June 22, 2004
Many eons ago...
...I kept up with this blog. Or so some seem to think. Now let's be honest, when have I ever kept this blog up to date? Regardless, it has been an absurdly long time since I've updated this thing. I will now attempt to enlighten you as to some of what is going on in good ol' Sher-town.
I suppose the most important thing is that I have a job. Two jobs to be precise, but being the gym attendant at First Baptist hardly qualifies. I go there one or two nights a week (depending on the schedule of my other job), read whatever book I'm reading currently for four hours, and get paid minimum wage for it. Not a bad deal, all in all. My other job is standing around in the shoe department at Mervyn's being a good little employee. Er, "team member." Basically, this involves keeping the place looking neat, filling any holes with extra shoes from back stock, and making sure the customers... "guests..." are happy. It's more hours and more per hour than the church, but I don't like it nearly as much.
While at Mervyn's, I have my share of stupid or annoying customers. The most common stupid customer is the one who says (holding up some shoe), "Do you have this in a size x?" Using my psychic powers, I can easily determine what "this" is, where it is in back stock, and if we have the right size. So naturally, I ask them for the box, explaining that we can scan the UPC to find it. Monday, I had to say this to the same lady twice within two minutes. Last Friday, having rung up a pair of kids shoes (for 6.99, no less), the lady tells me they're clearance. "No," I say, "they don't have a clearance sticker." She comes back with, "But there are a lot of them out there." Yeah, that's so that you don't have to come ask me if we have this in a size x.
Then there is MARIA. Or so the tags on the hold slips said. She comes in Saturday, the day before Father's Day, when it's already frigging busy, and asks us to put about 18 pairs of shoes on hold. This is odd, and normally wouldn't be too much of a pain to deal with, except that Maria only knows a little bit of English. Granted, she has a better handle on it than the rest of her friends, but it's not much. Sunday, she comes back, and I'm the only one working. She shops around the shoe department, picks out about 10 more pairs, and asks for her package of shoes from the back. So I make three trips to get all of her shoes. I start ringing them up. She stops me a couple of times to ask how much whatever I just rang up was. I tell her, "Oh. OK. That's OK." Her total comes to some $450. "No no no no no. How much for these?" "$25." "No. Put them in hold?" "Okay, sure." So four pairs of $25 shoes off the ticket and put them back in hold. Then she pulls out $360 cash and buys the shoes. Monday, she came back. Same thing. Ended up buying 10 or 12 pairs of shoes Monday afternoon. She doesn't want to carry them around the mall, so asks us to hold them. "Thirty minutes," she says, "thirty minutes." Right. Technically, we're not supposed to hold on to the merchandise after we sell it, but neither Cody nor I felt like trying to explain this in words she understood. So we held on to them. She came back around 9:15 (5 hours later or more) to pick up the shoes. Normally, I would count her as annoying, but not stupid. I understand that the language thing made her seem stupid, but I'm sure there are lots of non-English speakers who are many many times smarter than I am. The thing that makes me wonder about Maria is that she told us she was sending the shoes to Mexico (in case you hadn't already figured this out). Thing is, why couldn't she just send the $500 she spent here and get shoes there. She'd save who knows how much money doing that. But whatever. My job is to make the "guests" happy, and as a good "team member," I make the "guests" happy.
Not much more going on around here. Earlier this summer I helped my brother and sister-in-law move from their apartment to their new house. Two (or maybe three) weeks later, John went to Baltimore for the summer for his NSA internship. So that's where he is now, and that's where my parents are, as well. They left this morning dark and early and won't be back until late next Tuesday. It's not that hard to get to Sherman from Longview, so if you want directions, just ask. :-D
June 06, 2004
Interesting Result.
You're Gallagher!
Which Member of the Shadow Council Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Hmm. Odd. Doesn't look like the image was uploaded properly. Strange.
But a little (and I do mean little) bird told me that Wheeler's planning on adding the Gallery some time in the future. Looking forward to it. In that wow-Summer's-really-boring-oh-look-Wheeler-made-a-quiz-let's-go-take-it kind of way.