Day: 300 Scribe:0

It started out with me over-sleeping and having to rush to get ready for work. I should have known then that I would have to declare war on each successive hour from that point on just to get home in relatively large pieces that could be stitched back together where people wouldn't notice the marks. I'll share, and then maybe realize there wasn't as much drama as I thought and change the title of the post. We shall see.


I got to work 5 minutes late, but the manager let it slide because I'm usually on time. So, the day was looking up. Lots of new stock came in today, also good I like looking at the new stuff and keeping abreast of what is coming in the next catalog.

The first phone call I handled was a relay from a website, I'm not in the store more than 4 minutes and a stream of pornographic images being described to me poured out of the earphone. That's right, an obscene telephone call, and this one for whatever reason made me feel filthy. I've had them before, and it's not that uncommon for some creep to get his jollies by calling a Christian Bookstore and doing that kind of thing. But this guy, he touched a nerve. I don't know why, I know it wasn't my fault, and honestly it could have been worse.

It could have been like the satanist who was out from the local mental hospital and told the poor clerks that day that he had a glass eye cos satan told him to cut the one out so he did. Maybe they didn't look like they believed him, or maybe he was just nuts, but he POPPED it out to prove to them that he had one, and then left, carrying it in his hand.

Anyway, after the obscene phone call there was a bit of a twist up about how we got a satanic necklace into the store. Well, we sure as shooting didn't order the thing and I don't think one of the customers left it there because it matched other things that were not satanic. The manager and I figured finally that it must have come in with a set of other necklaces that had crosses and doves and sheep and fish and other Christian images on them and whoever ordered the things didn't catch it.

After the satanic necklace was dealt with, customers started coming in droves and the work piled up around my ears till I felt like I was in a pit merely because people had set things around me. One of the most difficult things that I did get done today was the assembly of Wayne Thomas Batson's Isle of Swords display. It nearly went in the dumpster three different times because of the idiotic assembly directions and the confusing pictures that accompanied the directions.

It had the thing I hate MOST in the world of retail, these little plastic fasteners the consist of a screw-like post and a cap that has two raise ears supposedly so you can 'twist' it down the plastic threads and secure cardboard bits to cardboard bits without using tape. And just why do I hate these innocuous little things?

1) The threads are NEVER clean, they are filled with burrs because they are mass produced by the same company I am convinced that made those cheap snap-together models or toys that you used to get at fast food places.

2) The fasteners are designed to go through little holes in the cardboard that if you have folded and bent the structure right, will line up. Not even the most famous contortionist could fold a display together and get the holes to line up. Why? Because they are mass produced and you can tell that the holes are off because the ink of the design that is suppose to look like nails or bullet holes or whatever they've incorporated into the picture to mask them is 'off'. So, you wind up crying and screaming and wrestling with the stand, trying to get these little fasteners into holes that don't quite match up and then you struggle to get the caps down the shafts of these plastic screws with the messed up threads. What usually happens is you strip the threads, and force the cap into the screw so hard you pinch the flesh of your hand, the webbing between your thumb and index finger, between them and then bleed all over the cardboard. Usually at this point, you throw the display out into the dumpster behind the building with a violence that excites the flies that live in the dumpster. But today I did the smarter thing, I called on my co worker and he finished putting the display together, though he admitted later that I'd done the harder part. The display is very nice, by the way, now that it's taped together where the fasteners wouldn't work.

After we got the display up and filled, there was a pull list and more customers and then we had to button up the store for the night but people kept coming in and the day continued to wage war with me. Right now, I'm pretty sure it won. This is how losing, feels.