I will never forget the night a dad rushed in and grabbed some fake nails. He looked around, then ran up to the counter. “Where is the super glue?”
I looked at him with an odd expression. “Well it’s on the back wall.” thinking that he must be picking up a few things while he was here.
He runs back up, and asks, “Do you think that super glue will hold these fake nails on my five year old hands?”
I was quite surprised. I couldn’t figure out if I was more surprised that he was asking if super glue would hold something, or that he wanted to super glue something to his kid’s hands. I calmly explained that it would hold the nails, but they would never come off without his daughter going through extreme pain. He seemed to accept this, but bought both items anyway.

Another guy came in, and asked, “Where do you keep your pads for women?”
I thought to myself, Wow, this is one dedicated guy. He’s getting pads for his wife, and he isn’t even afraid to ask where they are! He brought 10 packs up to the counter. While I was trying not to show my surprise, he quickly explained, “I use them for packing items. They keep everything so safe.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that paper works just as well, and is much cheaper and less embarressing.

Weird Sayings
“Pennies run my earth. Wait, that was a little too dramatic.”
“Daddy, I’m in the shoe aisle!” [We don't have a shoe aisle.]

One of the other stories that was passed on to me was an older guy that came in wanting latex balloons that would  last the full three days (also known as high-float). He aptly described it as balloon viagra.

Thankfully, the question of how much is a pinch is now solved!! We recently got in a group of measuring spoons that included a spoon called Just a Pinch. Apparently, ‘just a pinch’ is too confusing for people to figure out on their own.

Funny Item Names
Funny Happy Time Train! – a red train
Box of leashes Giant/Friend Matt – written on the box
Pool Folat

I hope you enjoyed this post, and who knows? Maybe another post will be coming soon….

An old man comes in, looking kind of confused. “Do you have those things that you stick on paper? You know those little things that are circular that you stick on paper? I don’t know what they’re called …”
 Leah replies, “Stickers??”
 ”Yes! Stickers!” was his response.
  Even stranger? He wanted to use them as targets for shooting. Leah convince him into buying two packs of yard sale stickers.
 (We later concluded he had a bad case of Alzheimer’s, or was very drunk as we could smell alcohol on his breath.)

Product of the Week
  Want to have a baby shower that everyone will remember? Then come to the dollar store, and ask specifically for our multi-animal animal plates and napkins. This lovely theme includes birds, a pig, a cow, a chicken, a lobster, a seal, and of course, a shark! What more could you want?

Product of the Week (a close second place)
 We have the most adorable little buggy cars. They each have a different hippie, flowery style. Of course, the back encourages you to COLLECT THEM ALL. (This includes the 20 cars, two different beetle cars, and four rat cars.)

 Some of my customers are really chatty, especially if there’s no one else in the store. One of the most random grandmothers came up to me with a bunch of stuff, and explained, “Just some stuff to do with the grandkids.” The item on top? A bill organizer.

Sayings
  In reference to pouring rain: It’s a beautiful day out – if you’re a fish.
  In reference to craziness: Do you sell sanity?
  In reference to if you want a bag for your seeds: No, I’m afraid the seeds would sprout in the dirt on the bottom of my purse.

 You know what’s really creepy? We have this green balloon that says You’ll Be Missed. Everytime I see it, I think of a dark night. The doorbell rings. You open the door to see a sparkly weight and this balloon. Confused, you take the balloon back inside and shut the door. And then the creepy music starts …. Doesn’t that scream horror film?

 Is this my last entry? I am going to say no. After all, there are always stories untold, unspoken thoughts, and new happenings occuring each moment. Check back every now and then – or ask me to email you when I update. Remember:

There is no end to insanity.

Rule #14: It is mandatory that when a balloon truck is on its way, you must sell out of at least one balloon everytime you work. (Oh wait, maybe that just seems to be for me …)

Random Product
Orbit now advertises A More Fabulous Clean Feeling! (which means what?)

Recent Murphy Attempts Include:
   – Dropping a huge box of rubber bands on me from the top of the shelf [no worries, I caught it with my face]
   – Sending out kamikaze wind spinners to dive in front of the vacuum cleaner [the poor vacuum cleaner can hardly stand on its own anymore - the battle is really taking a toll on her]
   – the ultimate offense: trying to take my life. A pair of scissors flew off the shelf, and sliced a good chunk of skin off of the side of my foot. [that's what I get for wearing nonappropriate battle shoes]. It’s still healing – three weeks later.

Random Customer Saying
 You’re a very efficient girl.
 (I had only rung up her items, bagged them, and gave her change.)

Little kids can be so adorable. This conversation made me laugh though.
 Little girl: Mommy, can I get that balloon? (pointing to a Happy Secretary’s Day balloon)
 Mother: Honey, you can get that when you’re an assistant.

Did you look at the five yet?? Couldn’t find him? I couldn’t either. The old guy took the five back from me, and says, “Oh, someone must’ve picked that hitchhiker up.”

PS Check out The Characters page for the lowdown on Leah and Adri Erin, Kim, Dave and Josh coming soon.

Random Items
  - We sell aluminum forks that are labelled as SPOONS.
  – We sell aluminum spoons that are labelled as FORKS.
Oh dear! I’m afraid that the utensils are having an identity crisis. I mean what if the forks actually believe they need to be used to scoop up soup. Or the spoons believe that they are actually sharp?
 [ Of course, knives are exempt from this because a knife could never been anything but sharp ... although it can be very useful as a fork as well. ]

 I had the most adorable little girl in the other day. She was just five, and she had just had her nails done. My mom was in and was making a huge deal about this little girl’s nails, and the little girl’s mom said, “Go ahead, tell them why your nails are done.”
  The little girls looks up shyly and says, “I’m going on a date tonight.”
  I’m a little shocked, but the mom quickly tells the little girl to tell me who she’s going with. “I’m going with my daddy!” the little girl exclaims.
  I think that that is one of the sweetest and best things to do with your daughters. It’s a great example of how guys should treat girls (and who knows better than Daddy?) and it also creates quality time between the father and daughter.

 I get a lot of random requests for balloons, but this was a first for me.
 ”Could you get me that balloon hanging on the window?”
  Which one?
  “The one on this front window that’s green and yellow.”
  Ma’am, that’s a sign.

Murphy Conspiracy
 Yes, Murphy is still up to his old tricks. I think a part of it might be because we are using him to hold raffle money in (definitely come check out the raffle, you potential customers). But anyway, he has been getting crazier and crazier, and I definitely believe he has infiltrated the new computers.
  For example, I’m in the middle of two balloon orders on a day when I’m by myself, when both registers decided to stop working. It just showed the little hourglass …. as if Murphy was taunting me … haha, you’re stuck with a ton of balloons …
 Or that exact same day, when six balloons decided to fall off the walls? For no random reason!
  The worst part is that whenever you replace the register tape, the screen shuts off. This is bad because when the screen is off, Murphy can communicate freely without us seeing him. I’m getting quicker at catching it, but each second is precious to a mastermind like Murphy.

Random Fact
 ”Did you know that going out with your hair wet has nothing to do with catching a cold?”

 One woman was shopping for a wedding bag. As long as they’re not going through the boxes I have, I don’t really mind. Well, this woman was an entirely different story.
 ”Is this a joke?” she exclaimed, sounding severly offended, like someone had played a sick joke on her.
  I look over at the wedding bag she’s holding that reads So Happy for Your’s Wedding. She demands an explanation, and I just said, “Well, it could be a joke; I’m guessing the company just misprinted the bag.”
  She huffed away.

Random Fact #2
 Got the hiccups? You should use this remedy a customer told me.
 ”Have someone ask you ‘When’s the last time you saw a white horse?’ You should spend so much time thinking about it, you’ll forget to hiccup.”

Great Cheap Ways to Entertain Yourself
 Outside: Put a mentos in a bottle of soda … then run. Very cool looking. Just don’t show this to rowdy teenagers hanging outside the dollar store.
  Inside: Microwave marshmellow peeps! You just have to make sure they don’t explode, but they should grow immensely large. I wonder how long it takes to figure out the precise timing …

Windy Conditions [The Cart Stories]
 So for any of you who live near the southwest corner of PA, you should realize that it was rather windy last night. Along with the random rain, and possibly hail, it was some weird weather. It’s normally pretty quiet those nights. I wasn’t expecting randomness, but insanity came knocking at my door … or should I say, came rolling in.
  I look outside and see an older couple in their car, stopped at an intersection in front of the dollar store. They hadn’t quite reached the stores yet, but there were no cars in sight. I continued to watch, and saw a cart go rolling past them; then, they continued to pull out.

 This story deserves its own paragraph.
 These two really nice women came in and bought a good amount of items. Following which, they proceeded to their car. The store had people, but I felt like watching the wind outside.
  Just as these two women are about to cross the barrier, out of nowhere, a cart comes flying across the parking lot. One of the women bends her knees and puts her hands up, as the cart approaches the speed bump. Upon meeting the speed bump, the cart flies up in the air, flips and hits the woman.
    At first, I felt like running out to ask if she was ok. However, her friend was bent over laughing (and the woman soon joined too), that they were, walking along, minding their own business, when out of nowhere, a cart came and hit the woman.
   You never thought you had to watch for carts, did you?

One of the most disturbing things in the world is when you have a customer that sounds like Yoda. It’s even more disturbing if that customer is a woman.

Favorite Customer Line of the Week
“You can keep my reciept as a souvenir of my visit.”

To all those who were wondering about my future college school, Grove City turned me down … I’ll be attending my second choice.

The same concept applies to the dollar store. If you’re pessimistic, you believe that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and Murphy is the one to blame. If you’re optimistic, you accept the fact that Murphy is the evil lurking behind every store corner, but you try to remain hopeful that eventually he will turn to the good side.

I firmly believe the optimistic view is only the first half right, and we must fight against him by any means necessary to defeat this evil … including yelling, venting about him, and blaming him for everything.

But anyway …

What was I talking about?

Oh yes.

So if we all try our hardest to do a few little things, I believe that we can help to better our world. Maybe not economically, maybe not leadership-wise, but through changing one person’s life one day at a time. Besides isn’t that the only thing that is remembered?

There was this older lady who came in to buy a pair of reading glasses so she could read to her grandson. She was only a nickel short. She began digging through her purse, apologizing frantically to the woman behind her, “I’m sorry, I just really need these glasses, and I know there’s a nickel in here somewhere …” The lady behind her didn’t hesitate but pulled out a quarter and said, “Here, take her nickel out of that.”
    The older lady thanked her profusely, almost crying, “Thank you! Now I can read to my grandbaby. Oh thank you!”

  There was also a young guy that came in. He explained how he worked with mentally challenged people, and that one of the men always wished for a talking watch. So this young guy bought him one online, but he forgot that he needed to get it on a necklace. So he continued to buy a lanyard, although he planned to invest in another one that was a keychain, so that his patient would have two.

  Remember how sometimes you get to the store and they close, right as you go to open the store? (This happened to me once at Gander Mountain – except I was 15 minutes before they closed, and this random guy that no one knew stopped to talk to my friends and I for twenty minutes about a 24 point buck (unlikely story though).) So anyway, because I have experienced this, I often let people in just to grab something quick. The most hilarious, crazy old guy came in. He was very animated and just excited about life. You could watch him walk and talk and still smile because of his crazy antics. He was SO thankful that I let him he thanked me for making his day and wished me a good night, a good school day the next day, and a good life. I wasn’t expecting anything in return, but I felt blessed that this crazy old guy had made my day.

Random Package of the Day Saying
 DOMO brings you range of every day products at value for money prices.
  Excellent. I’m so glad they offer paper bowls at money prices, as compared to food prices, car prices, or even worse, yo-yo prices.

I would also like to know why there is a random green plastic arm in the scrap paper bucket. It’s beginning to concern me what happens at the dollar store when I’m not there …

I had the cutest little girl the other day, who decided to blurt out, “You’re pretty.” It brightened my day. So go ahead, tell someone they’re pretty. Make their day.

 We have these bunnies that are, I’m sorry, but, they’re ugly. We don’t sell a ton of them every year, which of course means, that there are many of them in the back and around the store. It is a little creepy realizing that bunnies are always watching you … especially when some of them make strange mechanical noices … a Terminator Bunny 1000, anyone?

Murphy’s Irony
  Back around Valentines Day, I had the most funny experience. Adri and I were putting stuff up on top of the shelves where the baby stuff and random toothpaste is, and the entire balloon basket of little balloons fell off, almost hitting Adri. She blamed herself (although I, of course, blame Murphy), and picked it back up. One balloon fell out. That balloon read, “You’re So Special!”

St. Patrick’s Day
 ”Mom, what is all this stuff for?”
 Mom: “It’s for St. Patrick’s Day.”
 ”St. Patrick’s Day?”
 Mom: “Yep.”
 ”So you get to say Patrick all day? Cool!! Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick, Patrick. Haha!” *continues singing Patrick to himself*

My Worst Fear
 So, for those of you who have been reading this for awhile, you probably know at least a little bit about me. I thought I would openly share my worst fear.
  My worst fear involves long sticks. Pointy wind chimes, brooms, flag poles, whatever. I am always afraid that when I bring it over the counter to ring it up that I am going to hit someone in the face. How would you explain that? Oh, I’m sorry, your face was in the way. or I underestimated the distance between the stick and your face. It would be horrible! Besides what if someone was wearing glasses? I could see the stick accidentally hooking under the glasses, which would scare me to death, and I would jerk and accidentally poke the poor customer in the eye …
  I hope this is one fear that never happens.

One Thing I’ve Always Wanted To Do
  On the same token, you have read about stuff that I want to buy for weird reasons or another. One thing I have always wanted to do is take a big plastic bag, and shake all the glittery stuff over top of it, so at the end you have this huge bag of glitter. Wouldn’t that be a great way to welcome someone to a surprise party? I would love if someone dumped glitter on my head.
  On the other hand, maybe not.

Random Info of the Day
  Apparently dog brushes are considered dog toys.

This is Me Venting Section
  I have always loved Skittles. The crunchy goodness, the so-sweet-it’s-sour inside, the many colors. I began to love them even more when my friend accidentally bought me 30 packs of the regular size. (He thought they were fun-sized). The following year, it was a huge bag of Skittles. And the year after that, it was 5 pounds of Skittles. [I thought I would puke.]
 However, kids have begun to ruin me to Skittles. Kids love having their parents pay for them, then open and eat them right in the store. Now that’s all fine and dandy, until the Skittles fall out and sneak under the counter. No one knows they’re there, until the vacuum comes out. The vacuum cleaner finds the Skittles and has a sugar high, involving mass confusion, a tangled cord, and me having to pick up what the vacuum cleaner just spit out.
 Skittles are the epitome of the demise of the human race.

Interesting Customer of the Day
Customer (an older man, in his 80s): Do you have any calendars?
 Me: Well yes. Follow me.
 *walks to calendars*
 Me: I’m sorry, we only have the ones with Golf Courses left.
 *Customer looks at the calendar like it is a rare jewel*
 Customer: Thank you so much. How much is this?
 Me: A dollar.
 *Customer pulls out a dollar from his pocket and gives it to me*
 Me: Well it’s a dollar and six cents with tax.
 *Customer gives me another dollar.*
 Me (bewildered): Well, let me go get some change.
  Customer: I am so happy you have these. I have been looking everywhere. Can I hug you?
 Me: Uh, sure.
 *Customer continues to thank me for the next five minutes, letting me know that he’ll get the word out that we have calendars*

A Story of Mass Confusion
  It was a busy night, and Kim and I were in the middle of a large balloon order. The phone rings once, twice. On the second call, Kim picks up. I hear:
 ”Dollar Alley. Yes. No!” followed by her hanging up the phone.
 Slightly concerned, I ignore it and put it in the back of my mind.

 That night, I get home and my dad tentatively asks how work went.
    “It was fine,” I respond lightly.
     My parents look at each other. My dad says, “Well you sounded kinda annoyed.”
      Now I give them a weird look. “What do you mean? I didn’t talk to you.”
     My dad replies, “Then who did I talk to on the phone?”

    The next day, I walk in, and say, “Kim, I have a question for you.”
   Kim walks over.
   I pose the question: “Did someone call you last night and ask if you wanted dinner?”
    Kim looks at me weird, then you see the realization sink in. She starts laughing while being appalled at the same time. “But I asked Dave! He didn’t say anything.”

  It turns out that Dave did say that he hadn’t called, but that it was never fully discussed. As Dave says, “I have nothing to do with it, but yet I get blamed for it anyway.”

  Moral of the Story: Don’t assume who you’re talking to on the phone is who you think you’re talking to – on either end.

Random Question of the Day
   So we have a gumball machine, which is awesome. My question is, why is there something to hold a lightbulb on top of it?

Another Random Murphy Event
   So there I was doing balloons. I had just finished tying the strings to a weight, tossed the string out of the way, and turned to give them to the customer. They smiled and life continued on its merry way. That is, until I turned around.
    Upon my turning, I found that the ribbon had somehow ended in Kim’s tea. It’s Murphy’s fault, I swear.

Random Item of the Day
 Shower Candy [*cough* caddy]

Oh and for the record, my last entry was a huge sucess (in a contradictory sort of way, as it was about the bad things that happen). I had a new record number of visitors that day: 49.

Random Items of the Day
  So as it is a new year, we are going through the store and changing everything around. As such, I have found several new items that someday I would like to buy (someday could mean today):

•    A ceramic frog bank!! They are available in green, blue, orange, and yellow. I have a sad addiction to these ceramic banks, as I currently have both a cat and a dog ceramic bank. You should buy one – it’s so cool, it makes you want to put money in them! [Just don't buy too many for yourself - you run out of uses faster than you realize.]
• Laser pointers for your fingers. A great addition to any party, and it always helps if the power goes out.
• My favorite: a windchime that is shaped like a teakettle, with little cups and sugar containers, of which all the items are made of little ceramic bananas!! Who would’ve thought? Bananas.

Murphy is Back in Town [I Can Hear Dave Yelling Now]
    So, if you all remember, Murphy is the evil cash register who tries to take over the store. (For more info, click on the link next to this post that reads The Characters.) Dave says that Murphy no longer has any control over the store. I beg to differ.
   When Murphy was the main register, our biggest issues were with him and his friend-in-register/enemy-against-evil, Charlie. Beeping, the cash drawers falling out, eating money, you name it, Murphy was at fault. Now our new registers are mysteriously beginning to shut down without reason. Sometimes just for credit cards, other times the whole thing! The scariest part? Murphy is beginning to branch out to other stores: yesterday, the bank; tomorrow, the world!
 [Contemplation: we do have either Charlie or Murphy sitting next to the new registers. Which one? And is Murphy using Charlie to his advantage?]

Aliens!! Yes, I Really Mean Aliens!
   The other night I walked out of the store to see strange lights floating in the clouds. They were circular, white, and very organized. They seemed to be taking notice of the entire valley. It was silent as the aliens looked around.
  [It had to be aliens. The only other thing that is even close to that is a light show that is an hour away.]

Random Tag of the Day
  Warning: Use of certain tablecare for sale in this store will expose you to lead, a chemical known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm. Patterns identified with this symbol: [an upside down triangle] displayed on or next to the product are the ones for which the warning is given.
   [Ironically, there is no triangle on the heart box this warning came on, nor on any other item in the store. I would have noticed.]