But I've had one of those days where it felt like I was never in the right place at the right time and everything I did was a waste of effort.
Turn up to work, open the Shop, re-stock and clean - sell £200 worth of amber jewellery in the first half hour. I'm mistaken in thinking that this is the sign of a good day.
Boss turns up (after 10am), seems less than impressed about the £200 sale (Nora's never happy, I don't understand why) and I set about putting stock on our website. The website is a bit thin on the ground product wise; it has essentially fallen to me to sort the entire thing out and put a few hundred items on it.
This takes place at a desk away from the shop floor. There is CCTV cameras of the shop floor and I regularly turn to look at it, checking for people coming into the shop. If Nora is serving someone and another person comes in, I stop what I'm doing and go out onto the shop floor.
Works in theory. However, it seemed to Nora that in spite of my repeated glances at the screen, I just was not responding quick enough, i.e. instantly. Sorry, but I am not whipping my head around every two seconds - I wouldn't be able to get anything uploaded to the website and I need to prepare each image, write a description, put the price in and make sure it's displayed in the right category. I kinda need to look at the computer screen for more than a few seconds at a time. And let's face it - the website is something that Nora desperately wants up and running, envisioning multiple orders every single day, so she's been going on and on about getting more products up.
But the moment a new customer steps over the threshold, Nora is calling for me. A few times, mere seconds after I'd looked up at the screen. She doesn't allow me even a few moments to realise and to come out - no, I am summoned by her wailing my name (or rather a short form that I don't care for) repeatedly throughout the day. I traipse up and down the stairs, serving, selling, re-stocking, web administering, rinse and repeat.
In spite of this, I'm making excellent headway with the website. Lots of products go up and I'm hopeful that we'll get orders from it once we've got a good variety available. Am I at any point thanked or praised for this work? No, of course not. Nora is simply annoyed at 'having to keep calling' for me and that we 'lost' customers ... they walked in, I came up and they were walking out the door - if they don't hang around for more than five seconds then I would assume they didn't see anything they wanted; we probably didn't 'lose' them, they simply wanted something we didn't have. But no, this is huge deal for Nora - she believes that every single person who comes in is there to buy something. Apparently people don't go into shops just for a look!
Once as I came onto the floor to serve a customer, Nora shoved a load of stuff at me and told me to put it all back where it came from. Um, hello? Customers who need serving? No, change of priority apparently. And that still wasn't the right thing to do!
She demands that I move upstairs and use the computer / till. (Yes, it has been fixed and we have the till machine up and running again - took ages, but it's all sorted.) Nora points out that we really ought to have two people on the shop floor on a Saturday ... she buggers off about half an hour after that, leaving me alone.
But before going, right after I set everything up on the computer that I need to work on, she kicks me off it to place an order, shuts everything down, and then leaves me to deal with several customers.
Throw in some awkward customers who don't answer my questions as to what they want with Nora giving me unhelpful and patronising 'advice' - show them this, get this out, put it on them (while the customer can manage just fine), and shoving the trays we use for showing off the products right under my arm when I don't need it ... well, I was glad when she left early.
To top things off, we took over £900 but fell £35 short of target. Something else for Nora to get screwed up about.
I shall attempt to unwind this evening with a cup of tea and a DVD, and be thankful that I'm not working next Saturday.
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