Thursday 3 July 2008

A little prayer ...

Dear Lord,

Thank you for getting me through the first day of the Big W "Toy Spectacular" brochure without doing anyone bodily harm. (Calling them names in my head doesn't count, does it?)

Thank you for giving me the presence of mind to not swear at the lady who asked me the same stupid question 16 times hoping to get a different answer every time she asked it.
"No, we don't have any of the $2 CDs you're looking for."
"We have sold out."
"Yes that means we don't have any left."
"No, we don't have any more out the back."
"Nada, zip, zilch, zero, none, no more, all gone!"
"I'm sorry I have personally ruined your day by hiding the one thing you were looking for but that's my job today: to screw with your life!" (Not really but you know I wanted to!)

Thank you for giving me people to work with at the home entertainment counter who were, for the most part, able to follow simple instructions and not stuff the system up too badly (except for he-who-shall-not-be-named who nearly gave away a Wii console and two $60 games for 2 cents. Did you mean to make him miss out on even the most basic of common sense or was that just an oversight on your part?)

Thank you for only giving us one barfing child and one pooping child all day. I do need to have words with you about why you let the mother of that child allow it to poop in one of the toy aisles, but I suppose you have your reasons!

Thank you for keeping the store manager out of my hair for most of the day. If I was tempted to do bodily harm to anyone, it really would have been him, so thanks for that.

Thank you for giving me some workmates who were able to shed some perspective on things for the few really bad customers.
"I could understand you getting this upset if this were a life-support machine sale madam. As this is only a toy sale and you are enquiring after a five dollar piece of plastic, that will probably be broken before your child has finished unwrapping it on Christmas morning, I am having a problem understanding your rage." insert more irate screaming here.. "Would you care to rephrase your request as I'm sure that is anatomically impossible. No? Well I hope you have a nice time shopping at Kmart madam."

Thank you for only allowing the fire door alarm to go off six times. The 110 decibel siren right above my head did manage to make me jump every single time so thanks again for the adrenaline rush. (However, I'm not going to apologise for the names I called the manager once we found out it was him setting the alarm off because he was too lazy to go around the long way like everyone else.)

Thank you for giving Taya's mother the strength in her lungs and vocal chords to screech Taya's name for three hours straight. It gave us all an idea of where Taya might be in the store so we could avoid her after her first three run-ins with staff. I'm sure the bite marks will heal relatively quickly but the bruises on the shins will take a bit longer. At least the bruises are pretty colours and I'm sure we'll all recover our hearing by next week.

One small request for tomorrow: please grant me the patience to deal with the store manager's endless dissection of what could have been done differently, the inevitable squabbling over how someone's ideas were better than everyone else's and the clean-up of today's fallout. If you grant me strength I will kill them all, so patience is highly preferable!

Amen.

1 comment:

Kaye said...

Oh my. I'm glad I don't have a job. LOL!