Lessons from Jackson Part 1

Things I have learned thus far:

1. I honestly should have let my dad teach me about tools.  I at least know how to recognize a "Philips" screwdriver head, but who knew there were different sizes? Or that an electric drill can put a screw in AND take it out AND often has a built in light? I feel like a complete idiot whenever someone needs me to use or find a tool in the cluttered shipping room.  (Luckily for me, Rosemary, who is fifty-something and much more tool-savvy, can help me out.)

2. What goes around comes around. The other day I had to find a spot for four-boxes worth of packing foam in the tiny shipping room.  After bumping into counters and scraping my arms on misplaced tools I finally just shoved it all in the back, resolving that if it was a nuisance to someone back there, at least it wouldn't be me.  Guess who had to go search for a tool at the very back of the shipping room the next day? That's karma for you.  Of course, it goes the other way too.  In a spare moment, I put size stickers on the huge wall of folded shirts to make the dreaded "shirt-list" easier the next day.  Turns out that the next day, I was put on shirt-list duty, and the project only took five hours instead of six.

3. When life gives you lemons... okay, okay, I know.  Enough with the cliches! But I don't know how else to phrase this one.  How about: when your stove doesn't work right, make s'mores? nhmmmmeh. The point is, one of our stove burners doesn't work at all.  The one next to it works too well and burns everything we try to cook.  However, we have learned the beauty of roasting s'mores over the stove and that one unnaturally-hot burner creates the perfect "bed of coals" for making delicious hot s'mos!

4. It's great to have friends in the hotel business. Jackson is very much centered around the out-of-doors activities, and so when it is rainy and cold outside there are pretty much only two options for social activity: watch a movie...or go hot-tubbing. We went hot-tubbing at a hotel last night, and when the night guard came to close it up, it was one of the guys in our ward.  We still had to leave but he sent us over to the place next door that was open later and said he'd let a friend that worked there know we were coming.  (That one ended up being out of order, but still! Pretty awesome.)

Stickers

So today I spent several hours peeling mis-placed price stickers off of heavily shrink-wrapped pottery delivered in boxes stapled shut by the thickest, gnarliest staples I've ever seen.  It was a long process and my fingernails have been sawed down to bits from all that scraping and tearing. The flip-side?  Went home for lunch in the middle of the day and had a hankering for an apple.  You know those annoying little stickers they   put on apples that you always tear off half of while you are washing it and then can't get the other half off?  I peeled that baby off in one try with no sticky residue whatsoever.  Nailed it!

New Job

So I have a new job. And it's freaking awesome!

Actually, it's just your standard retail. But who am I to pass up the opportunity to learn how a small, independent business does its work? It's pretty cool actually.



Lately, I've been learning all about stocking.  I learned how to use a price gun, which is a pretty nifty tool if I do say so myself.

And of course, I've spent a lot of time counting which is helping me stay up to date on my math.

And I've been folding lots of shirts.  In fact, I just can't help thinking about the Teen Girl Squad episode where So and So gets a job at "the shirt-folding-store."   My management is a lot more considerate but I can sympathize with the steep learning curve:

"A kid just puked in dressing room 3"
"But it's my first day and..."
"Here's your name tag Mark. Get to minimum wagin'"

To view the whole video, click the link
http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs11.html