunger. 

Is this what I thought being an adult would be like when I grew up? Is this some sort dystopian fiction novel? No, but indeed there are some similarities. Here I want to get into more of the nitty gritty on life during the pandemic, working in a grocery store, and how I've been dealing with the pandemic on those terms. 

Life during the pandemic has been an easy transition for me. I wake up early in the morning, I go to work, I come home, I have recreation time for reading, guitar, and friends, and I rinse and repeat. It's quite the good life, as I pretty much get to do whatever I want, provided I make sure to get to work on time in the mornings. Evenings are always free to do whatever. 

Work has been more intense than home life. Working on the job has its stress but the added traffic of extra customers since the pandemic has given most of the staff more than they can handle. We have limited employees at any one given time and on top of that, there's high turnover, and it's been difficult to get new hires to stay and/or keep hiring more new employees. It really is a conundrum getting people, anyone, to work these grocery store retail jobs these days. The peoples who usually stay are young people who live with their parents, young people who go to college, and middle aged people who have been in retail their whole lives. In short, we don't have enough help and can't keep the help we do get.  

My personal role at the store has become more streamlined and my job itself has become a lot easier. So in that sense I can't really complain too much.

How have I been dealing with the pandemic? I read a lot of books, I listen to a lot of music, I play a lot of guitar, writing more blogs now and then, and I text and hangout with friends occasionally. To be honest, it's an amazing life and I'm really lucky I get to do these great things I love to do. My job surprisingly gives me a lot of freedom in my recreation hours to truly become inspired, come alive, and be myself. That won't happen in the world or retail. You have to make the time to build and develop an interior life outside of the working hours on the job.

Weather it's through my guitar playing, reading, or writing, I can truly say that I'm never really bored. There's always something new to learn, something new to explore, new avenues to travel along. This gift of curiosity has led me to learn jazz guitar, listen to the classical music canon, and read the western canon.  

In a time when people are really struggling I'm thriving, for now, praise be to God. When I look back at this time in the future, I can say that I had a great life during covid. Amen! 

Also check out my covid plague journal! http://ofigueroamusic.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Retail vs Corona 2021-pt.2

Hello, how are you doing in quarantine right now? I'm doing okay on the front line, working at a grocery store. Here I'd like to update you on what it's been like working at the grocery store during the pandemic. In case you didn't know, I've been documenting pandemic life at the grocery store since the beginning of the pandemic. You can read all about it here. I've even got the first post documenting literally the day before the pandemic began. I went to a punk rock show that day. 

Let me start with cleaning and sanitation. In the beginning of the pandemic there was cleaning going on all over the place, left and right. However, as of February 25, little to no one actually cleans anything. Hear me out, the actual cleaning service provider that cleans overnight cleans the floors and the bathrooms, but not much else. They usually miss the breakroom, which is always filthy. Which is unfortunate because that's where we eat and take our breaks. The cashiers hardly ever clean their register belts. However, they will do it if a customer is disgusted and asks them to. It should be noted that we are no longer cleaning carts for customers.  

Next, our store is no longer providing us with free masks. Which is a hassle because masks are so important, even more important now because they're suggesting that we all wear two masks now. There are gloves available but only in small and medium but they're always hidden and you have to hunt for them and hope to find it. To give credit where credit is due they did provide us face shields. Perhaps they thought that since they gave us face shields they don't have to provide us masks. 

The general mood of the work environment is surprisingly upbeat. The customers seem to have found a happy medium of treating the employees with respect and dignity. Upper management, co-director, and store director seem to be on good terms with the store and its employees. That's a blessing because at other times during the pandemic the morale of the workers has been very low, at depressing levels and management have been more aggressive towards employees.

However, I could attribute the good happy workers logo with a big time shift in my schedule. I'm now working mornings and early afternoons instead of closing. I find it to be a happier time of day for employees, management, and customers. In addition, I feel like although my life has changed drastically, that I'm much more appreciated during these earlier times. 

Lastly, it isn't often that management ever limits the numbers of customers that come into the store. The last time that happened was on Super Bowl Sunday. Things got a little crazy but they only limited the numbers of customers allowed in the store at any one time for maybe half an hour, and then resumed with allowing anyone entry. The lines get very long at my store and it's very difficult to social distance in the checkout line or in the aisles. Me being a cashier, I can hide in the cashier station and be relatively safe from others because you're enveloped in a cocoon by the window shield blocking between you and the customers in front and in back. At least I have that. 

Surprisingly, I haven't even got a cold once during this entire pandemic. Perhaps we should keep the masks. 

Stay safe, keep your head up, and social distance. If you're risking exposure to the virus like we are at the grocery store, godspeed. Do the things that are required to stay safe. 

Signing off this morning. Thanks for reading. Stay connected to my blog to learn more about retail vs corona as well as various posts about music and literature. 

Retail vs Corona 2021-pt.1

Hello everybody, 

I've decided to write a perfunctory post about what it's been like working retail at a grocery store during the corona virus pandemic in early 2021. If you haven't been up to date with my blog, I've been documenting everything since the day before the pandemic began, when I went to a punk rock show at the Sugar Mill Saloon. You can find all that information here.

First of all, the pandemic has been tough for retail workers, especially at the grocery store I work at. The employees are dead tired and more of them are catching the virus. They don't have the energy to really put in quality care and work ethic, so in many respects, the store manager gets what they get. Most, almost all of the emergency new hire employees have quit. The ones that have stayed are very part time workers.  

There's been a few more cases at my store but all in all not that many. We have window barriers in front of the cash register to help enforce social distancing. We are no longer limiting the numbers that can come into the store, exchanging safety for more sales, unfortunately. 

There's very little cleaning if there is any that takes place. In the beginning of the pandemic the cleaning was nonstop. At this current juncture, cleaning is a mere afterthought. The cleaning people that come to clean at night don't do a very good job. Instead of cleaning surfaces, they instead focus on waxing the floor mostly. 

Middle management is stressed to breaking points sometimes because of how short staffed we are at night. Upper management seems to be oblivious to middle and lower management needs. The grunt workers have never been at a more all time low morale. Most people don't like to work retail, but you know, if you actually put in a little time, effort, and care into the work, you will be awarded and appreciated by management, coworkers, and customers. 

I've moved into a strictly cashiering role at the moment which makes my job a lot easier because I don't have to clean, take out the trash, or push carts, all of which involves touching surfaces that could've been tainted by covid, who knows? My hours have been all over the place. I've been switched from my usual closing shifts at 1 am to instead mid shifts and mornings. It's quite a change for a night owl. The one thing that is unfortunate about it is that sometimes there are many more customers in the store in the earlier parts of the day, which makes masking up and gloves and social distancing much more important than working the closing shift. 

Now that Biden is President the world has calmed down some. The death of George Floyd brought about a new class consciousness. People my age aren't doing that great in life but now that there's true leadership in office, perhaps the young can get back on the right track, getting back to work, finding housing and moving out of their parents, getting married, starting families, having goals and dreams being fulfilled within the vicissitudes of the worldhood of the world. Things always seem bleak at the darkest hour. The truth is that covid will get a lot worse before it gets better and perhaps it will get a lot worse working at the market within the next few months, but its better not to think about that too much, for in the end, I've still got a job and I'm still making money while others are out of work and stuck relying on their parents and unemployment. 

The workers really deserve that $2 return to hero pay!