Sleeping In?

It's four in the afternoon. I just got up a couple hours ago and am
on my second cup of coffee. What day is it? I forget.

It's my one day off this week but I'm going in to catch up on some
overdue paperwork. Hard to sit in the office and work when we need
help on the floor. Meal breaks? Ha! Yesterday I managed to consume
large amounts of cookies on the go.

It actually would all be fun (really!) if it weren't for the big mess
customers leave. What makes them think it's ok to stuff magazines
under chairs, or leave half empty cups on shelves, or tuck wet
Kleenex behind books. Even in the kids section! Obviously they know
it's wrong since they "hide" what they're doing. There's something in
the holidays that gives permission to some people to shit on other
people. It's a lie they tell themselves. That they deserve; that it's
built into the price (nevermind that they don't buy anything), etc.
It's all a big fat lie. They are stealing. Not money or products, but
time. It's the other consumers, really, that suffer the most. When we
can't find the book they're looking for, when we have to spend
payroll cleaning up their mess, etc.

None the less, we've been very lucky. Very few meltdowns. We were
short handed last night, but after 10 pm it was like a ghost town and
I made the decision to close early (11:30 pm instead of midnight). We
didn't have to make a closing announcement since there were no
customers in the store! I don't remember that ever happening before.
Usually some stragglers... And yet, at 11:45, with all but one
register closed and everyone busy cleaning up, a frantic young woman
knocked on the door. She had some books on hold and had come over to
pick them up. I let her in and then she asked if she could still
shop. I told her no, we were closing up. She spent at least five
minutes going through the stuff she had on hold to decide what she
wanted (a little passive aggressive behavior) while I wiped down
counters in the cafe (where the only open register was. Finally she
bought half of what she had on hold, then asked again if she could
shop some more. I said no and escorted her out and locked the door.
She complained the whole time.

Frankly, I can see her point. We had said we would be open to
midnight but here we were already closed. And I suppose I could have
let her shop. We didn't manage expectations very well. I felt like I
was doing her a big favor to let her in, she felt victimized. End
result, we all felt bad. I wonder if I would've let her in in the
first lace if she'd been a scruffy looking man instead of an
attractive young woman. Or if I would've let her go ahead and shop if
she had been more charming or convincing instead of complaining and
whining. It's these unique situations that make this job interesting.