There ain’t no pleasing you

I like a challenge, I do. But a challenge has got to be within reason, right? Otherwise it’s just like trying to cross the Sahara on chocolate skis – or trying to stop TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) being a shit manager: it’s pointless, exhausting and doomed to failure.

Photo: Lenny Flank, Flikr

Sometimes it’s just too hard. Sometimes the challenge is too great. Sometimes that customer who’s just walked in (oh lucky me), is just too much of a mountain to climb. This is a (mostly) word for word conversation I had with one such creature the other day:

The Spy Who Loathed Me

OK, let’s start with the statistics:

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org
https://twitter.com/paulseesequa/status/704009260066148352

1. There are three people who work in this company: TBE (aka The Boss Erratic), Colleague Crafty and me. That’s not even enough to fill a taxi.
2. The Out Of Favour (OOF) shop (where I work) is about twenty seconds away from the New Favourite (NF) shop (where I don’t work), which is just around the corner.
3. Until the day both shops become self-service operations (oh, wouldn’t TBE love that: no staff [i.e. me] to whine on about employment rights), there is one of us working in each shop. That’s two thirds of the workforce hanging out within twenty seconds touching distance of each other at any one time.
4. Given this arrangement, there is a high probability that when I am working in the OOF shop, TBE is very often just around the corner in the NF shop; twenty seconds away.
5. That’s twenty seconds away. TBE is twenty seconds away. Very frequently.
6. I haven’t clapped eyes on TBE for three and a half months.
7. Three and a half months.
8. Three and a half months is a long time.
9. Three and a half months is at least fourteen weeks.
10. Three and a half months is over a quarter of a year.

She’s just disappeared. Run away. Gone. Totally absent.

Some people are born with it; the rest of us are just jealous

Consider the fashionistas. Those effortlessly sartorially gifted people who waft about in unique, glamorously styled outfits, leaving a trail of awe, wonder and dropped jaws in their wake.

Well, here at the Out Of Favour (OOF) shop we are lucky to have two such marvellous creatures in our midst.

Separately, they are a truly eye-watering sight to behold; together, they are practically traffic-stopping. Literally. I have literally seen traffic screech to a halt to let these two sashay across the road (truth be told it was either that or run them over: fashion diva school clearly doesn’t cover the Green Cross Code).

Theirs is a sea of colour; a truly eye-catching conglomeration of fabric styles, patterns, textures and layers.

Such is their impact upon our little market town, they rarely venture out unaccompanied by their ‘minder’.