It's beginning to feel a lot like....

I spent part of yesterday tying up some loose ends of shopping for various and sundry. Ariel needed a few things for friends for a gift exchange. I figured if I went in the morning on a Thursday there would not be that many people around. Wrong! Any and all stores I went to were packed and the lines were long. I did get good service at the electronics store I went to for some additional disks for the DVD camcorder. I could see that the sales people were trying to help people as quickly as possible and passing other onto the next free sales person so no one had to stand around for a long period of time. I do know that the salesmen supplement their income with commission but you could tell they were making a concerted effort to get to everyone. If you knew what you wanted, they took you there and sold you want you needed. If you needed help with all the choices, you were handed off to the persons in that section to help you. There were a number of older citizens in there shopping. The first electronic store I went into was one of the large chains stores that was no help what so ever so I went to the other and got what I needed in a short period of time.

Then I went onto the bookstore for the stuff for Ariel. They had a big sign for “joining the crew” which should have been a tip off that they were short handed. The fact that the phone was ringing off the hook was another. I found most of the items pretty quickly but one was taking a bit of time. A customer came up and asked me if I worked there. I replied that I use to but hadn’t in a while but I could still answer a simple question. The store has been refurbished so everything had been moved around. She was trying to find something in children’s books and having no luck. I got onto the computer that had been left on the store system rather than the customer system and found where the item was located. I then took her to the book. She thanked me profusely and expressed regret that I wasn’t working there anymore. I’m not expressing any regret looking at how busy the store was. I ran into one of the managers I worked with and she had apparently seen me helping the woman. She thanked me for the help. I joked that maybe I should work there on commission. She told me that I still knew the store better than the long-term employees. Of course I could tell you the layout of just about every bookstore and comic books tore in the area out off the top of my head. Those sorts of things stick. That helped me a lot when I was stage managing and writing down blocking.

I am grateful that the only store I have to visit the next week is the grocery store.