You load 16 Tons and whatta ya get?...

….another day older and deeper in debt.

I’m baaaaaaaaaaack!
Actually, I never went away. I’ve been swamped with work/church distractions and my blogging unintentionally got thrown onto the back burner…..the back-back-back burner, the one crusted over with egg bits that no one ever cleans…
Thanks to all my readers who have inquired about my whereabouts….and who have kept my site hits up despite the fact that nothing has changed here since August 23rd.

This working for a living stuff has done made me bone tired!
To quote Bill the Cat: ack!
Being a student-slash-housewife for the past two years was a piece of cake compared to this bringing home the bacon gig. I’m not used to being on my feet for 8.5 hours a day, I’m constantly on the move in the store and shelving books gives me a better workout than any Thigh-Master out there. I’ve mastered the art of crouching in an extended deep-knee bend as I alphabetize lower shelves, and contorting myself into Cirque du Soleil positions to clean the window displays. You can bounce a quarter off my hamstrings they’re so tight.

Of course between working-for-the-man and getting the new Sunday School year off the ground, my blogging life has seriously suffered.
All my physical and mental energy has gone into learning the new job and all of my creative energy has gone into organizing Rally Day, recruiting teachers, and setting up the teaching/curriculum schedule.

Now I finally have a morning off and so far I’ve used the time in a very productive manner….laying on the couch in my Sponge Bob pajamas, eating Cheerios and watching House Hunters, Dirty Jobs and DVR’d episodes of the Ellen show.
Life doesn’t get much better than this.

The new job has cut into my blogging time but it feels good to be back in the working world. I like the job….I’m actually getting paid to organize book shelves, something I’d do for fun, for free, in a heartbeat…..yes, I am a freak, as my SO keeps reminding me.

Of course the first two days on the job included the usual panic moments where one feels like an incompetent know-nothing boob who was obviously deluding herself when she agreed to take such a high-pressure complicated job…….in a bookstore.
There was so much to learn; the corporate policies, the store layout, the ever changing list of items we’re required to push during every transaction: (“would you like any candy, bookmarks or gift cards?”), and the 35 different buttons on the cash register, each of which must be pressed in a particular order depending on the type of sale, the discounts being applied, the phase of the moon, etc.

Then there’s the company’s Rewards club card that we have to get every customer to sign up for (and God forbid we dip below a 70% compliance level), an antiquated computer inventory system that never seems to bring up the book that a customer is looking for and/or give the correct section where it can be found in the store, and a complicated ordering process that we have to foist on the customer if the book they want is not in stock.

Add on top of this a manager who is…ahem….very “particular” about the way things should be done in regards to procedure and paperwork, and who has the patience and tact of a cranky 5-year-old trapped in a supermarket check-out line.

At least we’ve finally opened up the new store in the local mall. After a month of training at a store 40 minutes away it feels good to have a commute that is all of 3 minutes. We spent a week setting up the store and it was a book-lovers dream.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of books all of which had to be sorted and shelved in the correct location. It was like Christmas morning in every box! (yes…..I am a freak).

Now that we’re in the new store I’ve been promoted to “Senior Bookseller/Keyholder” which means in one day I went from bottom-rung-of-the-ladder-newbie to being in charge. I also get the added responsibility of opening and closing the store and settling up the registers at the end of the day…….all for .50 cents an hour more! Whoo-hoo!

Of course my first official act as ‘Keyholder’ was to watch my precious key get shorn in half when I left it in the back door lock while the FedEx guy was shoving a pallet of books through the door. Having to tell my manager that I not only broke my key but the other half of it was stuck in the lock and we’d have to call a locksmith to get it out was not my most shining moment as a newly minted Senior Bookseller. The FedEx guy summed up my situation beautifully when he said: “Geesh, I so do not want to be you right now.”

Always the optimist, I know there’s nowhere for me to go but up!
That and my manager goes on vacation at the end of the week, which means I’ll have time to rectify the inevitable mistakes made by me and all our newbie employees before she returns.

I’ll do my best to keep up with my blogging as the fun ensues!