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!
20 December 2010
16 December 2010
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.
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.
14 December 2010
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.
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.
09 December 2010
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.
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.
08 December 2010
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!
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!
01 December 2010
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.
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.
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