Losing my mind, among other things

Today was not a good day. I arrive at 10 a.m. to mass confusion, because there's a battle at the podium for control between a new person, someone who's training and someone who doesn't know anything at all. Nobody really knows what anyone is doing. But all the cashiers really know that they're a half-hour late getting their lunches and breaks and are starting to get really antsy.

I grab the clipboard and take over, trying to make sense of this whole mess. Geez. Picture five toddlers trying to run the United Nations. (well, that wouldn't be too far off from what we have now, but you get the picture)

Then things go horribly, horribly wrong.

I have to run to Register 15, the godforsaken cigarette aisle, for an override. I'm trying to save time, so I run into the book bay, and toss my keys (the override key, the podium key, etc., over to the cashier and give her my number so I don't have to run all they way around, through the customers and through the gate to the register. She does the thing and I tell her to throw them back. She doesn't throw them hard enough and they fall into this tiny crack between the tobacco wall and the book wall.

OK. The tobacco wall is a solid wall of shelves that is IMMOVABLE because that is a secure register. No on can just jump over it. The book wall is bolted together for the same reason, so you can't just knock the shelf over and get to the cigarettes. And the keys are six feet down in a space that's maybe two inches wide. ****sigh*****
And the girl goes "Don't blame me." Um, since when does the definition of 'throw' not include actually getting the item airborne?.

I shouldn't yell. She's one of the better ones, but she obviously isn't a softball player. Where's an athletic lesbian with a softball glove or a volleyball when you need one.

So the next 45 minutes (and working time of five employees) were spent trying to get my keys out of this cranny. We tried two brooms (and lost one down the hole). We got a "grabber" thing that old people use to pick up things off the floor from Pharmacy, wrote it off to store use and tried it. Too short. We tried a cane and some hangars and some other stuff. The obvious thing is a wire clothes hangar, but Wal-Mart DOES NOT SELL WIRE CLOTHES HANGARS.

We finally got a big wire pot hanger from garden center with a hook on the end, managed to hook the little plastic wristband on the keys and fish them out. Praise Jesus!

It took me, the Hardware Dept. Manager, the Pharmacy Manager and two cashiers to do all this. The customers got a grand old show. One old fool sat on a bench by Register 18 the whole time and just kept smiling like we were in "Cabaret" or something. Maybe he had gas!

And the day kept wearing on. There was this beautiful boy up at the Service Desk. I took my break and pretended I had a headache so I could go sit on the bench and stare at him. He had a tattoo on his back that peeked up above his shirt near his neck. I wanted him so bad.

And there was another Layaway adventure. This woman came in claiming she "extended" her layaway. Turned out she didn't talk to any Layaway associates. She talked to the guy who put together furniture for customers, who neglected to tell her that he couldn't do anything about extending a layaway. Only about 20 people in the store can extend a layaway, and I'm one of them. You have to have an override key and numbers for that. Lying heifer.

This layaway was supposed to be picked up March 21. It was canceled March 31, so she got a ten-day grace period anyway. She was exploding. "I JUST NOW FOUND SOMEONE WITH A TRUCK TO GET THESE ITEMS. THEY PROMISED ME THAT THE LAYAWAY WAS EXTENDED. WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME? WHERE IS MY TV? WHERE IS MY CABINET? I TALKED TO HIM EVERY WEEK. HE PROMISED TO HOLD MY THINGS.

Word to the wise. If they're screwing together your cabinet, they're not really in a position to help you much on anything else. The major thing was this TV she put on layaway back on December. It had been returned to the floor and sold. So she DEMANDED a comparable TV. She gets lucky and gets the one manager who doesn't really give a crap about losing money for the store. He tells me to take her to Electronics and "find something for her."

Electronics is marking down their display models, so we find something, but she manages to dither on for 20 minutes. I finally convince her to take the TV and leave by giving her $50 off. So the evil cow got a 27-inch flat-screen for $250. (Of course, she didn't know that they were marking down ALL the display models $50. Anything to get the woman to GET A MOVE ON!)

So then she plonks down $600 for this TV, a TV cabinet and a bookshelf that we had actually been holding for her that the builder guy found. Astonishing.