Looting and Pillaging

It has been a while since I've blogged. I have excuses, of course. I will share them with you now.

I've been working nearly 70 hours per week between my two jobs as well as planning my book launch event, etc. The book launch took place last Sunday. It was fabulous. More later.

Last night I worked at the Halloween store. It is the second day I've worked this week. While I have been used to the store getting cluttery and downright messy, nothing had prepared me for what I was going to step into Tuesday and Thursday at 5 p.m. (when my shift started). The store is quite large for a temporary business. It is located in a strip mall, and the space it occupies was once an appliance store many moons ago, I'm told. We have nearly every costume imaginable (except some obvious ones, but we only get what we get from corporate), a bunch of props, fake blood, lifesize and ridiculously large rats, fog machines, things that light up, things that talk (waaaay too much), zillions of latex masks ranging in price from $9.99 to $59.99, Halloween make-up, oodles of false eyelashes, vampire teeth, slutty costumes (also known as Legs Avenue), fart machines, dozens of children's Spider-man costumes in one size only (7-10), obscene costumes (including "Tricky Dick" the inflatable penis costume, which we apparently have sold out of), hundreds of wigs, flying bats, styrofoam tombstones, and many other items many people feel they need to have or at least pick up and put down somewhere else in the store.

I am a temporary employee. I make not a whole lot an hour. I have not complained about this because overall I have enjoyed working at the store and helping people shop for the holiday I love. In fact, I've been priding myself on my customer service, keeping the store in good order, sweeping up feathers and such with the little push-roller non-electric Hoover, etc. What a fun job, I had said to myself many a time.

Then the disillusionment began to set in. A few weeks ago I realized that one of my co-workers was really good at telling people what to do, yet not doing a damn thing except sitting on his ass and occasionally checking people out at the register. There is more to life in the Halloween store than attending the register. There is much clean-up and restocking to do. It is not a difficult job. In reality, a trained monkey could probably do it. Pick things up and put them in their appropriate sections in the appropriate spaces. We don't have to price anything, as the items come priced and ready to be put up.

We wear orange shirts. After all, it is a Halloween store, and orange is a seasonal color. It's also easy to pick us out of the crowd. Yet not all of my coworkers wear their shirts. I do not believe it is because they have a disdain for orange as much as they do not want to be recognized as staff. I wear my shirt every time I work, because we are supposed to. For me, this is not a hard concept. I'm also one of those wacky people that tends to follow the rules.

I also do not steal. This is another concept that some of my co-workers allegedly do not understand. Supposedly, a strip mall neighbor saw one of our workers (in this case I use that term loosely as he is not real keen on actually working) waiting out back by our dumpster for his friend's van to pull up. Then he opened the dumpster and pulled out bags of merchandise and put it in the van. As we do not have a register behind the store by the dumpster, I can only assume these goods were, as kids these days say, "hot."

On top of this, I still do not steal. But it seems that others do. I just found out that one of my favorite co-workers was accused of stealing money from the cash registers one night while closing. The money was accidentally left in the cash register by this young woman, so she left a note for the morning people to explain (after closing down the registers, you can't get back into them--a manager has to open them again). The person who opened the next morning reported that the money was missing. He, who is also among the losers who do not do a damn thing in the store, accused my young female co-worker of stealing the cash. I wish I had known about this sooner, as I was the other person closing that night. I saw the money in the drawers and saw her shut them. I was there when she wrote the note and say she hoped she wouldn't get in trouble for leaving the money in the registers (this was a policy that changed recently, so she shut the drawers out of habit).

When the female manager, who is way cool and on top of things, told the owner what happened, he did not believe her. Why? Because the loser who does not work told the owner that the girl did it. The manager told him that it was most likely the loser who did it, because he's been getting away with murder for months. The owner dismissed everything she told him. My young co-worker turned her key in. I had been wondering why I hadn't seen her for a while. This girl is a very hard worker and is dedicated to doing a good job. The manager says that since she (the manager) has no penis that the owner won't listen to her. I told her to wear the big inflatable penis costume the next time she talked to the owner. Perhaps he'd listen then.

Now to the looting and pillaging.

People are animals. That is a generalization, but if you stepped foot into the Halloween store this week, you'd agree.


to be continued