Bad day of work

I have recently started at a new job, it is a second job to the teaching job I already have. It is one of those things where you have a friend of a friend that has a place, and they could use extra help. Well I could always use extra income, so I jumped at it. It is a baby clothing store called Haute Baby.

After training for three days, yesterday and today were my first "on my own" experiences at the store. It is in fact such a small store that they only have one person working at a time. The owner, who trained me, is out of town, in Europe (so pretty far out of town). I was left a lady's number, Sally, who used to own her own baby clothing store. I have never met this lady and honestly never expected to even call her. But things are never as you expect, well things in my life, at least, are never as I expect.

Yesterday went pretty smoothly actually. I seemed to "hold down the fort" pretty well. I made one insignificant call to Sally regarding a customer needing something before Easter that no one left a note for me about. We handled that and the rest of the day was smooth sailing. The one and only problem being boredom. I could only think of all the things I wanted to buy for the babies I knew. So I went around and took pictures of those things. Here are some of my favorites:

Those are only some of the pictures I took yesterday while no one was there. If you count all the pictures I took, 46 (not even including re-takes for ones that didn't turn out) you start to realize how bored I really was. But that was yesterday, and yesterday was NOTHING like today.

Today, I started my day with the computer not letting me ring the first sale of the day up. I had to make call #2 to Sally, which was two calls more than I wanted to make to Sally this weekend. I really am very good with computers which is what made this so frustrating. I finally ended up doing things old school and hand writing the receipt. Sally decided to make an emergency run to the store to see if we could fix the computer problem. Urrggghhhh.....my third inconvenience to this lady, Sally, just in one weekend.

On her way there I figured out the computer problem. Turns out it wasn't my fault, whomever set me up on the program didn't set me up correctly. It was never detected because there had always been others logged in until today (long story about that, let's just move on). So basically when Sally arrived I told her exactly what was wrong and how to fix it. All definitely could have been done over the phone, but oh well...

But that of course is not where my day ended. I had a very interesting, pregnant customer come in, probably a couple of hours before close. She was into everything. Asking all sorts of questions about the different things we sold and how she could order some for herself. I was very proud of myself for being able to answer so many questions. She then decided to start a registry with us. I knew I could handle that so I was excited to do it for her. I even told her how excited I was to actually have something so concrete to do. This lady and myself had a good time picking things out for the registry and discussing her three baby showers that were coming up. She had all these plans and things she wanted. She left with a few business cards, my name and our business hours I had so graciously written down for her.

But that is where my fun stopped. I was straightening up the store before I left and realized there was an empty package that usually held a "Miracle Blanket." The same miracle blanket I noticed the lady looking at when she was in the store. I frantically looked around for the missing blanket and only found three empty hangers. NOT GOOD!!!

It is one of those moments where you freeze for a bit and don't even know what to do next. After I put the pieces together of how well she kept me occupied (though I did feel I still kept an eye on her the whole time- but apparently not well enough), I realized how well she had worked her magic. But would she be good enough to come up with the questions for the registry on the fly?

She left a cell phone number, which I debated calling. What would I say if she did answer? But I had no such luck with her answering. It was a guys voicemail, and not the guy that was her supposed "husband."

Then I googled her address. Turns out it is a business, an "art and rug store." The address didn't even match the zip code she gave. I went ahead and called the business, because that would be hard to come up with a local address on the fly. But no one, not even an answering machine, answered that number. Though, I still have my suspicions about that address maybe being something of familiarity to her because I did receive a call a few minutes later from a man that only spoke Spanish and she was a Hispanic lady. But who knows.

By this point I was out of ideas for my own detective services. I decided to solicit some more help before going any further. So I went through my usual list (see my last post). Emily, on her honeymoon, shouldn't have to help me figure out what to do. Next on list, roommate. And my back-up, friends from college, starting with Chelsea (don't know why she was first, but she was). Luckily, my roommate answered and gave the advice and more importantly, the support for what to do next. It wasn't like I didn't know what to do next, it was just getting the encouragement to do what came next.

What came next was call/inconvenience #4 to Sally. The lady whom probably now wishes she wasn't first on the list of people I call if need so should arise. But this call was by far the worst, having to admit to someone stealing right in front of you, and the first weekend you are left by yourself. Not fun.

But Sally turned out to be very nice about it. She completely understood, having had some very similar experiences of her own. She told me not to worry about it, but to leave a note to the other employees, so they could watch out for her. We did feel that her getting my name and the store's number was so she could possibly hit up the other employees in the future. Maybe the good news of this all will be that I will be able to prevent, if not even catch, this lady the next time she comes to the store.

Some good things were the fact that I took pictures of the store like a maniac yesterday so I was able to check the placement of a lot of the items in the store. All other items seemed to be in tact. Funny thing, you could actually see the miracle blanket inside the package, proof it must have indeed disappeared while I was working (I said it was funny, not good). I was also able to leave a description for the other employees that is probably worthy of a sketch artist. And the last thing I think I can feel a LITTLE better about is the fact that it seems the theft took place in one area, which was where the cheapest items were located in the store. Here's the scene of the crime, notice the shiny miracle blanket package on the left bookshelf, second shelf from the bottom. The other items were taken from the rack just to the right of it.

My last thought on the subject: how ridiculous do you have to be if you are stealing clothes for your baby? Stealing in general is ridiculous. But stealing for your baby just proof of how unfit you are to be a parent. I am just going to leave it at that.