What else?! (what else?!) What else?! (what else?!) What else?! (what else?!)

May 01, 2006 02:00

Today was not extraordinary by any means, but there were some interesting occurrences that made it satisfactory. Rarely will a workday gain a rating more than 3 out of 5 stars (not that I rate my days, understand), and today was no exception. I arrived at work ten minutes late, using the excuse that I misread the schedule, thinking I was due in at 2pm rather than 1:30pm. It didn't even occur to me to have that ruin my day so early, which was fortunate. Even waking up at 1pm, as result of laundering bedsheets until 4am, did not damper my day. I started the day on the wrong foot, but apparently I woke up on the right side of the bed. It just took me until late afternoon to realise that!


Two hours were spent in the cooler, stocking sodas and juices. My fingers became nearly functionless by the end of it, but I would say I am used to it by now. It seems that I am the only one who keeps the refridgerated section stocked at all. When I return to work after a day off, many products are sold out on the shelves, yet there are plenty more cases in the depths of the back shelves. It has been a long while since I let that bother me though. I did have to interrupt my labours back there to assist a few customers in the photo lab. *grumble* A twenty-something female customer was wearing a pair of purple and lavender Sauconys though, which looked pretty nifty, even if they weren't the classic Jazz model. I have been a little trigger happy with my digital camera lately, and I happened to have it with me today, so I took a picture of her shoes from inside the cooler. No, it wasn't creepy or anything to do that. Sometimes it's just nice to have pictures to accompany a story. (Perhaps you'll see what I mean when I recount the events of my Saturday night, complete with photo accompaniment. Hmmph.) By the time I was finished back there, it was about time for me to take over duties in the photo lab.

Lately the d-lab1 (our photofinishing machine) has been showing countless errors. One might think that a hundred-thousand-dollar piece of equipment would have all the tedious bugs worked out of it. Then again, maybe not. Today I was not able to process more than one roll of film at a time, when I would normally stuff the machine to capacity. On a busy day, a technician can have up to ten film orders running through the d-lab1 at one time. If I put more than a single strip of film at a time through the processor, an error would come up on the screen, followed by the lab program resetting itself and restarting. We technicians usually use the "printing after processing" function on our orders, but because of the many errors of the day, I had to manually feed each strip of film into machine to be printed. It may not seem like a big deal, but it takes me back to when we had our old photofinishing lab, with which we could only process and print four rolls of film per hour...only worse. The result was a time-consuming headache, forcing me to troubleshoot to the best of my ability, while still serving my customers. But perhaps "the weight [was] a gift".

A presumed Russian man and two sons wanted their passport photos taken at 9:55pm, five minutes before I was due to leave. As always, I stayed to finish the job. Otherwise I would feel horrible for not completing one of my tasks, only for someone else to be forced to handle. By that point in the evening, I was actually having a little fun (with the silliness and timing), for lack of a better description. One more son arrived a few minutes later for his photo. I found it more humorous than anything that usually the foreign-tongued come so late in my shift for passport photos. Additionally, there were about six men and one woman--all presumably Russian--conversing in the middle of the sales floor. Some days our urban/suburban region seems like such the melting pot.


A few more tasks needed to be completed before I could let myself depart, but yet again I was overrun with customers. Conveniently, the front clerk's register went down at that time, so he had to ring customers on my photo lab drawer. I overheard one of his customers say something about not wanting to spend certain money he had. I learn that it was not that he did not want to spent money (but who does?), but the type of currency he had. When I used my register to print my sign-in records, I saw something peculiar in the dollar till. There they were--three one-dollar silver certificates. One of them was even a rare Hawaii one-dollar bill, which bore an orange stamp, rather than the expected blue stamp found on silver certificates. Perhaps I am somewhat of a nerd about that. I found it quite interesting that I had never seen anyone pay with silver certificates in the three-and-a-half years I have worked there, yet in the past week, I have seen at fifteen of them in my cash drawers. On Saturday there was a black gentlemen who paid for a pack of smokes with three silver certificates. He even confessed that he did not want to get rid of them, but some people really need their nicotine.

Something even more interesting caught my eye, just minutes later. In the far left coin till--where we normally put odd change like dollar and half-dollar coins--was a

large, slightly-faded coin that I did not recognise. What was it but an 1883 Morgan Dollar (I just looked that up). I simply found it fascinating that someone would pay for grocery items with a coin that nearly dates back to the Reconstruction, and not even give a second thought to using it (although maybe there was a second thought, but surely not a third). Of course I kept it. It's probably not worth much, since the intricacies of the head and outer regions of the coin are rubbed away. Obviously my co-worker didn't care much for it either. I think it's special though!

I returned a text from Kate while I was walking out the door, saying that she was headed to bed. She surprised me when I got home though, when I found that she attempted to call me. How nice it was of her to give a ring to talk, when she knew I would be working quite late (1am) tomorrow night. Even though her New York Rangers went home in the NHL playoffs, at the expense of my New Jersey Devils, I have not rubbed it in her face. That's just not my style. Neither of us have ever followed the playoffs this much, and it's a blast to have her to ramble about the excitement of the season and postseason. It looks like she'll be rooting for Buffalo though, when they finally win their series with Philly, and meet the Devils in the quarterfinals. Blah! We'll both be cheering for the Edmonton Oilers though, to eliminate the Red Wings from the playoffs. Oh, how sweet that will be! It's been so much fun, even though I have mostly had to catch small portions of games at work on a fuzzy television. I tease that it's like how homebodies in Saskatoon watch their hockey. But like Edmonton, something has to put them on the map--even if it's my silly analogies and only for the satisfaction of my own mind. :-)

Our communication and understanding of each other will grow in so many beautiful ways, for years to come, no matter what capacity our love and concern for each other is. We will always have a friendship. That relationship will be altered by the day, but the potentials are endless. Who knows what will happen to us. We don't! It will be wonderful living it though. Super.
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