Selling at the Oakland City Market Place the FIRST and LAST TIME

Yesterday was certainly a unique experience for me. I decided, since I had nothing better do this weekend, to take advantage of the cold weather and go somewhere and sell some of my scarves and hats. I had staked out a few places around town and since there was no craft fair or art's show in Atlanta this weekend, I decided to set up shop at the Oakland City Market Place.

So the Oakland City Market Place isn't in the best part of town but passing by this place each weekend for many years, I knew that it's a busy place. I found their website a week ago, sent a request for vendor requirements to set up in the lot and after three days I heard nothing. Thursday, I called and the lady over the phone told me Saturday's price is $20 cash for a normal spot or $30 for a spot near an electrical outlet and I bring my own extension cord. I knew I could keep a charge on my phone all day and I needed no electric so the $20 spot was OK. When I asked about licenses or anything like that, she said if I set up more than two days a week, I'd need a license from the city of Atlanta. I printed out tags and information for each of my items. I packed up everything that I knew would be popular in a HUGE Rubbermaid container, pulled my folding table and a folding chair from my garage Friday evening so Saturday morning would consist of Terry and I jumping in the car and heading to the market and setting everything up before 9 am when the market opened. Everything happened as planned. When we got there, he wasn't too impressed with the market place but a selling venue is a selling venue...or at least one would hope.

Right after 9 am the director, the same woman I'd spoken to on Thursday, came by to collect the day's rent. When she looked at my set up, she asked if I had a black men's scarf. I didn't have everything out because when you have 70 scarves and hats set out on a table, it looks a little too confusing and harder to focus in the eyes of a customer so I limited my table to about 35 sets. I pulled out the only black scarf I had which was super long and perfect for a man and she said she loved it. When she asked "How much?" I wanted to give her a deal so I said $12 for you. You'd thought I just slapped her, she proclaimed "THAT'S HIGH" and turned around and walked away. This woman seriously put a bad taste in my mouth but I later realized why she acted as she did which I will explain shortly.

For those of you that don't realize, knitting is not a cheap hobby. In the world of hand crafted items, we not only spend money on the tools we use and materials, we invest our time in creating the items. There are few formulas out there for people that sell their hand made items including multiplying the cost of materials by three or cost of materials plus X times Z in hours of creation. You may also just opt to create a price that you feel is fair and go with it. No matter which you choose, there will be people that with complain that you are devaluing the item by undercharging and an equal amount that will complain that you are overcharging. I've been accused of both. I'm a super fast knitter, my average time on a scarf will range between three hours and a day, depending on the thickness of the yarn. My average price for a hat and scarf set is $25.00 or a regular adult hat for $6 and a child's hat for $4.00. Some other items such as handbags and blankets are substantially more. The cost of a handmade items versus a mass produced item should not take much to understand. Most mass produced "knit" items are made using thin yarn that will not last more than a year or two. Many hand made items produced in the 70's are still being used today. Quality shows in handmade items.

My booth took about 10 minutes to get set up. I watched others around me spend an hour to get two tables of "merchandise" get set up and not wanting to sound mean, most should have just kept their merchandise in their containers and just took most of it to the Goodwill. The man to my left was really nice but his items seemed to be a mixture of mass produced lot of things ranging from knitted solid color hats, like the ones you see in Wal-Mart for $2 during the winter and marked down to 25 cents in February as well cheap earrings and boxer shorts that he claimed were made at a factory in the West End section of Atlanta. One more thing on this man's table pissed me off a great deal but I kept my feelings to myself...CD-R copies in a plastic sleeve with a black and white printed cover of the Motown Christmas CD...Pirated music. The woman next to him was selling used clothing and toys. The booth to the right of me was run by a couple from the islands...not sure which ones though. They were selling toilet paper pulled out of a pack for a dollar a roll, industrial toilet paper like the kind in public restrooms for $5 a roll and various items from closeout grocery stores that were out of date for a buck each. She also had socks priced at 50 cents a pair. The 2 booths in front of me seemed a little more respectable. To the left, a man selling brand new household items like giant containers of Gain detergent, Huggies diapers, giant packs of Scott toilet paper and paper towels as well as air freshener and soap. His items were MUCH less than what I knew as cost and I realized that he procured his items from extreme couponing. The woman to the right had various mass produced items ranging from leggings, t-shirts, throw blankets to legwarmers. Other vendors in the market featured used clothing, socks, incense, body oils, fake cologne marked with names like Hoop! (Joop!) Dolo (Polo) and Dakkar Noir.

Once the customers began to come onto the grounds, it seemed that I was definitely out of place. In a world of cheap, I was sitting there with hand made items with "Gucci" prices. It was obvious when I began to watch the people around me wheel and deal their items. The man to my left offered EVERYONE a special deal for $10, the Christmas CD, a set of earrings and a knitted hat. How was i supposed to compete with that? My hats were priced at $6 and they came by themselves. I began to feel the element of how competition worked and my items were being de-valued based on someone doing what they could just to make a sale. The toilet paper and household items booths had booming business and there I sat, with nothing to do but work on a scarf that I'd began just after the morning started. The lady next to the Pirated Christmas CD man was making some serious cash and I realized that 90% of her stock came from the Goodwill and she wasn't making a secret of it. When people asked her for a bag, they walked away with their items in a recycled Goodwill bag.

I got a few bites, when customers walked up and looked at my items, I explained that every item was handmade by me. I decided to play with the prices and let them make offers on my items. One person asked if I had anything for 50 cents, I politely started I didn't and he promptly pulled out a bag of his own knitted hats and said he sold his for 50 cents a piece. I was shocked and told him that he's devaluing his work as well as the work of others and he shot back with that's how to make money. Obviously, he didn't do any of the work on any of those hats because 50 cents wouldn't have paid for a fraction of the yarn used on the hats. The toilet paper lady mentioned to me that the people at this market are the worst people she's encountered in terms of cheapness and mentioned a few markets I'd have better luck at. My goal was to cover the $20 rent for the day and I'd write it off as a learning experience. Luckily I was able to sell a few items which made the day where it wasn't a total washout. Some of the bargaining tactics people used were baffling. A Hispanic lady walked up to me, told me she loved my scarves and hats and asked how much. When I told her I hand make everything and I usually charge $25 for a set, she said how about $15. She was looking at a set that I'd made two years ago that pretty much no one showed interest in since I made it so I said OK...She then told me that she didn't want the hat and how much without the hat. I told her I sell them as a set but without the hat, I'll knock 2 bucks off bringing it to $13...she told me she only had $10....On the inside I was all like (FUCK OFF) but what I actually said was "I'm sorry but that wouldn't cover the cost of the materials" and she walked away. Throughout the day I got requests that ranged from people wanting knitting lessons to prices on custom items. A few people asked if I would be back next week, I didn't want to be rude and say "No, this place is awful." I simply told them that I will most likely be at a craft show next week. Many people took my business card as well as I took the opportunity to give out my promotional UBER ride cards.

While I was trying to cooperate with people trying to take advantage of me, I noticed the woman across from me wearing a legwarmer around her neck like a scarf and then she put a sign in from of her her legwarmers that read "SCARF $2.00 / 2 for $3.00"...She was selling legwarmers left and right and people were walking around with them on....REALLY??? I could only just sit there and wait for it to get dark and hope for a few more sales. Terry got off work around the same time that everyone started packing up and he arrived about the time that I'd gotten all my items and table packed.

On the way home, I told him how the day went. The lesson I learned was to avoid the Oakland City Market Place if we are looking to unload anything that would cost more than $10. Though I sold a few items well below what I would have liked to have sold them for, I made sure that I didn't lose money I'd invested on the materials. The only reason I'd ever return would be to buy toilet paper, cleaning supplies or electronics that were manufactured between 1978 and 1995.

So here I am again, on a search for the right in person venue for my hand made items.

If YOU are one of those people that appreciates a handmade item check out my online shops.

http://inselly.com/adrianphantom

http://adriansknitwits.storenvy.com/

http://adrianduarte.ecrater.com/

http://www.etsy.com/shop/adrianduarte

Adrian's Knit Wits...the Shop

Over the past few weeks, I decided to re-open my online shop which shares the same name as my blog "Adrian's Knit Wits." A thought about deleting my e-crater store completely and exclusively using storenvy but the day I was going to delete the e-crater store, I got an order for a scarf that I'd had listed for over a year. I'm trying to figure out which online store service would work best for me. I'm on e-crater, storenvy, etsy as well as bonanza. I'm not in love with Bonanza and Etsy's fees seem to be a little excessive though I guess they aren't as bad as they seem in the long run. Etsy is extremely user friendly, storenvy is as well.

   

I was going to set up a booth at the Oakland City Market this weekend in Atlanta but when I found out that this weekend, the Scott Antique Market was open, I realized it would have been a bad weekend. I'm thinking next Saturday might be the day. The only foreseeable downside to the Oakland City Market is the fact that Terry has to work on that day and I'll be sitting at my table from 8am until 6pm with no one to watch my booth in case I need to take a bathroom break. Anyway...If you're interested in a unique and functional holiday gift for someone or even yourself...Check out my online shops.

http://adriansknitwits.storenvy.com SAVE 10% at checkout with coupon code: November

http://adrianduarte.ecrater.com

OR

https://www.etsy.com/shop/adrianduarte

MY Story of The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

A few years ago, a friend of mine asked me if I remembered the 1980's TV show called The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. I'm not sure if she realized that I not only remembered the show, which I was a huge fan of, I am friends with many of the ladies that appeared on the show. When MySpace, Facebook and Twitter became the thing to do, I discovered a community of fans of the show as well as many of the actual GLOW Girls. I never really spoke to many people of my love for the show back when it was on the air, it was considered campy and uncool, though I have a feeling that all those kids that made fun of it were glued to their TV screens when each show hit the airwaves. The amount of weekly viewers were estimated in the millions so someone was definitely watching it, closet case GLOW Fans! The show was cancelled after it's fourth year but remains in the hearts of many.

Season 1 & 2 GLOW Girls

The first time I spoke to the GLOW girl, Roxy Astor, she asked me to explain how I became a fan of the show and what it meant to me. She actually asked many fans the same question around the time the documentary film featuring the story of The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling was produced. Unfortunately, I gave her a very watered down version of my story really never got a chance to tell the complete story of how I came to love the show, until now.

The Amazing Roxy Astor

My exposure to wrestling was limited to watching the Von Erichs on the World Class Championship Wrestling show Saturday mornings at my cousin's house and eventually when my sister realized how dreamy Kerry Von Erich was, our house also. I really didn't have a connection with men's wrestling, though I didn't mind the eye candy and I had a little bit of a crush on Kevin Von Erich as well as Rick Rude. The arenas and ring were usually dirty looking, the lighting usually dim and poorly lit for television and the costumes were basic and not too flashy unless the wrestler's gimmick was a bit out there. One Saturday afternoon, I started to turn channels on our cable box and stop on a channel that featured a blue and pink wrestling ring, a black and neon pink sign in the background and a woman wearing camo beating on a woman with pigtails, wearing white and pink tights with hearts and matching boots. My mom and sister both said "TURN IT" I was transfixed but complied. I had no clue what it was but I wanted to watch it, unfortunately we only had one TV in the house so it was not an option that day. The next week, I tried to catch it at the same time and my dad beat me to the TV which meant the Cubs game would be on the duration of the afternoon. While my dad turned channels looking for the game, I did see a flash of the show I was looking forward to watching but it was just a flash. Two weeks in a row resulted in failed attempts to watch a show that I had no clue about, other than it was ladies wrestling and my family didn't like it.

The third week, I got up early to watch cartoons. I flipped through the channels and saw a commercial for The Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling and I guess, by luck, an episode of the show actually started. It was on the same channel, WPMI channel 15, but at an earlier time. I was excited and transfixed. The show featured girls of all shapes, sizes and appearance wearing some of the coolest and craziest outfits in bright colors. Some of the girls had brightly colored makeup and others had a massive amount of glitter on their faces, bodies and in their huge 1980's hair. This was a show that could have kept the Aqua Net and Rave hairspray manufacturers busy. They sang, they fought and they even did comedy skits. This show was hysterically campy and theatrical and I loved every minute of it. The last match of the episode was "FOR THE GLOW CROWN" and featured Tina Ferrari against the Russian Ninotchka. Tina looked amazing in her purple costume with silver glitter and Ninotchka looked...well...Russian. The match was like riding a 20 minute roller coaster, both ladies were great when it came to selling pain. I didn't know if wrestling was real or fake but this match looked real. The announcer kept mentioning the US vs. Russia element and for all I knew, this match could have been the beginning of a war between the US and Russia, I was a kid and didn't know any better. The outcome was not so much a proud patriotic moment, Ninotchka won the crown and the show was over. The following week, I tuned in again in hopes of seeing a rematch but it seems it was replaced with something else. I grabbed the TV Guide, read it from front to back and found no mention of the show. I did find a couple of videos in a video store in Pensacola called GLOW 1 and GLOW 2 which featured the pilot episode as well as other matches from season 1 which I became obsessed with.

Season 3 & 4 GLOW Girls

A few months later, I am watching He-Man on WJTC channel 44 and a commercial for THE NEW Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling beginning Saturday at 6pm only on WJTC. OMG it's THE SHOW!!! My ass was glued to the living room floor in front of the TV at 5pm, intent on NOT missing the show. When the show began, it had a slightly different look to it. The show featured a different group of girls. A few from season one and two were there in the opening credits including Hollywood, Mt. Fiji, Sally the Farmer's Daughter, Vine, Ninotchka and Dementia, though she looked different. This episode seemed to have a lighter feel to it than the episode I saw months before. The first match featured a bad ass British woman named Godiva that beat the crap out of a woman with a gold glitter fetish with an annoying laugh named Tiffany Mellon, in later episodes we find that she and her tag team partner, the amazing Roxy Astor, are the rich girl replacements for the season 1 and 2 tag team Tina Ferrari and Ashley Cartier. The second match featured Babe the Farmer's Daughter (Sally's NEW sister) with Tulsa against Hollywood and a new bad girl named MTV. It was definitely weird seeing Hollywood team up with someone else that wasn't Vine but MTV was entertaining also. The next match was an arm wrestling matching which featured Mt Fiji and the new giant replacement for Matilda the Hun, Big Bad Mama which ended up being an arm wrestling match featuring the manager for the Bad Girls, Aunt Kitty against Jackie Stallone. Incidentally, Jackie Stallone (though not technically a wrestler) was the first GLOW girl I met. Jackie actually gave me a not so accurate life reading based on feeling my ass...NO JOKE. The next match featured two new girls Zelda the Brain and a girl from the land down under with no Australian accent named Beastie the Road Warrior. The last match of the episode featured Sally the Farmer's Daughter and was for the GLOW crown, now held by Ninotchka. Ninotchka kept the crown until later in the season when she gave it up and turned face to become a good girl leading to the Run for the Rubies tournament. All in all, I loved the NEW GLOW. It was different but still the same as the other episodes I'd seen.

Beastie the Road Warrior

Vine

As season 3 progressed, new characters were introduced and some older ones were totally phased away. Vine appeared once, Little Fiji came back for one match and then she was gone again. One of the strangest character changes happened with Dementia. For those of you that didn't realize, Dementia from season 1 and 2 was a totally different woman. Season 3 Dementia, played by Nancy Daley, seemed to have a second personality that surfaced halfway through the season known as the Widow Woman, also played by Nancy. From what I have been told, the appearances of Dementia during season 4 were actually taped during season 3. The final episode of season 3 ended with Cheyenne Cher winning the GLOW crown after beating Godiva thanks to interference from Roxy Astor. To this day, Godiva and Roxy are still holding this grudge. ;-) After this episode, I waited patiently for season 4 to begin but the stations in my area opted not to air season 4. The closest station to me that aired season 4 was in Mississippi at 2am on Saturday nights/Sunday morning. We got NO signal from there so whatever became of the show after Cheyenne Cher won the crown became a mystery to me for years until I hooked up with GLOW fans on Facebook and YouTube.

To fill the void of no GLOW show, I tried to watch other wrestling shows but nothing came close to the entertainment value I found in GLOW. After GLOW, ESPN in it's still early days, aired a ladies wrestling show really late on weekend nights but it was gritty and the production value was poor and eventually dropped from the lineup. I got REALLY into WWF for a while and my next door neighbors took me to see some of the matches that were held at the Pensacola Civic Center. Men's wrestling seemed to appeal to me more at this point, puberty kicked in and I was a muscle loving twink. After attending the live WWF show, I was a bit disappointed because what I saw looked nothing like what I saw on TV, everything looked practiced and the wrestlers just couldn't sell pain but I kept watching WWF on TV until Doink the Clown made his first appearance and I was done.

Doink the Clown

Many years passed, I still vividly remembered GLOW's 3rd Season as if it were yesterday and as embarrassing as it may be, I remember a lot of the girl's individual pre-match raps. When I began befriending people on MySpace and Facebook, I stumbled upon Beastie the Road Warrior's personal page and friend-ed her. I was working as a telephone psychic at the time and offered her a free reading. That free 10 minute tarot reading was the beginning of a four hour phone call that ended at 3am when my phone's battery finally called it a night. The most amazing aspect of meeting up and befriending a GLOW girl is certainly a unique experience. When you are friends with a GLOW girl, they seem to come as a package deal. My connection with Beastie led to friendships with a few other girls as well as friendships with a massive amount of GLOW fans.

The fans of GLOW are probably as unique and fun as the girls themselves. Michael Karr, Richard Hughes, Adam Soper and GLOW fan Mike Rand are just a few names that you'll most likely see on many of the girl's pages. Mike Rand's YouTube channel is chock full of GLOW moments. Some of these fans have been turned into GLOW girls via the creative artwork of Gener de Vera.

Shortly after I began speaking to Beastie, she shared an idea of a television show that she wanted to kick around and get produced. I was all ears and ideas and helped her further develop the concept. I spent a week at her home in Tennessee writing the package for the show which would star not only herself, but 8 or 9 other GLOW Girls including Daisy, Roxy Astor, Ashley Cartier, Hollywood, Lightning, Corp Kelly 2, Little Egypt and Evangelina. Unfortunately, the show's concept was not well received. We first pitched it to Matt Cimber, the original director of GLOW, who in turn turned us down. The concept was great for the time but the truth was that we were pitching a show that had a theme similar to other shows that were on the tail end of a fad which seemed to be winding down. Though the show never happened, the fact that I was able to work on something related to a show I loved as a kid was awesome in itself.

So I guess all of the above can be considered the answer to the first part of Roxy Astor's question...How I became a fan of GLOW. The answer to the second part of the question is much shorter but nonetheless, complicated. What GLOW meant to me? For the most part, you will hear the girls speak of their involvement with the show as empowering, not only for them but also for young women in general. What the GLOW girls didn't realize was their power of empowerment wasn't limited to just women. I was a shy, nerdy kid that had no creative or assertive bone in my body and I was bullied and made fun of. I didn't really learn any effective fighting moves...the closed fist rule doesn't apply to real life fights, the Buckingham Bounce doesn't work when you've got no turnbuckle and a sunset flip ends before it starts when someone kicks you in the balls. The theatricality of the skits and matches opened up my mind to accept "out of the box" entertainment. Had it not been for GLOW, I probably wouldn't have been as receptive to musical theatre in my teens. The bright colors and even the GLITTER, which I'm still obsessed definitely show in my current creative and artistic abilities. The show's mix of oddball characters made me realize that it was OK not to live an existence of trying to blend in and fit into what others believe to be as normal. If you take a look at the other fans of the show, you will see this is a common trait we share, most of us have strong personalities.

Beastie and I in the truck on the way to Knoxville.

One more question that many of the girls have asked me would be..."Who was your favorite GLOW Girl?" To be completely honest, I didn't have a favorite GLOW Girl. I was a fan of the Bad Girls AND the Good Girls. I did have favorite matches, Roxy vs. Dementia, Beastie vs. anyone because she would usually pulverize them and get disqualified. Evangelina's matches were fun because her character was like a grownup refugee from the Children of the Corn and her methods of teaching the gospel were certainly of an unholy nature...in a good way. I loved watching Sally and Hollywood go at it because I knew on some level, there was something more going on behind the scenes and when they were in front of those cameras it seemed very real. Picking one favorite out of the 4 seasons would be like handing a kid a case of candy and telling them that he could have just one piece. Each girl brought something unique to the show.

BTW check out the amazing documentary GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. It's on Netflix, Amazon, Vudu and pretty much every online streaming movie place. It's definitely a great little blast from the past and gives some amazing insight on the inner workings of the show that we didn't get to see as viewers. Babe the Farmer's Daughter aka Ursula now owns the rights to GLOW. She's tried to get the promotion started back up but it seems the stars have not yet aligned for it to happen. Over the years, Babe has been released DVD's featuring episodes from each season but unfortunately she doesn't have access to the complete archive of GLOW footage...yes it does exist and maybe one day an arrangement can be made to get them all out on DVD as complete season releases or even on Netflix or Hulu.

Many people may remember GLOW as an 80's cheese fest or a T&A show. Some people just didn't get it, my partner is one of those people. For me, as well as a few others, GLOW became a part of who we are. Not as wrestlers, though I did a little pro wrestling training. GLOW gave us the power to transform and bring the oddball characters we knew we were on the inside to the outside. So that's it, my long and drawn out story of how I became a fan of GLOW and what it meant to me. Call me a freak, I don't care, no matter how many years have passed, those 4 seasons of GLOW are still magical to me. I could ramble on for days and it seems that I already have. So which GLOW girl was YOUR favorite?

Job Hunt 2.0

This year has definitely been an odd one for me. After two and a half years I decided to quit Chuy's and work for the O'Charley's that was about 10 minutes from my house. The business appeared to be there moreso than Chuy's and the commute was a fraction of what I'd been dealing with so it seemed a good trade off. O'Charley's was good at first but it seemed that when our location closed for a week and renovated, it became ratchet central and it was obvious that "my kind" was not wanted there. I got hired on a La Hacienda, trained and was told that I was going to be a backup server until I was added to the next schedule and I'd be called with the schedule. No one called me, I called them, they said they'd call me and I never got a call so I said...I'll try Uncle Julios. I really wanted to love Uncle Julios...my enthusiasm turned to disgust very quickly.

Uncle Julio's training was horrible. Apparently they were so desperate to get us on the floor before the weekend that they scheduled us 2 doubles and shoved 4 days of training into 2 days. I had no clue what any of the food tasted like and still don't. When I was at Chuy's, they forced us to eat EVERYTHING in the course of a week before we opened. The other 4 people in the training class with me were less into training and more into playing which set me up to almost explode on them within the first few days. My first day on the floor and the GM asks me if I can work that night and he'll make sure I make over $120...that fucker left that afternoon and I got stuck in a BS section in the back that was being held for a party of 30 that I was to take with 2 other people including one of the trainees from my class. The party of 30 became a party of 25 and the managers forced me to take 12 of the people among all of my tables and another girl to take the rest of them. All separate checks and impatient from the time they sat their butts in the seats until they left. The only person that tipped me decent from that party was a girl I worked with at Chuy's all the rest treated me like crap. I said NEVER AGAIN will I put myself in that position. I had asked for all daytime shifts to leave my lucrative times open for UBER. BTW, $2 Taco Tuesdays are the worst shift I've ever seen in my life, it's like everyone that normally goes to McDonalds goes to Uncle Julios and tips the same as they would at McD's.

When I started, I let the managers know that I couldn't work the evening of Oct 27 before they even thought to work on the schedule. I'd been there a week, making marginal money because it's slow as hell at that location. Sunday rolls around and I'm told the schedule is out. I check it and find that I'm scheduled several nights including the taco tuesday night. Terry, Ernie and I had spent $100 each on tickets to Phantom (the one I wrote the scathing review about) and told the manager that I'd requested that day off in Hot Schedules and let them know before I started. I was told to get it covered. I was also told that there were 5 house shifts that night and they had to be covered before my shift could be covered. I also looked at the house shift list and it seemed there were 20 uncovered shifts throughout the week and not enough employees to cover them. I realized this was a sign of bad management. I also started thinking about conversations other servers were having in regards to making no money, looking for other jobs and then it hit me, if they are talking about this, I'm not the only one making no money and dealing with crazy stuff. The other nail in the coffin was their tip out policy. Most restaurants make servers tip out a small percentage to the bartenders, food runners and support staff, usually no more than 4%. At O'Charley's our tipout was 1.5%. At Uncle Julios it was 4.5% our gross sales and sometimes an additional 1.5% for a plater(whatever that is???) and an additional 1% on a food runner. The numbers are definitely not in the server's favor. There was all sorts of "not right" going on in the place. They are desperate for servers and are losing them through their own foolish attempts to keep them with the company. During the week, I witnessed 2 servers get offers to become managers. This is the first place I've ever seen this, one of those servers had been with the company for just 8 months. Yay for a management position but do you really want to work in a place that makes rash decisions with servers like that?

So when the manager told me that I have to get my shift covered for Tuesday, my reply was "You might have to do that yourself as well as all the others because I think today is my last day." I went to the bathroom and sent the GM a text that read "Hi Bill, this is Adrian. Thank you for the opportunity but I feel that Uncle Julio's isn't a good match for me." I worked the rest of the shift and my last table was Terry and Ernie. I did my side work and didn't come back. I kept Hot Schedules on my phone and noticed that they added several shifts to my schedule after that day. I'm thinking they were A. Trying to entice me to stay. or B. Piss me off. Also, the fact that my log in name for my schedule was "AndyMorgan" was a bit of a tip off that they don't have their shit together.

Oh yeah, Ernie ordered Chicken Tamales and Terry ordered Cheese and Onion Enchiladas. Both weren't happy with their food but didn't complain or send it back. Terry said it was the worst Mexican he'd ever had. Unfortunately, I'd have to agree that everything I had their was subpar, even their queso dip is nasty...I comes in a refrigerated bag. BTW, there's a bathroom in the kitchen...NO JOKE, someone is pooping within 10 feet of the place that the food is made. There are bags of rice stored in front of the bathroom door.

I have an interview tomorrow at another place. ;-)