I'm slowly getting used to working the Thursday night shift at work.
I used to avoid it wherever possible, since I prefer to work days when I can, but taking that shift was a condition of my part-time contract. It's a short shift - 4.15-9.15 - and tends to be pretty straightforward. The rest of the girls are generally pretty cool and it's not insanely busy the way it is on weekdays at lunchtime.
Downside? Well, it's dark outside, which plays havoc with my sense that I should be at home with a cup of tea, or at least in the library (preferably with a well-concealed cup of tea). I routinely miss the bus home, which I find to be particularly distressing - not because it's at all difficult to take another bus home, just because they've recently changed the timetable so that, instead of missing the bus every day that I work, I now only miss it on Thursdays. It's a bit of an indignity. And of course, in our store, with the doors open to let in the cold wind off the harbour, and with our demented air conditioning, it's bloody freezing by about 7. Keep in mind that we're all being made to wear our summer uniforms ...
It's also kind of a long day, since one of my two classes is at 9am on Thursday mornings. I'm not wild about long days. If I could fruitfully rearrange my sleeping patterns to divide a week into eight 21-hour days, I totally would. Anyone with a proposal for doing this should contact me immediately. I have a regular, if rotating, work schedule now, and minimal time-critical commitments at uni, both of which should make it easier.
Anyhow, the point is, as a general rule the Thursday night shift is tolerable. Right up until you get shifts like last night, which are bad-verging-on-terrible. One of the girls called in sick, so we were short-handed - only three of us in womenswear after seven (we typically have four or five). One of the three people we had is very new - very, very new. And the air-conditioning was, for reasons unknown, spewing out air colder than the wind blowing in off the harbour (bear in mind at this point that it was very cold last night anyhow).
Despite this, we got through the night with no problems. Right up until nine o'clock. We'd switched off the music, ushered out the last customer, locked the doors. We'd tidied the piles and racks and were about to get our bags and go, when the phone rings. I find it all but impossible to ignore a ringing phone (although, given the history of wrong numbers at my house, I'm getting better at it fast) - and besides, at ten past nine, I assumed it'd be the manager phoning down from upstairs to confirm that everything was one and we were ready to leave.
Nup. It was a customer phoning to complain about a suit she'd bought the day before. At ten past nine. I would sincerely like to know what possessed her to phone at ten past nine, when every store in the city closes at nine. Particularly since, by her own admission, she'd phoned at quarter past nine in the morning to complain about the suit - or rather, her apparent allergy to it. She seemed surprised to learn that, twelve hours later, a different shift was working - or not working, more to the point, as by the time I'd worked her around to something resembling a point, it was past quarter past nine, and so past the time to which I normally get paid. (Meanwhile, at this very moment, my bus home is pulling away from the stop on the next block ...). I suspect I would make a good psychoanalyst, as I seem to have a phone manner which encourages people to rave on about the most insane things - although it may just be an aspect of my personal Weirdo Magnet. Eventually she calmed down enough to accept that nobody on this shift knew anything, so I promised her a personal phone call from "our Apparel Manager" first thing the next morning, gave her my name and the manager's name, and hung up with a sigh of relief. Wrote a novel on a long reel of docket paper for the next morning's manager - "Why I Promised You Would Phone This Nutcase Back Before The Store Opens Tomorrow: Please Don't Kill Me" - and sprinted out the door.
I'd missed the bus, of course, and so spent what seemed like an eternity freezing to death on George Street waiting for another bus to come along, in my skirt and bare legs and thongs (yes, stupid choice for a freezing night, but I burnt the tops of my feet when my kettle died and leaked very hot water all over my feet on Thursday morning). It was not the best night ever.
In happier news, though, my tax cheque has cleared, and I've got to figure out what to spend it on. I've wanted a green iPod ever since they first came out (is that five years, now?), and have the cash to get it. It has been suggested to me that, if I'm insistent on getting a green iPod because I'm ridiculously superficial like that, I should at least get the six gig one. Then I started thinking myself - sort of a dangerous thing, because technology sort of confuses me - and it occurred to me that there's not a huge amount of difference in the price between a green 6 gig iPod, and a (boring) white 20 gig iPod (I'm paying educational price, so it's a shade over $400 for the 20gig).
I'd originally been thinking that a black-and-white screen would be better for me, because I thought that a colour screen might have poor contrast and clarity - that's what my brother's colour Game Boy was like, back in the day when that was cutting edge technology. Couldn't see a bloody thing on the colour sceen, and it was much easier to play the black and white one. One of my regular customers came in with her new colour iPod last night, though, and showed me - I was very surprised by how clear it was - and now I don't know what to do.
Damn. All I want to do is blow a fair bit of money on some schmick technological gadget. Why must it be so hard?
I used to avoid it wherever possible, since I prefer to work days when I can, but taking that shift was a condition of my part-time contract. It's a short shift - 4.15-9.15 - and tends to be pretty straightforward. The rest of the girls are generally pretty cool and it's not insanely busy the way it is on weekdays at lunchtime.
Downside? Well, it's dark outside, which plays havoc with my sense that I should be at home with a cup of tea, or at least in the library (preferably with a well-concealed cup of tea). I routinely miss the bus home, which I find to be particularly distressing - not because it's at all difficult to take another bus home, just because they've recently changed the timetable so that, instead of missing the bus every day that I work, I now only miss it on Thursdays. It's a bit of an indignity. And of course, in our store, with the doors open to let in the cold wind off the harbour, and with our demented air conditioning, it's bloody freezing by about 7. Keep in mind that we're all being made to wear our summer uniforms ...
It's also kind of a long day, since one of my two classes is at 9am on Thursday mornings. I'm not wild about long days. If I could fruitfully rearrange my sleeping patterns to divide a week into eight 21-hour days, I totally would. Anyone with a proposal for doing this should contact me immediately. I have a regular, if rotating, work schedule now, and minimal time-critical commitments at uni, both of which should make it easier.
Anyhow, the point is, as a general rule the Thursday night shift is tolerable. Right up until you get shifts like last night, which are bad-verging-on-terrible. One of the girls called in sick, so we were short-handed - only three of us in womenswear after seven (we typically have four or five). One of the three people we had is very new - very, very new. And the air-conditioning was, for reasons unknown, spewing out air colder than the wind blowing in off the harbour (bear in mind at this point that it was very cold last night anyhow).
Despite this, we got through the night with no problems. Right up until nine o'clock. We'd switched off the music, ushered out the last customer, locked the doors. We'd tidied the piles and racks and were about to get our bags and go, when the phone rings. I find it all but impossible to ignore a ringing phone (although, given the history of wrong numbers at my house, I'm getting better at it fast) - and besides, at ten past nine, I assumed it'd be the manager phoning down from upstairs to confirm that everything was one and we were ready to leave.
Nup. It was a customer phoning to complain about a suit she'd bought the day before. At ten past nine. I would sincerely like to know what possessed her to phone at ten past nine, when every store in the city closes at nine. Particularly since, by her own admission, she'd phoned at quarter past nine in the morning to complain about the suit - or rather, her apparent allergy to it. She seemed surprised to learn that, twelve hours later, a different shift was working - or not working, more to the point, as by the time I'd worked her around to something resembling a point, it was past quarter past nine, and so past the time to which I normally get paid. (Meanwhile, at this very moment, my bus home is pulling away from the stop on the next block ...). I suspect I would make a good psychoanalyst, as I seem to have a phone manner which encourages people to rave on about the most insane things - although it may just be an aspect of my personal Weirdo Magnet. Eventually she calmed down enough to accept that nobody on this shift knew anything, so I promised her a personal phone call from "our Apparel Manager" first thing the next morning, gave her my name and the manager's name, and hung up with a sigh of relief. Wrote a novel on a long reel of docket paper for the next morning's manager - "Why I Promised You Would Phone This Nutcase Back Before The Store Opens Tomorrow: Please Don't Kill Me" - and sprinted out the door.
I'd missed the bus, of course, and so spent what seemed like an eternity freezing to death on George Street waiting for another bus to come along, in my skirt and bare legs and thongs (yes, stupid choice for a freezing night, but I burnt the tops of my feet when my kettle died and leaked very hot water all over my feet on Thursday morning). It was not the best night ever.
In happier news, though, my tax cheque has cleared, and I've got to figure out what to spend it on. I've wanted a green iPod ever since they first came out (is that five years, now?), and have the cash to get it. It has been suggested to me that, if I'm insistent on getting a green iPod because I'm ridiculously superficial like that, I should at least get the six gig one. Then I started thinking myself - sort of a dangerous thing, because technology sort of confuses me - and it occurred to me that there's not a huge amount of difference in the price between a green 6 gig iPod, and a (boring) white 20 gig iPod (I'm paying educational price, so it's a shade over $400 for the 20gig).
I'd originally been thinking that a black-and-white screen would be better for me, because I thought that a colour screen might have poor contrast and clarity - that's what my brother's colour Game Boy was like, back in the day when that was cutting edge technology. Couldn't see a bloody thing on the colour sceen, and it was much easier to play the black and white one. One of my regular customers came in with her new colour iPod last night, though, and showed me - I was very surprised by how clear it was - and now I don't know what to do.
Damn. All I want to do is blow a fair bit of money on some schmick technological gadget. Why must it be so hard?
posted by beck at 11:11 am
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