Nicotine gum just isn't the same as choking honest-to-goodness blokes (a.k.a “smoking...cigs”), but it's just gonna hafta do. Because I have to quit smoking if I'm to get the surgery on my wrist done, that I've avoided for months already. Fuck me! It's been busted up since mid-December! The trick will be to get me to chew enough of the stuff, because I both dislike gum and dislike THIS particular gum.
Actually, the real trick will be for me to start and keep this new sushi restaurant job. Before even setting foot in the kitchen I know this place will be weird because the schedule I received via text earlier today was something I never expected to encounter: split shifts. I remember as a teen in Europe it was par for most hospitality workers — not just the food worker subset — to work split shifts, but it's not something I've personally experienced, or even heard of, in all the food joints I've worked here and in Seattle. lol This is what I get for bragging during the interview about striding there from home in only twenty-three minutes! Split shifts suck, unless you're working in a hotel and can nap in a spare closet or even room. I'll be working four split shifts, nine to ten hours total each day (one only six and a half); though at least the days are split apart in pairs.
It's both my wrist and my feet/legs I'm worried about. My feet and/or legs will start bothering me anywhen between five and seven hours into any given shift; but what kind of grief my wrist will give me I can't know because it depends largely on whether I'll just be dish-dogging or I chucked into the ol' meat grinder, right off the bat, washing dishes and prepping (and maybe clearing tables). Considering the schedule, I fear the latter. Let's just hope acetaminophen, extensive wrapping, and cardboard on the floor if there aren't any mats, will carry me through. Not only that, but I'll be in a cast for three to four months after the surgery, so ... well, fuck, I don't know. For all I DO know, I may not even make it this first week; also there's a fair chance the orthopedist will insist I do nothing more strenuous with my right arm during recovery than swipe my debit card.
Also known to me is how sick I am of canning, sick of looking for work, and sick of failing at work. In fact, this job feels like a disaster in the making. Well, considering how I'm starting to drastically fail at people, too, keeping this job (incentive!) will give me the lion's portion of each week to be too busy to want to give a damn about failings ... er, excepting in regard to my rapport with the (I strongly suspect) conservative Christian Korean owners, whilst withdrawing from alcohol and nicotine. Have I said “Fuck me!” yet?
