Weezer Money

One of the managers who regularly counts the money in the registers has noticed something strange.

For the past two weeks, there has been a certain one dollar bill that has refused to leave the store. The reason it stands out so well is because someone has taken a red marker and written "Weezer BUDDY HOLLY" across it. 

I don't know what the odds are of this happening, of a specific dollar bill staying in the same store for so long, but they can't be that astronomical because it's happening. I do have to say that the situation seems unlikely because the store goes through a lot of cash exchanges each day. We are constantly handing out money in pawn loans and check advances and then there are merchandise purchases where we make change. So, I'd think our money would cycle through fairly quickly, maybe a day or two or three at the max. Although, I do have to say that some very strange things happen at the pawn shop. So, maybe even though this persistent dollar bill is very unusual, it's not unusual because it's occuring at the pawn shop where the unusual is the usual. I could see that.

Or maybe this is a bad omen. A warning that Weezer will soon be infiltrating the pawn shop and playing Buddy Holly non-stop. It's a good thing we have compound bows, swords, and chainsaws at our disposal. We must prepare to defend ourselves to the death!

Cockroach Gumballs

There are three candy machines situated on the show room floor of the pawn shop. One is by the front door and the other two are next to the Pay Day and Pawn counters. One of these machines dispenses gumballs and it was inside of this one that a cockroach was found. Alive.

How it got in there, the world may never know--but a good guess is that it climbed into the box where we keep the extra gumballs and was dumped in. The box sits in the back room, open, on the floor. It seems like the most plausible answer, but I find it much more entertaining to believe that this cockroach was a misfit and wanted something more out of life, that he sought adventure, found the gumball machine, felt a comforting urge to scale it, and then squeezed through the gears and passageways that compose the innards of the machine. What a joy it would have been to put up such a struggle and then find oneself reclining atop a red gumball!

It's a shame the cockroach's gumball repose was cut short, but there is some comfort to be found in his death. I'm sure all the other roaches held a vigil to honor his bravery and determination, that they now recognize him for the free spirit he was and are ashamed of how they shunned him for his quirky antics.

Moving on, I haven't seen many bugs inside the pawn shop, and, sadly, I did not witness the cockroach squirming across the gumballs in the gumball machine. I also doubt I will see many bugs in the future. Since the gumball incident, we have had a pest exterminator come out to the shop. He sprayed some chemicals and placed little cardboard triangles around the edges of the walls throughout the showroom floor and back area. The inside of them are sticky and are meant to capture then slowly starve any insects and/or mice that attempt to scurry through said triangles.

I looked inside one today and found something. It was a graveyard of dust bunnies. No insects were to be seen.

Fairie Foam

I had the past two days off, and when I came in to work, I saw that a display table had been cleared and had started to be filled with a new shipment of fairies and dragons that was much larger than the first shipment we had a couple of months ago. One of my co-workers was specifically in charge of making sure the fairies were all displayed, and I commented to him -- "That table has so much cleavage going on" to which he responded--"I know! Our fairies are so dirty!"

This round of fairies and dragons aren't as interesting as the first shipment because there are no lesbian fairies, but they are as sexy and scantily clad as ever. Their entire thighs are exposed and their breasts are practically bursting forth from the poor excuses for tops they wear. But beyond their scandalous clothing, the posing of these fairies is ridiculous.

We have a fairie sitting on a crescent moon with a miniature dragon perched on her shoulder. We have an endtable with a glass top and a fairie crouched around the base of it. Some fairies are sitting on mushrooms with morbid looking wings while other sit on the ground with spellbooks in their hands and pentacles on their chests. Most of the fairies have coy smiles or expressions on their faces that win many of our customers over. Many of them comment that "those are so cool!" and cause me to lose just a little more of my faith in humanity.

We also have a number of skull items. One skull has it's mouth open and a large ruby where it's tongue should be. We also have an incense burner with skulls decorating one end of it. There is also a skull that is shiny and blue. But my two favorite things in this entire shipment are 1) A skull decorated with tribal designs with a top you open up to find a smaller skull which you can also open up to find a skull that was smaller still and so on, and 2) A dragon perched atop a skull that changes colors.

A funny side note is the mess that the packaging these items come in end up making. They each come in a box filled with foam inserts. The co-worker who has in charge of putting the fairies and dragons and skulls out on display brought several of the boxes out to the counter at a time and worked on labeling them between customers. While pulling these things from their boxes and foam, the foam inserts were constantly crumbling and sending little foam balls everywhere. We kept finding bits of it on our clothes, and I even had to tell my co-worker that it was in his hair and on his cheek. It kept gathering on the ends of the pens we used at the counter and clinging to our fingers and paperwork. One customer was writing a check, got some on her checkbook, and then couldn't shake the foam bits off of it. It was a horrible mess and I'm sure we will find the foam in unexpected places for days.

The Glory of Hilary Duff

Like any other store that sells televisions, the pawn shop where I work has a section devoted to displaying a wide array of TVs. I would say that we have about twenty-five of them. There are quite a few smaller tube and LCD TVs measuring anywhere between 13" and 32", but we also have several large ones, namely a 42" LCD, a 50" plasma, and a 62" rear projection TV. Of course, all of these TVs are playing during all business hours. There is, however, no motherboard for them all. We actually have a handful of DVD players scattered throughout the displays and hooked into splitters that are each connected to a handful of the televisions. This creates several networks, each of which is composed of only a few TVs and playing a different movie.

The other day, I noticed that we had at least three copies of From Justin To Kelly, that horrible movie that Kelly Clarkson and the afro guy who lost the first season of American Idol starred in. I thought it would be funny if I could find enough copies to get all of the TVs playing that shameful excuse for cinema, but I was unable to succeed in this endeavor. I did, however, find a consolation that proved to be much superior.

I noticed that three of the TV networks were playing movies with Hilary Duff in them. One was playing Agent Cody Banks, another one was playing the remake of Cheaper By The Dozen, and the third was playing A Cinderella Story. It was fate, I tell you. Fate. And I vowed to make it so that every television in the store was playing a movie with Hilary Duff in it. I managed to find two more copies of Cheaper By The Dozen and two copies of The Girl Can Rock (Hilary Duff in concert). I was shocked at how easily finding seven Hilary Duff DVDs proved to be, but all was not smooth sailing. I did run into one problem in my Hilay Duff quest.

One of the DVD players, which had been playing Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, did not want to open so I could swap out the DVDs. I hit the open button but the player would just make a grinding noise and the drawer would jiggle but not open. I spent nearly five minutes trying to get that DVD player to open, and in the end I suceeded. I like to think that Hilary Duff, where ever she is, felt a little thrill course through her body and smiled for some reason she did not know.

I really don't like Hilary Duff. She's a horrible actress and most deinfitely CANNOT rock, despite what her DVD says, but, oh, our television display is now life changing. I encouraged my fellow employees to "behold the glory", and they beheld, and I saw that it was good, and thus ended the fourth day of the work week.

My First Performance Evaluation

At the pawn shop, each new employee is supposed to receive a performance evaluation after his or her first thirty days of employment. My first performance evaluation, however, did not occur until today--over three months late. I knew it had to be coming soon because I was given a self-evaluation last week and told to fill it out. That was an experience in and of itself. I tend to take things much more seriously than they actually are. What can I say? I'm a spaz. Especially when it comes to work and responsibilities. So, you can imagine the nervousness I felt when one of the first things that was said to me at work today was that my evaluation would be at 2:30 pm.

I spent the entire morning and early afternoon analyzing how well I've been doing my job, belittling myself for the seemingly endless string of mistakes I make, and agonizing over what I could and should be doing better. I even wondered if they would be letting me go and began to consider the places where I would seek employment if I was fired. Like I said. I'm a spaz.

The evaluation itself wasn't as horrible as I had thought it would be. I sat down with the boss of the pawn shop and another manager and compared the scores I had given myself on the self-evaluation to the scores they had given me. I was worried that I would score myself a lot higher than what my bosses would score me as, but, as it turns out, the scores weren't too far apart. I scored myself a little higher in some categories and there wasn't a single category in which they scored me higher than I did for myself, but that's okay. They offered suggestions where I could improve--paging other employees for help more promptly when there is a line of customers, offering suggestions for merchandise to management, helping make sure music is constantly playing through the PA system, etc. And then they offered me a raise. Naturally, that made me very happy. And after that, my boss asked me if I wanted to "continue forward".

I responded that I didn't understand what she meant by "continue forward". That's a phrase that holds a lot of connotation in the workplace, and I doubted I was supposed to read that much into it. What she explained was that they were thinking about assigning me to be personally responsible for a specific area of the store. They even asked me if I had a preference of which section I would be given responsibility for. I didn't. I was then told that if I did a good job with this added responsibility that there was an opportunity for another raise, and that sounded just fine with me. I should be getting my section assignment next week.

Beyond the anxiety leading up to the evaluation and the relief I felt during and after it, I found a really old penny today. A young man was buying a Playstation 3 controller and I was about to hand him his change of eight cents when he said that I could just keep it. Intending to put this generous tip into the "Take-A-Penny / Leave-A-Penny" thing, I noticed that one of the pennies looked strange. When I looked at the year, I discovered that it was from 1936. My first thought--"Holy crap! That's freaking old!" My second thought--"I'm taking that. It might be worth something."

I took the penny home, figuring that it was going to be put in the free penny bin anyway, and Google searched "worth of a 1936 penny". What I learned was that the common value of a circulated 1936 penny from Philadelphia (which is where this coin was minted) is three to five cents but that it can go also be valued as high as seventy-five cents. Oh, that fool who threw away that penny! He had no idea what he was dismissing as naught, and now it's mine! All mine!

Toilet 1, Me 0

I am not afraid of cleaning a bathroom as long as it is not completely covered in human feces. This goes for my own bathroom in my apartment as well as bathrooms in public places, such as my job. As a matter of fact, I somewhat enjoy cleaning the bathroom at work, not only because I am a neat freak with a slight case of OCD, but also because cleaning the bathroom means I get to disappear into the back and not deal with customers for a short while. I may be wiping urine and stray pubes off a toilet, but sometimes it's better than having to put up with some of the people who come into the pawn shop.

Anyway, today before I started cleaning the bathroom, I went pee. The bathroom we have does not have a urinal, so I peed in the toilet. That went just fine. But after I flushed the toilet and washed my hands, I noticed that the water in the toilet bowl looked a little too yellow and foamy. I figured I hadn't flushed properly, and went to flush again. Only, this time, water squirted out from behind the handle and soaked my hand.

I figured I should try to figure out what was going on with that and took the lid off the back of the toilet. When I looked inside, I didn't detect anything abnormal and decided to flush the toilet again to see if I could figure out what had caused the water to spray out from behind the handle. Bad idea. When I flushed again, a stream of water shot out from the back of the toilet and hit me square in the face.

As it turns out, the hose that fills the tank up had come loose and then fallen into the toilet, landing so it was aiming upwards. One of my co-workers learned of my wet experience, laughed loudly, and then proceeded to tell each of our co-workers about it. He had also flushed the toilet earlier in the day and had his hand sprayed but had not looked into fixing the problem. I guess that's what I get for trying to go above and beyond the call of duty--toilet water in the face. Lesson learned.

Sleazy Rumors and Dead Dogs

One thing I really enjoy is when a customer talks on the phone while they're in the pawn shop because it often provides me with opportunities to overhear things--funny things, inappropriate things, sad things, outrageous things. Today, I will share two such instances.

Instance #1 : There is one particular woman who comes into the store on a regular basis. She is probably in her late twenties and very pretty, but she is also very strange. An encounter with her never fails to simultaneously dumbfound and entertain. Her most recent visit had her pacing around the store on her cellphone. She was confiding into whoever it was on the other end about some private information--who she had slept with, who so-and-so thought she had slept with, who she hadn't slept with, and what she was going to do about the rumors so-and-so was spreading about who she had supposedly slept with. She either didn't realize everyone could hear her or she just didn't care. With her, there is no telling.

Instance #2 : Today, I overheard another interesting conversation when a woman and her young daughter approached the counter. The woman was on her phone but handed it to her daughter and instructed her to tell whoever it was on the other end about "what happened to the dog". Intrigued, I discretely listened to the young girl fumble for words as I rang up her mother's purchase. After a few moments of the girl muttering incoherently, the mother became frustrated and grabbed the phone from her daughter to tell the story herself. Apparently, they had left their dog outside in it's kennel earlier that day. While they had been away, this dog--named Sebastian--had gotten up onto it's doghouse, tried to jump over the kennel wall, but failed and ended up hanging itself from it's collar. The woman's voice was shaking while she told the tale and I felt horrible for her, her daughter, and the deceased dog. Although, at the same time, I was trying not to laugh because I sometimes can't believe the things I overhear.

The Blackest of Fridays

There are two things that should be known about me. 1) I like to do silly things to the extreme, and 2) I love getting things on sale. These two character traits have led me to go Black Friday shopping these past three consecutive years. The first year, I waited outside in the cold for six hours at a single store. The second year and third years, I braved the crowds with my mother and shopped until the early afternoon. But this year, I had the chance to experience both sides of Black Friday--the shopper side and the worker side. It was quite the experience and very successful for both the shopping and working sides. Let me recount the insanity.

Thanksgiving

10:00 am - Wake up
1:30 pm - Eat a Thanksgiving meal with the family.
4:00 - 5:30 pm - Lay down to nap, hoping it will last three hours and then be disappointed when it only lasts one and a half.
7:00 - 10:40 pm - Drive across the state to an outlet mall that is on the way home, start feeling tired, and dread the following twenty-four hours.
10:40 pm - Discover that even though the stores at this outlet mall were supposed to open for Black Friday at midnight that many of them have opened early. Be very happy.
11:21 pm - Buy a leather coat that was originally priced at $250 for $45, put your old coat in your car, and put on the new leather one. Continue shopping.
11:21 - 11:59 pm - Go to Banana Republic and buy a belt for $6 and cologne for half off. Gawk at the long line of women standing out in the cold waiting for their chance to go into the Coach outlet.

Black Friday

12:00 - 1:40 am - Continue shopping. Buy a sweet illustrated edition of Dracula for $5.99. Be disappointed at the clothing you find in the various stores and buy none of it.
1:40 - 2:00 am - Drive back to the town where you live and park outside of Kohl's. It will not open until 3:00 am so go next door to Wal-Mart and look around.
2:00 - 2:45 am - Look around Wal-Mart. Be surprised it is not super busy. Urinate in the bathroom. Purchase a Pepsi and Snicker's bar for much needed caffeine and sugar. Feel tired.
2:45 - 3:00 am - Wait outside of Kohl's for the doors to open. Wish the cold would just hurry up and kill you so you can stop suffering. Welcome a friend and her friend to join you in line.
3:00 - 4:00 am - Shop at Kohl's. Find a pair of gloves and a pair of black jeans. Allow yourself to be enticed to sign up for a Kohl's card because doing so will move you to the front of the line. Argue with the cashier about what discounts you are entitled to. Benefit from savings of over $45.
4:00 - 4:40 am - Shop at JcPenny's. Be disappointed in their clothing selection. Buy three large pillows.
4:40 - 5:15 am - Try to maneuver through the crowds with three large pillows and bump into many things. Take a break to snack at Chick Fil A. Laugh at the people waiting in line for free $10 gift cards and decide waiting for that is not worth your time.
5:15 - 6:30 am - Shop at Target. Bump into more things with your oversized pillows. Find nothing you want to buy. Stand in line. Ditch your friend and her friend to go to Best Buy.
6:30 - 7:15 am - Go to Best Buy. Look around. Curse your oversized pillows. Feel tired. Wait in line and be happy that it is moving quickly. Be tempted to buy more things, resist the urge, only buy Dollhouse Season 1 for $9.99. Be disappointed Season 2 is not on sale.
7:30 am - Leave the mall. Feel tired.
7:45 am - Arrive at work. Feel tired. Be shocked to see a huge line of cars next door at the fabric store.
8:00 - 9:00 am - Put out the jewelry display and grow angrier and angrier as people begin to line up outside the front door of the pawn shop. Feel tired.
9:00 - 11:00 am - Deal with a shocking number of people. Be surprised that you are not feeling more tired than you are. Be confused about the pawn shop's Black Friday specials. Watch a co-worker mistakenly tell someone Wii's were $60. Listen to the customers complain about the misinformation they were given.
11:00 - 1:30 pm - Work hard.
1:30 - 2:00 pm - Eat a burrito for lunch. Feel tired. Drink caffeine. Remember the great deals you got that morning and smile to yourself.
2:00 - 3:00 pm - Feel not so tired.
3:00 - 6:00 pm - Continue working. Feel like you are not awake and are in a dream, numb and disconnected from the world. Talk to people much more informally than you normally do, kind of like you are drunk. Be surprised you are not making mistakes even though you are insanely tired.
6:00 - 10:30 pm - Go home, unpack from your trip to visit your family, eat dinner, watch South Park, begin watching Hoarders, give up on Hoarders twenty minutes into the episode and go to sleep.

I can't believe I did it, but I went shopping for nine hours and then worked for ten--and I survived. I didn't even crash my car or pass out into a wood chipper or anything! The only problem is that I balanced my check book the following Sunday and had a nasty surprise. I have not financially ruined myself by any means, but it was still not a pleasant thing to watch my balance wane before my eyes. It's alright, though. I got some sweet deals and that's what matters. And this year, unlike other years, I spent money, but I also made some by working. Well, even with working, I still netted a loss for the day, but you know what I mean.

Observations Concerning Another Pawn Shop

I must say that I now have a greater appreciation for the pawn shop for which I work. I am currently visiting my family (a few hours away from where I currently live and work) and visited one with some of my siblings. I couldn't help but make observations and comparisons as we roamed about the shop, and I felt a strange melee of competitiveness, superiority, inferiority, pride, like, and disgust. Here are a few of my observations.

The Good

1) This pawn shop had a much larger showroom floor.

2) This pawn shop had four times the amount of movies on display and even had them semi-alphabetized! I spoke with one of the workers and was told that there was one employee whose job was nothing but putting out and organizing their DVDs. On a side note, my older brother--who was with me at the time--has an obsession with buying DVDs and ended up purchasing 20 of them and then planned on returning on Black Friday to buy more when the price dropped from $1.50 to $0.99.

3) I saw a Zelda game I wanted, but the price they normally charge is $4.99 and that seemed high when my pawn shop only sells them for $2.99. I told a gentleman this much and he said they could sell me the game for the lower price. Haggling. It's a beautiful thing.

The Bad

1) Merchandise Displays : They may have had a larger showroom floor, but the way this pawn shop organized things for display did not allow them to utilize the space they had to its fullest capacity. Rather than stacking or setting out things in a neat or orderly fashion, their displays seemed to be formless masses that were as impractical as they were offensive to the eye. The pawn shop I work for packs as much as we can onto the floor--while making it actually look good--because A) we have a wide array of items to buy, and B) if we don't display this large array then people will not see or buy our merchandise because they will not be aware that it is available.

2) Jewelry : My pawn shop has a large display of jewelry which it displays very professionally with various kinds of stands and holders atop of cloth-covered platforms of varying levels. Our jewelry displays look much like what you would see at an actual jewelry store. This other pawn shop, on the other hand, had hardly any jewelry on display and did not even try to present them in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The display cases looked naked and laughable.

3) Electronics : My pawn shop has iPods, MP3 players, video cameras, digital cameras, DVD players, TVs, receivers, stereo equipment, surround sound systems, car audio, video game consoles and video games coming out of our ears, but this other pawn shop had hardly any of those things (except for TVs, which they had a respectably sized display of). I wasn't sure if it was because they didn't have any in stock or if they just didn't have it displayed because they were so inept at displaying their merchandise.

4) Receipts : This pawn shop had the most ridiculous system of printing out receipts. Instead of having a normal receipt print out of the cash register, each individual receipt was printed from a normal printer on an 8.5" by 11" sheet of paper. The print out looked like a normal receipt in the way that it was thin and did not occupy the entire piece of paper, but this method of printing caused the employees to rip off and throw away the other three quarters of the sheet of paper that had not been printed upon for the receipt. What a waste of paper, especially if you take into consideration the dozens of customers they serve on a daily basis. It was horrifying.

The Conclusion
My pawn shop is so much better.

Hiring Woes

Ever since I was hired at the pawn shop, we have been understaffed. And, as would be expected, this results in large quantities of work that never gets done. Dozens of gaming systems need to be retested and marked, shelf after shelf of merchandise needs to be organized in the back storage room, the showroom floor needs to be better stocked, items need to be marked properly, our Amazon and eBay accounts are horribly neglected, and the list goes on and on. The funny thing about being understaffed for so long (over three months now since I've been employed there and probably for a long time before then) is that there is a surprising number of applicants but very few of them are hired.

I've asked about why this is because there have been several days, like today, when multiple people have applied. I just didn't understand how so many people could be turned down. I have since been informed that, sadly, the background check knocks a lot of people out of the running. Being able to trust someone is a big issue as large quantities of cash, expensive goods, and fine jewelry are at stake. The application, which is required to be filled out in the store, makes the occurance of a mandatory background check very clear, and this has been a concern to some of the applicants. Recently, some of them have asked me about this.

One man asked me if having a DWI (Driving While under the Influence of alcohol) would instantly disqualify him for employment. To be honest, I had no idea, and I told him as much. I also told him that I assumed they were most concerned about assaults, theft, and repeated offenses. He seemed to find some encouragement in this, but I am not sure if he should have.

Another man claimed that he had nothing to hide and began to unfold the tale of the blemishes on his record. I would have happily listened because I find such things interesting, but as I really have no say in if he gets hired or not, I didn't feel it would be very moral for me to have him reveal his past transgressions just because I was curious. He dropped some very serious phrases such as "attempted vehicular manslaughter" and "aggravated assault" and that was when I interrupted his thrilling tale. The man was trying to be so brave and upbeat about it all, and I really didn't want to lead him on into thinking he had convinced me that his record was justifiably colorful instead of irrevocably damning. He was a very polite man, and I wish the best for him, even if "the best" does not involve working alongside me and my fellow employees.

Beyond the background checks, a couple of other things that have prevented people from being called for an interview have been 1) The Math Section: the last two pages are a math section that test the potential employee's basic mathematical skills. Apparently, this is very difficult for some people even though they are supplied with a calculator and are encouraged to use it as much as they need. 2) Not Writing Their Name Legibly: this happens more than you would think and we have been specifically asked by management to make sure the name on the application is legible when they are handed in.

On a side note, it is somewhat of a wonder that I was even hired. After filling out the application, I handed it in to a nice woman (who I had no idea was the manager of the store). I spoke briefly with her and asked how long it would take to hear back from them. She said it might be a while because of the background check. I then asked if they actually did those, and she assured me that they did. She then asked me if there was anything I needed to tell her, only half-joking. Surprised by this answer, I promised that my record was spotless and that I just wasn't sure if anyone had ever actually conducted a background check on me because of the not-terribly-serious nature of my previous jobs. A few days later, I received a card in the mail from this pawn shop. It thanked me for applying and said they had tried calling me to schedule an interview but that I must have written my phone number down incorrectly on the application because they couldn't get through to me. I was very surprised by this for two reasons: 1) How could I write down my phone number incorrectly? I'd had the same number for over three years, and 2) If I was a boss and someone couldn't even fill out their own phone number correctly, I would have tossed the application out and labeled them as an idiot undeserving of the job. Luckily, that did not happen for me. I ended up having both interviews in two days and, obviously, was hired. I am proud to say that I am one of the proud few applications that made it through the gauntlet of this fierce hiring process.

Amusing Perversions

There have been a few instances of inappropriateness while working at the pawn shop, most of which result from customers speaking without thinking. Here are just a few.

1) When I pulled up a customer's account, I discovered that they lived on Knotty Court. It sounds like a fun place to live if you ask me.

2) All through the month of October, all of the employees wore shirts that promoted our One Day Sale. One customer was so kind as to point out that the back of our shirts, which stated that "The Big One Is Coming", could be taken very wrong.

3) The pawn shop sells these rubber balls that are studded and are meant to be rolled down someone's back to produce a type of massage. There are no codes on these balls themselves, so a sticker has been taped next to each computer that reads "Massage Balls" along with the code so we can ring them up. My juvenile mind, however, can't help but read this sticker as a command rather than a listed item.

4) A woman tried to sell a stack of pornographic DVDs to us, but we refused to purchase them. She was about to leave when a man came into the store and interpreted this as her second chance to rid herself of the DVDs. She thrusted the smut in front of the man and followed him as he walked to the counter, offering the entire collection for the low, low price of twenty dollars. The man awkwardly turned down the offer and I had the pleasure of interrupting the woman's rebuttal by stating very loudly that she was not allowed to sell things inside of our store. She promptly left with her pornography still in hand.

5) One of my female co-workers is very pretty and is constantly being harassed by men because of it. I dont' think the men never mean anything serious and are just trying to crack jokes, but this poor girl has to put up with such inappropriate humor almost on a daily basis. One older gentlemen was taking a loan out on a camera and asked me to do him a favor and return it with pictures of my co-worker on it. I glared and told him I would not. One day, a pair of Hispanic gentlemen were talking about her in Spanish not five feet away from where she did. They either did not care or did not understand that most people, my female co-worker included, understand what "bonita" and "chi-chis" mean. Another man was retreiving a necklace from pawn and asked if we could throw in the pretty girl with it. Moments like these are always awkward, and it's not terribly amusing, but the plan I have come up with sure is. The next time I am around and someone makes an inappropriate comment to this co-worker, I will loudly state "Please, stop. Sexual harrassment, Sir, is NEVER FUNNY." I imagine the store will grow quiet and all eyes will be turned on the man who uttered the sleazy comment. It will be awesome.

She Didn't Start The Fire, But She Brought A Knife

Today, I was minding my own business, just going about my normal pawn shop routine, when a co-worker stopped me from doing whatever it was I was doing (putting away DVDs, stocking video games, who knows) and told me that a customer had just informed him that one of our cigarette butt tower collection things was smoking. I'm not sure what they're officially called, but I think most people will know what I mean. It's one of those plastic things that have a rounded bottom with a waist-high column sticking out of the top of it. At the top of this column are two holes, one on each side. People are supposed to insert their cigarette butts into these holes so as to 1) prevent unsightly cigarette butts from littering the ground, and 2) give cigarette butts that are still hot a place to cool off without the risk of starting something on fire. When I went outside, there were no visible flames, but a goodly amount of smoke was coming out of the top of the column. I removed the column from the base and dumped a glass of water into the collection bucket inside of the base, but realized that smoke was still coming from the column. Someone had pushed trash into the the hole, but it had not fallen all the way down. I had to slam the column portion onto the ground until a smoldering napkin fell out and I stomped on it. Apparently, some fool thought the cigarette butt collection tower thing was also meant for paper goods. Either that or they were feeling a little mischievous.

A while after this, a woman approached the pay day counter and was looking to take out a cash advance loan. I asked for her ID and she slung her oversized purse onto the counter and began to rummage through it. First, she pulled out a thick stack of various plastic cards and receipts. Not finding her ID, she began to pull out things from the multiple pockets and compartments in her purse. Out came a bottle of prescription pills, important looking pink slips, another bottle of prescription pills, receipts, yet another bottle of pill, a handkerchief, more bottles of pills. It was like watching Mary Poppins unload her bag, only this bag was filled with prescription pills, receipts, and trash rather than useful household items. The woman kept muttering to herself as she began to shift around the remaining contents of her purse (the counter was pretty full and would not have held much more sprawl of her things) and verbally hoped she hadn't left her ID at the pharmacy. Predicting that I had some time to waste as she continued searching, and not having an inkling of faith that she'd find her ID in that mess, I began trying to discreetly read her bottles of pills to see what they were all for. Sadly, it didn't work. They were turned or laid just so that I could read them properly. All I know is that one bottle said "preventative" in the directions. As I was doing this, the woman pulled a steak knife out of her purse and set it on the counter. Yes. She literally pulled a steak knife out of her purse and set it on the counter on top of a handkerchief that was on top of a mound of trash. I almost started laughing. I made one of those gasping noises you make when you almost lose control and have to suck a laugh back in after it's halfway out. I kept imagining her robbing a pharmacy with a steak knife. To my surprise, the woman did find her ID among her mess of cards and receipts, and then she began to repack her purse, shoving everything back in without rhyme or reason, including the steak knife. In the end, her loan was denied and I had to turn her away. Moments later, another customer approached the counter and pointed out that the woman's purse had been leaking something. I promptly sprayed the counter down with Windex and cleaned off whatever mystery juices the prescription drug lady had left behind. It makes me wonder what else had been hiding inside that purse.

Malfunctions and Interruptions

Today I undertook the task of setting up a surround sound system. The intention was to hook it up to a television and price them together in a package deal. It seemed easy enough, but the problems and distractions quickly piled up and had me spending about four times the amount of time doing this than was necessary. Follow my frustrating journey.

1) Rearranging things (20 minutes) : On the day of the One Day Sale this past Saturday, I was helping a customer look at a surround sound system that was located next to the TV that was going to be put in the aforementioned package deal. Only when we were testing said surround sound system, we found that one of its speakers was blown. The customer, of course, decided not to buy the system, and I didn't have the time to do anything about repricing or removing from the showroom floor. So, when I started out on this task today, I had to move this semi-broken system to make room for the package deal. First, I decided to be responsible and double check the speakers to see which one was blown for sure. That way, it could be marked properly. It was a nice thought. When I tried to reproduce the rattling sound I heard on Saturday, it wasn't there. All the speakers from the old system seemed to be working fine. I realize that this didn't mean that they'd be working properly indefinitely, but I was already becoming annoyed and decided to just mark that one speaker was broken and let the customer figure it out. As long as they were warned about it, that was what counted.

2) Finding the appropriate system (15 minutes) : As the TV we were going to be selling in the combo deal was priced at $299.99 alone, I wanted to make sure the surround sound system was of comparable quality. It just didn't seem appropriate to put an expensive TV with a junky surround sound system. Anyway, I went to the back and had a heck of a time finding the system. We have an entire stretch of shelves devoted to surround sound systems and speakers in the back storeroom, and sifting through all of them is somewhat difficult because it is necessary to make sure you have the right speakers for the right sub for the right receiver. They're normally paired together, but it is still confusing and requires checking the item numbers on stickers multiple times to find the correct matches.

3) Broken sub-woofer (15 minutes) : Once I found a system and carried it down to the showroom floor and began to set it up, I discovered that one of the tabs that was supposed to hold the wires that ran from the sub-woofer into the receiver was missing. This meant that the sub-woofer would not work because the wire would not stay where it should have been staying. This meant that we couldn't sell this particular system in the package deal. This meant that I had to take it all apart and then move it elsewhere.

4) Connect surround sound with broken sub-woofer to a different TV (30 minutes) : Hooking up all the speakers and arranging them was not the difficult part of this task. The difficult part came when I tried to hook up a DVD player to the system and to a TV but the DVD player didn't work. It couldn't read two discs; so, I followed store protocol, wrote down the item number of the DVD player in a book and indicated what was wrong with it, wrote a sticky note with similar information on it and taped it to the item, and then placed it by the back door so it could be transferred to our sister store to be either repaired or thrown out. After this was done, I had to find another DVD player and hook it up. Only, when I finally got a working DVD player hooked up, not all of the speakers in the surround sound system were working. I examined how I had the systems wired together and couldn't figure out if I had done something wrong if it there was something malfunctioning somewhere. Solving this mystery required knowledge greater than what I possessed and I asked a manager for assistance. What he discovered was simple enough, that there were different sound settings that control which speakers are being used and to what proportions. But, even so, the other settings he discovered sounded hollow and/or had a sort of echo. After much annoyance, we finally got the system working the best we could and called it good.

5) Find another surround sound system (5 minutes) : For some reason, finding the second surround sound system went much smoother. It was about time I caught a break.

6) Deal with an annoying customer (20 minutes) : Just as I was setting up the second surround sound system, my boss came over and began arranging some items on a display next to me. She noticed a man outside looking at the bikes and suggested I greet him and offer my assistance. I did so, but he said he was fine and I gratefully went back inside the store to my surround sound system. It wasn't long, however, before this man who supposedly didn't need assistance came into the store and said he wanted to buy a bike. Only he wasn't just going to buy the bike and then leave. Oh, no. He had questions about warranties and pricing and was very concerned about having the option of buying the bike, taking it to a professional so he could get an estimate of the cost of possible repairs he would need to have done, and being able to return the bike for a cash refund if he decided the bike would end up costing him too much money. For starters, we don't offer cash back refunds, so, I knew this was going to be fun. He was one of those people who talks loud and fast and in circles until he gets what he wants. I was very polite out loud, but I wasn't so polite in my head. All I wanted to do was finish setting up this combo deal and he kept rambling on and on about things I couldn't change. I eventually gave up on him and had him speak to a manager. They worked something out after several more minutes of discussion and the annoying man was on his way with the bike and an opportunity to return the bike for in-store credit (which is what we normally do, but he thought he was getting a sweet deal).

7) Finish setting up the system (15 minutes) : Annoying bike customer patronized and sent on his way, I was finally able to finish setting up the second surround sound system, but not before being interrupted by various customers who needed to be rang up. There is nothing more annoying than being in the middle of doing something and being interrupted repeatedly so that a simple task takes hours to complete.

The 12th Annual One Day Sale

For the past month or so, my fellow pawn shop employees and I have been promoting what would be the biggest sale of the year. We've been sending out mailers, sticking little promos on the paper money we give our customers, and telling everyone about the sale and sending them home with fliers. All of these efforts culminated in a day of pawn shop mayhem. Absolutely everything in the store was on sale, there was a free hot dog lunch, and we even had a money machine (a little chamber you stand in as money blows all around you and you try to catch it). Normally, the pawn shop makes a profit of about $1,500 per day. But The One Day Sale brought in over $24,000 in a little over 8 hours.

The day began with coming in an hour and a half early. We flung open the front double doors, weighed them open with mini-fridges, and hauled an expansive array of items out into the front parking lot. Folding tables were unfolded and laden with the most random things, tub after tub of DVDs were scatted about, a large display of CDs was wheeled outside (and precariously balanced on the uneven pavement, I might add. I seriously thought it was going to start rolling and hurt someone. Luckily, it didn't.), and many more things were displayed in the crisp November air. Customers began wondering through the maze of merchandise twenty minutes before we officially opened for business and even stood just outside the open doors so they could peer inside and see what was displayed. There was one teenage boy who kept reappearing every couple of minutes and staring off in a specific direction.

Now, it is important to know that for The One Day Sale, we have a pre-sale that leads up to it. The week before The One Day Sale AKA The Big Sale, little pink tags began appearing on the merchandise in the store. First, they appeared on the guitars and guitar accessories, then they advanced over to the stereo equipment, and then the Ipods and cameras sprouted these bright rectangles of paper, the tools were next, and soon enough everything but the jewelry was pre-priced and the store was a swarm of little pink tags. On these tags were prices listed as "Buy It Now". These prices were fairly good discounts from the original prices of the items and were what constituted our pre-sale, but what really enticed people were the "November 6, 2010" prices. These were the prices that would be available the day of the sale and the day of the sale only. So, when the customers looked at the pink tags, they had to make the decision to either get the smaller discount and obtain their items immediately or wait and hope their desired purchases had not been bought out from under them before the day of the sale. It was a sneaky tactic, but making the individual sale prices known in advance made many customers very anxious--this teenage boy being one of them. He had come into the shop with his mother two days before the sale and had drooled over a specific bass guitar. It had been originally priced at $399.99, but the little pink tag boasted a discounted price of $240 on the day of the sale. The mother and the boy asked me if I thought the bass would still be available on the day of the sale or if I thought it would be sold at the pre-sale price of $280. I was asked this question a lot by many different people concerning many different items, but my response was always the same--"You can never tell. It could still be here, but it's a gamble. You never know who's going to come though that door and what they're going to be looking for." It was a truthful answer--but the truth of the statement was coupled with the intention of increasing the customers' anxiety. It's cruel, I know, but I purposefully responded that way to watch their eyebrows furrow as they weighed their frugality against how badly they wanted the item. It was so much fun.

As it turned out, the boy and his mother's patience payed off. The boy nearly jogged to the bass when we officially opened for business, but tried to act cool once he had it in his hands. He turned it over and over, twisting it this way and that, scrutinizing it with microscope intensity as he ran his fingers across every last square inch of it. Then he sat down and played it for a while before finally purchasing it and leaving the store, trying to act nonchalant but failing to effectively conceal his excitement.

As far as the day of the sale went, I thought things went very smoothly. Everyone was assigned different stations at the pawn counter, the pay day counter, different positions on the showroom floor, and outside. I was assigned a specific register at the pay day counter and must have rang up several thousands of dollars of the sales that day. But for being as busy as we were, things didn't feel overwhelming. Every one of our staff was working and we even had a few other employees from our sister store joining us to help out. There were moments when the lines at the registers stretched across the store, but, still, things went very well. This does not, however, mean that there were no problems.

When we did have long lines, there were numerous people who tried to budge in line, trying to press their way up to the register by coming at it from the side instead of the front. I kindly asked the customers to go to the back of the line, which they were not too happy about, but no one made too much of a fuss. There was also a moment when a woman who regularly buys jewelry tried to pay for a ring with a check but did not have her ID. Without her ID, we were unable to run the check (the machine we run the checks through asks for the ID number and without the physical ID there is no way of putting it in). This woman is slightly mentally handicapped and is a very amusing character because of her passion for rings and the way she constantly adds "if you know what I mean" onto the tail end of sixty percent of her sentences. I felt bad turning her away and she seemed very upset at the idea of not being able to buy her ring at the discounted price. When I suggested that she go home and get her ID and come back, she responded that she couldn't because she was going to help her friend with some yard work that afternoon and wouldn't have time to make it back before we closed. She began to rummage through what seemed like an inordinate number of pockets on her coat, pulling out bills from various places and throwing them on the counter. She even produced a roll of quarters, but, sadly, there was still not enough to cover the cost even after the discount. Dejected, the woman collected her forms of money and the other random things she had pulled from her pockets and left the counter. She did not, however, leave the store until after having roamed the jewelry displays one final time with a sad look on her face. At one point in the day, I remember a hand patting me on the small of my back and feeling a form move past me, but I had been so busy ringing up customers that I didn't turn to see who it was--making the natural assumption that it was another employee. Moments later, I caught a man in the corner of my eye messing with a handmade guitar that hung behind the counter. So, it had not been a fellow employee moving past me but a brazen customer who had no shame in venturing into places he shouldn't. I didn't say anything because a manager was at the register next to me and I thought it was more of his place to direct the man out from behind the counter. This manager, however, said nothing and the man took his time examining the guitar before going back to the side of the counter where he belonged. But when the man tried to invade my work space a second time, I did not remain silent. I turned to block him and said, "Sir, please, do not step behind our counters. If you need something, ask." I was not happy and made this very clear with the tone of my voice. The man seemed a little shocked at my confrontational attitude and appeared to consider my request as both unexpected and irrational. The same manager who had been working beside me the first time the man had come behind the counter stepped in and handed him something. The man mumbled something to me that sounded like "be nice" before walking off. Whatever, dude.

During the sale, we had two two-hour stretches where customers were given raffle tickets and the chance to enter the money machine. These periods of time, as would be expected, found the shop to be more crowded than usual as people milled about, hoping their number would be called and they'd have the chance to snatch some cash from the air. The machine itself was stocked with $500 in the denominations of ones, fives, tens, and twenties. I believe the highest amount that a customer grabbed was $39. I only caught glimpses of people thrashing about and grabbing for money because I was so busy, but the little bits I saw were entertaining enough. I heard that some customers who had not gotten the chance to enter into the money machine bitterly made up conspiracies about us rigging the drawings and/or making grabbing the cash harder than it should have been--how we would have done either of those is beyond me, and how I wish I could have overheard their in depth discussions of exactly how we would have done this--second hand black magic or pawn shop voodoo, perhaps? But what was even more fun than these ignorant ramblings was when, after we had closed for the day, all of the employees were given a chance to go into the money machine. The order in which we went into the machine was determined by all of us drawing numbers. I drew number 14--last place--and had a heck of a time grabbing anything as there only seemed to be a handful of bills left, but one of our female employees--who went second--grabbed $61. I was amazing at how practiced she looked, making it appear so easy. I, on the other hand, only managed to get one bill--thankfully it was a five.

Unfortunately, I was not able to take much advantage of the sales themselves. I would have been happy spending a couple hours looking through everything, but only had a couple minutes to get something when my boss unexpectedly asked if anyone wanted to buy anything. But, as a matter of fact, there was something I wanted. I rushed to where I knew it had been the day before and was shocked to find that no one had bought either of the things I'd wanted. Not only did we have a GameBoy Color (a lime green one, at that), but we also had a copy of Zelda, Link's Awakening DX (the DX meaning that it has an extra dungeon than the original version of the game). Many fond childhood memories center upon playing GameBoy and, more specifically, this exact Zelda game. What made obtaining these items even sweeter was what a steal they were at the low, low price of $7.04 for both. I really should be spending every free moment I have working on my graduate school applications. I really don't need another distraction,  but at least it's a cheap distraction, and a distraction that produces inexpressible joy and comfort when I turn on my GameBoy and hear that happy little Nintendo DING as the system powers up. I'm currently stuck at the end of the second dungeon, but, never fear, I shall prevail!

Rock-Induced Panic Attack

At the pawn shop, we realize that it is important to some of our customers that they are able to try out the used items which they are about to purchase. We also realize that there are some people who just want to mess around with some of our merchandise. And it seems to me that the most used yet least purchased items in the store are oure guitars. Many people will spend long periods of time rocking out on our showroom floor and then leave without purchasing so much as a thirty cent guitar pick. We had one such man walk through our doors today.

He was an elderly man, meaning that I suspected he was getting close to sixty, and looked like he'd been wearing the same hippie clothing since 1969. He was polite enough in person. He even offered some little-known trivia about the origins of a specific brand name of guitar pedal. But when I knelt down to an amp, and plugged in his guitar, he strummed away with all of his aging hippie might and nearly deafened me by blasting a throbbing cord right into my face. His politeness in conversation, clearly, did not carry over into providing the courtesy of letting me remove my eardrums away from the guitar amp before he started showing off his skills. He then proceeded to rock out at an inappropriate volume.

Having helped the man become situated for his jam session, I returned to a counter to help ring up customers and tried my best to ignore the aged hippie guitarist. I would say that I was doing fairly well at this. One customer that I served, however, did not have such advanced skills of ignoring annoying noises as I.

First, I helped the woman pay the interest on one of her loans. Second, I began to ring up the various items she wanted to purchase. During all of this, she kept muttering to herself about the volume of the guitar (which, in her defense, was too loud) and turning around to shoot evil glares at the man. She kept muttering things like "I can't even think" and "Please, hurry up" and "Get me out of here" and had great difficulty in performing simple tasks such as counting money because she was so frazzled by the noise. I'd seen this woman in the pawn shop before and thought she was weird, but what I'd previously witnessed was nothing to what I saw today. I legitimately feared that she about to lose it. Finally, after she had paid for her items and I handed them to her in a bag, she dropped the bag. She tried to pick her things up but only succeeded after fumbling with them for several seconds. The, muttering to herself that the guitar music was horrible, she thanked me and rushed from the store. Thank goodness she didn't have a gun on her, otherwise, the content of this post would be drastically different.

What was even more entertaining was when the man turned to a woman about his age and asked her "Where were you--what were you doing in the mid-70s?" as he continued to strum away on his guitar. The woman had no interest in talking to the man and quickly made her away across the store. If this bothered the man, he didn't show it and continued to play.

Eventually, the man approached me and asked if he could try out a specific pedal. I responded that he could and kindly hooked it up for him. Sadly, the pedal didn't work. We checked to see if it had a battery in it, which it did, so we assumed the battery was dead. "Do you know how to check to see if these are dead?" the man asked me. I wanted to say "Sir, of course I know how to check if a 9 volt battery is dead. Every first-grader in the planet knows how to check that. Give me a break." I, however, kept my comments to myself and watched the man as he demonstrated how to test it by licking the prongs. He then handed it to me with a cocky "Yep. It's dead." I carried the licked battery to the trash can, making sure to be careful that the ends didn't touch my skin (I really didn't want hippie saliva on me), and disposed of it. I had to hunt for another battery for a couple minutes, but finally succeeded only to find that this second one was also dead. The man conducted a second lick test and I carefully threw that one away as well. A third battery was found, suspected dead, licked, and then disposed of. And then, finally, the fourth battery worked.

At this point, the man tried to strike up a conversation with me about guitars as he played, keeping his eyes on me the entire time as it to prove that he was so talented that he didn't need to look at his fingers, but I ended the conversation by reminding him to play quietly so as not to disturb our other customers. The man grinned, leaned in close to me, and asked "Do I play too loud?" with such arrogance that it disgusted me. He played a little while longer and then left without buying a single thing. What a poor, old hippie, pretending he's a rock star while playing cheap guitars at a pawn shop and getting shot down by middle-aged women.

I CAN COUNT!

There is a tedious task that needs to be completed at the end of each work day at the pawn shop, and that task is appropriately called "Counting Jewelry."

As for the logistics of this task, the title pretty much explains it all. Every night, someone is assigned to count all of the jewelry in the various jewelry cases. There is a sheet on which one records the counts, breaking the cases down into numbers of rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, pendants, and watches, the purpose being to act as safeguard against accidental loss and purposeful theft of jewelry. Even though I am a very honest person and would never be sloppy or lazy at work, let alone steal anything, counting jewelry makes me somewhat nervous.

I have a very guilty conscious, and whenever someone says that they need to talk to me, my first reaction is to think that I am in trouble. I can't help it. The rendezvous may be innocent, but I instantly begin to wrack my brain for if I have done anything offensive, mean, or wrong. Some would go so far as to call me paranoid. Whatever. Maybe I am, or maybe I just don't like the idea of screwing something up and then getting in trouble for it--miscounting rings, for example, which could lead someone to think I have been stealing. There is also the fact that I don't like doing things incorrectly. Moral of the story: paranoia and slight-OCD make counting jewelry a somewhat stressful chore. There is a lot of money in those jewelry cases and I don't want anyone to have any cause to believe I have been lazy or shady.

Anyway, I was assigned to count jewelry tonight. I don't get terribly nervous about it anymore because I've done it several times by now and am more familiar with the items that are in the cases. But after I counted and then my boss wanted to count everything on her own, I began to feel a little anxiety. My first reaction was that I had been counting jewelry wrong for weeks and that she was checking my counts in order to reprimand me and then initiate a process that would eventually lead to my dismissal because I was not viewed as a valuable or trustworthy employee. But after the first small panic attack, I calmed down a little. I also thought that maybe it was just a normal thing for her to recount jewelry every now and again just to make sure things are being done correctly.

After she counted the jewelry, she and I compared our numbers--we only matched on two of the six. What a joy that was to behold! What a pleasant sensation I hope to experience again and again! She and I began to recount everything, but this time we did it together. As it turns out, I was dead on other than for counting a wedding set as one ring instead of two because the solitaire and band fit together so well that they looked like a single ring (which was understandably confusing and not held against whatsoever). Other than that, it turned out that I had been correct on the other counts and that she had been the one who had made the mistakes while counting. I felt very happy about this, partially because it made me feel good to personally know that I had been doing my job correctly, but also because it felt good to have my boss see that I had been doing my job correctly. I sometimes think she doesn't think too highly of me, and perhaps this will change her mind. Or maybe it will make her resent me even more. Either way, I am pleased to inform you all that I CAN COUNT! I can count rings and necklaces! And earrings, too!

Satanic Cesspool Stenches

When I helped put out a 50-inch LCD television that was priced at $799.99 onto a television stand out on the pawn shop floor, I'll admit that I didn't expect it to sell very quickly. Who would spend that much money on a used television? Well, someone did, and it was gone within four hours after being put on display. The empty television stand was refilled with an additional LCD television, this one of more humble proportions at only 42 inches. Anyway, the 42-inch LCD TV is still for sale, but the television stand upon which it had rested is not. Someone bought it out from under it, and I found the television sitting on the floor, unplugged and with a dark screen.

When I asked what we were going to do about the television (it seemed unlikely that we would leave it sitting there on the floor and there were no additional TV stands we could use), I was instructed to find two mini-fridges of similar heights, cover them with some fabric, and then use that as a make-shift stand.

I was not pleased.

1) We may have a slew of mini-fridges, but matching heights required shifting through the several stacks of them until I could find a suitable pairing, thus requiring much time and energy. 2) When I finally did manage to find two fridges of very similar heights, I had to haul them down from the second floor storage area, through the disarray our back room is in, and then across the showroom floor. 3) The fabric with which I was supposed to cover the fridges was stored in a tricky, elevated location which first required snaking through a jungle of bicycles and then reaching above my head to try and pull down the desired fabric (I chose the slick golden cloth as opposed to the velvety purple one) off a shelf without pulling all of the extra items around it down upon me.

As it turns out, none of these individual tasks proved as irksome as I had originally expected. I quickly found two of the same exact mini-fridges (removing the difficulty of matching heights), both very lightweight (making them very easy to move from storage to the showroom floor), and the fabric easily came down from its perch detached from all the other items surrounding it (no head injuries were suffered). The real problem was something unforeseeable and came when I opened one of the mini-fridge's doors after I had moved it to the showroom floor.

A stench unlike anything I'd ever smelt lunged out at me and was so overpowering that I nearly fell over. My throat constricted and I turned away with what must have been a ridiculous look on my face. I'm not entirely sure how to describe it, but if you imagine fusing the semi-pleasant smell of a new refrigerator with the wholly-unpleasant stink of diseased flesh that has been rotting between Satan's teeth for several hundreds of years, you may come close to understanding what I faced.

I asked my manager if I should just shut the door and forget about the stench or if I needed to do something about the noxious fumes. Her first reaction was understandable. She asked if the fridge just needed to be cleaned out.

The answer was no.

The strange thing was that the fridge looked immaculate on the inside. It would be natural to assume such raunchy fumes were wafting off a cesspool of mutant, radioactive puss, but cesspool there was none. I was instructed to put the offensive smelling fridge in the back and leave the door open so it could air out. I did so and was happy to flee from its presence, but this meant that I had to find two additional fridges to use as a stand. There was another substantial amount of mini-fridge shuffling and then of hauling them across the store, but being free from the Satanic cesspool stenches was well worth the trouble.

Bob Ross Made Me Do It

There are moments when I find myself discouraged at the pawn shop. Such moments are when I look at what we call "the back wall". This wall is lined with shelves, upon which are placed items that either need to be put onto the showroom floor or into the storehouse for safe keeping and future display. Employment at the pawn shop is a constant battle of trying to clear off this wall as new items seen to be incessantly materializing and breeding on it. Many items are not difficult to find places for (cell phones, DVD players, speakers), but there are some items which are more bothersome. One such item is the filthy, over-sized grill that appeared over the weekend.

I'm sure it was a very nice grill to begin with, and it is still somewhat impressive with it's enormous stainless steel lid and expansive flat surfaces that jut out from either side of it and offer a type of counter space, but the grease, grime, and dirt that now coat every surface make it appear to be more of a prop from a horror movie than a means of cooking food any normal human being would desire to consume. Seeing this item made me cringe because 1) it's ugly, 2) it's huge, and 3) there is nowhere to put it inside of the store, meaning that we will most likely have to roll it outside every morning and then wheel it back inside every evening.

Wanting to avoid having to find a place for the grill on the showroom floor, I began pulling various items from the shelves around it. I put away a DVD player, a few cell phones, a television, a pair of dry wall stilts, and two of those cheap joystick games you plug into your TV, but then I saw one of the most amazing things I'd ever seen: a Bob Ross painting kit, complete with paint, brushes, utensils, and two instructional DVDs. With this single kit, one would be able to paint a mountain scene, stormy sea, or peaceful meadow while Bob Ross's soothing hippie voice instructs them from under his beach ball-sized Afro.

Needing to inspect this kit closer, I leaned up against the disgusting grill to grab the unopened box (YES, unopened!). After discovering the shockingly low price of $19.99, I put the kit back, seriously contemplating buying it for myself, but moved on to other tasks around the shop.

A while later, I returned to the back room and was assaulted by a putrid smell that lingered in the air. I asked a co-worker if she smelt something funny--which she did--and then asked her what she thought it was. She rushed off to solve the mystery, worried that it might have been gas. Not thinking much of this, I busied myself with additional chores around the shop. Not much later, I found myself smelling the same horrible smell far away from the back room on the shop floor.

As it turns out, my co-worker was correct. It had been gas we were smelling. When I had leaned up against the grill to inspect the Bob Ross painting kit, I had bumped one of the grill's gas knobs and unwittingly began to fill the store with propane. The seriousness of this situation was increased by the fact that we had been selling a lot of lighters lately and many customers liked to play with them, absentmindedly flipping them on while they wait in line to be rang up. It wouldn't have been too unlikely for one of them to have played with one of these lighters, ignited the gas, and killed us all. Thankfully, they didn't. But all I really have to say is that Bob Ross made me do it. He was the one who almost made me blow up the pawn shop with his irresistible painting kit that was priced so economically. What a rascal.

Back from the ZOMBIE PROM

I realize that these past two weeks of not writing in my blog have probably left you, loyal readers, feeling dejected, depressed, and desperate for more tales from the pawn shop. I apologize deeply for my negligence, but there has been good reason for my abense.

Over the past few months, I had been helping plan a Halloween party for my church. And as the past two weeks were the final two weeks before the party, I was busy beyond busy making sure everything was ready. Halloween is my favorite holiday and there is no accurate way of conveying my obsession with making the party as elaborate and memorable as possible.

The party itself was called ZOMBIE PROM and catered to young single adults of my faith, meaning those who were not married and between the ages of 18 to 30, providing a nice way for us to meet other young people who share the same beliefs. And, of course, we invited those not of our faith, because what horrible Christians we would have been if we tried to keep such a wonderful event such as a ZOMBIE PROM all to ourselves! My other main planner and I did a lot of promotional work, recieved a lot of interest in the event, and found ourselves overwhelmed with the actual planning of the event. Luckily, we know lots of great people and were able to recruit volunteers to help with music, photography, snacks, decorating, and general planning. Approximately 150 people attended, a goodly number of which drove several hours to attend.

Some of the highlights of ZOMBIE PROM :

1) Voodoo Doll : We had an oversized voodoo doll to which people pinned their names on pieces of paper. The person closest to the hidden mark on the voodoo doll won the doll.

2) The Tunnels : The dance itself took place in a gym of one of our church's buildings, but we extended the party to three different rooms by connecting the gym to said rooms by creating a series of tunnels constructed out of oversized cardboard boxes. The rooms were then littered with crumbled newspapers and all kinds of broken things such as smashed televisions, computer monitors, vacuums, and etc (items that the pawn shop was going to throw away but I took instead in preparation for this). The idea was to make the party-goers feel like they had crawled into the aftermath of the Zombie Apocalypse. My favorite room had hundreds of blank sheets of paper taped to the walls. On these pieces of paper were messages or drawings written in ink that only showed up in black lighting. Each room was supposed to have a different theme, but this room's theme was that children had been locked in it for an extended period of time in an attempt to escape the Zombie Apocalypse and had written on the walls out of boredom and cabin fever. We had three blacklights in the room and the primitive, glowing messages combined with the carnage, trash, and random pitched tent combined to create a very eerie feeling.

3) The Thriller Tutorial : A friend of mine volunteered to teach everyone a simplified version of The Thriller dance--a very appropriate activity for a ZOMBIE PROM. The tutorial itself went very well and most people seemed to have a lot of fun with it, even when we almost smashed into each other.

4) The Zombie King and Queen Coronation : Early on in the night, we presented five men and five women who my fellow planner and I felt had the best costumes to the rest of the party. The attendees then voted for which male and female costumes they liked the best. The best female costume went to a Zombie Mary Poppins and the best male costume went to two brothers who had turned themselves into Zombie Siamese Twins. During the coronation, the Queen was given a sash, a bouquet of dead flowers, and a burned Barbie doll as a scepter. The King was given a sash and a severed foot as his scepter. They were both, however, given "crowns" that had been made by stuffing bloody looking spaghetti into pig stomach lining to create what looked like real human intestines. But the coolest part of having these crowns was when I pulled them from my shirt, making it look like I had yanked out my own intestines, and then draped them over the heads of the Zombie King and Zombie Queen.

Overall, the party was a success, and the best part was that there were so many people willing to help clean up afterwards that I hardly had to do anything, which is saying a lot since the decorations were very elaborate. It was great fun planning the event and seeing it through, but, boy, am I glad that it's done and over with. But now my next big project is graduate applications. But, never fear, loyal reader, I will be more diligent in my blogging. I have even been jotting down notes of stories I knew I'd want to share after ZOMBIE PROM had stopped consuming my life, so, prepare yourself.

The Danger of the Telephone

Answering the phone at the pawn shop can be a dangerous thing. Most of the time, people are calling in to ask questions that hardly seem worth our time--"Do you buy insert random item here?"--"What time do you close?"--but they often ask things we cannot tell them over the phone--"How much would you give me for my insert random item here?"--or inform us that they will be late on paying the monthly interest on their loan(s) and ask if we could hold their item(s) just a little bit longer. In short, there are many phone calls which require little thought and could be put into script form and read off by a fifth grader, but, every now and again, you pick up the phone and get thrown for a loop. Some loops are more pleasant than others, and I had two of them today--one pleasant and the other not so pleasant.

Call #1 : The Pleasant Loop

There are some phone calls that make me thankful I was the one who answered the phone and this is one of those. A man called into the pawn shop and the first thing he did was ask to speak to a manager, mentioning one of them specifically by name. This happens a lot, people asking to speak with this or that manager, but in most circumstances they don't actually need to talk to a manager. Thus, I have been trained to first offer my assistance and find out the situation before interrupting whatever the managers are doing for something that could easily be solved without their help.

In this instance, the man did need to speak to a manager and there was a justifiable reason why he had asked for a specific one. Two months previously, this man had separated from his wife, during which time he had somehow obtained her wedding ring and then sold it at our pawn shop. The manager he had asked for had been the one who had rang up the transaction, and he was hoping the manager would remember what the ring looked like because the man now wanted the ring back because he was rekindling the flame and reuniting with his wife. Fortunately, finding out if the ring is in our inventory is fairly simple--if you have the correct level of authorization on the computer--but, unfortunately, the manager was very busy. It seems that most people with legitimate needs call during the biggest rush of the day.

Here's hoping we still have your wife's ring with the heart-shaped diamond, sir.
Call #2 : The Not So Pleasant Loop

After someone has been put on hold for a while, the phone will begin to beep very loudly to remind everyone that the customer is still holding. This annoying beeping ripped through the air at one point today and I went to answer the phone to just tell whoever was holding to hold on just a little bit longer for whoever was helping them. However, when I answered, the woman on the other end gruffly began telling me about her situation.

Upon recognizing the woman's voice, which was instantaneous, I was stricken with that horrible hollow feeling you get in your gut when you know you've fallen into a bad situation. This woman is very strange and so large that she is unable to move about independent of a wheelchair, and everytime she comes into the pawn shop, she and her male companion (friend, relative, significant other?) ask for a print out of all of their pawn loans so they can pour over a convenient, condensed summary of their thirty-something loans. They spend at least twenty minutes going through the loans and marking the ones they want to renew and the ones they want to redeem by coding them with either a check mark or circle. Yes, they have been doing this so long and have so many loans that it has become a necessary and second-nature practice to code their loans.

Well, this woman called in to tell us that she 1) could not remember when a specific loan was due, 2) that she would probably be late on paying it, and 3) that she had better not lose her item. I tried to explain that we could not disperse information about anyone's loan over the phone because we are required by law to only give out information to the loan holder. This requires that we verify their identity with them being physically present with a state issued ID in the pawn shop. I can see how it could be annoying to have to come into the pawn shop every time you are irresponsible and forget when your loan is due, but it is a precaution we take to protect the privacy of our customers. As you could imagine, this woman very passionately expressed her displeasure, telling me that I needed to get into the computer and just tell her when he loan was due because she couldn't come down because she was sick and on bedrest.

At this point, a manager realized that I had answered the phone call with the irate woman and whispered for me to put her on hold again. I nodded that I understood and interrupted the woman to tell her I'd be putting her on hold and then did so. My manager told me to just leave her on hold until she gave up on waiting for someone to get back to her. It made me feel a little guilt to just leave her hanging, but she was not being rational whatsoever and there was no better option. For the next few minutes, I kept glancing at the phone. We have several lines and when someone is on hold on any of them, the line will flash a red light. To my relief, the flashing light indicating the angry woman disappeared very quickly.

All Aboard The Ass Train

When placing an item out on display on the pawn shop floor, there are several things that need to be done. The item needs to be 1) cleaned off, 2) tested to make sure it still works, and 3) the price and important details about the item need to be displayed by attaching a colorful burst-shaped piece of paper--called starbursts--to it.

When I first started this job, everytime someone would say starburst, my mouth would water as I thought of the fruity goodness of the similarly named candy. Now, however, I often cringe at the thought of the tedious nature of the starburst. Correctly labeling a starburst requires putting a description of the item along with the price and a list of any accessories that it may include on the front while putting the item number and location of where the included accessories are being stored on the back. For example, a starburst for an Ipod may say something like "32 GB Ipod Touch w/ charger $249.99" on the front with "12847389, charger in small e's drawer" on the back. But just correcting filling out a starburst is not the end. There is also the task of taping the starburst onto the front of the item in a location that will leave it visible to customers when placed a shelf, display, or inside one of our generously stocked glass cases.

All in all, writing out and putting starbursts on almost every item in the store is time consuming, but they do prove to be very handy. For example, they keep customers from bothering me and my fellow employees with such simple questions like "How much does this cost?" And as they often also state what accessories are included with them, they keep a lot of people from asking us "Does that come with a charger?" So, yes, the time put into writing out starbursts does earn itself back, but lately we have come across a problem with the starbursts.

The other day, one of my managers was helping a customer pick out a digital camera. The customer asked what was included with the camera and my manager began to read the starburst to him. It came with a "charger, memory card, and ass." Luckily my manager caught himself before he read the final word on the starburst. It was very clear what had happened--someone had been abbreviated accessories as "ass" instead of "acc". What a glorious mistake, and I half wish that we would adopt the new abbreviation as it is much more entertaining than the correct one. Oh, the fun I would have telling a customer that "Yes, this camera comes with ass. I'll go get that for you."

Several instances of this have been popping up around the store, and it has been a pleasure discovering each and every one of them. My favorite item has been a train set labeled as "Toy Train Set w/ ass". I have no idea what that would mean if it were to be taken literally, but it doesn't matter because all I want to do is bellow a warning of "All aboard! All aboard the train with ass! The train with ass is boarding! All aboard!"

To my great dismay, as well as the displeasure of several of my co-workers, the incorrect abbreviation has been addressed and stifled. There will be no more items showing up on the pawn shop floor with starbursts declaring that they also come with ass. What a sad thought.

The $1,600 Bathroom Faucet

An older man came into the shop today with a box. He set the box on the counter and proudly told me that I had probably never seen what he was about to show me. Just from that, I could tell the next few minutes were going to be interesting. Not so much because I believed that the man had some impressive item in his possession, but because the man was so pompous that I knew he was going to be completely ridiculous.

Opening the box, the man began to pull out various parts from a bathroom faucet. Only, as the man informed me, this was no ordinary faucet, but a $1,600 bathroom faucet. Apparently, the various parts had been dipped in platinum or gold. He then shoved a piece of paper with details about the faucet into my face with triumph, thinking he had proven the worth and guaranteed himself a generous loan offer. What this man didn't realize is that we never taken pricing information from customers. I took the paper, set it down, and then called a manager over because I wasn't sure if we even took bathroom fixtures. After a quick exchange with the annoying man, my manager disappeared to go look up information about the faucet and I was left alone with the customer. I tried to go about my other pawn shop duties, but the man kept talking to me--only it wasn't good natured chit chat, but self-important rambling.

He told me that he used to have lots of money and that he originally bought the faucet to impress his wife. I responded that she probably would have been more impressed if he'd spent the money on buying her jewelry instead. It was meant to be a joke, but I don't think he enjoying my sense of humor. He then mentioned that the faucet was the only thing he still had from his days of financial abundance. I asked him what had caused him to lose all of his money, but he didn't respond to my question. Instead, he told me that I would never have enough money to buy such an expensive faucet and that I would probably never even see one again. I shrugged and told him I saw no point in buying a $1,600 bathroom faucet. Completely unaware of my subtle hostility, he asked me if I had ever heard of the brand of the faucet. It was Kohler. Of course, I'd heard of it. I told the man as much and then began to ignore him.

He kept asking me questions but I didn't respond. I usually hate it when the phone rings, but when it rang this specific morning I was very glad to answer it.

In the end, my manager ended up turning away the faucet to the great displeasure of the older man. When the elderly jerk had left, I told him about the rest of my encounter with the fancy faucet man and we both had a good laugh.

The Things Customers Are Willing To Tell Me

I try to be a good person, but there are many times when I feel cranky and just don't want to play nice with strangers. I'd rather ignore them and go about my business without being bothered. Unfortunately, this fierce desire for solitude usually occurs while at work when I'm forced to put on a happy face for an endless string of customers. When in these moods, my face is cemented in a stern expression and my voice is hardened with unquestionable surliness, but lately I've been playing a little game that I have titled: Reconnaissance Small Talk. This is, as the name suggests, making small talk with customers in hopes of them telling me something outrageous. The funny thing is that I usually win this one sided and slightly immoral game. It's amazing how little interest you need to show in order to open a flood gate of information.

For example, one woman told me all about how she had lost her job after working at a local hospital for over twenty years when she fell and broke her wrist. She had been a secretary and her healed wrist just didn't allow her to perform like she used to. This caused her employer to heartlessly label her unable to do her job properly and let her go without offering any compensation or type of severance package. This somehow lead into the then recent event of her daughter moving away to the local community college and how the apartment she had moved into had been filthy. In her devoted motherhood, the woman spent hours cleaning the apartment for her daughter (where the daughter was at the time, I have no clue, but it didn't sound like the recently unemployed mother had any help) and then complained to the office but was not compensated for her time.

One man haplessly mentioned that he was going to head out on vacation. When I asked him why he didn't seem too happy about it, he told me that he was heading to his brother's wedding. Now, the only reason I ever go to weddings is to eat food and cake--I mean--to show my support for the newly wedded couple--yeah--to show support . . . forget it, we all know it's all about the food. Anyway, I was going to say that at least there would be plenty to eat, but the man interrupted my joke and stormed ahead to inform me that he thought his brother was rushing into the marriage much too quickly. Apparently, this man's brother and his fiance had only known each other for three months and this was not a sufficient amount of time in his opinion. I might agree with this judgement in most cases, but my parents married quickly and they're still going strong after thirty years. There's also the fact that many courtships in my religion don't seem to last much longer than three months. Anyway, I wasn't totally disgusted with the brief engagement because I'd seen plenty of marriages that began that way and are still thriving today. I would have offered some comfort that it could all work out, but the man continued on to divulge that his brother was going to have a camouflage wedding. I had never heard of such a thing, but my imagination burst forth with images of a bucktooth bride in a camouflage dress and a groom with a mullet donning a fuzzy moss tuxedo amongst a milling crowd of barefooted people discussing Nascar. The man, however, interrupted this slackjawed daydream by telling me that he was upset with his brother because he wouldn't let him bring his dog to the wedding. The man just didn't see why he couldn't bring a dog to a camouflage wedding, but, of course, the answer is very obvious. Because having a dog in attendance just wouldn't be classy.

Another moment of greatness was when I noticed that a man had a large gash across one of his fingers between his first and middle knuckles. He was actually rubbing on hand sanitizer at the moment, making the wound look especially moist and disgusting. I asked the man if he'd gotten into a fight. As it turns out, the only fight he had was with gravity while upon a ladder. As you could imagine, he lost the battle with this eternal law of nature, but as you probably didn't anticipate, he fell into a dumpster and scraped his hand open. I have since repeatedly played a dramatization of this event in my mind.

On the other hand, there are some people who are not so willing to talk. For example, I once handed a woman a pawn contract along with a yellow pen so that she could finalize the transaction with her signature. This woman, however, stared down at the pen and harshly demanded that I give her a different one. Taken off guard, I asked her to repeat herself. Without removing her eyes from the pen, she told me she needed a different color of pen. Recognizing something ridiculous, I asked her why. She responded that yellow was an unlucky color. I continued staring at her while she continued to stare at the pen as if it was a rattlesnake about to strike and asked "Really?" She said it was and I gave her a green pen. I wanted to push this topic further, but I dropped it. The way the woman was acting made me fearful that inquiring deeper into her superstitions would get me stabbed, most likely with an unlucky yellow pen.

Blog Gold

There are just some people out there who like to be difficult, and today provided me with the pleasure of dealing with one such person.

It all started when a very tall man approached the pawn counter and asked me how much we offered for VHS tapes. I have been trained to ask how many VHS tapes they have because we base the price off the quantity. For example, if they have ten tapes then we offer twenty-five cents, but if they have three hundred tapes we offer five cents. Clearly, one main reason for this price tiering is to discourage customers from selling mass quantities of VHS tapes to us because no one wants them anymore. So, when the man told me he had about 90 tapes, I responded that we could give him ten cents for each.

At this point, a woman butted into the conversation, asking the tall man how much we were offering for the tapes. He told her and this woman was not pleased. She began ranting about how we used to give a quarter per tape and that she'd rather donate the tapes then sell it to us because we were ripping her off. This may make me horrible person, but I kind of enjoyed this. I hate dealing with VHS tapes. They're old and crappy and hard to sell. Please, keep your tapes. So, if I don't have to look through dozens of tapes and then find a place to store them in our already overflowing storage room where I know they'll end up rotting away, then I'm a happy pawn broker. I didn't expect to have much more interaction with this ridiculous woman, but I was wrong.

After raising a stink about the price of the tapes, she pulled a pawn contract out of her purse. I tried to look at the contract so I could use the transaction number to pull up her account, but she must have thought I was up to something much more devious because she snatched it out of my sight and put it back into her purse. I asked if I could see the ticket, just so I could make sure I was pulling up the correct loan, but she refused my request and told me to just pull up her account with her name--which she then provided. Her original intent was to pay the interest she owed on her loan, but when I pulled up her account and provided her with the amount of the interest, she wanted to know how much it would be to redeem her item. And this is when the real struggle began.

Now, the only way we can give out information about a pawn loan is if the owner of the loan shows us their ID or if they have written and signed a note giving someone else permission to pick up their possession(s). Normally when I ask a customer to see their ID, they produce it without hesitation because they understand how our system works and appreciate the precautions we take to keep their information private. But when I asked to see this woman's ID, she told me she didn't have it on her. She even looked through her oversized woman's wallet and was unable to locate it. Long story short, she argued with me that it was her loan and that I should be able to just give her the information. She wouldn't listen to me when I mentioned protocol or customer confidentiality and insisted that I just give her the information. In the end, she paid the interest and signed a new loan contract--which actually gives out a lot of information about the loan itself--what is in the loan, the amount due on it, the interest, the due date, etc. Upon seeing the wealth of information on this contract, she began to rant about how ridiculous our system of confidentiality is because I couldn't give her that information without seeing her ID but she got it in the end because she paid her interest. I saw a shred of a valid point in this, but it's more likely that if someone is paying the interest of a loan that they're more trustworthy versus someone who is trying to snoop around into people's accounts.

After this fiasco came to a close, she said that she would go ahead and sell us the VHS tapes at ten cents a piece. Apparently, she changed her mind about donating them to Goodwill. The tall man asked if we had a cart he could borrow to bring the tapes into the store. We do have such a cart, but if someone is going to take the cart out of the store unattended then they are required to give us their ID to hold while they do so. It's not a big deal for most people, but the man didn't have his ID on him and the woman began to rant about how ridiculous this store policy was. At this point, we were in the middle of a rush and I would have preferred to have just given them the cart so they could bring in the tapes by themselves, but I had to go outside with him to load up the cart. Furthermore, I told her that without her ID, she wouldn't be able to sell us anything because it would have been required by law for us to see it. And then the woman flipped open her wallet and showed me her driver's license. So, when I had asked for her ID earlier, instead of showing it to me, she lied about not having it, put on a show as if she had tried to find it, and then argued with me for several minutes about not needing her ID when she had it right there the entire time. Why she did this I will never know and hope to never know. When I asked if I could take the woman's ID, she refused to take it out from behind the clear shield of her wallet, forcing me to accompany the man outside with the cart.

When we got to his vehicle with the cart, there was clearly more than ninety tapes. There was more like two hundred and fifty. Once we got the tapes into the store, I informed them that since there was a much larger quantity than they had informed us about that we could only offer them five cents a tape. As you could imagine, this set the woman off again. I tried my best to look sympathetic but doubt it was very convincing. She pointed out that our price tiering was immoral and didn't make any sense, but what didn't make sense to me was how she could think we wanted to buy hundreds of VHS tapes that 1) we would probably never sell OR 2) if we did by some miracle sell them to someone still interested in using such archaic technology--that they'd be bought for next to nothing.

So, what the woman did next was both shocking and impressive. She said that she wouldn't sell all of her tapes to us but just ninety of them so she could get them for ten cents a piece instead of five. Touche. Touche, ranty lady.

This sent me on the task of looking through the trash bags that had been filled to the point of bursting. Most of the tape we actually wouldn't have been able to buy off her, anyway. We require that they 1) have a running time of 90 minutes or longer, and 2) come in their original boxes. Many of her tapes failed to fill one or both of the requirements. But as I was sorting through the ones we could actually take in, she began to give me orders on which ones she wanted to keep--children's movies, for example. In the end, I found ninety tapes, gave her nine dollars for them, and then helped them load the excess tapes back into their vehicle. While I was helping them do this, the tall man muttered "I hate them" under his breath. Unsure if he was talking about me and my fellow co-workers, I asked him what he'd said. He responded with another "I hate them" and then nodded towards some people down the row of cars. He then told me he would have really enjoyed physically assaulting them with nonchalance that did not match his gruff language or attitude.

Wheeling the cart back into the store, I considered wishing these demanding customers to have a good day. The key word of that sentence would be "considered". In truth, I sent them off with no such wishes even though I appreciated their quirks. I may have been frustrated for a moment or two, but I realize that when the frustration fades that I'm left with blog gold.