Recently in massage Category

I was going to totally start a new weekly thing called Totally Random Thursdays where I guarantee at least one post a week by hitting you with more of my random musings and stuff you really don't want to hear, but I went to bed early instead.  So, it will have to be next Thursday. Maybe I should call this Fail Friday? Eh. But, still, if I get a little random, just bear with me.  I feel like I'm a day behind since I had to work today. Yeah, work.  In fact, I have to work all weekend.  The spa owner and I decided in a moment of insanity to work a golf tournament at the country club.  "You can make a ton of money," said the decidedly cheap, kindness-sucking, and advantage-taking club manager.  Trust me, if I had answered the phone when he had called, I would have laughed at his flat fee offer.  Spa Owner is way nicer than I am. So, we get to this club and can't find the guy who's supposed to tell us where to set up.  We are told by staff that it's the men's locker room. Yes, we are to set up for massages in the men's locker room. I am well aware of the possible sit-com style scenarios this could create. We had nothing else to go onl, so into the locker room we went. The locker room is like a hidden casino.  There is an actual locker room in the very back, but you have to go through several rooms full of green-carpeted card tables, ash trays, chairs, and sofas to get there.  Yeah.  Totally a locker room. We are immediately told by the local doomsayer/cleaning woman that we had our work cut out for us, especially since she had to tackle three industrial-sized garbage bags full of beer cans, another full container of plastic cups, an untold number of full ash trays, and a craps table full of puke. Yeah.  Totally a locker room. This, of course, got us a little nervous, but yet excited.  Well, hell, if this "locker room" was the hang out then we should be swamped. We eagerly set up two chairs and two massage tables, laid out our business cards, seeded the tip jars, and waited. And, waited. And, waited. So, the manager-type person had told us to be there at 9 am.  The tournament was supposed to start at 10 and had actually started early.  So, they were all on the course. We had two massages by noon. So, we waited a little longer until Spa Owner, her Minion, and I decided we were starving and went to get lunch. We come back an hour later to the local doomsayer/cleaning woman with news that as soon as we left 40 people showed up for massages. There was much cussing. Okay, fine, we decided.  We'll stay until around 5.  Plenty of time for them to finish.  Doomsayer wanted us to stay until dark.  Dark is 8 or later.  I have an hour's drive home.  She can take that can of mulberry spray* and stick it in a very sensitive place. Around 2, we get a guy who wants a full body, so I put him on the table, perform some magic and turn him into ooze.  Damn near literally.   He requested some time to lie on the table for a bit after I was finished.  Well, sure, why not.  15 minutes later, I started to worry, so I went to check on him.  He started a bit when I asked if he was okay and turned his head out of the face cradle.  I had to take a little pride in the bit of drool he had to wipe from the corner of his mouth and the amount of time it took to convince himself to get up. He jogs passed the spa every day.  He might come back. Spa Owner took care of another guy who wanted a 15 minute chair massage...and then another five minutes please...okay, that's awesome...hey, can I get 30 minutes on the table?...that was fabulous, how about another 15 minutes...Snore. Okay, so, it wasn't a total bust, but not the "ton of money" or the "work cut out for us" we were expecting.  So, a decision was made to go in later in the morning, work through lunch, and possibly leave earlier.  That might sound stupid to most folks, but Spa Owner usually makes $350 on a Friday.  She made $75.  I usually make about $200 on a Friday.  I made $85. Do.  The.  Math. One of the manager-type people came by to ask us if it were worth it.  We grinned and nodded the nod of people who were nodding just to agree because they hoped the next day would be better but knowing, if there were no change, if asked again, nodding would not be in the equation. Next time they call, I'm going to ask Spa Owner for the phone... $300, my ass... So, that was the day.  Sadly, I'm still worn out.  Maybe from a slow-burning anger in my gut from not being given enough info or advertisement.  Who knows?  I didn't go to Stitch.  I was so bloody tired.  I ate and mostly played Bejeweled because that's about all my brain could handle.  I'm not even sure why I'm awake now.  I think I've passed into the mysterious realm of Too Tired to Sleep.  It's a strange and alien land that needs to be nuked from orbit. Because I didn't give ya'll the Totally Random Thursday I didn't promise you, I feel I must be random now.  You can either consider it late randomness or pre-emptive randomness.  Half-empty, half-full, I guess. So, I present to you, your weekly Totally Random:

• My cat, Merlin, was so totally stoked at having a balled up piece of paper thrown down the hall he poofed to three times his normal size.
• I have not cleaned my house in a week, and I am going through DTs.  I am unable to rectify this because my feet have decided that standing is an affront to their existence.  I figure by Tuesday, I will lop them off and clean on my knees.
• I absolutely don't miss the clinic.
• The other day, I watched a man in his front yard, in the pouring rain, wearing nothing but a t-shirt, shorts, and a ball cap, struggling to pull some serious weeds from his front yard, while smoking a cigarette, in the rain.  (Yes, I mentioned the rain redundantly.  Seriously, this guy was smoking and pulling weeds in the rain.  That's some beautiful suburbia weirdness right there.)

Okay, enough of that.  Tomorrow will either bring some grumbling tirades about mornings or nothing at all.  Please hope that it's nothing.  These country club guys are creepy enough without encouragment. __________________________________ *Ya'll, this woman had this can of mulberry spray that was more or less like a series of random chemical smells in a can.  She was standing there talking to us explaining what we missed when we dared to go to lunch.  She punctuated each sentence with a spray from her mulberry can.  She did this about ten times, got bored, went and sprayed every inch of the actual locker room, sprayed every piece of furniture that didn't belong to us, and dashed away in a cloud of unpleasantness.  I have to seriously agree with our Minion:  "It smells like a really stinky ass wrapped in a blueberry sauce."  I like our minion.  I like her a lot.

So, I am officially finished at the chiropractic clinic.  It was bittersweet because I loved my patients but really could live without The Hag or The Greed. I'm not always sure The Greed was mutual among all parties. Really.  I'm not sure. Either way, I jump again, feet first, into another risk.  This risk has proven stable for months, but, of course, the moment I choose to acknowledge it exclusively it decides to freak out and disappear. I haven't had any massages at the spa in a week. That's not happened before. This is a little scary, especially since my first spa job was a total bust.  I mean, $900 in three months, maybe back in the Depression that was huge, but these days, that pays nothing.  The difference is, of course, that the current spa cares and is trying.  Pam is awesome.  The other spa, well, best to leave things unsaid. I know it's the end of summer; people are taking last-minute vacations; and there is school supply buying, but still, when you take such a leap, it makes you nervous when irony wraps itself around a brick and hurls itself at your head. I know everything will be okay, but man, the universe has some serious means to make a person feel uncomfortable. I would cross my fingers, but the lid to the washer insured I couldn't do that for a while. WHAM!  Thank you for making my job painful...urk... _____________________________ That would have sucked for a last day. I seriously thought I had broken my fingers last night when the washer lid slammed upon them.  I could just imagine On My Last Day trying to convince my boss that my fingers really were screwed.  I know I wouldn't have believed it.  Thankfully, they just hurt a lot today and seem to be bruising nicely.  Otherwise, it could've been ugly.

We all have our standards. Our ethics.  Our moral codes. When a place you work at starts to bend those in a way that's mildly bearable, you tend to grit your teeth and really bear the pain. I've been there many, many times. Recently, the clinic I work most of my hours has decided to be a little more greedy than I consider "human growth".  I had a once-a-month 30-min patient convinced to come in for an hour.  She doesn't need an hour massage.  Yeah, well, that's all well and good, I'm informed, but the insurance pays more for an hour massage. So, convincing people to do more treatment than they actually need just so you can bill the insurance more money...this is acceptable? I've had some people call it fraud. Either way, this is an attitude from which I wish I to separate. Look, no job is perfect.  No idea can't be warped.  But, damn, when you actually physically accept the only reason you're trying to convince a patient to get an hour massage is because it will bilk the insurance of more money, that's skirting fraud. Time to move on. _____________________ I'm sorry.  Those assholes can bilk the public for all they can, but I will never ask for more than what is needed to heal my patient.  If this is not acceptable to some folks, then they can kiss my big ass.