My first jobs were retail. Everyone had weekend off except me. I hated it. Ten years in retail, and I dreamed of the day I would have a "career" and good pay and weekends off to enjoy it all.
Then I got a career. Now everywhere I go is packed with people and lines.
A trip to the grocery used to be on Wednesday around 2pm. I could fill a cart with anything I needed and get in and out in minutes. Now I go after work and wait in the "express" lane with my under 20 items for upwards of half an hour.
I used to go out on a Tuesday night, because that was my weekend. Two for Tuesday everywhere! Happy hour, all the time. Fast service. Hot food. Now, I have to make reservations in advance to wait 20 minutes for a waiter, because the restaurant is short staffed. God help you if you forget the reservations, or the place doesn't take them. You'll easily wait an hour for a table on a Friday night.
I take a weekend trip to a theme park and I have to park a mile away from the tram which is a mile or more away from the gates, where there are lines to get tickets and more lines to ride the rides. Just getting to the parking spot requires slow traffic. Lines of cars all doing the same thing.
I've considered asking if I could work weekends at my career job. It would be quiet on Saturday and Sunday. I could get a lot of work done without tickets and support calls coming in all day long. But then, who would handle the tickets and support calls if I'm not there?
What a pipe dream... To have a middle of the week "weekend" again would be so grand!
I am self-employed and schedule Mondays off for this reason. Everyone works Mondays. Not me. Plenty of time to get everything done in my personal life and running errands easily.
Are there no other decent supermarkets around? I certainly wouldn't stand in a line for the supermarket on a regular basis no matter how good they are.
Its in the middle of Manhattan, so there are grocery stores everywhere - Trader Joe's is just a chain with a particularly strong cult following, and there are fewer of their stores in Manhattan compared to a lot of their competitors.
(I like Trader Joes well enough, but even when I lived very near to that specific store I'd make a conscious effort to avoid it. Proximity to New York University's dorms seems to do it no favors on the already very busy 14th St corridor.)
> I used to go out on a Tuesday night, because that was my weekend. Two for Tuesday everywhere! Happy hour, all the time. Fast service. Hot food. Now, I have to make reservations in advance to wait 20 minutes for a waiter, because the restaurant is short staffed. God help you if you forget the reservations, or the place doesn't take them. You'll easily wait an hour for a table on a Friday night.
Why not still go out on Tuesdays?
My favorite bar has their cheap well night on Wednesdays, so Wednesday is my night for going out for drinks. That it's in the middle of the week is irrelevant.
Then I got a career. Now everywhere I go is packed with people and lines.
A trip to the grocery used to be on Wednesday around 2pm. I could fill a cart with anything I needed and get in and out in minutes. Now I go after work and wait in the "express" lane with my under 20 items for upwards of half an hour.
I used to go out on a Tuesday night, because that was my weekend. Two for Tuesday everywhere! Happy hour, all the time. Fast service. Hot food. Now, I have to make reservations in advance to wait 20 minutes for a waiter, because the restaurant is short staffed. God help you if you forget the reservations, or the place doesn't take them. You'll easily wait an hour for a table on a Friday night.
I take a weekend trip to a theme park and I have to park a mile away from the tram which is a mile or more away from the gates, where there are lines to get tickets and more lines to ride the rides. Just getting to the parking spot requires slow traffic. Lines of cars all doing the same thing.
I've considered asking if I could work weekends at my career job. It would be quiet on Saturday and Sunday. I could get a lot of work done without tickets and support calls coming in all day long. But then, who would handle the tickets and support calls if I'm not there?
What a pipe dream... To have a middle of the week "weekend" again would be so grand!