Christmas Craziness

We have some weird people every now and then, but we had a very strange woman in recently. “You have way too much plugged in,” she said to Stevie. “You could burn down the store. My coworker just died in an electrical fire because they had too much stuff plugged in.”
 [The irony was she was referring to a power strip that only had two things plugged in.]

Random Request of the Day
 ”Hi, I need 16 packs of serving cups.”

Christmas Idea of the Day
 Filling little sleighs, not with mints, but with M&M’s. (Guys are more likely to eat them anyway.)

A father told me a great story about his three year old son who went to see Santa Claus.
 Santa Claus: Now, what would you do if you got coal for Christmas?
 The three year old happily replied, “Why, I would put it in my John Deere tractor of course!”

I had the shock of my life when we had a joke shoplifter. He came right up to the counter, with a bag from Giant, and started picking up the candy canes and stuffing them in his bag. My mouth just dropped, as he watched me the whole time. I wasn’t really sure how to respond. After 30 seconds, my manager assured me it was just her uncle, and he was just joking.

Christmas Exchange Disasters
 A guy explained to me that this year he pulled a person who only liked Mickey Mouse. As difficult as that sounds, the year before was harder: she wanted only pink fuzzy stuff.

I’m working the big weekend aka this weekend aka the weekend before Christmas. Whew! It’ll be exciting for sure. Stay tuned.

Monday, Tuesday … Vice Versa

Mondays tend to be pretty uneventful, while Tuesdays are pretty crazy. Not this week!!

Idiot Story of the Day
 A woman had bought a bunch of items. So, running the register as I do, I counted them up, and gave her the total. “You counted wrong,” she told me. “You counted those candles twice.”
 I explained how I had put nice numbers in each bag, and I was right. “Fine,” she said. She turned to her daughter, “We’re not leaving this store until we count all the items.”
 Exasperated because of the three other people waiting behind her, I take all 33 items out – and count them out loud – again.

Ok, remember, it’s a dollar store. So why do people ask if we have phone cards? One dollar would get you somewhere between 3 to 10 minutes if you’re lucky.

He was obviously a little deranged. “Hello,” he said. About a minute later, he turned to me and say, “Hi, how ya doing?”

The Theory of Growing Young
 I love when people who don’t know each other within a store have this really intelligent conversation with each other – and they leave without even knowing the other’s name. So, that was pretty crazy when two adults said that each year they only grew younger – we just start old (aka teenagers are ancient).

A Guy on Girls’ Shopping Habits
 I’m used to, “She takes forever!” “Does she have to see everything in the store?” “I’ll be back in three hours. Maybe she’ll be done by then.”
 I was pretty shocked when a guy told me that he thinks guys can’t shop – that girls have the gift of being able to shop. If guys weren’t so focused on getting stuff done, they might be able to enjoy shopping.
 (And he was straight.)

Ok, I understand there’s new names, but Montana? So, I can expect a guy named Oklahoma next year, right?

Bluetooths are a great invention – but also horrible. Especially when it’s covered by a person’s hair. I couldn’t understand why this lady was yelling at me, “I haven’t even eaten lunch today!!” until I saw the bluetooth.

Alien Visitors
 I’m used to strange people. But tonight was the first time a daschund tried to come shop inside the dollar store.

Random Saying of the Day
 ”Oh, I’m gonna pass on the bag of bows. They look gay.”
 [Hello??? How do bows look gay??]

And today was pretty cool because, just as I was getting ready to close, I got a visit from random Giant guys numbers 1 and 3. (Josh is there all the time anyway; but I hadn’t seen Tom in a couple months.) So that was pretty cool.

“Record Breaking Weekend”

Last year was the most money we ever made in four hours. It’s time to break the record.

Saturday

In case you haven’t figured it out, Murphy (the register, for you newbies) is behind everything wrong that happens, directly or indirectly. Like by telling one of those two-piece snowmen attack a customer. Remember I told you about how I sold just the top half once? Well, that customer who was attacked offered to just buy the bottom half.

We also have this random Spiderman 3 hat. Anyone interested?? It’s only a dollar. (No, it was not lost and found; we brought it in, and there’s only one left.)

Manager’s Pick
 A little girl came in and asked if we had any more “Randolph” candy canes. Kim told her seriously that we never had any Randolph candy canes – just Rudolph ones.

Ok, I’m not a huge fashion person or anything, but sometimes, people wear the craziest stuff. For example, a guy walked in, and I thought he was joking around by wearing a dirty craft sponge on his head. But no – it was an actual hat.

The Coolest Thing Ever!!!!
 Kim hit the menu button on the TV security cameras, just to play around. That’s when I saw a motion option. So, curious to see what it did, I went to it, and hit <ON WITH BEEPER>. I went to the back camera I had put it on and told Kim to watch. I was planning on waving my arms and see what happened. As soon as I approached the camera, lights and beeps started going off everywhere: the screen, the camera, and every other camera in the store. The worst part was it didn’t stop. I ran up to the counter, hitting “off”, “mute”, “volume” – I eventually had to go back through the menu to get it to stop. Now, it’s just on motion only: which is pretty awesome. If someone moves and the camera catches it, it automatically flips. If there’s a few different cameras at the same time, it goes to a quad screen. Little did I know how much it would save the day ….

Record Day: Sunday

 I’d been joking that no one was gonna come, just to jinx us out – sure enough, it was raining – which affects the crowd.

 The day started out pretty crazily. Murphy bit my pinky. (What else is new? I swear he’s out to get me sometimes.)

 I was ecstatic though when someone bought a Finding Nemo balloon!!! Finding Nemo is the best Disney movie ever (well, in my opinion . ), so it was pretty freaking awesome to see it blown up. And I was glad they didn’t take all of them, because I want one for my birthday. *hint, hint*

 But back to the stories. I was opening some gift cards we sell to put into groups for the preschoolers coming this week. The weird thing was they kept reproducing. It was a 15 gift card package – and 7 packages had 16. Pretty weird.

 And who knew garlands were flame retardant? I wore one today as a scarf, and sold quite a few. The best part was when I got to give a little girl an extra piece. Her eyes lit up, and I knew I had made her day.

 Oh yeah, random Giant guy number 1 was in today (aka Josh). It was pretty funny, because we both greeted each other with, “Hey, I heard about your car crash.” (We both totalled our cars – but not on each other.)

 I’m always amazed at the amount of people who ask me what I’m watching on TV. Hello, it’s a security camera system!!!

And today’s “grand merchandise flaw” was that half our dog leashes were painted shut. No joke.

I saw the strangest thing today. It was an older car (typical of older drivers), with graffiti on the side that read, “Yep, I’m an old man!” It had a billion bumper stickers, flames, and more graffiti all over. And the driver really was an old man. It was pretty bizarre.

Ultimate Chaos Story of the Day
 Yeah, the first ever. It was pretty empty until 3pm. There were just two people in the store, then 5, then 12, then 18, then 22. So, that’s pretty nervewracking to begin with. Then Murphy malfunctioned. He said he was out of paper and he wasn’t. I have no idea what happened. But he stopped working for 25 minutes, despite any button combination I hit. Meanwhile, the handy dandy motion detector picked up a shoplifter: who I confronted. She hid the stuff she lifted, but another customer brought it up and told me that she saw it happen. (Yay, my first shoplifter caught.) So, yeah. First one’s the hardest. At the same time, for every one person that left, five came in. Pretty insane.

To finish off my day, I brought the balloon from the sign over to random Giant guy number 6 – who actually works at Subway. He let go of it by accident, and got it stuck in the fan. So, then, they had to go turn all the fans off so he wouldn’t cut his hand off trying to get it down. Which then led to them realizing no one had cleaned the fans in ages. So, random guy 6 cleaned the fans while it was just me in the store. The funniest part was when another customer walked in, and the dust was still floating down. He (the customer) starts frantically brushing himself off, wondering where all this random dust came from.

Did we break the record? Sadly, no. It is saved for another day – and hopefully a day with no shoplifters. Don’t worry though – I’ll keep my eye out for them.

(Stay tuned – new update coming Tuesday.)

Hello, Welcome to Insanity

On Thursday, we sold two specific items to a lot of people: tampons and candy canes. Needless to say, I think that explains a lot about grouchy ones.

Remember? It’s a dollar store. So, I was a little surprised, but hardly, when someone asked, “Could I get a price check please?”

Someone asked me today, “Do you ever stop smiling?”
 I laughed, but I was thinking, No, I’m Tour Guide Barbie. *rolls eyes*

And Murphy bit me. Not to mention, he mocked me when he literally spit a five dollar bill across the room. The customers in line laughed.

Oh, and for everyone’s clarity, I have no idea what the thing is at the top of the layout of this page.

The Murphy Conspiracy

First off, you’ll have to forgive me when I don’t update so often. Our internet decided to break (how convenient). But now that I found this new connection, the updating should be more consistent.

Murphy truly really has a conspiracy going on now. On Monday, he literally attacked me. There I was, putting cash in, when the drawer not only popped out – it fell from the countertop to my toes with a crash. Instantaneously, there was 20 dollar bills, 1 dollar bills, and thousands of pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters anywhere. (And yes, most customers walked by snickering after that).

But Murphy has begun talking to other things. Lights, bags, toys: they’ve all become part of his conspiracy. So now, whenever anything goes wrong, I blame Murph. Yep.

Something else really strange – we sell singing Christmas hats. Oooookkkk….

And I saw Santa yesterday!! Yep, Santa and Santa the second came into the store yesterday followed by an elf. Pretty crazy. Santa the second needed a hat.