Daily Report

Made about $25 today in tips. Not bad for a half-day's work (4:15 to 9:30ish). One person stiffed me on the tip, but the rest of the people tipped either at or over 15%. It's really nice driving around in the evening, then going home with some extra money in your pocket.

This day also saw the first trial of my tip-tracking spreadsheet, created in Excel and exported to docs-to-go on my Clié. A friend who used to deliver pizza had advised keeping records so I could double-check the supervisor's figure at the end of the day. Since I was carrying this computer in my pocket anyway, I went ahead and slapped this together. It's a relatively simple little worksheet, with spaces to keep track of the order total, how much and in what form I get paid, how much I'm getting in tips, and how much I need to pay out at the end of the night. I quite astonished my supervisor when I told him to the penny just how much I needed to pay him before he'd even started adding the totals. This is gonna be a really helpful tool.

Tomorrow (well, it's "today" now) I'm off in the morning but on in the evening again. Then I'm "on call" Monday, and work the morning shift Tuesday. Yep, I definitely could get used to this.

Sunday thoughts

Ahh. Nice lazy Sunday early-afternoon. In a little while, I'll be heading down to the brother's place, as the parentals are supposed to come up there later today. Then I work at 4:15. Right now, I'm relaxing in front of my computer and thinking happy thoughts about my job. I think some of the new is starting to wear off of it, but that's okay. At its worst, it will still be infinitely more tolerable than that K-mart position was. Fewer customers to deal with, more responsibility, and less standing around stuck in one spot all the time. Less boredom. Since I get antsy when I get bored, this is all to the good.

I figure I'm probably going to make, on average, about the same as or a little less per hour than I made at K-mart. On the other hand, I get about half of my pay on the same day I work—and if I apply the Net Present Value formula to it that I learned in finance class, that means the money I get is worth a little more than if I'd had to wait two weeks for it. (Though, granted, it's only theoretical, as I have no way to invest that money for a week or so to realize a return, and any return I did get would probably be just a few pennies.) And also, I'm only going to be taxed on minimum wage, which means anything I make above that is gravy. :) Plus, I'm getting more hours here than I did at K-mart, which means more money coming in. As soon as I know roughly how many hours I'm going to work a week, I need to go on up to the Family Services dept. and file a change-of-circumstances report on my food stamps.

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Hm, this is interesting. Just got off the phone with Mike Anderson, an old friend of mine. He tells me that VisionCon is back on. What makes it interesting is that, up to now, some of us who were long-time attendees weren't yet certain that it was actually going to happen. I can't really go into why we didn't expect it to happen, as it's all hearsay and rumor, and would probably get me sued for slander if the person I'm talking about saw or heard about it...but suffice it to say that I was quite surprised to hear the con organizer went in and paid off the hotel and made the reservation.

At any rate, I was running the anime room last year (since the convention apparently managed to alienate the Bay Area Animation Society, who had been running things up to that point). I wonder what I'll be doing there this year, if anything?