2 posts tagged “work”

Phew, thank god I'm done with my week of full time bookselling.  It really wasn't that bad, but I definitely wouldn't want to go back to doing that all the time.  It's just so BORING, moving books around, endlessly cleaning up after people and endlessly alphabetizing bookshelves.  Occasionally there is a rewarding customer interaction, like the lady who came in and asked about "an obscure book from my childhood" like a Where's Waldo but not really, with intricate drawings.  No idea on the author or title.  I thought for a moment, then said, "Animalia by Graeme Base?"  Yes!  That was it!  Damn, I LOVE it when that happens!  However, for every one of those there's a "Do you know if you have a bathroom?" or "What's a good book for a three year old?"  ARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH.   Whatevs.  I will say that I enjoyed doing some merchandising, which thankfully kept me occupied for the first few days of the week so I didn't start to lose my mind until later on.  Here's one of the funnier displays I made, which cross-merches picture books with corresponding stuffed toys:

Of course I couldn't just make a straightforward display; I had to have the black bear eating one of the Humu fish and the Lost In The Woods deer clutching a stuffed guinea pig for dear life.  Why a guinea pig?  Because I like em.  And so does that deer.  Just check out the maniacal glee on his face:
Okay, I admit that I loved those guinea pigs that I actually bought one and brought it home with me.  It now resides under the watchful gaze of my Cheshire Cat:
Yeah, so that was my week at work.  One guinea pig gained, countless hours of my life lost.

...because I will be working at the book store 5 days this week.  The families I work for are both out of town (Hawaii and England, respectively) so I foolishly volunteered to take on "some" extra hours at the store.  "Some" apparently translated to my manager as roughly 25 extra hours.  I'm not upset about it, really, since I can definitely use the money.  But still, ugh, the thought of being a full time retail worker again, even if only for one week, is not too appealing.  And it doesn't help that we recently got a new GM who loves nothing more than cracking the whip on upselling.  I'm sorry, but I just refuse to try to pressure people into buying more stuff than they want!  Hopefully I'll be able to stay under the radar this week and then go quietly back to my 15 hours a week. 
Enough about work though, let's hear a couple of songs I've been enjoying lately:

I'm pretty crazy about those Black Kids.  Still pissed that I missed them at Mezzanine, especially when I found out that one of my coworkers was there.  Apparently the show was crazy packed (the headliner was Simian Mobile Disco).  Maybe they'll come back around again after their full length comes out...  Anyway, this song was stuck in my head all day today, and actually I don't know if I would have made it through the entire day without this song to pep me up.  Not that I got peppy at any point, of course.

Okay, as far as Islands' "Arm's Way", I admit that I only downloaded this album because of the crazy weird album art.  I mean, WTF.  Really.  Anyway, I missed Islands' first album, so I had no idea what to expect.  So I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's a little weird, but not even a tenth of how weird I expected it to be based on that cover!