Xmas Haul and work OMFG
Jan. 1st, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
reymonkeyI think I said I'd post this? Maybe? I forget. All I asked for was the 'art of Discworld' book, which I did get, but I also got Brian Froud's Goblins of Labarynth artbook which I've wanted for years but had gone out of print and was impossible to find anywhere. Apparently they just reprinted it recently. I also got a Herr Drosselmeyer Nutcracker, which brings the total of Nutcrackers and Nutcracker ornaments in this house up to... 26? They're not all mine, just mostly. G-Bridgie got me an amazing cool faux leather jacket that makes me look like a kick ass biker chick, and a replacement for my grey cap that's been missing since I last visited B'ham. Two Gorillaz DVDs which I still haven't finished looking through but they are incredibly awesome.
Okay, so today I worked, because it was the grand reopening of the store since our move. I got there at nine because I had to vacuum the store, which takes effing forever because it's so much bigger now and you have to keep unplugging the damn thing to reach. We were scheduled to open at ten, and at nine when I walked up to work I had to tell some lady in the parking lot that we didn't open until then because she was ready to follow me in. By 9:30 we had a line on the sidewalk that covered the windows on one side, and that's about a dozen feet. I should mention that since I woke up this morning it was pouring rain. Ukrops Grocery, which is the main draw of the shopping center, was closed today. Half the stores there were closed, really. By 9:45 the parking lot was FULL. We opened a little before ten, with gift bags for the first 100 people in the door. Those were gone in twenty minutes. They put me on register duty because I'm apparently the fastest (we only have one register right now, although we want a second once the rent on the new space is paid off), and by about ten-thirty I was just ringing one person out after another. At one point the line apparently wrapped around most of the store although I was too busy ringing them up to notice and only heard later. What I did know was that whenever I looked up all you could see was a solid mass of people. Now this is a quilting store mind you, so these are mostly women and a handful of husbands and a lot of them are friends, so they stand in line talking and laughing and we had chocolate and stuff around.
I've worked three Black Fridays at RadioShack and I don't think I've ever seen a crowd that big in that size store. Our square footage is probably about equal to the RS, maybe slightly more. I did not hear or see a single unhappy person in the store all damn day. Even the husbands that came along were happy and joking and smiling.
When I did get off at about three it had calmed down a lot, but there was still somebody at checkout about every five minutes or more. I cam home, napped, we went out to eat in the same shopping center just after closing time so I peeked in and asked the boss how we did.
I'm not sure I should put the number here, but OMFG.
When we first saw this little quilting and craft store open up in the shopping center, we said 'wow how cool but it probably won't last'. That was about a year and a half ago now, and the space we just moved into is twice as big as next door where we were. Wow. Just wow. Plus my boss is the best I've ever had, possibly short of the informal ones during college workstudy. I am genuinely happy for my boss and my whole workplace and that's just a little weird.
WTF of the day: Our cat Spider is too dumb to figure out the gourmet catfood we gave them as a treat tonight. Yet she was really interested in my cat's mouth because she obviously got something really good. We put the damn kitten in front of her food bowl with the cat food three or four times and practically put her nose in it.
Okay, so today I worked, because it was the grand reopening of the store since our move. I got there at nine because I had to vacuum the store, which takes effing forever because it's so much bigger now and you have to keep unplugging the damn thing to reach. We were scheduled to open at ten, and at nine when I walked up to work I had to tell some lady in the parking lot that we didn't open until then because she was ready to follow me in. By 9:30 we had a line on the sidewalk that covered the windows on one side, and that's about a dozen feet. I should mention that since I woke up this morning it was pouring rain. Ukrops Grocery, which is the main draw of the shopping center, was closed today. Half the stores there were closed, really. By 9:45 the parking lot was FULL. We opened a little before ten, with gift bags for the first 100 people in the door. Those were gone in twenty minutes. They put me on register duty because I'm apparently the fastest (we only have one register right now, although we want a second once the rent on the new space is paid off), and by about ten-thirty I was just ringing one person out after another. At one point the line apparently wrapped around most of the store although I was too busy ringing them up to notice and only heard later. What I did know was that whenever I looked up all you could see was a solid mass of people. Now this is a quilting store mind you, so these are mostly women and a handful of husbands and a lot of them are friends, so they stand in line talking and laughing and we had chocolate and stuff around.
I've worked three Black Fridays at RadioShack and I don't think I've ever seen a crowd that big in that size store. Our square footage is probably about equal to the RS, maybe slightly more. I did not hear or see a single unhappy person in the store all damn day. Even the husbands that came along were happy and joking and smiling.
When I did get off at about three it had calmed down a lot, but there was still somebody at checkout about every five minutes or more. I cam home, napped, we went out to eat in the same shopping center just after closing time so I peeked in and asked the boss how we did.
I'm not sure I should put the number here, but OMFG.
When we first saw this little quilting and craft store open up in the shopping center, we said 'wow how cool but it probably won't last'. That was about a year and a half ago now, and the space we just moved into is twice as big as next door where we were. Wow. Just wow. Plus my boss is the best I've ever had, possibly short of the informal ones during college workstudy. I am genuinely happy for my boss and my whole workplace and that's just a little weird.
WTF of the day: Our cat Spider is too dumb to figure out the gourmet catfood we gave them as a treat tonight. Yet she was really interested in my cat's mouth because she obviously got something really good. We put the damn kitten in front of her food bowl with the cat food three or four times and practically put her nose in it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2007 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2007 02:25 am (UTC)Weeeell... yes and no.
I am not a feminine person, as I'm sure you've noticed by now. That's not just because I have a girlfriend, it's just I've always got along better with guys. I don't get the stereotypical chick things and I probably never will. I am finding out lots of other chicks don't either, but...yeah. I've always worked with groups of guys, and liked it. Now I'm working in a place with entirely female employees and a mostly female customer base, and they understand chocolate and feeling shitty once a month. I was worried because quilting=little old ladies.
You know what? Little old ladies can kick ass. Yes there are some stereotypical little old ladies who want to do things the way their mother did, but my boss swears more than I do and is younger than my mother. She doesn't like little old lady fabric so we don't carry much of it. She is part of a quilting group online for which it is a membership requirement that you send around a really foul-mouthed email when you join. There's actually a lot of people not too much older than me, maybe mainly thirty-five and up? I suck at guessing ages. Two of my coworkers are older than sixty and they're friends (they used to work at another shop together). The one that has voice problems that make her really quiet is Trouble and I tell her so to her face. One day she was talking to someone and said that the one son-in-law she doesn't like she has to pretend to be nice to because he's studying for the priesthood and you never know if he might have connections.
Your aunt just might not be who you think she is when you're not around.
no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2007 02:33 am (UTC)I agree, little old ladies can kick ass--I just think it'd be odd to have such a 'niche' customer age. Personalities can and do vary, thank goodness! I'm sure quilting is a joy for most of your customers, not a burden, so you get to work at their happy place! :)
My aunt...hmm...could be. She lives in faraway Indiana, so I've never really had a chance to be around her a whole lot. She has promised to make each of her nieces and nephews a quilt, so I'm very much looking forward to that!
no subject
Date: Jan. 2nd, 2007 02:52 am (UTC)It's still weird to me, and learning little old ladies kick ass is a major discovery for me. I only ever had one set of grandparents, and the one set lived across the country with all my other relatives. I was never around older people at all, let alone old ladies or even groups of women. Also our customers are just amazing after the hell of RadioShack for two and a half years. WTF was I thinking working there so long? My last job was even crappier than that.
I'm still not so big on the quilting thing, but we've been doing dollmaking around the house for ages and I'm getting majorly into the puppet thing. We have dollmaking classes and other stuff at work, so it's broader than you'd think even though it's supposed to be a quilting-oriented store.