Adventures in Retail: The Saga Begins

I've been trained on the cash register, taken the store tour and watched all the training videos. Now I'm out on the floor as associate #435. I worked Thursday night and survived my first weekend. Saturday was very busy but Sunday was rather quiet. The weather on Sunday was gorgeous. I'm sure most people were probably out enjoying the day.

Surprisingly, I found that many of the customers were friendly and patient. I hope I projected those characteristics back to them. I did overhear two people I had helped tell the big manager what a wonderful sales clerk she had. Alrighty. On the other hand, it's my co-workers who leave much to be desired. One in particular, who was supposed to act as my "buddy" and help me out on the floor. Sure she helped, when she'd bother to be around. L is the stupidest, most self absorbed person I've ever met. Of course she thinks nothing of talking incessantly about herself, herself and herself. She's around twenty years old and has an eighteen month old baby girl. I'd think she'd might occasionally bore me to death talking about her daughter -- but no. She hardly ever mentions the poor little thing.

On morning Sunday L and I were scheduled to open. I knew I'd have to get the cash bags and open the registers, even though I'd never done it before on my own. I didn't figure I'd have to be there for a whole 45 minutes on my own. I did run into a small problem that I didn't know how to deal with so had to call for a manager. K, the store assistant GM who hired me showed up. She helped me on the registers until L showed up at 11:45. I did cover a bit for L (which I really shouldn't have). We were both originally scheduled to start the shift at noon but our supervisor changed it on Saturday. (The supervisor forgot that the store was opening early on Sunday when she made out the original schedule.) I told K that maybe L had forgotten the shift start time had been moved up an hour, or maybe our supervisor neglected to tell L.

Then, once L was on the floor with me I was subjected to hearing all the details of her breakup with her boyfriend (who by the way IS not the same guy who fathered her baby). Apparently his friends were talking trash about her, and he wouldn't defend her. Incidentally, he also hits her. I got the impression thought that the punch fests might have been permissible if he would just stick up for her. Either way, she dumped him. There might be a bright side to this. The boyfriend also works in the store, so L is considering quitting to avoid constantly running into him. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I opened two new credit applications over the weekend (that's two extra dollars in the old paycheck for each). They were also handing out candy bars for each application. I left mine in my locker for those evening shifts I have to go to directly from the software company to the mall.

I did have today off so I was able to catch up on house cleaning and laundry. I got out to buy some flowers for the flower boxes and a decent hanging plant for the porch despite that most of plants were fairly picked over by this afternoon. I'm hoping to put the flowers in the box tomorrow night. I wrote up the Relay press release. Those will have to wait until the ACS office approves it before I can send them out later this week.