Red Robin was a Hot Mess

This is being written from my phone, so please excuse any grammar and punctuation errors.

For a background, my undergraduate is in human resources they have taken classes on OSHA I have taken courses on food safety and I have created and implemented training programs. That being said, I am not stretching the truth when I say that working for Red Robin was a sh*t show. Not only was I barely trained, and the online training videos were skipped because the internet at the restaurant was so bad I believe, the people I was trained by were barely proficient at their job. No training program is perfect, but when the training program you are on you then try to follow up on regarding either process is or items available as dictated by the training and are then told “that’s not how we do it” or “we don’t have that”, you begin to scratch your. When those head scratches turn into confusion, and then you get told you need more training days because you question the training you’re given because the directions you were given can’t be carried out and your trainers don’t know where your questions came from, you get fed up.

Furthermore, when trainers and managers come from another state to assist and train staff while your managers are out due to a COVID exposure, and everything you’re doing is exceptionally different than the way they do things you especially begin to question your processes and training. When they train you in a different way than your other coworkers in the same position have been trained, anytime when your training doesn’t match up, destruction of a square you are frustrated and alienated. What is extra frustrating and alienating is the fact that these are not franchises, this is a corporation and therefore everything should be standard with few, if any, exceptions.

I cannot express how glad I am to no longer be a Red Robin employee. I am also seriously questioning whether I should continue being a patron given my difficulty is as an employee. Maybe it is just the storefront I was at, which I will conceal at this time.

BBH: Book Review Medium

Book Blogger Hop is a weekly, Friday through Thursday, question themed post. Originally created by Crazy for Books and reignited by Coffee Addicted Writer, its purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers their own blog.

9th – 15th – Where do you post your reviews? (submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews)

I post book reviews to GoodReads, to this blog, and to the site it was awarded by if it is an ARC or free for feedback.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s “Bridal Ballad”

I am reading Edgar Allan Poe’s Complete Poetical Works and I’m trying to take my time and not just read the poems to get to the next one. There is so much in them, that I think I’m going to read it once through, then read it with a companion that analyzes each poem.

For this one, for the “Bridal Ballad”, I could not wait. I read it, it touched me, I read it again, then I read this guide, and read it again. I recommend you do the same.

The ring is on my hand,
And the wreath is on my brow;
Satins and jewels grand
Are all at my command.
And I am happy now.

And my lord he loves me well;
But, when first he breathed his vow,
I felt my bosom swell
For the words rang as a knell,
And the voice seemed his who fell
In the battle down the dell,
And who is happy now.

But he spoke to reassure me,
And he kissed my pallid brow,
While a reverie came o’er me,
And to the churchyard bore me,
And I sighed to him before me,
Thinking him dead D’Elormie,
“Oh, I am happy now!

And thus the words were spoken,
And thus the plighted vow,
And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Behold the golden keys
That proves me happy now!

Would to God I could awaken
For I dream I know not how,
And my soul is sorely shaken
Lest an evil step be taken,
Lest the dead who is forsaken
May not be happy now.



1845.

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4th of July – Reflecting, Not Celebrating

By Dana P. Saxon: 9 Reasons Why I Don’t Celebrate the 4th of July
-Here are the bullets, read the article for full explanations.
-Three-Fifths Compromise (1787)
-Fugitive Slave Clause (1789)
-Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 (1793)
-Cotton gin (1794)
-First law to prohibit “importing” enslaved Africans (1808)
-Nat Turner’s revolt and execution (1831)
-Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (1850)
-Dred Scott decision (1857)
-Frederick Douglass summed it up best (1852)

By Courtney Vinopal: For Some Americans, July 4th is a time not to celebrate, but to reflect
For some Americans, July 4 is a time not to celebrate, but reflect
This Fourth of July, Americans are grappling with a global pandemic and an intense period of political and social unrest, driven by calls to reform policing and address systemic racism that dates back to the country’s founding. While some people see the holiday as a chance to celebrate democracy — or “the greatest political experiment ever tried” — others are questioning what it means to be patriotic, and whether the country is fulfilling the promise of its founding for everyone.

By Alaina Nutile: 10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Independence Day
7. The U.S. Isn’t the Only Country Celebrating its Independence Today
July 4th marks days of independence in both the Philippines and Rwanda. July 4 is known as “Republic Day” in the Philippines and commemorates the date when the U.S. officially recognized this Southeast Asian nation as an independent state in 1946. Rwandans celebrate “Liberation Day” on the 4th, which marks 1994 end date of the Rwandan Genocide.

By Karen Green Braithwaite, as told to Lynette Nicholas: I’m a Black American—Here’s Why I Don’t Celebrate the Fourth of July
For many people in this country, the Fourth of July represents some very ugly truths hidden within the fabric of America’s legacy.

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BBH: Book Shelf Space

Book Blogger Hop is a weekly, Friday through Thursday, question themed post. Originally created by Crazy for Books and reignited by Coffee Addicted Writer, its purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers their own blog.

This week, 6/26 – 7/2, the topic is “When you run out of bookshelf space, what do you do” and was submitted by Elizabeth at Silver’s Reviews.

I often do a quick audit of my books and usually only end up donating one or two.
In our current apartment, there are built-in bookshelves that are super deep and tall. We put books on the shelves two to three books deep and then put books on top of the lined of books.

What do I do when I run out of bookshelf space? Double up; or thrift for another book shelf!

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Book Clubs are Hard Work – Help?

I run two book clubs through Meetup. Both of which I did not start, but I enjoyed and jumped at the opportunity to take over when the organizer role was vacated.

Women, Wine, and Crime focuses on murder mystery and true crime books, alternating between fiction and non-fiction. This book club has been fairly successful, with new members joining regularly and a handful of members attending each meeting. I took this book club over when the previous organizer slowly became less involved and then resigned. Once I scheduled events and made the group active again, things fell right back into place. For most events 3-5+ people showed. Last event, only two showed. I had ten people RSVP “yes” up until the night before and morning of.

Literature & Liberty (for ALL) is not doing as well. Before I took it over, it was not very active. I took it over right before COVID hit and the first few online events I did, no one showed up. I stopped scheduling events for a while and now that I’ve put some books/events on the calendar I thought at least a few people would sign up. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to keep it going. My last event one person signed up, then day-of said she thought it was another date (which I don’t understand because the date it was posted for never changed) and cancelled right when the event was supposed to start.

The ups and downs, the inconsistency of RSVP’s, I just wish I knew how to manage these better.

I try to take recommendations for books from the group, obviously vetting the choices before adding them to the list and calendar. I try finding locations that are cool, that have food and drinks, alcoholic and non, that are safe spaces, individually-owned, and in easy to find, centrally located areas with plenty of parking. Meetup doesn’t seem to offer “promotions” of groups or events, so I think I am doing all I can do. If you’ve got more ideas, let me know!

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TTT: Bookish Wishes

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and The Bookish June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

This week’s post is about Bookish Wishes.
There was a snag and I misunderstood, so here’s some book-related wishes and then my actual wishlist, which is what the post was supposed to be about ; )

One wish would be for some of the fantasy to be real. Magical powers, mystical animals, prophecies, and real power struggles.

Homely bookish wishes include a fireplace, a guinea pig on my lap, and a comfy blanket.
Comfy blankets, in abundance. Guinea pigs, five to choose from. Fireplace, coming soon!

Literal literary bookish wishes, I wish I had some of the books I lent/donated/lost. I also wish I had some of my favorite books as a signed copy.

Event-related bookish wishes, I’ve never been to a book signing. I feel like I hear about authors well after their book signing periods or read best-selling books after they’ve fallen off the top selling lists. I’d like to be a big enough fan of an author, know when they are somewhere I can get to, and get a book signed.

My book wishes, which is what the post was supposed to be about, are here.
My top 5 are:

• The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice by Victor E. Kappeler, Gary W. Potter
• Dream It! Do It!: My Half-Century Creating Disney’s Magic Kingdoms (Disney Editions Deluxe) by Martin Sklar, Ray Bradbury
• Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman
• My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
• Tolkien on Fairy-Stories by Verlyn Flieger

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WWBC: Saddest Book I’ve Read

Each Wednesday, Long and Short Reviews hosts a weekly “blog hop”. For more details on how to participate including a full list of topics for the year, please click here.

I’ve read some sad books in my day. As a Jewish cancer-survivor I get punched in the feels pretty easily. Night, Number the Stars, Diary of Anne Frank, and even purely historical reviews of the Holocaust are so hard to read. In the same vein, while it is not my people’s history, reading more on how black people have been treated and the immense numbers of humans enslaved, killed, and the horrors in between is eye-opening in a very heartbreaking way. One noteworthy book being Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Flowers for Algernon is up there as the saddest book I’ve read. I don’t want to spoil it if you haven’t read it. It’s a classic, it’s now been banned in schools which is ridiculous, and you need to have some tissues and water nearby to wipe your tears and rehydrate.

Moods in the same vein:
– Movie – I Am Sam
– Movie – Simon Birch
– Book – Of Mice and Men

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Bad Dreams and Terrible Sleep: a Vicious Cycle that WFH Does Not Help

My bad dreams cause me to have terrible sleep, the terrible sleep contributes to my daytime stress, and then I have bad dreams. You can see where this is going.

I’m not even sure my bad dreams are necessarily nightmares. WebMD says that “[n]ightmares are vividly realistic, disturbing dreams that rattle you awake from a deep sleep”. I don’t think they rattle me awake, I think they just disturb my sleep.

My dreams are almost all different settings with different people. The end result is me feeling alone, scared, lost, or in some form or other of an action movie that I am not prepared for. I have a high level of stress at the moment from a few things and it’s definitely flowing over into my dreams. Just last night I was lost in theme park. I went through the same “exits” over and over, instead ending up on another ride I didn’t want to be on or somehow moving through the park and looping right back to another exit I had already been through. As I saw the pattern repeating I began to run through the park, then things got very “action-film”-y. I was starting to be targeted at exits, I was power-sliding under rails, ducking to hide my face, and eventually escaped on a plane. I know it sounds fun, but I promise it was scary. First off, I get lost easily. Second, I am a nervous wreck while lost. The entire time in this dream my anxiety was in overdrive. I am waking up after the level of anxiety has made me sweat to the point of dehydration, after I have physically abused my SO in my sleep, and after my inner-spirit is curled in a ball screaming and crying.

This makes it so that when I read an email from a coworker who has been passive aggressive and the email can be read as passive aggressive, I get overly defensive or am ready to be on the offense and completely shut down. This only feeds my stress which, since I’m so great at stress management and amazing at conflict management both inwardly and in social and professional situations, means I hold that in my chest. I have never been great at “not bringing work home with me” and now that work is my home, that my desk is in my bedroom, I am not any better at it.

I will be addressing all aspects of this in therapy, by journaling, by meditating, and by talking to personal, professional, and all the in-between contacts that I have that can guide me to the right place.

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BBH: Images, books and otherwise, for Posts

Book Blogger Hop is a weekly, Friday through Thursday, question themed post. Originally created by Crazy for Books and reignited by Coffee Addicted Writer, its purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers their own blog.

This week’s post is “Where do you get book images for your posts?” and was submitted by Elizabeth at Silver’s Reviews.

Generally, for books, I use Goodreads. I find that by using a single source, my pictures come out mostly the same size and shape which makes formatting more simple and consistent. I occasionally use Google searched, but it tends toward the issues that Goodreads helps to avoid.

For images that aren’t of book covers, I use Unsplash; “Over 2 million free high-resolution images brought to you by the world’s most generous community of photographers.”. In fact, the cover for most of my posts come from Unsplash, including this post.

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