GOOD IN THE MIDST OF BAD

I would like to thank Cindi for nominating me for a Marie Antoinette award, but I have no idea what that is or what I need to do, if anything. If anyone has any idea what I am supposed to do other than thank Cindi, please email me or leave me a comment on this entry. I have never gotten any nomination or award in journal-land or blog-land before, so I don’t know how to act, lol.

There is always something good happening within a bad situation. One only need look for it.

Because I am always relating the “bad” things that happen at work, I feel I must relate the good as well. There is often nothing exceptionally good to relate, but last Saturday revived my faith in humanity. It has only gotten better since.

Saturday started out as any other Saturday at the Salvation Army. But during the day something rather miraculous happened. A female customer was shopping with her 2 children. The kids were about 3 and 5. She was a middle class looking woman, well dressed, well mannered and articulate. Her total bill was $39.02. Behind them was a couple and they looked average middle class as well, with the woman being about 8 months pregnant. The man of the couple took his 3 shirts and laid them on the counter and said to add them to the total of the woman with the 2 children and he would pay for it all. Of course, the woman looked at him and laughed, as did I. He reiterated his statement and said he was serious. Had he not been with a pregnant wife/girlfriend, I would have said maybe he was trying to put a move on the mother of the 2 kids. But he convinced the woman he was on the up and up and she allowed him to pay for hers. His total was only around $8, but he paid the whole bill. Since he had done a good deed, I sold him the shirts for 99 cents each instead of the regular price of $2.49 each. That started something in the line. All of the rest of the line helped out the ones in front of them with change they needed to complete their purchase. It was just so wonderful to watch people paying it forward.

There was tension once again amongst the other employees, but after the paying-it-forward incident, nothing was going to steal my joy.

On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it happened again. An older gentleman came up to make a purchase and all he did was hand me a $20 bill and told me to pay for the purchase of a teen boy and his grandmother who were still shopping. He said he didn’t know the pair, but wanted to pay for their purchases anonymously. Tears sprang to my eyes, as they did for the older man. He patted my hand and I took it and held it and told him he was a very special person and may God richly bless him. When the 2 came up to the register, they each had one clothing item. I started to put both in the same bag and the woman quickly shouted no, she was only paying for hers. I took both items and continued to put them in the same bag, and once again, she grabbed the boy’s pants and said she wasn’t paying for them. I told her that someone had anonymously paid for their items, and proceeded to put them in the bag. The boy looked truly surprised and he thanked me, then the woman did. It really felt good. I used the rest of the money to help others in line that needed an extra dollar or two to make their purchase until the whole $20 was gone. A truly wonderful feeling.

And now on to the usual drama.

On Tuesday all the employees had to be at work at 8:15 am for a staff meeting. I had planned on keeping my mouth shut and was able to do so throughout most of the meeting. The newest girl said something that upset me, and I denied it. But that didn’t bother as badly as what the “resident Christian” said. She made a snide comment that proved she harbors resentment toward me that she hasn’t been verbalizing. It just furthered my suspicions of what has been going on behind my back. Oh well, her problem, not mine.

One of the items brought up at the meeting was an incident that occurred on Saturday between a customer and the “resident Christian”. The man is truly obnoxious, but I have learned how to handle him and have no trouble at all with him when he comes in. In fact, he will often hug me when he comes in if I am not behind the counter. He has an openly known dislike for the “resident Christian”. So while I was at lunch on Saturday, he came in with his wife to shop. The “RC” was at the register covering for me, and as I was coming back from lunch, I noticed the man standing at the other side of the register looking through someone’s items that had been put on the counter for safe keeping while they shopped. He isn’t the only one that does that. I pretended to slap his hand and told him that those were someone’s items and he said he knew that, he was just looking. The “RC” turned around and snapped at him that he was nosey. I thought she was kidding, so when he looked up and said, “Who is nosey?” I said “you are” and I laughed. Then the “RC” told him that maybe the person the items belonged to didn’t want him touching them. Well, that is when it started. Not liking her anyway, he said something like “you are not the boss here, so don’t tell me what to do”. She retorted with “I am in charge and we don’t need your kind in the store”. He yelled something back at her and she said something back, asked him to just leave and I left the front and went to the back and got one of the men who volunteers and asked him to come to the front to diffuse the situation. Well, he took the “RC’s” side and told the man to leave the store and he wasn’t welcome back. Sheesh. The “RC” was rude to the man. But later, when she related the story to the boss, she said she wasn’t rude at all, that she was very calm and cool and told him nicely that he didn’t need to be handling other peoples’ items. Then she said he took the Plexiglas cover to the jewelry counter off and almost hit another customer. I have been removing the cover myself to help the customer better access the jewelry and it hasn’t been a problem till the “RC” made it one. So the boss had the cover glued down. Sigh…………I give up.

The man came in on Monday or Tuesday and asked to see the director. When I went to get him, he asked who wanted to see him. I made the mistake of telling him it was the man who the “RC” had had the incident with. The director said he would be up there in a minute, but instead he went to get the “RC” and talked privately with her for about 10 minutes, then left out the side door and went to the bank, leaving the man waiting for him to come out to talk to him. When the man came back up and asked me if the director was coming out, the man hugged me and asked what I thought about it all. I declined comment and told him that the director had left. The director had told the “RC” to go out and talk to the man and she didn’t even do that, just went out into the store and ignored him. Very badly handled. I was furious, but since it wasn’t any of my business, I tried not to get involved. I hope that the man figures out how to go over my director’s head and reports the whole thing to a higher up. The whole thing was so wrongly handled.

Ever since the meeting on Tuesday, the 3 women in the back have been acting rather mean toward the 2 younger girls and myself. They make snide remarks and do whatever they want to do without regard to the other employees. On Wednesday, the yank ogre said she was craving a waffle from Waffle House. The “RC” and her other cohort said they wanted to get something from the dollar store. Then they were overhead saying they would like to all go to Waffle House. So, at 10:15 am, all 3 left the store without clocking out and were gone for over an hour. They told the new girl she had to stay and watch the back and me and the other cashier had to stay as well. OMG!!!! When the new girl told me what happened, I thought “oh no they didn’t!!! When they came back, the “RC” had the audacity to come into the break room and show me something that one of the other women gave her and was bragging about the biscuits and gravy they had. So, the other 2 young girls and I told the director that we were going out as well and when I asked the “other yank” to cover for me, she asked why and I told her that the 3 of us were going out to eat as well, and she rolled her eyes and headed straight for the director’s office and told him. To keep peace, he came up and relieved me so that I could go with the other 2. We went to the Sonic drive in and scraped up enough money between the 3 of us to have a halfway decent meal. We stayed just as long as the other 3 had and didn’t clock out. I went back in and thanked the director, hugged him and told him how nice it was for him to do that. He said that Thanksgiving only came once a year and he was happy to let us do that.

Today at work the “other yank” ran straight to the boss when a customer went off on me for asking her to fill out some paperwork for us to hold a piece of furniture. She told the boss I was running my mouth again (a community service worker came told me what she overheard, lol). The boss came to me and started telling me to not let the customers get to me and to be nice to them. I began to tell him my side of the story and he didn’t want to hear it. I told him that was so unfair, not to be able to tell my side, and he let me tell him. I told him that the customer actually apologized to me, saying it was her that was at fault since she was in a hurry and didn’t want to take the time to fill out the paperwork. I was cleaning out some boxes the other day and I found my gonads. I am not going to let anyone run over me anymore. One of my readers said that if I just keep my mouth shut I won’t get into trouble. That is good advice, but I have discovered that it doesn’t matter if you keep your mouth shut or not, they will manufacture something to tattle on you. For a bunch of “old” women, they sure do act childish.

I sincerely hope that my weak wifi signal will let me enter this. I have tried to read and comment on several journals, but not sure how many comments actually went through. There is a setting on the blogger site that lets you get alerts in your email like did. Every time someone comments on your blog, an email is sent letting you know.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. There was a lot of chicken cooked and eaten at my house. And there will be lots of chicken that will be frozen for future meals……. Sigh……………

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