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. 

Live Music Performance 11/18/21!

 https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/884509442267455

Good evening, here's another live music from myself, Orlando Figueroa on guitar, and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

I used my birthday guitar from my mother for this particular performance. I've used it before for our sessions, but this second time the tone was dialed in just right. There was a better bass sound, and I was able to get a lot of tonal range on certain chords in good moments using the tone selector switch. The guitar itself is a $160 guitar, as cheap as it gets, its a Rogue Rocketeer, something out of like a Sears catalogue in the 80s, but man, this guitar is actually good. Check out the tone. I use a basic Marshall avt275 amp on a clean setting, no pedals. 

For this particular performance I was focusing on my rhythm chords and really going all out on the solos in terms of off the cuff phrasing, [as I think I was trying to do lol]. Anyways, there was some great moments here, in between a lot of comping. 

Gracias por escuchar 

Live Music Session 11/11/21!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1062070257878268

This was recorded on November 11, 2021, on my phone. Featuring myself, Orlando Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

We've been practicing together for about a year during the pandemic. We've done a few open mics but mostly we jam and record everything like a jam band. We play standards but also just do jams based on jazz chord changes in a straight ahead context. 

When performing today, I was thinking a lot about filling up the space with lots of strums, and give Jason complete melodic control with his horn. Like a drums/singer sort of combination. 

During a lot of this session I was thinking about playing in terms of a modal sort of style. The straight ahead jazz sound signature. 

I used my Jackson Dinky 6-string with a floyd rose whammy. The tone selector allows a plethora of sound options from thick full bodied tone sound, more typical of a jazz box sound, as well as allowing the other option for more clean bright chord sounds, typical of blues, funk, and rnb. Although I initially bought the guitar to be a heavy rock and roll machine, it's also come to be one of my best guitars for jazz improvisation. 

Gracias por escuchar! 

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

Jazz jam session 11/4/21!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/474208377194713

Here's footage from my jam session today. Featuring Jason Thomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on guitar. 

Jason and I have been jamming for about a year now. At the moment we've been playing on my balcony and attracting all the neighborhood with our duo instrumental straight ahead jazz sessions. We play once a week for an hour but its been consistent enough for us to develop together musically. 

My jazz guitar style has improved a lot, and I've learned a lot about chord voicings, taking solos, and how to tell a story with a solo. 

In addition, another aspect of the music that I've been adding is the nature of the feelings of the moment. The time of day is a factor, my mood or attitude is a factor, Jason and his feelings are another, these sorts of variables that have been added to the music is something I've learned from other kinds of improvisational music, like world music, especially Indian ragas. 

At this point in the pandemic things have become much more strict. At Starbucks today, I had to show my vaccination card to sit down and dine in. I've decided to quit playing video games and spend my time focused on guitar, reading, and writing. 

Gracias por eschuchar. Bonne Nuit.

Retail vs Corona Halloween Bash Style

Buenos dias! 

It's 5 am on an October day in California. The pandemic still rages on and on. The fight against covid has been arduous and never ending, yet we still persevere in the sector of work retail. Why? Because we have to. Because to persevere means to get the job done and do it well. Here I'd like to go into the inner details of what retail work at the grocery store has been like at this current stage of the pandemic. 

a) So the work itself has become more intense and faster paced. There are more customers going out and shopping for their own groceries now that the vaccines are out and people feel a lot more comfortable about being back out in public. Our staff has dwindled in the last couple months, due to young people quitting and older people retiring. And on top of that our staff we do have is limited to part time hours (20-25) a week because management doesn't want to give them the extra hours. Leading us full time workers to have to work that much harder. The lines build up and when I turn around to see who's also cashiering alongside me, there's oftentimes only one or two people. 

b) Some of the staff are still getting sick with covid here and there. It goes unreported at our store because of confidentiality and all that. But isn't that something that we, as workers, deserve to know? Instead, oftentimes, the affected person takes a few days off randomly and then suddenly they're back perhaps 3 or 4 days later. When asked about if they had covid, they often say, "I had a cold." Again, most of these covid infections go unreported but it's at least partially known because the infected person is known to be sick and known to be out for a few days. Obvious troll is obvious. 

c) The actual work day itself has become more normalized and streamlined for me in particular because my work schedule was shifted from all night shifts to all morning shifts. Getting up in the morning was always my nemesis but now that I'm used to it I've realized that waking up in the morning and working throughout the early day is actually better for my body. "Oh, that sweet circadian rhythm." 

d) At the store we still deal with a lot of anti-maskers who refuse to wear a facemask inside our store. At this point we sort of just have to accept it and move on. Our store doesn't have security throughout the day and only sometimes at night. It's just not worth it to confront these people as oftentimes, they are aggressive Trump types that cannot listen to reason due to their pea-sized brains. Upper management sometimes tries to get involved but even they themselves are scared of these people. Trump types love to use intimidation and oftentimes it works.

e) The cleaning situation at the store is for the most part pretty good. As workers, we strive to make sure the place doesn't look or smell like a pigsty. The cleaning is more important in the departments (produce, deli, meat, etc) but even on the front end we oftentimes spend a lot of time washing down the registers. Squeaky clean!

f) Lastly, the morale of the retail work world has always been extraordinarily low. Right now in October there's a small movement of workers trying to rise up, fight the man, and demand better wages and benefits. It's called Striketober, but will it really amount to anything? The biggest workers strike was the teachers strike back in 2018, and that went well, right?

Well, the retail world is full of people who just don't want to be there or are stuck there because of whatever reasons. Right now, morale is at a historic low. The workers are hurting badly: they're not getting the hours they want (either number of hours or the time they want), their pay isn't increasing for years and years, and on top of that the company took away our $20/hour increased pay, which only lastly 5 months. Its no wonder these people are down in the dumps. 

With companies like this life is very stressful. Most of these people have children and have to provide for themselves as well as their families. These are mostly hard working Hispanic people and occasional young white, middle eastern, and Asian employees. The fight against covid while working retail has never been harder. And the scary thing is that for most of these workers, their struggle is invisible to the public. Sometimes the stress there can be overbearing and frightening, a scanner darkly during Halloween. 

The public is still much in love with nurses, cops, and fire fighters fighting the pandemic than with the people who are providing them food to cook for their families. That is the reality. It was never going to be easy.

Keep the faith. 

I don't know about you, But I'm feeling 22

Good evening ladies and gentlemen of the internet, 

It's been another birthday. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two. That's what I said when I lost in black jack. I'm actually about a decade older than that but isn't age really just spirit, daesein? Yes, I'm feeling another year older, and yes it's harder to wake up early in the morning, and yes it's more tiring being on my feet at work all day, and yes I've got lots of laundry to do, and yes all my relationships are like a chess game, etc. But in the end I still feel like a young grasshopper, a mere sapling awash in the pools of the universe, awaiting the wheel of fate. 

I spent my birthday weekend in Las Vegas with friends. The trip itself wasn't remarkable but I had a lot of fun playing black jack, baccarat, and roulette with friends, learning it on the fly, as well as some slots as the casino. My favorite meal was a Monte Cristo sandwich. The bread had the texture of fried chicken. I would take a bite and then drink some coffee to go with it. 

There were three metaphysical moments I experienced over that birthday weekend in Vegas. 

1) On the drive there, when we left California and entered into Nevada, there were these dust storms and doom-inspired mountains. A sign on the highway read Shoshone. When we passed that landscape and that sign, I had some kind of meta moment in time. Something about the land or something. 

2) On the drive back there was a car accident on the road leaving Nevada and going to California. This is probably a big drinking/smoking in the car road. Anyway, so this car gets into an accident and the car is completely totaled, especially the front end and the car seat was crumpled/crushed into itself, meaning this person was killed instantly on impact. It really is the city of sin, for I saw Death himself, staring back at me from the abyss. 

3) On the last day the guys wanted to go to a antique shop to look around. I stayed in the car with the window down and did a lot of reading and got some rest. I was in that state between wakefulness and intense sleep, meanwhile the weather outside was going from sort of hot to more mild coolness and breeze in the mid afternoon hours. It was the most relaxing part of the trip. 

As if that wasn't enough, as soon as I got back, on the next day's morning, I had an 830am-5pm shift, right back into the saddle again, ad infinitum. 

But you know, I'm feeling good. I said a prayer for the deceased in the car accident, did some meditating in the car, and turned on Handel's Water Music to vibe out to something flowery. And you know what? Life is good. I'm older but I still feel young. Covid is still raging but I'm healthy. My house is in order: I'm reading books, I'm playing guitar, I have a for work life and a for fun lifestyle that most people would be jealous to have or can't have because they're busy doing other things like trying to make ends meet. Most people are stuck in obligations at work or have kids, or both, and meanwhile, I'm out here trying to figure out how I'm going to get Korean spicy spare rib soup for dinner or how I'm going to manage to find time to finish the Ring Cycle. 

The world from say 2004-2021 went through a drastic cataclysmic change. I cannot see the world in the same way as it was say in 2004. Covid has created a new system in which we have to learn to find a new way to life. That's really all we can do. 

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling twenty-two.