I'm Not Supposed to Leave

It's Sunday; at 6:30 I am off work and have the next entire day off [painting??]. I should be in a good mood, but I'm just not. We got new sales lists this morning so I had to change all the marked down items to 70% off again [back and forth from 50% to 70% basically every other day] and some of the girls' and guys' fleece / hoodies went to a $39.50 price point. So we had to rearrange both the wall sections to make sure that the sale ones and the regular priced ones were separated and signed / priced correctly. Once again, I didn't sign the skirts--on purpose--to see if when I return on Wednesday after a morning shift in the Bellingham store anyone checked to see if the signage was correct. I'll keep you updated; keep your expectations low please.

Today I met an asshole and Kelly Impero. The asshole bought some sandals and a pair of sale shorts [I believe]. He went to pay with his card and I asked if it was debit or credit.

A.H.: Credit.
Me: Can I see your card and your I.D.?
A.H.: If it's signed, why do you need to? ...

Sorry to interrupt this quoted dialogue, but honestly do you go to someone's place of business and question how they do their job? If it's truly something worth complaining about, I get it. Horrible customer service or some safety hazard or something, fine. Needing to complain about being asked to see picture identification to verify that someone hasn't STOLEN YOUR CREDIT CARD and doing you a FAVOR, not fine. Just rude. I get upset when someone doesn't ask for I.D. Well, except for a situation that I'll get into in a bit.

Me: It's just our credit card acceptance policy. [Swipes card and it asks for a PIN number. By the way, why do we say VIN number and PIN number if that's what the N stands for??] Did you have a PIN for this?
A.H.: I said it was a credit card.

I did not speak a word to him after this. I told Matt that I hope he gets in a car wreck. Not that he gets hurt or anything, just that it inconveniences him enough to have property damage. Even if the other person was at fault and his or her insurance will cover everything, having a damaged vehicle is just annoying.

Finally I get a break. I am starved and I eat my delicious Suddenly Pasta Salad I made earlier this morning [the same time I made myself a morning Frozen Mocha, perhaps?]. I get interrupted by an annoyingly loud buzz calling me back out to the sales floor. This is when I meet Kelly Impero. Miss Impero is a mid-40s woman, bleached blonde hair [not super trashy], heavy set, and shifty. She came in to return four different items with three different receipts. The first item she had to return was a pair of shoes. Girls' Circa shoes that I recognize from long ago when we carried shoes [sent them back in April but we haven't had that style of Circa shoes since possibly early-to-mid November '07]. She had a receipt from August 8, 2007 with a SKU number for some girls' shoes but there was no way to verify that these shoes in fact were the same ones purchased on this date because A.) we don't have shoes in our inventory anymore, B.) the woman didn't have the box [required] or any kind of tag, and C.) even if we had shoes, we wouldn't have that style still or the SKU information because we get new books every six months or so with information on it. I told her we couldn't do anything about it and she went ahead and told me how to do my job, "I can call customer service if I need to. Just look it up in your little book." Honestly [I think that is my over-used phrase in BlogWorld], don't even start. We have been following you for 3/4 of a year and we know your little excuses. Well guess what? We have a new 60-day policy requiring tags attached and a receipt for a full refund. So your little receipt from literally almost a year ago is worthless, woman. The second receipt was from four months ago when she purchased two pairs of denim. These jeans were obviously worn and they had no tags or anything attached. I told her that we couldn't verify that they were from PacSun at all without the tags [does any other company sell Bullhead denim? I didn't think so!] and after a fuss and telling me that I "could return them without a receipt as if they were a gift," I just flat out refused and she took those ones away. The last item was a pair of girls' sale shorts that she recently got on an exchange. The tags were attached, so I gave her the amount onto a gift card. She then left and came back to use the card and get a zebra-print sweatshirt.

She sounds like the average semi-rude customer doing an exchange/return but she isn't. She has been exchanging merchandise from years ago for a long while and it's just lame. We're not a rental company; we don't take trade ins. Get a life, get a job, pay for your clothes, and when you're done with them, donate them or give them to someone or whatever. Don't return your old clothes!

After work I went home to find out that Andrew had already moved Ashley's stuff out of her old room to make way for my stuff, to make way for Sam's stuff. So he and I together moved my bed, dresser, television, VCR/DVD player, shelf, and other miscellaneous stuff. I had a huge pile of stuff [my room was kind of messy before we moved everything and, of course, I just shoved everything off to the ground so we could move the bed] that I had yet to put away, but everything was out of my old room so that Sam can paint tomorrow [well, "today" I guess]. I made a list of things I needed to get at WalMart and headed out after Andrew left. Except, I couldn't get into my car. And I couldn't get back into the house.

I locked myself out of the house.
Who does that? And of course, I had to be extra "smart" and lock both the front and the back doors so no one could break in, which was exactly what I needed to do. I called Andrew to ask if there was any way to get back in and he turned around and was back at the house in no time. Of course, I felt dumb for locking myself out of the house and was pretty upset and emotional. I think my frustration with my job makes everything that's not perfect into a part of this frustration and it comes out worse than it actually is. Andrew then decided to stay later with me and switch the times he does his jobs to be there to make sure I feel okay.

How did I get such a great guy to be mine? Who in this world actually puts his or her relationships before work? Not many, and I managed to snag one. He's absolutely amazing.

We go to WalMart and in the parking lot, I find out that both my I.D. and my credit card are at home somewhere. I only have my debit card and the picture of me that is on the front. WalMart doesn't check any I.D. and I'm thankful for this because I don't have mine [I told you I'd discuss it later on in the blog]. I balanced my checkbook yesterday or the day before and had about $65 left [getting paid on Friday]. So with this "about $65" we went in looking for things we actually needed for once. I always go into that store and walk out with one thing I needed and ten things I didn't, making the categorizing of my purchase a "want" in my checkbook, which is not a positive category.

I was thinking today [wow]. There are tribes in New Guinea and Africa and other places that don't have words in their language for "hate." Is there a tribe with no concept of the "want" notion? If so, I need to be re-born into it. Wanting is a sad, pathetic thing, and we all do it. At work when I was thinking this, a song came on that I didn't much care for. I "wanted" to switch it to another song. But at the same time, someone might "want" to hear the end of the song. How do you explain "want"? It's just odd.

Anyway, we got white paint [for ceilings and trim], paint rollers and a pan, a bristle paint brush, plastic tarping for covering up stuff, blue paint tape, new shower curtain rings [ours were question-mark shaped and didn't slide well] and a shower caddy that holds shampoos and such. The caddy works really well! ...considering we have one of those two-headed shower dealies. Now there'll be more room for Sam's things if she wants to keep anything in the shower all the time, and it looks nice and matches pretty well. It looks similar to this:


Ours has little white and seafoam green trays on each of the two shelves and it has two lufa holders but no razor holders. Regardless, it looks good in the shower. After putting the shower curtain rings on and setting up the caddy, Andrew headed out. I finished cleaning my room, started laundry, and felt a little crappy. I then came here to blog about my day and my brush with destiny [being locked out, not having my credit card...]. I have a few visitors with me while I blog:






From right to left: Moe, blog, Murphy. And waiting for these pictures to send from my phone to My Album, retrieving them, saving them, re-uploading them so that they actually load, and HTML tagging them takes forever. I have almost fallen asleep four times and I keep hearing people having a conversation. I think I'm going crazy.

I also might be reaching:

Frou Frou "Old Piano" 0:30-0:53



Thomas Newman "Six Feet Under Theme" 0:00-0:12


Don't know of any connection, don't care to look, don't matter if I am in fact reaching, my excuse is that I'm sleep blogging.