There is just too much to do in a single day at the pawn shop for this faithful employee, especially when my boss continuously gives me additional tasks to complete without any regard for the fact that it is humanly impossible to get so much done. There is just not enough time in the day, nor do I want to make time to complete it all. That would require too much energy, and, I'm sorry, but I don't get paid enough.
Beyond my daily Loan Walking, I have been given two additional reoccuring responsibilities--keeping tabs on how many game systems we have in the back by counting and updating a detailed spreadsheet listing the various systems each week (which I haven't done for the past few weeks. Oops. And by "oops", I mean "I didn't do it on purpose because I didn't care") and keeping the part of the "houseworks" part of the showroom (three sets of shelves which display household items such as microwaves, alarm clocks, artwork, boardgames, and MUCH MUCH MORE) stocked. Staying on top of those three things is very managable, but the other other things my boss told me to do are not because 1) of how time consuming they are, and 2) there seems to be some sort of conspiracy that has people constantly coming into the pawn shop to pull me away from my special chores.
Anyway, one of my additional tasks was to rearrange how some of the loans had been stored. I was to move smaller, lighter loans to higher shelves so as to make room for the larger, heavier loan. The reason behind this should be obvious. It keeps our pawn brokers safe by not requiring them to lug heavy things up ladders. But the phsycial rearranging is only half of the process. The other half involves writing down the new shelf numbers where I moved the loans and updating that in our system so they can be found when someone comes to redeem their items. This part takes me to a computer in the showroom and this is when those pesky customers see me and feel the need to bother me with questions about surround sound systems or iPod prices.
Anyway, at one point while I was in the warehouse, my boss pointed out a large, plastic storage tub which had wires hanging out of it as it sat on a loan shelf. This was very odd since the tub wasn't marked like a loan and was stored in such a disorderly fashion.
When I finally got around to the mystery tub, I discovered an array of house phones, most of which were wireless. I began to rumage through them and found that a few of them were marked as being broken. Now, when something is broken, we are supposed to put them in a designated area of the warehouse so they can be taken to our other store where they are either repaired or thrown away if repairing it proves impossible. Instead, someone had disregarded this protocol, shoved them into a tub, and then put them onto a tall shelf. Why? The world may never know. But we do know, from the dates the broken phones were marked with, is that this breach of pawn shop guidelines occured in early 2005.
Yes, the broken phones had handwritten dates on them from March of 2005. They were worthless and collecting dust and taking up space for nearly six years. As ridiculous as that may seem, I kind of like it. It was like finding a time capsule because in pawn shop years, six years is more like thirty years.
Unfortunately, the employee responsible did not leave a friendly note for us to find along with the ancient communication devices. If only they had. Then I would know what it was like to work at a pawn shop so long, long ago.
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