Because this is the weekend before Christmas, Joseph-Beth has special extended hours — super fun. Tonight we were open until midnight and tomorrow we are open until 9, which is one extra hour tonight and two tomorrow, full of frenzied last-minute shoppers.
I expected to come home exhausted after a trying, busy day that had me running in circles. I expected to have come within hairs-breaths of murdering customers.
I did not expect to have one of the most annoyingly boring days ever.
I was stuck in the children’s department all day…something that has become a regular part of my schedule on Thursdays, that I have been getting somewhat used to one day a week, but was not expecting today–I have been kept on a rotating schedule on the weekends, despite the lack of creativity in my weekday workday, and it makes my time at the bookstore much more enjoyable, and also keeps me familiar with what books and items we have in the various departments.
The worst of it, however, was that the children’s department wasn’t even very busy–and the people that WERE there seemed to either know just what they wanted and where to find it. Few messes were made, no books needed to be placed on the shelves, and overall there was not much to do. I spent all but one hour wandering the end of the second story that houses our small-person literature, searching for books slightly askew, perhaps sticking a quarter of an inch further out than it’s fellows…asking any person who foolishly wandered into the brightly colored department if there was anything I could do to help them…re-organizing the Papo figures, that always end up in such dissaray so quickly (I almost suspect that by morning, they will once again be a tangled mess, due to wild dances when the store is empty)
<–Papo pirates
<–Papo knight
<–papo knights with horses
I hope tomorrow is better.
I think that if I keep getting placed in the children’s department for entire days on a more regular basis, I must learn how to be eccentrically creepy. I will come up silently behind customers absorbed in glancing through books, or peek around corners with just one eye and ask expressionlessly if I can help them, and stare at them without blinking, especially if they are startled and it takes them a moment to find their words.
