Red Green, we miss thee already.

Many of you are probably wondering where I've been lately. Well, as a matter of fact, so am I. I have no idea. I just woke up one day in a bathtub full of ice with a note pinned to my chest that said something about my kidneys being gone, or there being no kidney pie left, or something. Maybe it was about a kidney shaped swimming pool. Anyway, I tossed the note, it didn't seem important, though you have to wonder about people who would pin a note to someone's chest. What, sticky tack or tape isn't good enough? Sheesh.
Oh wait, that might have been a dream, now that I think about it. Yup, definitely a dream. Although I might be going to the doctor, just to be sure...
So about three weeks ago I decided that KalTire wasn't the place for me, so I quit...wait, let me ammend that statement. About two months ago (we'll say three days after I started working there) I decided that KalTire wasn't the place for me, so I spent some time there making some much needed money while I looked for another job. About three weeks ago, we'll call it 17 days, I had my last day there. Now, I am working with the Sign Guys again, that crazy job where I spend my time in Home Depots doing signs and the such. They immediately shipped me off to Edmonton, where I spent about two weeks. I left on a Monday and returned home on a Friday, so that would be 12 days. In there I went home for a couple days over the Thanksgiving weekend. It was actually a pretty good day. This week we are starting to do some work at Zellers in Calgary. Don't know exactly what yet, we'll find that out tomorrow.
Now, some of you may have heard me rant about Home Depot before and may be wondering why I would go back there. Well, the pay is much better than KalTire, and I actually do enjoy the work for the most part. And this time I go in knowing what the deal is, so I am completely unconcerned about it. I don't have to worry about the stupid stuff, I just have to do the work. I'm not the one that has to deal with the lunacy that is Home Depot.
I want to give some examples of silly things that have go on at Home Depot. Let's see - we put up aisle directories, and at the bottom of the directories is a panel, 3' wide x 2' high (maybe only 18", not 2', I can't remember). These panels are filled with a variety of orange signs that advertise some permanent Home Depot things (Low Price Guarantee, Truck Rental, Gift Cards, etc). Some aisle directories are only 2 feet wide, and they know this. But they don't send us any directories that are 2 feet wide, so we have to cut down the 3 foot ones. And then they don't provide any signs that are only two feet wide, so those panels have to remain empty, even though they want them all filled. But there is nothing we can do.
At the Edmonton store, someone randomly threw out some of our signs. Not all of them, just a few that we had on a cart. They had to take some other signs OFF of the cart so that they could throw out the rest, and they completely ignored some of the stuff that was relatively haphazardly strewn about, and just threw out those specific signs, the ones we needed to finish our last night. Why? We don't know. We were just lucky that nothing had been thrown on top of them before we got there.
But this is my favourite thing that I have seen. At each store they have one of those height measuring strips that you see at convenience stores so that you can tell how tall the armed robber is when he is running out of the store. But Home Depot's is a little odd, and in some ways useless. You see, it is in feet and decimal points. What I mean is that I am 6.17 feet tall, or something around there. I can just see the conversation now...
Home Depot Guy (HDG): We were robbed officer!
Police Dude (PD): Can you tell me how tall he was?
HDG: Yeah, he was 6.42 feet tall.
PD: 6.42? How tall is that?
HDG: I'm not really sure. Less than seven feet for sure.
PD: Well, why don't you have inches on your measuring thing?
HDG: We are in Canada you know. We use the metric system here.
PD: Okay, then shouldn't it be in metres? Wouldn't the guy be something like 250 centimetres tall, or 2.5 metres?
HDG: Don't be ridiculous. No one knows how tall 2 metres is. That's just silly.
PD: I hope they come back and rob you again (walks off shaking his head, hoping he gets transferred to a more sane case, like the sighting of Elvis, Benjamin Franklin and Elmo the muppet robbing the convenience store before getting away in the UFO flown by Handy Smurf).
This is the sort of decision that Home Depot makes all the time and just doesn't seem to make much sense if you think about it for longer than a second. But hey, whatevs. I get paid either way. Maybe Zellers will make more sense...
Oh, one other thing. If ever you see that I have written a story on my BLOG, please comment. Us creative types are completely useless without some sort of feed back. Even if you didn't really like it, just post 'Meh'. At least then I know you've read it.
That is all. So until next time, keep your stick on the ice.