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JLong83
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Name: James
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia, United States
Birthday: 9/23/1983
Gender: Male
Interests: All things Chinese. I also like religion (all kinds), and I am personally Byzantine Catholic. I like quiet nights at home (b/c I never get them) watching my fav. TV shows (Star Trek, Everwood, and Roseanne) and reading some good books. I have a spontaneous bone in me that makes me want to just jump up and do something, like travel cross-country in my car, so I guess traveling is an interest as well.
Expertise: Chinese and Spanish (languages) are my expertise...that's about it. Oh yeah, Catholicism too. I'm also an expert at my job, yeah!
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  JLong83
Member Since:
11/10/2004
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| OK...so I'm a little overdue for my monthly update, but I'm sure we'll
all survive. Since my last update I was turned down for the job
of manager at my store, and only because of politics at the district
headquarters. Apparently they demoted a district manager and told
her she had to take a store as manager, so she picked ours. I
think the reason she picked my store was that she thought it would be
easy to manage. I mean, we've been doing just fine without a
manager now for over two months. All that shows to me is that I
would have done just fine. I think my boss knows it, but I know
that he kind of had to put the other lady in there. He told me
his decision had nothing to do with the abilities of either of
us--yeah, so it all had to do with her being a district manager and so
whatever store she picked she would have been given. That
*#$!%. That's ok, b/c I think my co-workers and I are going to
run that poor woman out of there. She doesn't know what she got
herself into. Another result of this is that I have no desire to
stay at 7-11 anymore. I mean, at first, I thought about just
staying there and moving up in the company after I graduate. That
would have been fine, the pay is really pretty good and the benefits
are even better once you move up to district manager (which is easy to
do for college grads w/ store experience), and although I could still
do that, I just don't want to work for 7-11 anymore. They don't
deserve me. Not that I'm anything special, but after all the work
that I have put in, they pull stupid crap like that. Then they're
talking about using me even more by sending me to another store (as an
assistant) to help the manager out there. Heck no, I'm not going
anywhere, I'll show them where they can put that idea. I was so
mad about it all that I was desperate to leave...until one thing
happened.
School started this week!!! Actually, it's sort of a relief from
the daily routine of getting up at 430 am to go to the store and do
paperwork and stuff. The other assistants are going to cover for
me while I remain in charge until the next manager gets in (God knows
when that will be, more using and abusing from 7-11). But yeah,
once I had been to all my classes and been through a week, I realized
that I need a really, really flexible work schedule to work around
school. That kind of means I'm stuck at 7-11 for now, since I'll
be able to pretty much make up my own schedule and tell them what days
I'm working and what days I'm off. I don't what to go get a new
job and then start dictating my schedule to the boss, that's not right,
but since I've been at that store for 4 years with all the same people,
I'll be able to work those flex hours. So in the end, it's a good thing
that Target, K-Mart, AND Walgreen's all haven't called me back for an
interview (I put applications in to all of them b/c I was so upset with
7-11)...there's a reason for everything I guess.
Everything went fine this week and I was happy with the way things were
turning out when a crazy idea hit me on Wednesday while I was frying my
brain in Hebrew class. The idea struck me (it may have been a
side effect of the fried brains learning Hebrew) that I should apply to
the CIA. I figured I had a rather satisfactory-looking resume for
a CIA position (knowing Chinese and Spanish and all), so when I got
home that night I went to the CIA web site and just researched
it. After my researching I found a position called Language
Officer (one of the Clandestine Service positions). I think that
job was invented with me in mind, seriously. Another friend of
mine said the same thing, so I'm not the only one. Anyway, I
submitted my resume online to the CIA for that position on Friday night
and now I'm just waiting and praying. Please God, get me out of
7-11 and get me into the CIA. That would be awesome, pay is great
and benefits are even better. I guess I should have listened to
Jason and my Uncle Nobby (my cousin Michael's dad) all along while they
were alive. They always told me to look for a job with the
federal govt. but I always resisted. Now here I am begging for a
job with the CIA. God works in mysterious ways, and with Jason
and Uncle Nobby up there whispering in his ear for me, things are bound
to get even more crazy and mysterious I suppose. Anyways, better
go now, got a LONG day at stupid 7-11 and school tomorrow. More
on my classes and teachers later...
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| Well, life is moving on. I still have days where I feel like not
moving on with it, but those are getting fewer and fewer. Now I'm
hoping that I will get the manager position at the store. It's
pretty much a 50/50 chance as my competition is strong. 4 people
(including me) put in for it when it opened up and two of them I'm not
even worried about, but the other one is a former district manager for
whom the market has been looking for a position. That means my DM
has some pressure to give her the position over me, but he claims he
doesn't know what he's going to do and he's waiting on the results from
the interviews which he was supposed to do last week, but now who knows
when. This is really frustrating me right now, especially since I
have to do manager's work at my low pay, and can't get overtime or we
get yelled at. Whatever, I'm just going to do what I want and see
what happens. But b/c of not having a manager and everything,
it's putting a lot of stress on everyone in the store, they don't know
"who's the boss" between the assistants, they kind of want to defer to
me, but the DM says to listen to Karen (who wants me to be the boss
anyway), so it's just crazy. And it will be two more weeks before
we can get a manager in anyway, b/c of payroll periods. Stupid
7-11. Anyway, beyond that, life is pretty good. Right now
my aunt and cousins are on vacation in Minnesota visiting my late
uncle's family so I'm staying at their house watching the dogs and
keeping the place clean, etc. House- and dog-sitting I guess it's
called. Well, on with my day.
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| Life is good. I'm glad I can finally say that again and mean it,
seriously. I got out of VA last week and went down to Atlanta to
spend the weekend with an old friend of mine whom I haven't seen in
four years. While I didn't spend enough time there (b/c of work
of course), I still had a great time and I'm looking forward to another
visit. My dad and I will be going there next Tuesday for some
kind of stock market trading class that he has gotten into, and I'm his
guest. I'm looking forward to that trip mainly for the
food. There are awesome restaurants in Atlanta. I'm
surprised my friend hasn't gained any weight down there. I'd
probably have gained like 50 lbs if I was the one down there for the
past four years. We ate at a really great Indian-Chinese place,
an Ethiopian place, a strange smelling Korean place, and had homemade
from scratch biscuits from a small restaurant in downtown
Atlanta. Some other great food too, but I can't remember it
all. So while the food was the highlight of the trip, we also
visited the CNN center and took an "Inside CNN" tour. Next time
we go, we have to go to the world of Coca-Cola, I hear it's pretty
good. Anyway, counting down the days to becoming a manager and
making some real money finally. And then after that, my last
undergrad semester!!!! Some exciting things coming up, so keep informed.
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| Looks like it's time for my monthly posting. It seems to have turned into that now  .
Anyway, things are OK. The "going out" manager retires on July
14th, which means I should be promoted on the 15th or so. I hear I have
competition, but I'm not too worried, my district manager likes me, so
I'm pretty sure I'll get it. I won't mind the extra money, and my
actual work load would be about the same, just a few more hours than I
am already there now anyway. And finally, I'll actually be
getting paid for all the work I've been doing. I have a plan to
buy a house in the next year with all that money, saving up and also
will have my brothers and my cousin to help, we'll probably be buying
it together. Even with all this going on, I still can't seem to really
be happy. I just drag on through each day, I'm seriously
beginning to wonder if I need to see some kind of doctor for depression
or something, but I really don't want to do the whole happy pill thing.
But yeah, something has to give, I need to smile again, real smiles,
not just fake ones that I put on all the time.
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| Wow! What a month this has been. I don't know where to
begin. Well, the past is past and I'm not trying to bring all
that crap up again. Let's talk about the exciting future
ahead. I talked yesterday to my district manager at
7-Eleven. I told him that I wanted to be manager of the store I
work at now when my current manager retires. I wasn't sure when
that was, but I wanted to make sure he knew that I was
interested. I found out that my manager's leaving in 6 weeks and
my DM was actually happy to hear that I wanted to be manager.
This is awesome b/c the store I'm at now is really the best store with
the most competent and hard-working team around. I'll have a few
more responsibilities, but they'll actually be paying me for the work I
do with a pay increase of like 300 percent, plus some more vacation
time and bonuses, which I'll always get at that store. This
starts in July, so I'm counting down the weeks, soon it'll be days!
Also in the future, I took the GMAT yesterday. Although I did
pretty mediochre, I think it'll be good enough to get back into ODU
next fall and start working on an MBA in general management. That
should take me two to three years to finish (while I'm busy managing
that store). I'm hoping that me staying at ODU will kind of get
my cousin to think about staying here for school. Right now his
plans are to go out of state. His mom told me it was b/c I wasn't
going to be here. That really makes me feel good. I always
thought of him as a little brother, I never knew he thought of me as a
big brother and looked up to me like that...of course he'd never say it
though.
These last few weeks have made me really want to get closer to everyone
in my family, cousins, aunts, uncles, everything. So far I think I'm
succeeding. That's also another reason why I decided to go back
to ODU for my MBA instead of going out to colorado right away like I
was planning. It'll give me time for things here to settle down
and give us time to...well, just give us time.
For two weeks now Justin has been dragging me to the rec center to work
out. I'm so bad at it, but Justin keeps encouraging me and so I
keep going, someday I'll get in shape, hopefully then I won't be so
sore all over :) .
Well, more exciting things to come.
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