aggienaut | Getting Screwed by the Man IV

   You know you are in Orange County when... you forget your flip-flops when you go to work, and no one notices that you are barefoot all day. So yea.. that was me today. Hope I didn't ruin my beautiful flip-flop tanlines.
   Today - guest: "is bombay blasters open?" me: "not right now, they're painting it" "what about that one?" "they don't usually open that one unless its really busy" "what about liquidator?" "uhhh no its closed too." Yeah we're such a great waterpark.. they just somehow managed to name off all three of the closed rides. Here's a secret key to understanding lifeguard euphenisms for closed rides: "its closed for maintanance" definitely means "someone crapped in the pool;" "operational difficulties" really means "turns out that ride kills people;" and "we're painting it" you may be shocked to learn means "the ride is being painted."
   Speaking of closed things though, I learned today that the grilled hotdog stand is permenantly gone from the park. Health inspectors seemed to have a bit of a problem with it. How the OTHER restaurants at the park passed the health inspection is beyond me.. no really I'm not kidding ...but potentially disease ridden or not I loved those grilled cylinders of flesh and hearing of their loss broke my heart. Saddest news I've heard all week ::single tear::

   Today I FINALLY got to talk to the HR Director about why I'm only getting 25 cents over the base deepguard rate of $7.25. Between telling me I need to wait until the next paycheck two weeks later, making me file various forms, telling me the HR director is not in, and various other tricks, Stacy the Evil Office Wench has kept me from talking to the HR Director for about six weeks. Today Toni the Friendlier Office Individual (TFOI) launched every single one of those excuses at me, while the HR Director Lisa was in her office five feet away.. TFOI ended with "well you need to talk to Lisa about that" to which I was like "thats what I'm trying to DO!!!!!!" arghh. Anyway, Lisa proceeded to explain to me that basically I get a 25 cent raise every year, unless minimum wage goes up, which it always does, and in that case I'm still "getting my raise" by being paid minimum wage. So yea I'm getting $1.75 more than I started six years ago, but I'm still getting only 25 cents more than I would be if I had just started today, and frankly I think that is total crap. ::sigh:: wild rivers has stolen six summers of my life.

   So there's this one ride, Bazooka Bowls, in the bottem of which the lifeguard has to stand in waist deep water. And it is SOOO cooold! It is cold like whoa. Last time I was in it my toes were literall numb by the time I got out. Leaving today I passed the lifeguard who had just gotten out.. she was stumbling along staring at her hands like "its so cold it hurts!!" You can always tell when someone has just gotten out of there because they are lurching along in this wounded way like Grendal. And then I learned that the other day the lifeguard that was in bazooka bowls had to go see the EMT (first aid) when she got out. Yea I seriously think I'm going to try to contact the state labour board and look into this. When Bazooka Bowls became operational last year the number of deepguards getting sick went up noticeably and I developed a caugh I proceeded to have for several months.

   I didn't have internet access from saturday morning till now (Monday night). I nearly died. Fortunately I discovered Half Life on the other computer and managed to play massive amounts of that to stay alive.