A right royal headache

Original picture: Clker-free-Vector-Images, Pixabay

I think TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) has secretly joined the CIA.

She’s joined the CIA and she’s using their unbearably effective tactics on me until I collapse into a broken heap in a dark corner of the Out Of Favour (OOF) shop and promise to tell her whatever she wants to hear……

“Yes (TBE), you are SUCH a brilliant manager! Yes, everyone loves your oh-so-quirky-and-not-annoying-at-all-ways! Yes, it’s such an honour to work for someone as great as you that I would be happy to work for almost nothing!”

Why else would she be torturing me? All day, every day. Constantly. With no respite.

I can’t stand it.

It’s driving me insane. I just can’t take it any longer.

She is torturing me – with whales.

Rage against the wage

Oh TBE how do you shaft me? Let me count the ways.

Well, the Living Wage for one……….

Picture: Bluesnap, Pixabay

Remember, the UK Living Wage came in on 1^st May 2016? Designed to stop tight-ass employers financially wiping the floor with their poor little worker slaves? This was proper, legal stuff; something that even TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) couldn’t get away from.

Or so I thought.

Liar liar, pants on fire!

Oh dear. I accidently caught TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) out in a lie, and now she’s got the hump with me.

Well, it wasn’t a lie exactly; more an act of complete incompetence and anti-management (yeah, I know: so what’s new).

Remember when TBE said this about Barista Boy?:

“I’m going to reduce his hours to a level I know he can’t afford. Mwa hahahaha, cackle cackle!!!”  (It’s possible that last bit existed only in my brain). After which, of course, he left.

Original photo: AndreasHolzner, Pixabay

Well,

Music music everywhere, and you’ve had too much to drink

Oh dear, the Upstairs Office Geeks aren’t very happy. 

They keep complaining about our music. Apparently it’s too loud, too bass-y……… just too music-y.

Is it wrong of me to find this wickedly funny and deliciously amusing? After all, they knew perfectly well the office was above a shop when they moved in.

But it seems the Upstairs Office Geeks don’t quite live in the same world the rest of us do. They’re sort of halfway there; they look normal (mostly), and they speak normally (well, some of them), but they don’t quite achieve full-on, “Yeah, we get life. We’re good at life.” It’s a bit like a Venn diagram.

A Venn diagram

You thought I’d forgotten you, didn’t you?

Soooo…. You may have noticed I’ve been very quiet over the last six weeks.

You may have thought to yourself this is because all is going well in the Out Of Favour Shop. That perhaps TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) has suddenly morphed into a supportive, attentive, reasonable and entirely sane boss.

That the Out Of Favour shop is being run efficiently and effectively.

That every customer who now enters the hallowed ground of the Out Of Favour shop is pleasant, normal, refreshingly free from tedium and not at all away with the fairies.

Well, to that I would say: snap out of it at once! You’ve clearly had too much chocolate over Easter and it’s affecting your sense of reason. Of course the Out Of Favour shop is still a head-slappingly bewildering hellhole. Of course TBE is still has mad and snappy as a box of monkeys. Where do you think we are, Hobbiton? Hogwarts? Get a grip!

Is time going really slowly, or have you been here forever?

Oh dear God, it’s enough to make anyone lose the will to live: Mr Schadenfreude Socialist has been talking at me for over three hours now.

Three hours!

My brain is numb with boredom. Please somebody make him stop. Sweet Jesus make him stop.

Original photo: cristels, Pixabay

One is the loneliest number.....

Remember the saga of the café without a fridge? Remember the Milk Wars with TBE (aka The Boss Erratic)?

That’s got to be all over and done with by now, right?

I mean, come on; it’s been almost eight months! There just has to be a spanking new fridge sitting proudly in the Out Of Favour (OOF) shop kitchen by now, right? TBE must have stopped the farce of storing milk in a bowl of lukewarm water, right? Surely we’re keeping that all-important café milk refrigerated so it’s icy cold and super fresh, right?

Picture:WikiImages, Pixabay

Well……

The loneliness of the Long Distance Argument

TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) and I are having a non-communicative argument about communication.

It’s non-communicative because we’re writing all our insults, digs, and acerbic points of principle down in a book*. It means we neither have to see each other or speak to each other directly, which is a splendid relief for both of us.

Picture: AgnieszkaMonk, Pixabay

I don’t understand the question. Or the answer

Right, so you know how something small and insignificant can suddenly and unexpectedly turn into something much bigger and messier than you ever thought it would? 

So, an insignificant spot on your face can turn into Mount Vesuvius just before a massive night out, or a single loose thread can turn into a huge hole in your jumper right when you’re in smart company, or a tiny bit of rust on your car can result in you reluctantly having to shell out two months wages for an entirely new wing? Well, the retail version of this is conversations that start off being normal and insignificant but somehow end up in the Twilight Zone. And it happens a lot.

This was a conversation I had the other day with a lady of average size (UK 14ish) who was looking at a loose fitting top………..

Music to eat your own ears to. And repeat

I am not happy.

I am on edge.

My shoulders are tight, my teeth are clenched, and I’m developing a rather fetching twitch in my right eye.

The reason? Music.

Original picture: Prawny, Pixabay

Barista Dreams. And nightmares.

Meet Barista Boy.

Barista Boy was headhunted by TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) to work in the cafe of the New Favourite Shop.

Trouble is, the New Favourite Shop doesn’t have a cafe, it has a building site, and unfortunately Barista Boy believed TBE’s promises that the cafe would soon be up and running.

It wasn’t.

It still isn’t.

Boss Wars part V: The Battle of the Stool

So we’ve been playing silly buggers with stools, TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) and I. Or you could say I’ve been glimpsing more of TBE’s cockeyed psyche. Via seating.

You see, when the Out of Favour (OOF) shop reopened there was nowhere to sit; TBE had taken the staff seat away.

‘So what?’, you might say, ‘You should be working instead of sitting on your arse’, which is fine (harsh, but fine), except I’m alone for the whole day with no break. Having no seat means standing up for eight hours straight. My feet don’t need that, they’re ugly enough.

Photo: PaintedFeet01, Pixabay

Milk Wars, episode V: Shop Girl Strikes Back

I think I’m having a Milk War. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

It started when TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) brazenly stole the cafe fridge for her own house, leaving the Out Of Favour shop fridgeless, with only a bowl of water to keep the cafe milk in. 

That was over six months ago. There is still no fridge. There is only the bowl.

Photo: Thor_Deichmann, Pixabay

Is that blue fluff in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?

*(Middle Aged Men Always Around)

MAMAA* Hep Cat Pensioner came in today and asked me if I wanted to see his ‘little friend’.

As you can imagine, this alarmed me somewhat.

Photo: geralt, Pixabay

My head has gone numb...*

Oh My God the Out Of Favour shop is cold! 

My fingers are numb, my nose is freezing, and I swear there are icicles hanging off the end of my racks…

Photo: Pexels: Pixabay

This time I can’t blame TBE (aka The Boss Erratic).

I really can’t.

Oh Annie, what would Daddy Warbucks say?

Picture: Prawny, Pixabay

What do I do about Annie?

Do I say I find her principles fundamentally wrong?

Do I tell her I find the free and unguarded tone of her chatter offensive, because it assumes endorsement, even corroboration on my part? Do I tell her she’s full of crap and should be ashamed of herself?

What I really want to do is stuff her mouth full of badger poo, slap her about the face with an angry woodcock, 

(It’s a bird. What did you think it was?),

and make her watch Bambi, Watership Down and Lassie Come Home all in one go (FYI, if anyone was looking to break me, that would just about do it).

My previous four conversations with Annie have begun like this:

Christmas in retail: Things that could only happen in the Out Of Favour shop (and a few that happened somewhere else)

The Annual Dying of Boredom Ritual (aka. Lantern Parade Day, Part One)

It’s the day of the kids’ lantern parade; a charming tradition where we all pretend the kids have made the lanterns whilst knowing that the parents have made every inch of their exactly-to-scale tissue paper version of The Millennium Falcon, or Elsa and Olaf, or whatever, in a tooth and nail, fight-to-the death game of one-upmanship with all the other parents in the town. Consequently the shop is like a morgue because they’re all touching up their (sorry, their kid’s) masterpieces at home. It’s empty. Except for MAMAA (aka Middle Aged Man Always Around) Mr SS, who spends two hours drinking green tea and recounting the weekly sales from his market stall: how many, how much, who to. Inside my head I alternate between vegetation and apoplectic rage. The Christmas love begins..…

Photo: MarinaRossi, Pixabay

The annual Christmas works do, or, How to Survive a Night With The Boss

By the time I arrived in the pub, TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) had already cornered the New Favourite Shop’s Landlord and was busy schmoozing him into submission. Occasionally he’d throw pleading glances to others around the room, but to no avail. No one was coming to rescue him.

Then TBE sent him to the bar, and whilst he was away she seized her chance to drag a row of seats into a straight line directly opposite the Landlord’s vacant chair, and bizarrely instructed us employees to sit in them shoulder to shoulder. I felt like I was back at school. When the Landlord returned to his chair, there we all were: a row of staring faces, like a hostile jury with personal space issues. He looked terrified.

Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
http://nerdist.com/john-carpenters-village-of-the-damned-brings-creepy-kids-to-blu-ray/

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It might spit in your face.

Our bright, bubbly Saturday girl handed in her notice, which was sad for TBE (aka The Boss Erratic) and for me. I was sad because I liked her and she worked hard. TBE was sad because she was under age and TBE could pay her peanuts. Of course, that still didn’t mean she was going to be replaced by another tweeny exploitee:

“You can cope on your own on a Saturday from now on, can’t you?”

As a thank you for all her hard work, TBE generously announced she would give Saturday Girl whatever she wanted from the shop as her leaving present. Saturday Girl wanted a bag in a colour that had just sold out. I told TBE.

“No problem” she breezed, with all the warmth and generosity of a Retail Mother Earth bestowing Great Favours. “Whatever she wants, she shall have. Leave it with me. I’ll sort it out.”

Embarrassing pumpkin soup for Christmas, anyone?

So the local town did Halloween. How long ago was that now? Over a month. This town does Halloween in a big way: lots of dressing up and partying. And the shops join in. All the shop windows are bedecked with pumpkins and cobwebs and witches broomsticks weeks before the big night. 

All except one.

The window of the Out Of Favour (OOF) shop was still rocking floaty, summery numbers right up until the 31st October, when three sad looking pumpkins quietly appeared in the display.

Three sad looking pumpkins.But still less sad than the actual ones. Picture: htconesandroid: Pixabay

Woo hoo! At last! The OOF shop is all set to do the Retail Run-up to Halloween, which is, er, today......

The day after Halloween, the shops moved on; pumpkins, cobwebs and the like disappeared from every shop window in the high street.

Except one.