The Ins and Outs of Santa Barbara

I went to the bookstore last Friday night at 11:30-- even thought I had to work early on Saturday, just so that I could get my hands on the LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK. We bought 2 copies so that Charles and I wouldn't have to share, although Charles finished reading it much faster. I alas, have work, so I am almost finished but not quite.

I do enjoy my new job as a teller. As I get better and more efficient I seem to get less angry customers. But there's always a few. I've had a lot of trouble with the California drivers licenses. Apparently the DMV thought it would be cool to encode the license number and expiration date on a magnetic stripe on the back of the card so that you can swipe them just like a debit card. Of course anyone over 20 thinks that by swiping their license I know everything about them and am trying to steal their identity. People get surprisingly angry when asked to swipe their license, and I had one customer ask for my manager and then proceed to yell at him for 15 minutes because I asked him to swipe his license. Needless to say, I given up on the whole swiping thing. If someone comes in without a skateboard in hand-- they'll want me to look at their license the old fashion way.

Most of the people in California have lived here their whole lives and have no idea what even the rest of their country is like. All of my coworkers ask me all the time, "So what's it like in the ATL?" They have a hard time believing that Spanish isn't a prominent language there, that there are indeed lots of black people, and that the weather could actually get hotter then 78 degrees. Here, 75 degrees is considered 'hot'. I love it!

There is a horrible real estate bubble here. Lots of people move here, but there is not room to build more homes, so an equal number of people are moving out. There are basically 2 demographics here-- college students who cram into condos and apartments which they can barely afford, and then wealthy people who can afford to drop $8 million on a home. Because of this, there's a desperate need for jobs at the entry level. There just aren't enough college students to fill them all. At the bank, 2 girls were hired to the teller position a couple weeks before me, then a week after I got there a fourth person was hired. And after all that, there's still a sign on our door declaring that the bank is still hiring for this location. It's crazy.