[Fic] "Weregild," part 17 -- Inception/Anita Blake

I am, in fact, still writing this story. (Just as I am, in fact, still writing all my interminably delayed WIPs... but let that go. *sigh*) And look! I finally got Anita and Richard on-screen! (1,475 words)

( Weregild, part 17 )

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...I have a suspicion that my frequent annoyance at Anita (and often Richard) is bleeding through a bit more than I would prefer. Then again, I think if we weren't seeing the series through Anita's eyes, she would come off rather unpleasantly there, too. So this is mostly Anita without the mitigating effect of seeing her emotions and motivations from the inside... but yeah, some of it is just that I want someone to call her on her shit sometimes.

Richard too. Hamilton punishes him a lot, but mostly for things that aren't really his fault, while the issues he ought to deal with are either ignored or kicked down the road. Maybe this gets fixed after... I think I stopped reading around Cerulean Sins, maybe? The last book I clearly remember is Narcissus in Chains, but I must have read one or two beyond that to get fed up enough to quit the series. So Cerulean Sins or Incubus Dreams. (I KNOW I didn't read Danse Macabre, because I am sure I'd remember Jean-Claude opening a dance club. *wry*) Anyway, maybe Hamilton gets over her problem with Richard later in the series, but she was still treating him very awkwardly last I knew.

But enough of my blather.

Dreamwidth poll for quick responses!

Poll #8368 Weregild, part 17

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: Just the Poll Creator, participants: 7

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Tickybox!
5 (71.4%)

wherein Liz complains about her job

Yesterday, to put it bluntly, sucked.

Monday is the day when we get in most of our new magazines each week, swap them with the old issues on the shelves, and pull and return a number of other old issues according to a call-in sheet that STNC (our distribution company, which is also our parent company) sends us. We are supposed to get the magazines sometime between 9am and 11am, when a delivery driver arrives to pick up all the transfers, newspaper returns, and paperwork we've collected over the weekend. By 2pm, when we do afternoon cash-up, all the magazines should be up and the call-in should be well on its way to completion.

When I arrived at noon, the magazines had not yet been delivered.

JM, RE, and MS had been figuring that maybe the driver was just late... but noon was too late to be explained by traffic or changed delivery patterns. So JM called STNC to ask what was going on.

The delivery driver, when contacted, claimed that he had rung the doorbell on our back door, received no answer, and then just up and left.

Firstly, even when the doorbell is working (which is not 100% of the time) it is often impossible to hear out front -- there's a whole room and a closed door in between, plus the front room is often noisy, what with the radio, customers, and various ambient noises from the lottery machine, the coolers, the coffee machine, the registers, etc. Secondly, if you are delivering to a store and nobody comes to the back door, your response should not be to just shrug and leave. The proper response is to find another door and ask someone to come help you.

Anyway, STNC told the driver to get back to us ASAP, and he finally showed up around 1pm. In the meantime, I finished the weekend newspaper returns and made bags of rolling tobacco, since we wouldn't be able to do those things in the afternoon like normal. (RE and MS took their half-hour breaks.) MS, RE, and I did jointly get all the magazines up, but I had to abscond out back halfway through to do cash-up and then take my half-hour break. We decided, therefore, to forget about the call-in or packing up the returns and just work on the daily list of tasks, like restocking the coolers, bringing up supplies from the cellar, grinding coffee-to-go, and so on.

Traffic in the store slows down dramatically around 5:30pm on Mondays, so I did finally get the call-in finished around 8pm, but I had to leave the returns sitting out back for somebody to deal with on Tuesday, and I never really got a chance to slow down and just breathe.

In short, not a good day.

Also, the Ithaca Journal -- after making a big fuss about us having the returns ready for them on Monday mornings instead of Tuesday or Wednesday, as we'd been used to -- completely neglected to send anyone to pick up the returns or deliver our invoice last week. They did not send anyone this Monday either. I wrote a note to PM about that. If they didn't send anyone today, I will call their office tomorrow and make annoyed noises until they fix this.