Work

I've decided that I'm a glutton for punishment. I traded shifts with Patty at work - she worked for me Friday night so we could go to the fair, and now I worked her shift today, Sunday. No big deal - in fact, I get the better end of the deal. Sunday shifts are only about 6.5 hours, as opposed to my 9 hours on a typical Friday night. Sunday shifts are over when it's still light outside. That's cool.

Today we weren't even that busy, so Alexis and I got a lot of stuff done. That's atypical for a Sunday because we usually do the same amount of business as a typical day in less than half the time, but not today. Sorry Turners. So Alexis and I were done by 5:30. Jamie (the creative genius at the store) had a Stampin' Up party at her place at 6:30, so I headed down there with Jeri and Jen around 6 or so. Had a great time (a little Smirnoff doesn't hurt) and spent a lot less money than I could have. Now here's where the day takes a turn for the worse. Julie asked me to come back to work after the party and work on getting more inventory out while the store was closed (I can be much more productive when I don't have people following me around asking where to find hot air balloon stickers or prison embellishments). So, after the party, I head back to the store to meet Julie and Anne. We determine that the best use of our time would be spent doing the stickers for a couple of reasons:

• It's incredibly difficult to do them during the day because customers, without fail, need to shop the exact area you happen to be working on at any particular moment.
• It's fairly physical work, which causes a host of issues: grunting, sweating, getting dirty, swearing, stinking, screaming on occassion...
• We had no less than 2 months worth of new sticker rolls than hadn't been put out on the walls yet because it's the most hated job in the place.
• The walls needed cleaning up - tons of empty sticker rolls and old stickers that hadn't sold since the store opened - and I'm the slash and burn type. No sentimentality whatsoever. If it's not selling, trash it.

So, we started this task around 9pm by sorting the new stickers by theme, printing out labels for the ones that didn't have them yet (let's the customers know how much they cost) and distributing shopping carts full of stickers to their various sections of the store. We reworked every section of stickers, taking of the old, saving the empties for reorder, putting up the new, and just generally rearranging everything. I worked on one side of the store, Julie and Anne did the other. We left the store at 6:45am. That's right - after sunrise the next day. And for those of you keeping score, that's two weeks in a row for me. I'm beginning to question my sanity. But, darn it, those sticker walls are a site to behold...