I drove for fifteen hours on this nasty greyhound bus

Today was really good, did merch most of the time. I think I finally get what they mean about taking initiative. I've gotten to the point where stuff isn't done and it makes me mad so I just go ahead and do it without even asking anyone's permission. But on the other hand, I know I would still be crap at taking initiative if it was book merch, not multimedia. I still don't really know what the hierarchy of what needs to get done or not is on that side, and there's always sheets missing or in weird tabs/places, and I still get screwed over 50% of the time if I just pick some up and try to start doing it. And if we weren't getting crazy amounts of multimedia merch in, and there weren't all the new people to be constantly trained, there probably wouldn't be any multimedia merch most of the week to make me mad and take initiative.

I also find myself in this weird place where I feel like I have more authority than a regular seller, but obviously don't have any official authority on anything. But I know more what I'm doing than most of the part timers, because I'm doing it constantly (exhibit A: I have over twice as many register transactions as anyone in the store), and I definately know a ton more than the new people. I'm also constantly asking them to do tasks for me (getting things I need keepered keepered, pricing things--which I hate letting them do because if they get it wrong it's more work for me in the end, but at the same time I don't have the time to do it all myself). I'm also always trying to explain to people what they did wrong, so that they won't do it again, and I feel like it goes in one ear and out the other, because I'm not a supervisor. Also I don't know whether or not I communicate to them that effectively anyway, I've known for a long time that I always use ten times as many words as really need to be uttered to get my point across.

Anyway, Elaine made me feel good today. She said something about not being able to/or at least it being very difficult to get the multimedia merch done if I weren't there. And I kind of replied that yeah, I had kind of been thinking about that the other day. Because I was showing yet another n00b how to alpha/price multimedia, and had discovered a million mistakes while I was doing it, and was thinking, "man if this is how poorly people do the prep for what I do, I don't even want to see what would happen with the stuff I actually do. I'm totally awesome! I deserve employee of the month!" and she agreed with me. Emphatically, even.

I guess I feel less angry and depressed when people let me know I'm appreciated. So that's something.

Partywise: Elaine gets moved up from the "not going" category to the "definately going" category, which is rocktastic. Getz and Hootie have moved up to maybe.

I have a lot of cleaning to do before I allow people into this appartement. And a small amount of shopping. I've been pretty tired every day after work though. All I've managed to do so far is my favorite part of party planning, the playist of music I'm going to have.