intriguing work tales

[pauraque_bk]

So work super-sucked this week, as I said my boss was sick, and it was the week before Valentine's Day, which where I work is the same volume as the week before Christmas. (The store is basically designed to be a cooler, independent version of Papyrus, which if you don't know what that is, is a less-stuffy and less-cutesy version of Hallmark.)

Unlike my last retail job, the customers are 99% polite, which is pretty nice. When I started working there, my first review was like "pauraque sometimes seems defensive and too reserved with customers, he is not rude but could work on being friendlier", and I was like... well, when you work for three years in an environment where combative customers are the norm, it takes a while to unlearn that.

But you do always get gems like the woman who bought a lunchbox, gave it to the kid, the kid broke it, and then she wanted to return it without the receipt and be INDIGNANT that she can't because surely if her sweet angel broke it, it must have been DEFECTIVE!

Other interesting thing: We found a lost dog. Me and the boss are standing there discussing something work related (this was after she had stopped being sick of course), and Random Dog wanders by. Boss yells across the packed store: "WHOSE DOG IS THIS?"

No answer.

"This is NOBODY'S dog?"

Shrugs all around.

So I'm like, does it have a tag? And I grab it by the collar, and it has a phone number, so I'm like "Should I call this phone number?" And Boss is like GOD YES ARE YOU STUPID CALL IT, so I do, and I'm like, "Uh, so we found a dog."

Woman: "U FOUND MY DOG????"

Me: "Yes I'm at the card store on [Street] across from [Prominent Grocery Store]."

Woman: "OKAY I AM COMING OVER THERE RIGHT NOW"

And then my boss is like, did she say how far away she is, WHEN is she coming? And I was like dude, I don't know, I'm sure she's coming as fast as she freaking can. And my boss is like BUT THERE IS STILL A DOG IN THE STORE, so I took it in the office, and she was like, "What are you doing, you can't just sit there and babysit the dog!" I was like, "What man, I can't leave it in the office by itself, nor can we let it wander the store, do you have another idea?" And she goes, "Can't you make it lie down by the door and just stay there?"

Now the other aspect of this story is that the dog had the same name as me. I am not making this up. So here I am in the office going "Come here [My Name], lie down boy, yes you are a good boy!" while my boss looks on disapprovingly and [My Name] totally ignores me. This carried on for not a very long period of time until the dog's mommy came and got him and was very grateful that we found her dog. I told her that the dog had the same name as me, and she was like, "It's a MIRACLE he was DRAWN to you so you could SAVE him from being run over in the street", so that was that.

Well anyway I worked a million high-volume days in a row, and when I got home from work last night I had hit such a wall physically that I just crawled into bed and fell asleep. When I woke up this morning I was like, huh what's this thing in the bed, and then realized it was my SHOES, and I was still otherwise completely dressed. I guess I had just like toed my shoes off and not even managed to kick them off the bed...

So now I have a three-day weekend. And as I was typing this, my boss calls and goes, "So... you wanna be a hero?"

"No..."

She laughs. "Well, [minion from other store] called in sick, and now [manager of other store] is there by himself, and he's sick... And [Owner] wanted me to call you, but I already told her how you worked so many days in a row for me. And she was like, I'll pay him the overtime if he goes over there, but..."

I summarized the falling-asleep-in-clothes story and was like, I know he's sick and I feel really bad for him, and normally I would go rescue him, but today... just no, I am wiped out.

She was very understanding and was like, "Well [Owner] can just go over there, I just thought I'd call you first and see if you did want to be a hero."

Nope! Nope nope nope.

---

Oh, so here's something else bizarre. In my WoW guild I'm one of the people who looks at applications that players submit in order to join our Prestigious Ranks. Of course this makes me privy to a lot of hilarious nonsense and assaults on the English language that must be sorted through to find people who actually might be good.

We are a GLBT-friendly guild and advertise this fact, and most of the leadership of the guild is queer. So one of the questions on the application is like, to paraphrase, "So you know this guild has lots of openly gay and lesbian people and that's cool for you right?"

Anyway, today we got this in an app:

Yes it is, although i may blurt out a "thats gay" every now and then its by no means offensive to anyone, i have no issues with anyones sexual orientations.

Oh right. RIGHT. That is so the way to impress the gay people who are reading and judging your application. They love that stuff, it doesn't bother them all when you "blurt out" offensive slurs on their identity, as long as you also mention how it... doesn't... offend them? Got it!

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

As if you weren't already a hero saving [your name] from getting hit by a car!

I'm so glad you are not going to work. The idea of your barely getting your shoes off is just too sad. I'm going to be even nicer to the salespeople the next time I go into Papyrus.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

you are a HERO for telling your boss "NOPE." and very powerful/dynamic for saving [Your Name] from certain death.


As for part the second, I can only go O.O quite a lot.