Why you no attracted to me?

Attraction.

It's a funny thing really. We spend so much of our younger years trying to figure out if someone we like likes us back (except in those situations where it's kind of a "no duh" moment; I'm not familiar with that too much though). We look for signals, try to show our own worth, and generally make ourselves go crazy, all because we find someone attractive.

I was super guilty of this for a long time. I'd like someone, try to "prove my worth," and end up falling flat on my face either because they didn't feel the same way, or in those rare cases that they did, I would spook them because I'd stop being me and just be this whacked out guy trying too hard.

I'm obviously not the only one guilty of this. I see it on social media a lot, whether it be a meme or someone actually lamenting how they like someone, but it isn't being returned.

Some people get mad. They go on tirades about how perfect they'd be for that person, how happy they'd make that person. They complain that this person doesn't even know that something great is right next to them. It can get ugly sometimes too.

But that's what makes attraction so interesting. You liking someone doesn't automatically mean they should like you back. It's never worked that way, even if you believe that it would be a great relationship. There are factors beyond the obvious that play a role in whether a relationship develops or not.

Of course, it typically starts with physical attraction. But physical attraction can only take things so far. You also have to connect in other ways and sometimes, even if you want it to be there, the chemistry just isn't right. Something that clicks for you isn't clicking for the other person and you can't just force it to happen.

Sure, there are occasions where it could happen with time as a friendship develops and becomes something better, but more often than not, if things aren't clicking, they aren't going to magically click.

My particular favorite is when someone compliments the person they like, but throws in something like "too bad you have poor taste in men/women."

Because that's particularly endearing.

No, attraction isn't something you can force, and if it isn't there, trying to make it happen will typically only make things worse.

For instance, let's say there's a woman I like. She's a great woman in a lot of ways and is a blast to talk to. She's the type that will do whatever she can to help you out, no matter what. But just because I think these things doesn't mean she thinks the same back and the thing I need to be more than willing to accept is that we'll likely only be friends.

That's okay. She can make a great friend and be willing to listen to me when I need to vent, but more importantly, can give me a fresh perspective on a number of things, something I desperately needed after I kind of went into a tailspin early in January. Between her and another friend, they helped pull me through it and remind me I have it pretty good.

So you can like someone, think they're incredible, but be okay with just being friends. And that's where I am right now.

Some things that stuck with me the most include wanting to develop a friendship that turns into more, thus this person I'm with isn't just a person I'm with, but a best friend as well. Taking time to let the relationship develop is something I haven't really done well and maybe next time, this is the approach to take.

Another thing that's stuck with me is the idea of being the energy you want to attract. Hence, while I was mopey for a bit, I've snapped out of it and am trying to be as positive as I can be. That's what I want around me after all. People who are positive and can see their way through anything.

The final thing that's really stuck with me is that maybe it hasn't happened because it isn't meant to right now. While I'm not religious, I often wonder if there's something going on beyond what we understand, guiding us in ways we can't comprehend. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not meant to be with anyone at this point in time to keep me on task and that the right person will come along when the time is actually right.

Which of course is cliched, but it sounds pretty solid actually.

Let's get this money saved, get a new car, and get a house, then see what happens. Oh, and fix my teeth. That should be a priority too.

At this stage of life, I'm content to have as many great friends around me as possible. If anything else is meant to happen, well, it will. Otherwise, I'm going to enjoy the ride, continue to get in better shape, continue to try and help people whenever I can, and see where life takes me.

Life's too short to sweat the small stuff and now that I'm approaching 40, I really start to see this and understand it.

In any case, this isn't meant to come across as whiny or mopey, but rather as me observing the things I see around me.

Let's have fun with life guys.

Tales from the pharmacy - A prankster is loose

It did not take me long to acclimate myself to the crew inside of the Revco in Strongsville.

Within weeks, I was throwing jokes around with the best of them and often being referred to as the "peanut gallery." It helped that most of the mainstays had strong senses of humor as well as it made it easy to fit in with them. Most of my comments were directed at Mike, but virtually everyone was a potential target, including my store manager.

The only person that was spared most of the time was the assistant manager, a person (and position) that was eliminated within months of me starting there. I don't remember much about him, but he was someone I just simply didn't like, and it felt like most felt the same. I remember one particularly nasty exchange he had with one of the pharmacists, who ended up telling him to "get out of my pharmacy."

The rest of the crew were pretty laid back, funny, but also hard workers. The work would get done, then the games would begin, and since it was a relatively slow store (and getting slower by the week), there was plenty of downtime to cause chaos.

I made my mark in my own way, whether it being one-liners directed at anyone who said something silly, or in some situations, pranks. Sometimes the prank was really subtle, other times, I went for a slightly more direct approach. Either way, it was memorable and probably caused my manager more than one heart attack.

One of my earliest pranks involved the security tags that we'd have in a big strip that we had to manually place on high-ticket items (remember friends, this is prior to 2000, so things were a bit more relaxed back then). They'd send us a bunch of these with each warehouse order and most of the time, the strips were placed where corporate preferred them to be place.

I had a better idea though.

In an initial attempt to prank Mike, I started placing the strips upside down on the floor under the desk in the manager's office. Mike had been elevated to shift supervisor (along with myself and the other pharmacy tech), so we all had access in there. The prank was pretty simple in design: get at least one of these to stick to the bottom of the target's shoe(s) in hopes of setting off the alarm and causing mild panic as they tried to figure out what item was setting off the alarm.

As Mike went to leave, the alarms went off as expected and he spent several minutes trying to figure out what happened. Meanwhile, I was dying of laughter, which tipped him off that something was amiss.

He astutely checked the bottom of his shoes and found several of these strips attached. He called me a jerk, I laughed some more, and he went home for the day.

Not content with just getting Mike with this, I took aim at my store manager. In retrospect, it probably wasn't fair. He was a good guy, albeit a bit behind when it came to changes in retail, but he was friendly and good-natured and didn't deserve what I was about to do to him, but I couldn't resist.

I once again laid several of these strips upside down under the desk and waited for the moment. Finally, late in the afternoon, he went to leave. He had a bag of stuff that had been rung up earlier in his hands, went through the alarms, and about fell over when they went off.

After several minutes of rooting around, he shrugged his shoulders and left.

What made this great was this went on for several days. Every time he came in and every time he left, the alarms went off. He was baffled and nearly called the alarm company in to check them when for some reason, while sitting at the desk, he happened to drop something on the floor. It was at that moment he noticed the stray security tags still sitting under the desk, then noticed a corner of one sticking out from underneath his shoe.

He came out of the office, a smirk on his face, and a clump of these tags in his hand. He looked directly at me, chuckled a bit, and said "That was a good one."

He then added to not do it again.

I wasn't done with the poor guy sadly, although this next one wasn't directly intended to get him, it just kind of worked out that way.

One fateful delivery day, I managed to get my hands on a ton of bubble wrap. Having finished up my allotment of totes, I proceeded to head to the back room, grabbed this stash of bubble wrap, and very carefully spread it out across the floor of the stockroom. I mean, I covered the entire floor with this stuff, even being smart enough to work my way from the back to the front by the door to avoid accidentally stepping on any of it.

I laid the last piece down by the door, then high-tailed it out of there. My money was on Mike getting there first, but he ended up taking longer than I thought to finish his section.

I happened to notice my manager was heading straight for the door to the backroom, his giant cart full of finished totes in front of him. I knew what was about to happen. He was going to push the cart into the door and go straight on in without a second thought. For a brief moment, I felt bad.

The feeling didn't last long.

As soon as he pushed into the backroom with the cart, the bubble wrap started popping so fast and so loud it sounded like a fireworks show was going off back there. In his panic, he pushed the cart in even faster, thus causing even more bubble wrap to pop. Even with the door now shut, you could clearly hear it all the way up in the front of the store.

The pharmacist stopped working long enough to look at me and ask "what did you do this time?"

Before I could answer, my manager opened the door, walked out so I could see him, and held up several sheets of popped bubble wrap, shook his head while smiling, and walked back into the backroom.

He later told me that he appreciates a good prank, but if I kept this stuff up, I was going to give him a heart attack.

I was also banned from going anywhere near bubble wrap in the store from that point on.

Another frequent, but less impactful prank, was after I finally bought a new car, I took full advantage of it having a panic button. See, Mike and I often parked next to each other, so when Mike would head out to his car, I'd wait for him to be bent over, reaching into it, then hit that panic button, thus sending my car horn blaring and his head into the roof of his car. It took him a few times to figure out what was happening, but the look on his face was priceless.

After leaving that store to go to the Berea location, the pranks became more elaborate, but I'll cover those at a later time.

I had fun at the Strongsville location in my 3 years there, but a major change was about to unfold just shy of a year on the job, one that completely altered where I was heading with the job.

Stay tuned.

Tales from the pharmacy - Get a job hippie!

The circumstances that led me to apply for my first job have long become clouded over in my memory. I know it mostly out of necessity given how things had been at home for the last several years, but I'm sure it was also decided as a character building exercise as well.

What I can be sure of is it needed to happen. Things had been rough for a while with my dad hardly working (or being around for that matter) and my mom trying to get where she wanted to get to with her nursing career by working multiple jobs while putting herself through school.

As I approached my 17th birthday, we somehow came to the conclusion I should try to get a job in retail, presumably somewhere small where I wouldn't be overwhelmed. I could be making that up though. I don't really remember why we ultimately decided on me walking up to Revco, which was next to Stop-N-Shop in the plaza across from the end of my street on Hickory Ridge.

For those unfamiliar with either name, well, thanks for showing my age. Revco was one of the larger drug store chains until CVS bought it out and Stop-N-Shop was the big local grocery store before Giant Eagle took over the town. Revco seemed like a safe place to start my working career, and since it was within walking distance of my house, it was real ideal.

Naturally, things didn't pan out quite how my mom and I anticipated of course. The Revco in Brunswick wasn't hiring, so they sent my application to the store in Strongsville, which was looking for cashiers. I received a call from the store manager, who asked me to come in for an interview. I did and not longer after that, I was offered a job, which my mom felt I needed to accept even if it complicated how I was going to get there at first.

Remember, I was 16, just a couple months short of being 17. Yes, I had a driver's license, but we only had one car, which meant we were going to have to find a way to make it work until I could afford my own car.

My mom, as was often the case, assured me it would work. Another thing we had to work out was how much was I going to work. I was entering my Junior year in high school, which meant balancing school and work was a real thing I had sort through. Again, my mom helped me balance things out, which was tremendously helpful. The plan was put in place and I was set to begin my first day of work.

*     *     *

There's always been a sense of irony to me that my first day of work was on Labor Day, but that's how it worked out. I started on September 1, 1997. I was one of two new hires, the other being a girl whose name I sadly never retained after all these years for a reason that will be explained in a bit.

I was nervous as I had no idea what to expect throughout the course of the day. I was given the customary tour of the place, and for the first time, had a glimpse of what a store looked like behind the scenes. I had no idea that the infamous candy selection overstock was kept in boxes inside of the office, spanning several rows of shelves. Nor did I realize how many boxes were kept in the backroom.

I also had no idea that most of the current employees were a bit apprehensive. At the time, CVS was in the midst of buying out Revco, so while the store was still operating under the Revco name, it was assumed that the deal was going to be completed and major changes could be coming.

It was a close group though. Many of them had been working together for quite some time, so they were comfortable with one another. Thankfully, my sarcasm fit right in and I acclimated myself to the group fairly quickly. In fact, my longest-running friendship still exists to this day with Mike and Debbie, two people who took me under their wings and helped guide me.

Another person, the pharmacist-in-charge, Steve, ended up becoming the father figure I so desperately needed, particularly given the continued absence of my own dad. Steve was the guy I could talk sports with, the guy who helped me learn how to tie a tie, the guy who gave advice whenever I needed it. He was friendly and caring, even when customers were being nasty to him.

Thankfully, my first day was mostly uneventful. It was a 5 hour shift that was mostly spent learning how to run a cash register and the responsibilities I was expected to have. Of course, this didn't last long as much more responsibility was thrust upon me faster than I could anticipate.

Sadly, the girl that was hired alongside myself didn't last long.

Keep in mind, this was 1997. They were just starting to stiffen the penalties for underage drinking, which meant there was a lot of emphasis on checking ID's to make sure someone was legal to buy alcohol. This also meant police departments were running frequent stings to see if cashiers were adhering to the rules.

Well, the sting operation hit us one night. I was working the floor and she was working the register, so I wasn't at the counter when it happened, but saw the police come in shortly after it happened to talk to my manager. She was escorted out of the building and I never saw her again. She was a nice girl who unfortunately forgot to check ID one time. From that point on, I checked everyone's ID, and when people had an attitude about it, I told them I watched someone get taken out of her for not checking, so they can deal with it.

Within my first week on the job, I had learned how to ring up a customer on the register, watched a coworker get taken out of the building and ultimately lose their job, made life-long friends, and start doing plan-o-grams and other stock work.

It was an interesting start to what has become a 20 year journey at this stage and one filled with stories covering all types of emotions. Over the next several months, I plan on telling some of the more memorable stories, at least the ones I can remember enough details about.

I ask that if you have a story you think is worth telling from any time working with me that you send it along to me. I want to include as much as I can, but obviously my memory can only help so much, so anyone who can fill in the gaps is welcome to.

I will try to keep these in some kind of chronological order, but ultimately they may fall out of order as I remember things randomly.

Stay tuned for more by following the blog and I'll see you in the next one.