Holiday Retail Potpourri

My day involved the following:

1.  No one was there to help me open.  I was thinking that I was going to be a one man band.  Turns out, my co-worker was late.  All was well.
2.  A woman bought and wanted wrapped a flower that is taller than me.  I'm 5'1".  The head of the flower was wrapped by a co-worker (as round as our Tercel tire) and the stalk was dealt with by me.  I ended up floofing some tissue with the leaves, put some ribbons on it and did the best I could. 
3.  The perfume assault band of old ladies came in.  It gave me an instant headache and though it was 35 F out, I had to turn the air on with it blowing directly at the desk to hopefully blow it away.  Customers looked at me weird and I decided to just tell them.  "I'm so sorry.  I suffer from wretched perfume sensitivity and I have a horrible headache right now."  My customer apologized and said that it wasn't her.  The next lady in line said that she has the same problem as me.  Geeze people! 
4.  I was told by another co-worker that there was a lady that was sitting down in another room, I needed to take care of her purchases and bring the items to her.  I did that and found a very disabled woman sitting in a chair with one of those seat walkers in front of her.  She was very lovely, we got her purchase handled and then the challenge was how to get her back out.  I told her that I would walk ahead of her to clear the path.  She ended up taking out doorway merchandise (she felt so bad), we got that picked up, then her husband couldn't get her and her trappings all underhand.  I took her purse and her oxygen.  She toodled behind me as I cleared the way and opened doors.  We got her down the stairs, then I had her hang onto my back as I lead her between cars.  We got her to the van in one piece.  Whew.  I thought we were seriously going to lose her. 
5.  We had a return from something purchased nearly 2 months ago because they decided that "it smells like chemicals."  I sent them to our gallery director.
6.  A co-worker (office staff) was sent home because, with the blessing of her doctor, she came to work with shingles.  Still, one of the owners has a supressed immune system and, well, there is the rest of us. 
7.  Someone had my shingle co-worker blocked in and didn't hear the pages to move her car.  I ended up accidentally tracking her down by kidding with her friend about the car being paged, she went, moved her car but was given a hard time by another co-worker.  I apologized profusely and did an extra foofy job on her gift wrap.  She said that she noticed and I told her that I just felt so bad. 
8.  I can't handle hearing that steel drum band Christmas CD one more time.  I think that the other co-workers are going to fling it.  We have one co-worker who insists on playing it and playing it and playing it because we have three for sale.  She put it on while the #7 was lady at the counter.  The co-worker at the counter with me was going to begin to plead with the music CD player to please not and I told her to just let it go.  "It's not worth the energy."  All #7 could do was to laugh and agree.
9.  Self-service caused a customer to reach way high to get something that she shouldn't, knocked down a $35.00 Christmas figure which bounced off the carpet and her friend quickly scooped it up and went to put it back on the shelf.  "Ma'am, may I please have that.  I need to check it.  I'm sure that the drop broke it."  I looked at it and sure enough, the nose busted clean off of its face.  I told them that.  "Truly, if there is anything I can help you with, please let me know.  I'm happy to get it for you."  Apparently, they ducked back out.  No apology.  No offer to pay for the breakage.  Nothing.  Lovely.
10. Of course, we deal with people's inability to just back out of the parking lot.  E-r-e-r.  (That is the sound of them toggling between reverse and drive.)  It's a tiny lot, people.  JUST BACK OUT!  Thank you.

Smiles in my day:
-  The betamethasone that Dr. A-, allergist extraordinaire, prescribed seems to have lightened my redness with just one application.  Let's hope it continues to work.
-  It's Wednesday and that means that the second part of my "work week" starts tomorrow.  I can switch focus and, here's a thought, sit.
-  K-'s teacher called this evening and had a lovely chat with me. 

Have a wonderful day!