Cooler King, age 2 September 24, 2008

I work at a preschool in the afternoons, and this has led me a conclusion:

 

The “time-out” system is flawed.

 

Shocker! Let me explain.

 

I work with the two-year-olds, which, in the afternoons, combine with the one-year-olds. So typically there are four or five kids in my room at the end of the day, ranging from just turned one to nearly three. They are all at different levels as far as speech, listening, sharing, etc., though not a one of them is fully potty-trained (they’d move on to the next room if they were).

 

Yesterday I was working with a little boy, we’ll call him K. But that’s not what I call him in my mind. In my mind, I call him the Cooler King, after Steve McQueen’s character in The Great Escape. You’ll soon see why.

 

K is probably our most verbal child, and I’m pretty sure the oldest. He’s a sweetheart, but there’s one catch: he’s the LOUDEST CHILD ON GOD’S GREEN EARTH! This kid has the lung capacity to be the next Luciano Pavarotti…or to blow up hot water bottles til they burst.

 

Yesterday, he and V, another little boy who’s just barely two, both wanted to play with the same truck. It’s a cool truck, too, so I can understand why. K took the truck from V, resulting in V’s indignation.

 

“K,” I said, “V was playing with the truck. Give it back to him and play with another toy; you can have a turn when he’s done.”

 

K: “NOOOOO!”

 

Me: “K, you need to listen to the teacher. You have five seconds, or you’ll have to sit in time-out. 1…”

 

K:”NOOOOOO!”

 

Me: “2…”

 

K: “I DON’T WANT TIME-OUT!”

 

Me: “3…”

 

K: “SHUT UP!”

 

My mind: “Cooler, twenty days.”

 

My voice: “K, we don’t say ’shut up’ to our teacher. Come sit in time-out!”

 

K: “NOOOOOO! I DON’T WANT TIME-OUT! I DON’T WANT IT! I DON’T WANT IT!”

 

This went on for about 7 minutes: about every fifteen seconds, K would shout either “NOOOOO!” or “I DON’T WANT IT!”. At the seven-minute mark (he would’ve been out much sooner, but he was still shouting), after many admonitions to stop shouting and sit quietly in the time-out chair, K suddenly grew quiet. “Super,” I thought, “He’s calming down!” I turned away for a moment to tie another kiddo’s shoes and felt movement behind me. I turned around again and looked.

 

It was K. Sneaky child that he is, he decided that time-out would be more tolerable if he had a toy with him. So he snuck over and chose…a playground-sized ball. Way to go, K. I can’t even see that in your hand, nooooo.

 

(A side note here: These kids stick together. I’ve seen two year olds start “prison ministries”, where they aid and abet timed-out ones to obtain toys, snacks, and two-year-old gibberish counseling. Serious!)

 

Me: “K, we don’t play with toys in time-out. Give it here. Now sit quietly and you can play in a minute.”

 

K: “NOOOOOOOO! I DON’T LIKE TIME-OUT! I DON’T WANT IT!….” etc.

 

Me: “We’ve been over that, kiddo, now sit!”

 

That was the first of four times over the next 10-12 minutes that I confiscated toys from K, still in time-out (given the fact that he was still shouting at the top of his lungs every fifteen seconds. This kid would’ve been great at the Ephesian riot in the book of Acts!) I was starting to feel a little like Inspector Javert from Les Miserables: “For heaven’s sake, the guy’s in for petty theft…for 19 years, cause he keeps busting out! Gimme a break!”

 

Finally the shouting stopped, and as I confiscated the fourth toy, K said in a very repentant little voice, “I’m sorry!”

 

He sat still for about a minute, then I let him out and he came over, hugged me, and started apologising. Awww…

 

Although this story does bring up one solution to kids voluntarily getting out of time-out: at the program my sister works at, the time-out chair in the two-year-olds’ room is a restaurant-style highchair, complete with safety belt. Genius.

Life In the Slow Lane August 6, 2008

So yesterday, I was cleaning up a bit at home. Specifically, I was clearing off the top of the bookshelf I use as a nightstand (from the top bunk). I was quite motivated, as I had a new alarm clock to plug in…and nowhere to set it. So I began to wade through piles of dangerously balanced junk, some of it papers and correspondence dating back to 2006 (did I mention I’m not so good at filing?) This required many trips up and back down off the bed, often carrying armloads of stuff that belongs elsewhere. That’s when it happened.

 

I managed to land wrong on my left ankle. The problem with that being that I sprained that ankle over ten years ago and it hasn’t been the same since. The good news is that it didn’t bother me at all…then.

 

I didn’t realise that I’d aggravated that old injury till about 3 1/2 hours into my 8-hour shift at work. As a cashier. Standing there all the time and running around price checking things for customers.

 

Rats.

 

I bought an elastic bandage and wrapped it up, then convinced my manager to let me pull a seat over to my register for the rest of my shift. I plan to go home and ice it. But all I can say is: This is not fun.

 

I moved pretty slowly for the rest of the day. And I think I like the advice I got from one customer: “Everyone should be able to move slowly every once in a while.”

 

So now I have a greater appreciation for the mobility and youth I typically have. Typically. ‘Cept, you know, the ankle.

 

I shouldn’t be able to tell you when the weather will change by my joints. I’m only 20.

 

Sad.

 

Hopefully it feels better tomorrow, just in time for another long shift. Sigh.

 

I can help the next customer on register 5.

Hutu GPS July 3, 2008

Overheard in the back kitchen at a pizza joint:

“Dude, I’m pretty sure that throwing a cell phone into a 500-degree pizza oven voids the warranty!”

I’m pretty sure that guy’d be right. Someone should tell that to the customer who came in just the other day.

The man had purchased a GPS unit from our store a little while back. He didn’t have the receipt, but he’d purchased an extended store warranty that covered the product for a year. The deal was that we would replace the item if it were to break within that year, or, if we no longer carried the item, a similar item would be substituted.

The man complained of problems with unit; namely, it had “randomly” changed the interface language to some unknown language which he couldn’t read. He wanted a new unit so he could start fresh. The associate looked at it to see whether she could figure out how to change it back to English-quite a task, since she couldn’t read a word of the menus. She showed it to another associate, who also couldn’t read it. I checked to see whether I could recognise the language, and at first glance it looked like Portugese, having both cedillas on some c’s and ~ (these things whatever they’re called) above vowels. But it wasn’t Portugese, since it didn’t bear enough resemblance to Spanish. During this whole process, my coworker who had originally tried to fix the device was talking to the man, who insisted that he get a new GPS unit on the grounds that this one was “broken”. My coworker explained that his changing the language to one he didn’t speak was not covered by the warranty.

Eventually, a couple of associates and rather a bit of a headache later, the device was back in English from what it had been before (which one associate thought might have been slang French-huh?) and the customer left with it, not quite satisfied.

Lesson learned: never put your GPS device into Hutu…the warranty doesn’t cover that.

Fire Alarms and Soda July 3, 2008

So today I was at work, and a man came in, asking to see the manager. I called a manager up, and he explained to us that he was here to repair the fire sprinkler system, which had broken by accident during inspection this morning. He went to the back and fixed it. But here’s the kicker:

No one warned us that the fire alarm would go off while the system repressurised.

Therefore, we were totally unprepared when it did go off, continuously, for what felt like an hour, but was probably 10-15 minutes.

Several customers asked me whether the alarm was for real, to which we replied that it was being tested, which it was, to make sure the system was back up. After a few minutes, one manager announced that it was only a test over the PA system.

All this led me to a conclusion:

I don’t like it when fire alarms go off continuously. It hurts one’s head and threatens one’s hearing.

All this happened after a customer managed to explode a soda can by accident…right in front of the service desk.

My theory is: put that guy on the ceiling. If he smells smoke, let him explode more soda.

Problem solved.

I can help the next customer right here.

Intercultural? Me? June 29, 2008

I thought I was pretty much an American traditionalist.  was pretty sure that my “culture” and that of America were pretty similar. Ok, my culture and that of America 50 or 60 years ago, maybe.

I thought that, until the other day at work.

I’ve chosen purity and sexual abstinence until marriage for my life, not only out of obedience to God, but largely out of honour for my future husband, whoever he may be. As a symbol of that, I wear a ribbon wrapped around my left wrist and tied into a bow, symbolising that I am, as I delicately state it “an unopened gift” until marriage. (I also have a purity ring, which I wear on my left ring finger.)

Sometimes folks ask about these symbols, and I tell them what I have chosen. I try not to preach or talk their ear off about it, instead I just give them a brief explanation of why it’s there. Usually, since the subject is rather delicate, I use the phrase “unopened gift” or occasionally “saving myself”.

The other day at work, I was behind the service desk with a couple of coworkers. One of them, call her Ana (false names are used to protect the innocent), asked me about this ribbon. Ana is bilingual, with English being her second language. She understood my words, but had some trouble with my vague implications as to purity. She grabbed another girl (call her Krista), and asked for further explanation. Krista asked what exactly she was explaining. I told her, and she began.

This was Krista’s explanation of my position on purity: “Well, it means that she believes the Lord, and she follows the Lord. In her religion, the rules are that men and women don’t do anything, like they don’t kiss or have any kind of intercourse until after they are married. Once she’s married, she and her husband can do whatever they want to, but not till then.” She looked at me, as if to check her facts. “You also don’t date, correct?”

“In her religion“? Hold it! I hadn’t even actually tied this position to my religious beliefs; most people just thought that I was honouring my future husband, which is true. But what got me was her academic tone. It was as though she were introducing another friend who was Jewish by saying, “This is so-and-so, and they are Jewish, so they worship on Saturday and abstain from pork”!

That was the first time I’ve ever felt like an intercultural curiousity before. Ah, well. Perhaps I am. I knew I was from another decade, but I hadn’t quite grasped the idea of being viewed as from another culture entirely.

If you need me, I’ll be visiting Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Although I doubt the Amish there will look too kindly on my Internet use, Christian rock music, or jeans. Ah, well. I’ll just be my own little culture here.

Good afternoon, sister. Have you heard about the Lord?

Labels June 25, 2008

Labels are great. They help you find things.

Overlabeling is not great. What ARE we, idiots?

We’ve been cleaning and organising at the store where I work for the past couple of weeks. Apparently there’s some grandiose scheme to make every inch of the store shine, all the time (which won’t happen unless we follow our customers with mops and vacuums, but hey, what are you gonna do?) One job that I as a cashier had was to clean out the cabinets under the cash registers: take everything out, clean the floor and all the walls of the cabinet with surface cleaner, figure out what needed to go back in the cabinet, and figure out where the rest should go. Doing this, there were several things I learned.

1. The cabinets under the scanners where we put the hangers from apparel are quite large enough to climb inside. In fact, this is more or less necessary in order to reach the back corners and clean them. My coworker has photographic proof of this fact.
2. Quarter-inch thick dust+strong smelling cleaner+a small enclosed space=Headaches and aggravation of other factors, which may also lead to nausea and dizziness.
3. When one store changes to another store, stuff from the first store may still be found squirreled away under the cash registers. Two years later.
4. It is truly fascinating how many wires are needed to run a cash register. It is truly mind-boggling how they could all get in my way at the same time…and move with me!

This digression was brought to you by: Victor Hugo.

And now, to my main point: labeling.

The other day I found my manager at customer service with a labeller. Not unusual, since they’d been labeling drawers up at customer service to help them stay organised. This is the proper use of labelling: placing a little sticky label on a drawer that informs you that the drawer contains certain types of forms, a first-aid kit, or whatever you may need to find is good.

My manager was making labels that read “STAPLER”, “HANGERS”, and “REGISTER TAPE”. Her plan? Under directions from others, she planned to stick these labels inside the cabinets, in front of the very spot these objects were supposed to go.

Pardon me, but this isn’t Sesame Street.

If you are working as a cashier, here that means you are at least 16 years old. If you are 16 years old, and can read well enough to utilise said labels, chances are you could just as easily remember where to put the register tape. By the time you open the cabinet (the last one, naturally) and see the label pointing you to the register tape, you would see the register tape, probably more easily than the label, actually.

This whole situation put me in mind of the comedian Brad Stine.

Sad. Truly sad.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go stick labels inside my drawers so that I’ll know where my left socks go, and where my right socks go.

Oh, the Vanity… June 17, 2008

Picture this: a normal day working as a cashier. Where I work, that means I’m not doing much. I’m basically standing waiting for customers so I can ring them up. Here he comes.

Young guy, maybe early 20s. Not bad looking. Got a few items to check out. Here he comes walking through my line.

To me, just another customer. I’ll treat him the same way, with the same amount of respect I did for the 80+-year-old lady who came through a few minutes ago. But to him, he is very different.

In his own mind, this guy is next Mr. Universe, and I should see that. I mean, come on! Am I even a human girl that I’m not slipping on drool at this point? Obviously, to him, I will be falling all over myself to get his attention as soon as I fairly see him and realise that his good looks are enough to make the building explode. All that in his own mind.

He’s so vain. He probably thinks this post is about him.

So he comes up and places his purchases on my counter. He flashes a smile that, to him, is calculated to light up a football stadium. To me, he’s lucky to get a birthday candle to glow. If that.

“Hi,” he says, “how are you?“

“Pretty good,” I answer, “did you find everything ok?”

Another birthday candle smile. “Sure,” he says, leaning against my counter a bit. Oh, for heaven’s sake. He’s posing now.

“Would you like to apply for a store credit card?” I ask, smiling politely.

“No,” he says, smiling again. That smile is starting to get on my nerves, as is the fact that he keeps shifting positions so that I can more clearly see his (un)impressiveness.

Now comes the question: Why, if you are not interested in what I’m trying to sell you (store credit) would you go to all this trouble smiling and posing beforehand? And why, after you’ve declined the offer, would you attempt to continue to flirt with me? Do I not come off as unapproachable enough by the fact that I’m standing behind a counter wearing clothes that are not actually very flattering to me? Are you desperate enough to try flirting with the cashier ringing up your shaving cream, wrench, and Dr. Pepper?

If you’re really that good looking, go find someone who will fall all over herself at the first sight of you. There’s more between my ears than you think. I can help the next customer, please. Step right this way, Ma’am.

The Unpleaseables June 16, 2008

There’s just no pleasing some people. Seriously.

Case in point: the other day I was assisting a gentleman with his purchase of a toolbox from a well known brand name. Pretty normal transaction. Or so I thought.

“Yup, this is a sad day,” the man said. “I hate to see the *********(brand name censored to protect the innocent) name on this piece of junk. Look at that!” he pointed out. “Only one latch where there should be two. And this handle. You always gotta remember that it’s just stinkin’ plastic. If they’d just angle it a little bit further this way, it might actually be stronger. I’d be surprised if this piece of trash lasts a year.”

What I knew that this guy didn’t seem to get was…it was a little plastic toolbox. It was $10 on sale. It wasn’t meant to last forever. It wasn’t meant for ridiculous amounts of tools to be crammed into it and be carried for miles at a time every day. It was plastic, for heaven’s sake.

“Yeah,” the man continued, “I used to use a lot of *********’s tools, before they went to (bleep). They really went downhill!”

I politely asked the man whether he’d like to apply for a store credit card, explaining the promotion attached to it.

“No,” he replied, “I used to have one of your cards. They couldn’t get it right from day one. I went to the headquarters and cut it up in front of their eyes and told them to take a flying leap…” etc.

At this point I realised: this guy was not going to be pleased no matter what I did. He would find something wrong with perfection. And it probably wasn’t a good idea to call his attention too much to the customer service survey on his receipt.

What killed me? He paid the $10 for the toolbox he’d just finished whining about and left the store. I felt like suggesting he go work for that particular tool manufacturer and perhaps improve their tools and toolboxes, thus helping others like himself have better tools. But I don’t think he would’ve taken that well. And I seriously doubt my manager would be thrilled when he’d demand to speak with her about me.

Just another satisfied customer. I can help someone down on register 5!