Dirty Tip Money

One thing that has really surprised me about my new job is how courteous we are required to be to the clientele. I wasn't expecting it to be okay to be rude to customers, but I can honestly say that we really go out of our way to be nice. We try to offer a friendly greetings and offers of assistance to everyone that comes in and we even hand out free cold bottles of water. I think it's a great thing, the level of customer service we maintain, but it can sometimes be a little strenuous. Today, for example, I found myself helping load a 32-inch tube television into a very small car. It was heavy and awkward and we couldn't close the door the entire way because pushing the television in any further would have made it hit the steering wheel. When I saw that the seat belts were the kind that ran along a track on the door, I had an idea. Being the innovative individual that I am, I lashed the door shut by taking the seat belt and wrapping it around the passenger seat headrest twice. It wasn't a very tight fit, but if he drove carefully he shouldn't have had any problems. Anyway, after that ordeal was over, the woman who purchased the television was so kind enough as to break a twenty dollar bill and give me five dollars for my troubles. I was really excited about this, but when I realized that one of my managers was giving me a strange look I realized that I probably shouldn't have taken the offered tip. I asked to verify, still hoping it would be okay for me to keep my tip, but as it turns out, we aren't supposed to take tips for helping load things into cars and he suggested that I put the extra cash in the drawer. I did as he suggested because when it comes to breaking protocol with money, I don't do it. Anything dealing with money in the work setting makes me nervous and I don't want any trouble, definitely not over five bucks. I think tips are a great way to show appreciation and it made me feel really good to have received such a large tip, too bad it was dirty money and I wasn't able to keep it.

A while after forfeiting my tip, I carried several DVD players up to the second level of the backroom for safe keeping until we would have space to display them out on the show room floor. But when I found the shelf where the DVD players were kept, it appeared to already be completely full. When I reported this to a fellow co-worker, I was suprised to find out that this shelf should actually be layered three rows deep. After standing on a ladder, I found that there was plenty of space further back on the shelf and I just had to move the ones in the front row to fill in the back two rows to make room for the additional players I had. Moving these players into the correct place required me to move several of them out of the way, climb from the ladder onto the shelf (which was very sturdy), and then carefully start shuffling the DVD players around so that the shelf was filled from back to front. Once again, I was amazed by the sheer quantity of items we had. There must have been close to a hundred--if not more--DVD players. But just in case moving DVD players around wasn't thrilling enough, the task was made a bit more interesting by having the shelf I was kneeling on and filling overlooking an open area that looked down onto the first floor. It would have been very easy to knock any number of the players--or myself--over the edge to fall two stories and then crash on the cement floor below. This thought was not pleasant. But I managed to complete the task without sending anything over the edge. The thought of something or many somethings becoming unbalanced hours later was very unpleasant, but I didn't pay much heed to it because the back row was packed pretty tightly. Unless there's an earthquake, I don't think there will be any problems.

One thing that I realized today is that some people have no shame when it comes to selling their personal belongings. A co-worker of mine cleaned out a small carpet cleaner that had mold growing among the dirty water and clumps of hair that the seller had left in it. It was very rank. I personally dealt with this problem when I lugged a pair of miniature fridges down from the second floor storage to the show room. Before we officially put things on display for sale, we make sure they are clean (because they may have been sitting in storage for a while and have collected a healthy layer of dust, but mostly people don't clean their stuff when they pawn or sell it to us--thanks guys). Both fridges I brought down from storage were dirty. Only one of them was filthy (flecks of dried food and who knows what else everywhere). The second mini-fridge was a bit cleaner but had patches of fuzzy black mold growing in it. They both cleaned up just fine, and it didn't really take that long. I suggested we start a policy that penalizes people for selling us dirty items--reduce the payout by ten percent, perhaps, but I was only half serious. I just thought it'd be funny to tell people their stuff was dirty and that they'd have to pay the consequences for their laziness. After discussing this with a seasoned co-worker, she told me that since she had started working the pawn counter that she has stopped biting her nails because she touches dirty things all day long and doesn't like the thought of what may be lurking underneath her fingernails getting into her mouth. I guess that would be the bright side of this epidemic of having to cheerfully handle dirty things, it'll help you break a trivial bad habit. What a silver lining.