30 November 2010

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.

29 November 2010

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.

24 November 2010

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.

18 November 2010

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.

13 November 2010

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.

11 November 2010

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.

10 November 2010

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.

07 November 2010

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!

04 November 2010

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.

02 November 2010

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!