Dogs And Customers--Requirements: Lots Of Patience

February 2, 2006
(This was from two weeks ago; I know: Sawnya’s behind!)

Today was a long day. First of all, I missed my bus for the second time this week (I’ll have to start leaving earlier again). I got to work late, and yet was another rough start.

Shortly after I finally made it to work, I had one lady, Ms. Navy Blue, who wanted a pair of BCB Girls high-heel brown crocodile shoes in a six-and-a-half. The problem was the only two pairs were had left (returns from other stores) and neither pair was close to what size she wanted. I did a printout of nearby stores that carried her size, but the nearest stores were in Austin!

The real trouble began when she insisted that we call Austin, which is of course a long-distance area. But at my store, you need a code to call long-distance, and my department manager, Mr. M., and his boss, Ms. D., did not have the necessary code. Before we went to Ms. D., I called customer service upstairs, which referred me to our administrative assistant’s office, where the lady filling in that day, referred me to Human Resources, where I received only an answering machine message.

Meanwhile our Ms. Navy Blue was getting impatient, complaining that, “I drove to three stores looking for those shoes, and now you don’t have them, and why can’t you get through to Austin! This is ridiculous!” Finally, I had to go get poor Mr. M, and he took the list of numbers I obtained from customer service and went upstairs to borrow Ms. D’s cell phone to call Austin. Some time passed, and my customer grew impatient. I apologized several times and told her that we normally didn’t call stores outside of the Houston area, but you could tell that she still wasn’t too happy.

While I had been waiting on her, I had been forced to neglect a regular customer that I normally wait on when she comes in. If she hadn’t been one of my regulars, I would have passed her on to someone else, but my Ms. Navy Blue wasn’t too happy with my stopping to help my other customer, so I couldn’t go check on the red tennis shoes for Valentine’s Day in a size ten that she had been hoping for. I had been hoping to find a pair of red Keds, but I never made it that far, and she had to leave.

Finally, after calling Ms. D., to find out if she and Mr. M. had met, Mr. M. eventually returned and let her use his own cell phone to call Austin. Ms. D wanted us to try to get her to sign up for a store credit account, so that she could save fifteen percent for her first two days. Unfortunately, Ms. Navy Blue was on the cell phone the whole time afterwards, so she finally got to order her shoes, but I never got to pitch for the credit application until afterwards (she turned it down). She used up Mr. M’s remaining cell phone minutes.

And then, because Ms. Navy Blue demanded that her shipping charge for the shoes (ten dollars) be waived, we had to make one of our registers ten dollars short by selling a gift card to her without payment. Sigh! All that jumping through hoops to get a phone call to an Austin store, and someone else gets the shoe sale, and all me and Mr. M got were lost cell phone minutes and a bunch of wasted time and grief.

Sigh again!

Later that day, a colleague who works in Women’s Fragrances said to me, “Ooh, you’re gaining some weight, aren’t you?” While it is true I gained between five and eight pounds, I felt this was completely uncalled for. I tried to inject some distress in my voice in hopes that she’d get the message, but when I admitted that yeah, I gained a few pounds, she said, “Yeah, you sure have!”

Question: is it ever polite to tell a co-worker or colleague that he or she has gained some weight, if he or she doesn’t ask? I certainly never would do it, but is that ever a time to be honest? Was she right for saying that to me, or am I right for feeling a bit hurt?

What makes it hurt more was that this was a co-worker I liked that I had always been friendly with, so I was wondering, if I had done anything to offend her, but I can’t imagine what I did. I don’t know…

Later, riding the bus home, this elderly lady, in a yellow raincoat and frizzy, graying hair held up with a hair band, insisted on standing up on the bus, while all her bags of groceries were piled on three seats in front of her. She moved them eventually up to the area where the fire extinguisher was kept, and after some time, I was concerned for her because she wouldn’t sit down, even though there were empty seats nearby.

I asked her, “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” She looked a bit too frail to be standing up on the bus for so long. She refused, saying that she had been sitting on day, but that was all I could hear from her because she spoke so softly.

Ah, go figure.

Then after she left, some lady, who could have served as a human advertisement for Kroger’s, talked continuously about their deal on Arm & Hammer Baking Soda for $1.99 a box and DiGiorno’s Deep Dish pizza. I listened politely and nodded every now and then, but I was thinking, Why are you telling me all this?

And then I find out my mom had to do inventory at the video store where she’s a manager, so I was stuck walking the twenty-minute trip home from the bus stop after 10:00 at night.

After I got home and took my Chihuahua, Tony, out for a walk, I went to visit Dan, my big dog in the backyard. He was jumping about, happy to see me. Even though he’s done a lot of damage to our house, I’ll miss him when we take him to his new home this week. He doesn’t mean to be trouble, but none of us have the time during the day to take care of such a huge, energetic dog, and we’ve learned this the hard way. My brother no longer likes him or wants anything to do with him, so the only attention he gets is when I come home from work.

Tonight though, I was almost ready to kill him. He’s not allowed in the house anymore, so when I went to go back inside, he pushed past me and burst into the house. He immediately started chasing poor little Tony all around the house; he probably just wanted to play with him, but Dan plays so rough, that anyone can imagine what a big dog like him can do to a tiny Chihuahua. Tony whimpered, as he ran away, but thankfully, it was only out of fright, not because Dan actually touched him.

I couldn’t catch or stop Dan, so my brother came down the stairs and hit Dan for what he did. I finally caught Dan and forced him back outside, but the damage was done. Tony wasn’t harmed, just frightened, but my brother now is currently nursing a swollen, bruised knee when he fell to go after Dan.

I still love Dan, but I’ll be relieved to see him go to his new home, where he can get the attention and discipline he needs. My mom and I aren’t home enough during the day to give Dan what he needs, and when we come home, we’re tired. We don’t have regular schedules.

Anyhow, Tony’s recovered, and my brother hopefully will too.

Of St. Louis, Shoes, Casinos, and Dogs...

Today, I finally am doing it: I'm posting my thoughts. I'm not sure yet how often I'll post here, but I hope it will be frequently. Right now, I'm trying to figure out how to make separate paragraphs on this thing.

Ah, I figured it out...Darn html paragraph marks. Anyway, most of those reading here probably have known me for a while. I am a huge fan of DragonballZ and have written numerous fanfictions, all so far at: http://www.fanfiction.net/~sawnya. While I am not as super popular as some other fanfiction writers there, I've become somewhat of a cult classic. I am best known there for the Tayla of Astoria series, centering around an original character and her family and her friends living during the times when Frieza was still alive and terrorizing the universe. (Yes, Vegeta was still working for him). The first book of the series does need quite a bit of redoing, but other than that, and it being very wordy, it's not bad. Since the first book is a 112 chapters long...I hope if you're interested, you'll have lots of free time.

But I'll save my descriptions of Tayla and her world for another blog. Also, I'll touch on my other series involving oddball DBZ character romances. And yes, Roshi finally gets a girlfriend...more details later, or better yet, go read the story!

I do sell shoes for a major department store chain...about to become even more major since another company bought us out. A lot of our customers haven't been happy about it, since coupons won't be quite as frequent, and that our huge shoe clearance (which makes us struggling salesfolk quite a bit of cash) may not exist any more after this one this spring. If you live in Houston, Texas, you'll probably know what I'm talking about.

Selling shoes requires patience more than anything else, and I believe that to be a good salesperson, you should always think about the money and making the customer happy and everything else will take care of itself.

I just came back from St. Louis eleven days ago with my mother. We were visiting my grandmother and her roommate, someone who has been with us so long, she's almost like family. After years of begging, I finally got to go up in the Arch, even though my mother swore that I had been up there as a child (to this day I still don't remember). The ride up to the arch is one of the most unusual ways to go upstairs; because of the Arch's unusual structure, a regular elevator is impossible. Instead there are about five or six "capsules" that can hold up to five people, and you are enclosed in the capsule for the entire ride. It starts and stops along the way, and you can see the long, dark stairways as you ride up. It's definitely not a ride for the claustrophobic, and even I was a bit nervous going up and down.

When I got up to the Arch, it was a little hike to the very top, and I looked out of the rectangular windows (which look like a series of black dashes on the outside), and you can see almost all of St. Louis, even perhaps some of nearby East St. Louis, where I spent my childhood. The old Busch stadium had been torn down (greatly mourned by true St. Louis citizens), but I got to see the half of the new Busch stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals that was being built.

As I stood leaning towards the window, I felt the Arch sway and rock a little because it was such a windy day...definitely not a good sensation, if you're afraid of heights, and even I worried a little. A child or two up there panicked and cried, poor things. Finally, they called for those who wanted to go back down onto the "South Tram", and so I went back downstairs through that capsule again, this time accompanying a young couple.

Downstairs, this being on our last day in St. Louis, my mom, grandma, and I toured the Arch museum, following the Lewis and Clark expedition, which in that museum, is basically a bunch of colored picture of nature from different states that they traveled through after the Louisiana Purchase. The pictures of Idaho and Oregon were especially breathtaking, with the waterfalls and the ocean waves.

Also before the last day, I got to see my uncle and aunt, and I would have loved to see my other aunt and her kids, but unfortunately Aunt "G" has cut off contact with most of us, and we still don't know quite why. My grandma and I tricked my grandma's roommate, JS, into coming with us to a very good barbecue restaurant, where my uncle paid for our meals. JS hadn't been getting along with Uncle "R" lately for unknown reasons, so when she finally realized who was at the restaurant with us, she was polite, but not very happy. Ouch!

If you ever go to St. Louis, the best places to eat, if you like fast food are Steak and Shake and White Castle (gotta love those mini cheeseburgers)...and oh, yes, if you gamble and go to the Ameristar casino, it's worth the money to go to their buffet. The best part of that buffet is that they will make your pasta however you want it. (I ordered mine fettuccine alfredo with broccoli, chicken, parmesan, and mushrooms...wish I had added artichokes, but it was still so good!)

Much of the time there though, we did gamble (yes, I am more than old enough). My mom lost quite a bit of money, but thankfully I only lost about eighty dollars during the whole week were in St. Louis.

Lesson learned: don't get too caught up in nickel and penny slots; you almost never win back the same amount you put in on a single spin. I remember when nickel and penny slots only took up a corner of casinos, but now they almost occupy the entire buildings or showboats; you can't throw a rock in there without hitting one.

Anyhow, it's back to the real world now, and it's been twelve days since I came back home from vacation, back to housecleaning (sometimes ;) ) and tiny paychecks (January is a slow time for shoe sales) and my dogs, particularly my miniature chihuahua, Tony.

Tony resembles the former Taco Bell chihuahua, and his full name is Senor Antonio Fernando. When we are at the computer, he likes to chew on my hair or my houseslippers, so I always have to occupy him with ribs or rawhides. (What is it with dogs and houseslippers?)

I am currently working on the next Hope Never Dies chapter. For those few who still keep up with it, Tayla was last battling Diamonique, and Kekron and Caline had just recently learned of Ruli's death. The Armored Squadron (Coola's Elite soldiers) had just raided one of Frieza's stations and stolen the remaining ki-masking bracelets. Meanwhile, Raditz and Journa are still on planet Feo, where they were taken in by a kindly tribe who feeds and provides them with help for their journey. Journa later learns from Raditz that Feo is one of the next planets to be "cleared" for sale.

Well, I'll be going for now, to see how this first entry looks, but I may post more later. Gooden boden fro noy (goodbye for now in Astorian)!