Work work work...is work....

Holy. Crap. I'm tired. Why didn't any of you little cheerleaders remind me how HARD working is? Huh? WTF? Didn't any of you think to poke me and say "Uh, you know, Nessa, this isn't going to be sitting on your arse and socializing. You might have to do stuff and learn new things?"

I'm a spoiled little wuss, I know. I know. I've worked three days in a row, eight hour shifts of standing behind a faux-cherry counter smiling like a sycophant and taking people's money. Not rocket science, right?

But the standing. Oy, vey; my dogs are barking. I very smartly purchased some spiffy new shoeses for the whole "business casual attire" requirement (I didn't think they'd be impressed with my housewife clogs or tennies, and the slut heels stay at the back of the closet), only to discover that cute new fashionable shoeses cause BLISTERS after a few hours. I think my feet swelled to the size of that colon in the Mutter museum after the second hour. They sure felt like it. I hobbled around wincing and muttering the 'f' word by about hour six Friday.


Not that there was much hobbling to be doing as a cashier. Because as a "Seasonal Cashier", the management feels that we are not competent enough to actually venture out onto the book floor where a customer might see our nametage and assume we know where anything is, so we are safely ensconced behind twenty feet of that faux-cherry wall. God forbid we usurp the Trained Booksellers by guiding some trembling social phobic to the Self-Help section. In our untrained ignorance and being, apparently, too stupid to read the shelf headers, we might take them to the International Travel section instead, thereby causing mass confusion and hysteria and the End Of Days. Nope. We stay behind and just ring up people's piles of stuff.

And my feet weren't the only reason I was exhausted. After the first day, I had WORK DREAMS. All night, I rang people up on a computer that didn't work and frantically ran around the Sugarhouse B&N searching for some elusive...something. WTF? I mean, I understood when I had the teacher nightmares, all teachers have those. You dream that you show up without any lesson plans or behavioral map and the kids have decided to take over. I get that; teaching is a hard job and I was constantly afraid that someone would find out that I really had no fucking clue what I was doing.
But this is cashiering at Barnes and Noble. Again, not rocket science.
Last night, I don't think I ever got to the REM stage of sleep in order to have the dreams. The girl came into my bed every hour (she missed me, which both bolsters my heart and breaks it), and the rabbits were staging an in-cage riot all night because no one had let them out while I was gone.
So now I'm all groggy, and I have writers group tonight. I'm suspecting there will be very little intelligent wittiness from me this evening.


It's been a few years since I've worked retail, and the times they have a'changed. Instead of just scanning and hitting 'total' and taking their money and wishing them a nice day, we have a script.
"Welcome to Barnes and Noble. Were you able to find everything you needed?"

" Great. Will you be using a Barnes and Noble member card today to save ten percent on all your purchases?" [If the answer is "no", mention one more benefit to paying 25 bucks a year for another card to clutter up their wallet]

"You are a member? Great! Let me tap four different buttons on my screen to get to the proper screen so you can swipe your member card. Ok, great. Let me re-tap the four fucking buttons to get me back to the POS screen. Nothing like an efficient computer system when you're surly and in a hurry, right?"

[Insert witty banter to feign interest in what they are purchasing, unless it's something uncomfortable like "Why Men Marry Bitches" or "How to Escape an Abusive Relationship" or "Smokin' Hawt Nekkid Chicks" or "How to Recover After the Loss of a Child". That purchase actually made me cry a little. With books like those, it's generally a good idea to shut the hell up and avoid eye contact.]

"Okay, then. We are doing a holiday book drive. Would you be interested in purchasing a book [indicate books nicely displayed next to my register in such a way that I knock them down every time I bag someone's order] to be donated to a local underpriveleged elementary school student?"

"And would you like a bag for your purchases?"

I am the High Inquisitor. I feel like a moron. They make me do it. I innocently asked if it would be okay to not ask all the moronic questions if it was a purchase like one of the above, or if the person had obviously just come in because we're the only place to buy a roadmap for Northern Iowa. NO! God NO! Never skip the questions! It might be a secret shopper pretending to be surly and uncommunicative and depressed and they might give you a BAD GRADE and then you've ruined EVERYTHING.

Oh-kay. Thank goodness the Corporate Gods are sensitive to their customers' needs.

And the customers. Ok. I think there is a secret conspiracy. I've been lucky; I haven't had any fit-throwers or real psychos. But, I swear, I think I've been ringing up the same twenty people, over and over and over. I look at them and I SWEAR they were just here. Is it just my brain being overloaded with new information and refusing to process anything else? Because here's who I keep getting:

Uncomfortable Guy.
Surly Old Man.
Big Burly Betty. And her girlfriend.
Dysfunctional Crack Whore.
Snotty College Professor.
Even More Snotty College Student.
Strung-out Housewife and her four screaming kids.
Perfect Hair-Nails-Boobs Barbie. (Chiseled and Uninterested Ken optional)
Defensive Dan.
Happy Heavy Honey.
Twilight-Might-Happen-To-Me Hopeful Girl
Granola Gus and his girlfriend Stinky Jane.
The Subaru Outback People.
JockStrap Jared.
Militant Mike and his Violent ADD son.
Squeaky Mouse Girl.
Vanilla Ice.
I'm-Better-Than-You 'Tude.
Duuuuuuuuuuuuude.
The Mormon Bishop.

Yep, I think that's about it. The entire customer base for B&N. I can, if you're bored, tell you exactly what each of them buys.

Ugh. That's it for now. My brain is SOOOOOOO done. Thank Quark I have five days to recover before going back. If you're at work right now, I apologize for being such a baby. You rock.

I have to go fold twelve loads of laundry now. Back to the daily grind, which I have discovered is no grind at all.

:)