WARNING: Job related rant below. Knitting content at the end of the post.
I know that I mentioned that I was surprised about how our customers acted on Friday (better than normal) so I should have known something was up.
On Saturday I had to close which is something I haven’t had to do for several weeks due to the store manager being very happy with how well I stock (ie: I actually place the items in the right place and put all overstock up were it belongs properly). So already I knew that it would be a long night. Then upon getting to work I found that the store was a mess, the customers were back to their normal selves and that I was closing with one of my least favorite front end supervisors (FES). Yay! Well, the night went as I expected, except it got worse about an hour before closing. I had my area recovered, my returns put mostly away, and had even done most of the clean up of the front end due to the FES disappearing for several hours (normal) - during which time I was the only register open.
Just to give you a picture of our store so you can understand why this is bad. As you enter our store you come in using automated doors (they only open from the side meant to be used ie: the exit only opens from inside the store) and to your right are the registers. They start at register 1 closest to the exit door and end with register 7, which is obviously the farthest from the door. Were was I? On register 6, which made it very hard to make sure that nobody was leaving the store without paying. Then to add to it the phone at register 6 does not work - no paging or answering the phone which is a cashiers responsibility.
So, what made my night wonderful was the behavior of a customer’s daughter. I had rung up the customer’s purchase and she had slid her credit card already when the phone started to ring. Our rule is that the phone should never ring more than twice. So since the customer’s receipt had printed and all I needed was her signature I asked her to sign the receipt and leave it on the counter while I answered the phone (which at this point had rung 4 times). The customer said okay so I answered the phone while she signed and then she started to leave the slip on the counter. Well, her daughter (who had already given me attitude about several things that night and was probably in her 20’s, so old enough to know how to behave) decided that even though no one was around the register that leaving the paper (which has all but the last 4 digits of the card number x’d out) that this was not a good enough response and walked up to me and shoved the slip into my pants pocket. Not the pocket to my uniform (we have something that has pockets that we have to wear), but my jeans pocket on the back of my pants. And, THEN while I am talking to the customer on the phone she starts to rant about how I should have not answered the phone and that it was MY responsibility to get the phone fixed at register 6. Now unfortunately since we only use register 6 & 7 during holidays it is not a big priority to get the phone fixed - though the manager ordered a new phone from corporate back at the beginning of October. What made my day with this customer though was several things 1) she was not the one paying 2) her mother had no problem with what I suggested 3) she had already given me attitude and 4)how she made sure the customer on the phone could hear her. Tell me how does someone in their 20’s not know this is not proper behavior?
Compared to Saturday Sunday was not so bad. The worst part was how busy we were. It was pretty much non-stop customers for 5 hours and it was very unorganized.
Well, enough about my job, lets move on to more interesting subjects. Since my last progress report I have only managed another row or two on the Seraphim in Sunset and nothing at all on anything else. This is in part due to how tired I have been from the constant go at work.
Then there is the temptation to start new projects. I have the pattern for a pair of socks, some cheap acrylic fingering weight yarn, and some brand new cheap dpns to try and understand how to knit socks. I have fallen in love with some of the wonderful colorways of sock yarn out there, but until I know if I can knit socks I refuse to spend the money on sock yarn.
Then there is the fact that if I kept with it I could easily whip out the stockinette portion fairly quickly I think. Since I have never used charts before that could be a problem. So, I decided the solution was to use my expected stitch count (I changed the size by deciding to add at least 12 rows per Miriam’s pattern due to the one made in Sunset being meant for my sister who is 6 feet tall), the charts, and my handy pen and paper to work the pattern up into a written format. When I get to the charts I will use them, but this way I get experience deciphering the charts as well as create a written version to refer to if I get confused. So far I have managed to (hopefully) correctly decipher the first chart through like the 20th row or so. Since I have Monday off hopefully I can get all the charts done and some knitting done as well.
As to photos - I believe we have located the cable I need. If not my mom has said she will upload the photos to her computer and then share the files onto our network. Yes - we have a network. It is the only way since we have 2 desktops (mine & my dads), 2 laptops (my moms & my dads) and then my dad also brings home his work laptop and all of them must use the same DSL modem. This does not include the 2 laptops that will arrive in December when my sister and her husband visit over the holidays. Then there is my fond hope of getting a laptop for school next year. While I wait for that, at least I have been upgraded from a bulky regular monitor that took up my whole desktop to a nice, new, shiny flat-screen monitor (a very belated birthday gift from my parents as my birthday was in September).
Even though I could I guess I should finish this up so that I can go to bed. Even though I have Monday off I have to be to work at 6am on Tuesday and since I am not a morning person the only way I will manage that is by keeping my schedule fairly normal.
More tomorrow.
