So I survived
Today was my first day training to work in the immense vintage-and-secondhand-clothing warehouse. What pseudonym should I give it? The Schmutter Barn? The Thrift Block? The Attire Attic? The Clothing Cave? Maybe I'll just swap a new one in every time, in case the store's webmaster ever tracks me down. Plausible deniability.
They seem like a pretty mellow bunch of people. I always get uneasy starting a new job, but the woman who taught me to use their sale system was really nice, and our immediate boss seems decent too. More about them as I learn more. Today was largely taken up with reading Teeny the rules and giving the grand tour. The Schmutter Barn is housed in an old factory, with three stories of crappily painted raw wood walls and pillars, abused wood floors, kitsch art and motorcycles and bisected planes hanging from the ceiling and shitty portraits of Elvis on velvet, and big holes in the floor covered by slabs of steel. It was wonderful. The building looks the way some of my better dreams do, the ones where I'm adventuring inside a huge structure full of cultural debris. There are four stories plus a nice cool basement full of racks and creepy mannequins, and you get to the fourth floor via a terrifying elevator which only works if you thump it and swear. Oh shit, I sound like Francesca Lia Block already and I haven't even described any clothes or fetishized my food yet. It's the long lists of things. Breathe, Teeny, breathe. *hhh*EEE*hhh*EEEEhh*huuuh*pant*pant*pant*
Then there was the compressor. You ever wonder how the wholesale pile at the Schmutter Barn is supplied with big bales of clothes that have been mashed into tight hard blocks about the size of refrigerators? This is how. In the warehouse section out back, there's this thing that looks like a giant trouser-press crossed with a humane animal trap and one of those ten-ton safes you would drop on Wile E. Coyote. Never mind, I'll get photos next time. It's positioned over a five-foot-deep hole in the floor. Down at the bottom of this hole is a sad layer of tatty shirts and old pillowcases. The warehouse staff shovel the thing full of old clothes periodically and squish them down till they're defeated and blocky. It's disturbing as hell, in the best possible way.
This is a very incomplete and skewed description, but I must leave it there because I met a friend for a celebratory beer after my first shift, and now I can't keep my eyes open. I love being a lightweight. More later.
They seem like a pretty mellow bunch of people. I always get uneasy starting a new job, but the woman who taught me to use their sale system was really nice, and our immediate boss seems decent too. More about them as I learn more. Today was largely taken up with reading Teeny the rules and giving the grand tour. The Schmutter Barn is housed in an old factory, with three stories of crappily painted raw wood walls and pillars, abused wood floors, kitsch art and motorcycles and bisected planes hanging from the ceiling and shitty portraits of Elvis on velvet, and big holes in the floor covered by slabs of steel. It was wonderful. The building looks the way some of my better dreams do, the ones where I'm adventuring inside a huge structure full of cultural debris. There are four stories plus a nice cool basement full of racks and creepy mannequins, and you get to the fourth floor via a terrifying elevator which only works if you thump it and swear. Oh shit, I sound like Francesca Lia Block already and I haven't even described any clothes or fetishized my food yet. It's the long lists of things. Breathe, Teeny, breathe. *hhh*EEE*hhh*EEEEhh*huuuh*pant*pant*pant*
Then there was the compressor. You ever wonder how the wholesale pile at the Schmutter Barn is supplied with big bales of clothes that have been mashed into tight hard blocks about the size of refrigerators? This is how. In the warehouse section out back, there's this thing that looks like a giant trouser-press crossed with a humane animal trap and one of those ten-ton safes you would drop on Wile E. Coyote. Never mind, I'll get photos next time. It's positioned over a five-foot-deep hole in the floor. Down at the bottom of this hole is a sad layer of tatty shirts and old pillowcases. The warehouse staff shovel the thing full of old clothes periodically and squish them down till they're defeated and blocky. It's disturbing as hell, in the best possible way.
This is a very incomplete and skewed description, but I must leave it there because I met a friend for a celebratory beer after my first shift, and now I can't keep my eyes open. I love being a lightweight. More later.