Sober Week, pt. 2

And Sober Week lasted all of 44 hours... Just some half an hour after I posted my last blog, I'm at a bar with my girlfriend and some friends, having a beer and a Crowmoor... Go figure.

It's kind of annoying that when you go to a bar/restaurant/cafe in Finland, your choices of drink are limited to coffee (2e), juice (2-4e), soda (3e), beer (4.50e), and Cider (5e). There's always water, but fuck me if I'm paying a euro for a small glass of water. Of the other choices, the juice is ridiculously overpriced, I've already had 4 cups of coffee today, and I quit drinking soda a bit over a year ago. (traveling to America this summer and drinking a gallon of Dr. Pepper each day for 2 weeks doesn't count...). What does that leave? Alcohol. And no fucking way am I paying any ridiculously insane sum for a tiny cocktail (try 15 euros for a Long Island Ice Tea, half the size of something you'd get in Budapest for 7 euros...) So, with no other options available to me, (going home didn't appeal to me at all), I enjoying a nice, cool beer. Why do I make plans and resolutions which I can never hold up for longer than a few days? Oh well, I love beer. End of story.

Sober Week

Some make this clear for me: what defines alcoholism? For the last month I've created a habit of going to a bar almost everyday of the week, especially after work. (I work in customer service, I need a beer afterwards...) Would one consider that alcoholism? Even the tiniest bit? Ok, to be fair, the last two months in Budapest before I moved back to Finland are a haze cuz Erik and I got drunk pretty much every single day, so my situation does not compare to that. At all. Shall I just call it a work-related activity, as I REALLY need to wind down and complain about the nuisances, the bitches, the wiseguys, and the nutcases I have to deal with on a daily basis. (I work 3-7 days a week, between 25 and 55 hours a week...)

It's not that I worry about becoming an alcoholic. I don't. There are no instances of alcoholism in my family used, so by genealogy alone, I should be fine. It's just, Finland is not the country you wanna go for a drink every day, less so with my wages. Let's see: 1 beer = 3.50 euros to 6 euros, and you can never have just one, can you?

That times seven equals a lot of money. (2 Schools of Beer Mathematics: 1. You start thinking how much money you've spent on drink, and all the wonderful things you could've bought with that money. 2. You start counting the cost of things in the amount of beers you could've bought with that money...) This spending of money has led my girlfriend and I to spend a Sober week this week. Time will tell how long that lasts, as yesterday, monday, day one of Sober Week, after work, I was craving a beer and my girlfriend had the same primal urge for a Crowmoor Cider... Keep your fingers crossed for us, and if you're at a bar this week, drinking, have one for us, won't you? =)

A Lovely Day At Work

To really stretch your patience, go visit your local neighbourhood supermarket, situated in the not-so-nice area, with 3 bars, and low-income, government sustained housing right next door. Better yet, go work there. That's what I did today, and do every now and then. Every day is the same; you have the grumpy people who'll complain about EVERYTHING, the grandmas you insist you be their butler, the neighbourhood drunks (and there's a lot of them!), the narcs who every now and then are so fucked that they don't realize that someone will notice them trying to walk or run out with a sixpack of beer under their arm, the kids of alcoholics who think they're really tough and rules don't apply to them, and and any other group of fucking nuisances who I might have forgotten to mention. Let's son, on today's schedule we had several men too drunk to talk, trying to buy A LOT of beer; several narcs who had to be followed around the store, in case something just miraculously ends up in their pockets; a few people too fucked up to realize that having no money on your account means you cannot buy anything;several little 10-14yr old kids of alcoholics threatening to beat me up, calling me a faggot cuz we wouldn't let them play on the slot machine (which is restricted under 15, and anyone under 15 playing on the machine is breaking the law).

That was merely today's happenings. It's like this, and worse, EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK. I'm only an extra, which means I move from store to store, 3-7 days a week. Of course, this isn't what all little supermarkets are like, but quite a few. Everywhere you must deal with threatening customers, whiners, people complaining about the most mundane shit, alcoholics, brokeass motherfuckers trying to haggle with you about the cost of beer, last minute shoppers who aren't in a hurry to leave, little babies crying and screaming, narcs misbehaving or being threatening, leaving you to worry about what they may be capable of doing in their fucked up state, social outcasts shoplifting (several times a week, 6 days in a row the police were called to the store this summer to catch shoplifters, ranging from a loot of 1.05 euros to 150 euros. I even managed to physically catch 2 of the regular narcs running past my cash register carrying beer under their jackets one lovely monday evening...), kids on the slot machine, kids trying to buy alcohol or cigarettes, swearing at you for not selling them cuz they "forgot their ID in the car" or "home", just to mention a few of the fucking annoying shitheads who one must deal with all the time in this line of work. And hey, I'm an extra. Atleast I can choose where I work. Imagine the regular workers who deal with this same crap 37.5 hours a week.

So the next time you're in a supermarket, and see any of this shit I've just mentioned, take a minute to think about the workers at the store. And please, if you see someone shoplifting, tell someone who works there. It's not too much to ask, is it?

As a final thought, remember that the person sitting behind the cash register serving you is also a human being, possibly a student just like you, trying to make ends meet. They're not that low is society; atleast they have a job...