Working On A Quirky Graph

The best laid plans for the day were shot before the day even began.

I quit my job over a year ago, completely burned out on a company that specialized in glitter and googly eyes. The customers were a mixed bag of awesome and tiring. I had several really cool team members, and some really tiring ones to work with, but in the end, to save my sanity and my pride, I quit.

After a week of laying on the couch, reading everything I could get my hands on, I realized I was bored and needed to find a hobby, or a job or something to keep myself busy. I ended up going to work for a coffee company, in loose definitions. All my knowledge of how to make coffee went out the window and I had to relearn how to brew, learn how to make espresso and lattes, as well as the dreaded frozen drinks. In case you were wondering, what they say is true: The quickest way to kill a barista’s soul is by ordering something frozen.

I delighted in being the lowest person on the totem pole. After years of being the top dog, it was with glee that I turned any and all problems over to my supervisors who were 20+ years my junior. I’m sure I had the most maniacal of grins every time someone needed to speak to the manager and I could walk away. However, manager muscle memory and habits crept in and I started taking care of problems on my own. I was still not the boss, but I was making the decisions of one. Caught in a trap of my own making, I began to get frustrated putting on the apron.

Several things occurred in a short time frame. COVID slammed into the states and the coffee company shut several stores down, offering their employees the option to stay and work with a temporary raise, or stay at home and be paid their normal amount. Several employees took the second option, but I choose the first. I still remembered being at home with nothing to do 5 months prior and wasn’t eager to jump back into that groundhog day scenario.

I was also considering, finally, what my next step should be. I began to look at LaunchCode, and their CoderGirl program, when my sister suggested going into Data Analytics. I joined the program at Washington University and was immediately worried. I hadn’t been in school since I was 22, much less something that focused on math and statistics and being able to understand and analyze them.

I just finished the program. I am still making coffee, but now I’m being paid a little better to be a supervisor. I find I’m butting heads with the manager lately. She can’t seem to understand the concept of asking people for their pronouns, or even trying to pronounce people’s names correctly. I’m constantly offended on my team members behalf. She also believes her immune system is stronger than COVID and that she will never get ill. I received a call from her last night indicating that a team member had contracted COVID and because she had been in contact with the individual, she was one of 11 people who have to isolate for 14 days.

Meanwhile, I realize I’m lucky I wasn’t in contact with the individual. I don’t have to isolate. She still needed me, however to rearrange my day today to get a cleaning crew in the store, as well as help other stores come in and get the perishables out. So the plans I had, an interview with a company to use the skills I just paid to learn, were put off until next week so I could help out. It gives me time to practice my skills at Hacker Rank, as well as work on a project for a local homeless kitchen (that they have no idea I’m working on).

Which I did none of today. I helped out at the store for a bit, then came home and read paranormal gay romance. I start my day fresh tomorrow, work on being productive, try and resolve in my head how to gather information from Mapbox and put it into a database, only read one book. At least, that’s the plan…