Melissa was full-blown ANGRY when she got out of work tonight. Like yelling ranting SERIOUSLY *ANGRY*.

The last two days, I've spent almost my entire shift out back, working on print jobs. We're doing up like 30 or something 6-foot banners for this Art Trail conglomeration starting up, and while printing and cutting them apart was made nice'n'easy by having the right sized material to print on, only a third have the grommets pre-punched. So yesterday and today, Chad got them all printed and I got them all cut up, and I even managed to grommet a few, but there are still a good dozen at least to do.

But in the last two days, I have:

- Printed four things to be made into car magnets.
- Found and changed the file, then printed 1400 business cards.
- A marker banner, and then two copies of another marker banner, that required making the marker machine do something I'd never done before. Four attempts and I gave up, had Chad explain to me the next morning. Still didn't work right off, but second try I got it sorted out. Of course, size was still off, since it was a weird setup, so I got to draw in a line with a Sharpie, and white-out the little spaces around each letter "e".
- Random birthday banner.
- Random art show banner, which was sent over pre-designed for once.
- Banner for a church, wherein I got to deal with somebody's Word file, and fix all the little weird things that cropped up when blowing it up three times the original size. Also spent about 10min on the phone with her, working out what she needed done.
- Numbers to cover up the numbers on a banner that's already been used two years running for an annual event. I'm never there at the same time as a boss to explain to me the pricing on oddball sized prints like this, so I left yet another note.
- And had to trim down those random magnet prints so they'll fit on the laminate Chad has left. I seriously hope I did it right.
- Threw together a layout for a banner that's not needed for a month yet and the customer hasn't brought in the photo yet.
- Worked on another banner that I needed to invent a crown/tiara picture for. It's actually insanely cute, I threw together a picture in Photoshop last week, but making it work proportionally with everything else is being a bit of a headache.
- And then there's all the Art Trail stuff. And I'm pretty sure one or two other simple banners that are slipping my mind.

Now, that would be enough on my plate, but on TOP of that, I work with a bunch of highschoolers who have no work ethic and little common sense. "Where should I put these?" "Chili pepper lights? THE FIESTA SECTION. It's at the end of the OL aisle now." "Meliiiissa, there's no room for these!!!" "... ... ...you've been here a year now. There's *never* room for things, you MAKE room. ... ...I'll go take a look, but..."

And then I go to see if there's room for one kid's stuff, and see that the stuff the other kid put out is already toppling over, because she stacked it stupidly. So I fixed it, and moved things around so it looked better and wouldn't become a mess in five minutes.

So that's like a normal iffy day. I get one like that maybe once a week, where I'm working with all people I can't rely on. It's close to closing time, I'm running around trying to make sure everything's taken care of, and everything's picked up, and the other girl is standing around curling bits of ribbon. I have to tell her to help me put things away - like the product *they'd* been pricing all night, while I was out back.

There's maybe five, ten minutes to closing. As I'm running the garbage outside, I see that there's like five cars around. I come back in to find everyone else standing around chit-chatting. "Someone put a new bag in the garbage can. Someone else, go do a walk-around, and make sure there's no-one else in here, because there are a LOT of cars outside."

A customer walks in at like two minutes to nine. "I just need a card! I know you're closing!" So I make a page for the boys to not shut off the lights yet. Customer comes back up in like a minute. And stage-whispers that there's another woman still back there too.

I don't see the boys at all. I go scampering back to find a customer leisurely putzing around the card section. "Is there anything I can help you with?" "Oh.. you're closing, aren't you?" "Yeah, technically a minute ago, but.. is there something I can help you find?" "Yes! I had so many other things I was going to look at... I need to find a nice retirement card... and do you have any writing sets, like nice writing sets? ...I was going to go look at those mugs you have downstairs..."

I remembered her coming in like an hour ago. She knew she had only an hour. I'd told her where the mugs were then. "They've already closed up downstairs, yeah... we do have some stationary sets, over here..."

And THIS FREAKING WOMAN LOOKED AT EVERY GODDAMN STATIONARY SET JOURNAL NOTEPAD WE HAD ON THE SHELF. And you have to understand, that aisle is a constant disaster area because the shelves are *covered* in boxed notecards and notepads and journals and everything else. Absolutely covered, there is not an inch empty. I asked if there was any certain style she was looking for, something floral maybe. "Well... do you have anything with names on it?" "No, just the notepads you were looking at earlier, that's it." "Oh... well what's this? Oh this is pretty... now what's this? Oh I should stop looking, you want to be leaving. But there's so much to see! I had so much else to shop for..."

I WAS GOING FREAKING CRAZY. I was trying SO damned hard to stay polite, but that was the most forced smile I've had in ages. I FINALLY got her up to the register, at like ten after freaking nine. A girl cashed her out. And THEN! "...are these two a lighter red?" NOW, she decides to inspect the rolls of cellophane that she has carried around for an HOUR. "Yes... they definitely are. Do you have any more of this color? This is the color I need for the bridal shower..."

I grabbed it and half ran to the display. Found more. Brought them up. Customer inspects. She is satisfied. Putzes around. "Oh! These are $1.95, the others were only $1.85!"

It took another minute and a half to convince her that no, NO, it was REALLY okay, it didn't make a difference to us, she didn't owe us anything, it was FINE.


Soon as she was out the door, I made sure everything was off, and then confronted my highschool buddies. "Did any of you know she was in here?" No-one did. "*That's* why I told you to look for people, there were too many cars out there." "I didn't see her, where was she??" "I found her by the cards." "Ohh.. she must have been in the corner, I walked down the middle aisle of the cards and didn't see anyone.." "That's why you need to LOOK." omFG I was ready to kill someone. We've all overlooked customers, it's insanely easy to do in that store, but I was pretty damned sure there was someone still in the store. That's why I told them to LOOK. fhes;ihgbfjksdbds


Poor Tom took the brunt of my anger, I was swearing up a storm the whole way home. Then we got home, and he showed me the email his boss had shown him - one of the higher-ups had sent him an email saying he wanted to fire people and make training more efficient. Tom's boss sent an email back, explaining in great detail (and in the same lack of punctuation my dad utilizes, funnily enough) that they need *more* people on certain shifts, because there just aren't enough people there to do the work now, and that's why people are burning out.

If you are supposed to have eight people on the day shift, to make unloading a truck in a certain timeframe physically possible, and only schedule five people, and two call in sick because you treat them like shit... having LESS people working there is not going to fix the problem. I understand that there are people who, by being there, actually create more work for the other employees because you have to double-check them all the damn time, but...

About five minutes into Tom's stories about his day - which I don't often hear, since he'd usually rather just forget it - I felt a little better. I also don't have to work tomorrow, and I finished everything *I* was supposed to. I'm getting better at letting the shit other people bring on themselves fall where it may. (No WAY did one kid dust *every* Snow Village piece, and have nothing to do by 8pm. I ran a finger along the shelf, and it came up dark grey with dust. Bullshit. Fortunately, someone with more authority to yell at people *will* catch that.) Also, I have a nice big bottle of Swedish vodka, three fun crochet projects, and silly games on the internet. I am going to go cheer up.