Tying up Loose Ends

There are 3 things I want to write about and without further adieu... 1. I had a job in a sandwich shop. I thought I would get out of the education business and work in a sandwich shop. A new, high quality family-owned shop opened within walking distance and I thought that would be far less responsibility and headache than being in charge of on-average 30 students at a time so I went for it. It was a huge pay cut and I thought, "This is probably mostly a job for high-schoolers" so I didn't think there would be a LOT of employees my age there. Yeah, I was a couple decades older than any employees other than the owners. There were very strong pros and cons that I just want to note. A downside is that I REALLY struggled with maintaining my identity while working there. They gave me a LOT of hours, way more than I wanted and it felt like I was always at work. While at work, our hair always has to be pulled back. Our nails always had to be really short. Also, there was a protocol for doing almost every task there. They do not want us coming up with our own ways of doing anything. We were not allowed to use our phones at all. When I'm there for 7-8 hours at a time, with my hair pulled all back (which is almost never a way I wear it by choice) and I'm just going through tasks that are very regulated and I can't communicate with anybody outside of that place for the whole time (oh yeah, no breaks by the way), I really started to struggle to feel like a person. I'd come home tired and then needed to do many of the things I normally fit into the time I'd been gone and it was just draining. That would not have been sustainable to my mental health but there are a lot of pros and I'd rather talk about that. I had a job in a sandwich shop when I was 16 years old, at Schlotzsky's Deli. When I was first hired, they scheduled me for a variety of different things. I was a great student and good at memorizing things. I'd cram for tests at the last minute and ace them all the time. I'd been sent home with a list of sandwiches and what goes on each of them but for some reason, I could NOT recall sandwich toppings. I was SO SLOW at making sandwiches!!! It was painful for me and painful for the other employees. I still remember another guy my age, named Joe, who begged our manager, Rich, to never let me make sandwiches again and we were both relieved when that never happened. I mostly ended up doing front-of-the-restaurant things-cashiering, cleaning the dining room & restrooms, stocking everything a customer would see, and all of that stuff. Going to make sandwiches almost 30 years later is a whole different experience. My memory is definitely not what it used to be and yet I've had years of practice of making lots of people foods in customized ways at home. Now I found sandwich-making a breeze and I got really fast at it and now I was the one impatient and frustrated when the other employees struggled to pick it up. Also, at my age, I'm much more confident and don't need a lot of direction or approval. It feels much better to operate with confidence instead of wondering all the time if the boss thinks I'm doing okay. I love the owners! It's a father & his wife and their son & his wife that own it and they are wonderful people that really put their heart & soul into the place. I've used a lot of past-tense verbs here so it's probably no surprise that I don't still work there. It was a very physical job and I liked that overall but I'm still recovering from a car accident and the routine would have made recovering fully impossible so for now, I'm back in the education business after all. I'm glad I had the chance to go give something else a try though. I mostly found it to be a good experience but I don't think I could have stayed there for years. 2. This is a petty complaint but seriously, what is up with all of the selling on the shows we have casually watched over the years?! Everything from Good Morning, America to Entertainment Tonight. They used to be a kind of burst of pop-culture-y news and entertainment but now there are dedicated segments to present a bunch of crap they want you to buy. They always say it's on sale-"deal of the century" and all that jazz-but that's just marketing. We already see commercials and get bombarded with stuff people want us to buy. I HATE that part of the show is direct selling. The shows aren't that valuable to start with and I've never been a regular watcher. It just makes me not want to watch at all. It's not worth it to hear about the Kardashians, who I don't care about in the first place. Even our local news shows will sometimes present several "deals of the day" and sell garbage there, too. Good thing I don't watch mainstream news much these days either. 3. Finally, I just went to the A.I. Doc movie tonight, which actually cost a lot to see in the theater. The ticket price didn't sound too bad for a Friday Night Flick so I started checking out and then with the fees & taxes, each ticket was close to 50% more than the original ticket price!!! Yikes! Unfortunately, it wasn't worth all the moo-lah. The director was dealing with his existential crisis related to A.I. and it's role in the world as he learned he would soon become a father for the first time. After nearly 2 hours, that's the journey we went on was his existential crisis, not a deeper understanding of A.I. or technology or the people running the main operations with AGI. They interviewed the biggest names in A.I. in the country and what did we really learn from the interviews in this movie? Nothing! A.I. could be good. A.I. could be bad-that's pretty much the broken record message most experts said in various forms but we didn't really gain understanding. Don't most of us know that already before watching the movie? I don't need an expert to tell me this. If I had an expert available to interview, I would want to know what ethical battles they've personally faced in the race to the A.I. domination. I would want to know how their views have changed and about if and how any of their boundaries with technology have changed. Walk us through the ways that you, as an expert, have navigated the complications of the ever-changing tech. I would want to know how their projects or experiences with A.I. have changed their relationships, whether professionally or personally. There are all kinds of things I would want to know but I would never say, "The whole A.I. thing-is it good or is it bad?" and get their diplomatic answer to that simple and meaningless question and say, "Ok. Thanks for the interview." There are many movies that are really just somebody exploring how they feel about something. I am usually a little annoyed when I realize a movie is pretty much just that-somebody exploring their own feelings about a certain thing. However, I find it far more offensive when it's done with a documentary!!! I expect more. There's a certain amount I want to learn and grow from a documentary and none of that happened with this one. Probably most people are not rushing out to see this show. There were 6 other people in the theater with us and that's probably telling. However, if somebody is considering it, I would not recommend it. A.I. could have written a better documentary itself-ha! That's the real irony there. That covers my loose ends for now.