random stuff - sabrina, caden, movies, hearing voices

1:19 PM 11/20/10

saw sabrina
caden was crying
selling mcd hands
the movie: main character. needs to show eight's saving grace
voices want me to see curtis very soon and more often
hackers wondered about eye deformities
work today, left early

This is a bunch of random stuff.

I was scheduled to go to work early this morning. That was unusual. It turned out that we weren't busy and they decided to let me go after I finished making the salads and parfaits.

I think it was yesterday or maybe the night before that I saw Curtis's mother at McD. Drive-thru customers sometimes tell me that they like my voice. I use prosody, I sing my sentences, so they're pleasant sounding and not a monotone, and not harsh, and not conveying negative emotions. People tell me that I sound calm and soothing instead of gruff and irritable, not like 'whaddya want?' So she said the same thing to me. She was being very nice to me.

She also said she appreciated something about how I took the order, that I didn't interrupt every time she ordered a Happy Meal to ask her if she wanted fries or apple dippers with the meal. Note, there's actually a good reason why we do this, why we interrupt and ask about the apple dippers. The computer screen is designed in a user-unfriendly way, so that it's a major hassle if the customer starts to order a Happy Meal and then says, at the very end, 'Oh, yeah, and I wanted apple dippers instead of fries,' and yes, they frequently don't bother to tell you that. And our *NEW* computer system is *SLOWER* than the lean mean green screen system we used to have. So when you push a button, you have a delay time of a couple milliseconds while you wait for the computer to respond, and the customer keeps on talking, and your short-term memory starts forgetting what they asked for. The new system is badly designed in so many ways, I'd have to write a whole separate blog about it. Anyway I just skipped asking about fries/apples because I've decided to use the 'default option' a lot lately instead of asking. She was ordering Happy Meals really fast, one after another, so I just took the default options. Curtis has a bunch of half-brothers and sisters, and when his mom goes through McD she gets a lot of Happy Meals.

I saw his mother a few weeks before this, too, back when I hadn't seen Curtis yet. I saw her and I started crying. Also, there was an incident where Kayla drove through with Caden in the back seat, on the driver's side, and he looked up at me and he waved, even though he doesn't know me. I think 'they' made him wave. It's not likely that he did that on his own. I cried a little bit when that happened, but I also had the fakeness/puppet suspicious feeling too. (Like the way I felt about the movie Inception, where they manipulate the guy to do something he wouldn't have otherwise done, and it's supposed to be a cathartic, emotional moment when he meets his father at the end, but I know in my mind that it's fake and it serves someone's purpose. And like how I couldn't really get into the movie Avatar, not completely, partly because I got stuck watching it in 3-D when I would rather have watched it the normal way, and also, partly because I was asking, 'But aren't the avatars alive too? Don't they have their own minds and their own personalities? They're not just blank brains waiting to be controlled. They're living animals.' Whatever emotions are being expressed, they're not completely genuine because they are caused by an external controller, and you can't ignore that fact.)

Then, last night, I was taking an order, and I could hear a young child crying, 'waaaaaaahhhhahahahh! ahhhaaaaaaaahhh aaaaaahh! aaaaaaaaaaahhahah!' I mean, he was REALLLLY crying. I could hear him over the headset while she was ordering. I didn't know who it was... and then they pulled around to the window and it was Caden, Kayla, and her mother. I don't know why he was crying. Little kids cry when they're tired, hungry, cold, sick, or whatever. (I know, because I do too. I just don't do it in public.) It could've been anything.

****
'They' are having controversy over the movie that I watched, 'The Chumscrubber.' I didn't mean to make anybody think that this was the ***GREATEST MOVIE EVER*** or that I totally agree with and believe in all of the values and ideas expressed by the movie. But the voices have been bugging me about it, about how the guy... spoiler... does anybody care if it's a spoiler????... how the one guy dies at the end.

I was reading about moviemaking and about writing fiction. One web page talked about how you can make a story more interesting when you look at it from the point of view of another character, and he did this with the story Little Red Riding Hood, and he developed the character of the Big Bad Wolf.

So the voices were saying that the suspected enneagram eight character, the 'bad guy' in the movie, was now the 'main character.' They were wishing that he had had a 'saving grace' experience, instead of the bad ending that he had. The 'saving grace' is something in the enneagram, where each type could possibly become unhealthier and do worse things than they are doing, except that their saving grace makes them realize what will go wrong if they do. I am a self-preservation Four, and I already knew about my own saving grace years ago: whenever my life was going badly, I was able to look into the future and see what would happen if I continued to do what I was doing, about how bad things would get, so I had to take action to change things now before that happened. I don't remember what word they used to describe this in the book. It might have been something like 'being honest with yourself, being realistic, instead of fantasizing.' No more fantasies, no more wishful thinking - what's going to happen in the REAL world? The saving grace of the Eight is when they realize that if they hurt somebody, then everyone will reject them, and cut them off, and eventually hurt them in return. So they know, don't hurt people.

So, the eights need to see good role models in movies, of criminal eight characters who turn around when they realize all of the bad things that will happen if they hurt somebody or go too far.

*****
I wrote 'hackers wondered about eye deformities.' I was googling stuff about drooping eyes. I know somebody who has drooping lower eyelids, so that you can see the red stuff under the eye, like when you pull them down with your fingers. Her eyes are permanently like that. I wanted to know what's the name of that condition. She seems to have been born that way, because she showed us baby pictures, and her eyes were like that when she was a young kid. So I heard voices saying that the hackers who spy on my computer were wondering why I was reading about that.

****
'selling mcd hands' - This should be a whole separate blog post, and it should be well written, but I'm not going to make that much effort today.

This week at McDonald's we are supposed to ask for donations for the Ronald McDonald House Charity. If you donate, then you can sign your name on a little paper with a picture of a helping hand on it, and they stick it up on the wall. You don't have to sign the paper, though.

So I'm supposed to sell them in drive-thru. And it turns out that actually, I'm really good at it. I'm terrible at suggestive selling for the stuff that makes more profit for McDonald's, like I'm supposed to suggestive sell apple pies, or french fries, or a drink, or would you like the value meal Large Sized, or whatever. I don't feel comfortable suggestive selling food for profits. But it doesn't bother me at all to ask for a donation to the RMHC.

But McDonald's really, really messed up this time. And I can't believe that, with all their social skills, they didn't figure this out. They are undermining themselves when they sell the helping hands. Here's what they did.

I was told that we are supposed to tell customers that they can get a free apple or pumpkin pie if they donate a dollar. As soon as I tried to do this, I knew right away that it was wrong. I did it a couple times and then gave up on it.

First, I did that at the front counter. Selling the hands is harder at the front counter, because you are there looking at the big, scary customer. I hardly sold any at all at the front counter, and I wasn't comfortable telling them that they would get a 'free' apple or pumpkin pie as a 'reward' for donating to charity.

Not only that, but of course, we are losing a small amount of money every time we give them a pie, too. Not a big deal, but still. That's not as important as the undermining ourselves thing.

I can't explain how I know this, I just feel it. I felt it when I was trying to talk to the customers and offer them a 'free' pie for a charity donation. I feel it in myself, like if I were donating to charity, I wouldn't like this. I don't like to donate to an anonymous charity like RMHC, but still, I can understand how it feels to want to donate to charity. (I like the 'direct action' kind of donation. You know who's being helped, you know what their problem is, you know what they are getting, you know where the money went.)

You don't want to get a material 'reward' for donating to charity!!!

Nobody wants to! Not just the 'selfless' Christians that Ayn Rand complained about. It isn't just brainwashing, it isn't just Christianity, it isn't just mainstream culture. When you donate something to help somebody, you don't expect to get a material reward. You have reasons why you donate, and you don't want to get a 'free pie' in exchange for a donation! Getting a reward makes it feel repugnant, gross, contemptible. It's like they don't understand you at all. And you want to be understood.

There's a good feeling that I had when I sold the hands in drive thru. I sold TONS of them, and, again, I'm terrible at selling anything else, but for some reason I really found myself when it came to asking for charity.

When the people drive around to the window, I make eye contact with them. I look them in the eye and smile. I smile a little bit more, and my eye contact is a little bit longer and more direct, than it is with the other customers who don't donate. They smile back at me. We have a bond. We have cameraderie. We have togetherness. We both know and understand something. They are more likely to make a friendly comment about the weather, or about anything at all, to me, a total stranger. This isn't just a 'buying something' transaction. It's a shared feeling. When they leave, I say, 'thank you very much,' and I make sure they can hear me. I hold them there a second or two longer than usual. And they almost always act this way. A few people will still kind of ignore me and act like they're in their own little world, but not usually. They usually reach out to my world. Almost always.

Give them a free pie? That has nothing to do with it!

And the other people, when they are asking for the donations, they try to sell the free pie because they were told that's what they're supposed to do. The rule says that we are to offer the customers a free pie in exchange for a donation.

It makes it sound like this: It's like, we were trying really hard to get donations, but we failed. It wasn't working, nobody would donate... until some genius came up with the idea, 'Hey! Why don't we offer them a pie!' And finally, the donation drive was a success! Nobody would donate until we offered them some extra food! But in reality, this is the opposite of the truth! People WANT to donate. They are HAPPY to give. They LIKE doing it! Don't assume something cynical about how greedy everyone is, about how nobody wants to give unless they get something *material* in return. They do get something in return. They get a good feeling, and a social bond, but not a piece of food.

And that's not even getting into the issue of whether people even WANT a pie. The pies really aren't that good. They're just cheap junk food. I don't like them very much. I'm sure a lot of people feel that way. People don't want to be forced to take a piece of cheap, yucky junk food that they really didn't want to eat! But if you give a donation, you're REQUIRED to take a pie. Or it seems like it. Now they're going to try to push this McDonald's pie on you whether you want it or not! They'll be asking you questions, 'What kind of pie would you like, apple or pumpkin?' And then they have to say, 'Umm, well, I really don't want one at all.' It's like saying, 'Give a donation, and get a free platter of greasy grimy gopher guts!' (Only a Weston Price dieter would say yes to that. I guess that's a bad example.) You push them to take something they don't want... so they'd rather not give a donation! Just don't even bother with the pies. But the other employees were still following the 'rule' and offering them the unwanted pies anyway. People usually said 'no' to this, at least while I was listening. But they very often said 'yes' when I offered them NOTHING AT ALL. It really was about one out of four customers, at least, and sometimes more than that. It was a high percentage of people who gave me money in exchange for NOTHING. And it was more pleasant that way. Nobody had to say (in a 'yuck' tone of voice), 'I'll donate a dollar, but I don't want a pie.'

I twittered about this (SilentSoul74) a couple times and said that the only thing that made me not try to ask them for a donation was if I had trouble hearing them. It's very embarrassing to say, 'Would you like to give a dollar to the Ronald McDonald House Charity tonight?' 'mumble mumble.' 'I'm sorry, what was that?' 'mumble mumble.' I usually gave up and didn't add on the dollar when this happened. One time, I thought they said 'yes' when they actually said 'no,' and I had to remove the charity donation when they got to the window. So I only try it with people I can hear.

Well, the charity drive is almost over. I'm not sure if we do it tomorrow or not. They said it lasted a week, and I think it's been almost a week now. But I'm glad I did it. And I learned something I already knew, which is that people enjoy giving, and they like to feel connected to other people, and they like to help people.

*******
so... hearing voices. 'They' were wondering about me going to visit Curtis again. This time I would go with nothing, because I just recently gave him something. I would go empty handed and I would talk to him and listen to him, and I would gather up the courage to touch him again. 'They' were noticing that I didn't go yet and were hoping that I would see him more often.

It has to be a required routine. I need a rule for how often I will go see him, and it has to be a duty that I must perform, whether I want to or not. (It doesn't matter that I enjoy it, and yes, I do. I still find it hard to go do this, because it's scary and difficult and it's hard for me to get out of bed. So that's why I say 'whether I want to or not.' I DO want to.) It's a duty to perform, because I get terrified out of my mind every time I get close to him. I get overexcited and scared, and sometimes I start crying, but not always. If I'm 'allowed' to just not bother going there and being tortured and terrified, then I just won't bother to go. And it's a 'good' torture, because I can see him now with permission, and he wants to continue being my friend, and he likes the things I gave him. But even though I am feeling more safe now it's still very difficult.

******
I'm going to try to see Harry Potter today. Some of the shows will be sold out, but there might be a few left.