2 posts tagged “manners”

A semester of college never properly starts until the first time the fire alarm goes off in your dorm.  As you can guess, that's exactly what happened this morning.  I had returned to my room for the two hour break I have between my morning classes and my afternoon class.  It took me a while to realize what it was...the fire bell sounded more like someone with a really obnoxious alarm clock rather than a real alarm.  As soon as I figured out what it was (I peeped out the door and saw an RA knocking on all the doors), I told my roommate to climb out of bed and stick something on her feet.

I overheard a small snippet of conversation between two RAs on the way out of the building to the effect of this not being a drill, but I wasn't certain if I had heard them correctly at the time.  The south wing girls gathered in the parking lot closest to us until the RA in charge of us told us we had to stand in the field across the street.  I was still trying to figure out if I had heard what I thought I heard from those two RAs, then I catch a whiff of smoke.  I look around and discover that a girl directly behind me had just lit a Marlboro and was huffing away.  I mean, lighting up a cigarette when everyone else around her is trying to figure out if it's a drill or the real thing?  Could this girl have exhibited any worse taste than that?  (Granted, I think smoking exhibits incredibly poor taste period, but smoking during a evacuation that might have been for a real fire?...that's just wrong on so many different levels!)  Anyway, it turns out it wasn't a drill, which probably means some jerk pulled the fire alarm as a joke.

I think North Texas needs to implement the same fine that UNL did for pranksters pulling the fire alarm (I think they had raised it to $2,000)...once UNL raised the fine, the pranksters stopped.

(Yes, I know that's not what the line really is, but my motives will be clear soon enough.)

Today was one of those dreadful blurs at work...painfully slow until the last half hour, at which point the store was the busiest I've seen in a long time on a Sunday afternoon.  Of course, except for an elderly couple that came in early in the day, it wasn't so bad.  But man, that elderly couple...*shudders*

You see, elderly people can be some of the worst customers out there.  Don't give me all that "respect your elders" talk--I'll respect someone if they behave in a manner worthy of respect--being old in itself isn't a strong enough criterion for respect.  I don't know what it is, but it seems like the older ones are always the most belligerent, and they almost never pick up after themselves (and to think they whine about how irresponsible my generation is!)--once they find that shoe that they think won't rub their bunion the wrong way after leaving behind a pile of fifty scattered boxes, they're out of there.

Well, at least the couple that came in today did make a decent effort to pick up...I'll give them that, but they certainly picked up the slack as far as attitude goes!  First, the wife comes up to me and asks for a try-on sock for her hus and gets a little indignant when I hand her an athletic sock.  She obviously doesn't realize that no one gives out dress socks as try-ons, and very few stores provide anything other than those shrively little bits of nylon hosiery (it's a public health issue if they're not disposable).  Then the wife brings me over because her husband has a question about the shoes.  Basically, the husband's having a fit because the 9.5W doesn't fit, and "I've been wearing nine-and-a-half wide for the past fifteen years, and I've always bought my shoes from your store".  Then he holds up two left shoes and asks me if I can see any difference between the two of them, and I tell him the one on his right is bigger than the other.  He says the 10.5W is the exact same size as the other shoe, which I can clearly see isn't true at all...I line the shoes up and show him that the difference between the two is about the thickness of my index finger...roughly a half inch, or in other words, completely normal for a whole size difference.  He doesn't believe me, and I show him the Brannock device (yes, that's the proper name for the measurer) and indicate to him how much distance there is when you go up a whole size...it's not even a half inch.  The man is still just as cross with me as one can possibly be, and I continue to explain that because everyone has outsourced to China that there is no consistency in sizing these days--even within the same brand and sometimes even the same style (side note: it's amazing to think that a country with such horrible quality control standards and even worse standards for worker treatment is poised to take over the world in the next few decades).  I have to wonder what the man really wanted from me...did he expect me to say, "Oh, it's really just a joke, let me fetch the real 9.5W from the back" or perhaps conjure up a pair of 9.5W dress shoes that fit perfectly?

I have to wonder if the man has purchased a pair of shoes in the past fifteen years--inconsistency in sizing has been a problem for most of my life.  I mean, I wear anything from a US Women's 6 to 8 depending on the style and manufacturer (and if it's about a 7 or bigger, I'll need a narrow if comes in widths)...that's two whole sizes.  Clothing is even worse--my size can be anything from a 0 to 5 depending on the manufacturer.  I just don't understand why people get so fixed on the idea that they are this one shoe size and that's it...it's not like it is with clothing sizes where there's a stigma attached to larger sizes.  Amazingly enough, most wide-footed people are willing to admit they're wide, and will get very cross if they can't find wides in every style.  I say fuck the wide-footed people...the narrow-footed have it much worse...over half the styles in our store come in wide (not to mention many other brands just run wide), and yet there's only one style of shoe we have in narrow and it's only in the women's section.  Granted, Puma (IMHO the ultimate fashion sneakers) does run nice and narrow, and narrow feet look great in pretty much anything that fits correctly, whereas almost nothing flatters a wide foot.

Anyway, let's get to the bit that'll explain the title.  I noticed when I came into work the other day that the Muzak wasn't on (yes, it is a genuine Muzak brand unit).  Turns out that the receiver isn't getting any signal.  One of our assistant managers likes to hook up his portable CD player to the sound system (and I'm certain they'll try to blame him), but that involves unplugging the RCA cable running from the receiver to the amplifier...nothing that would interfere with the functioning of the receiver.  After doing some investigation to the unit, we concluded that everything was plugged in correctly.  About the only thing we can think of is that it's been raining heavily the past few days, and it's possible that the antenna (we think there's an external antenna--the coax cable runs up into the ceiling) got damaged on Friday.  Of course, I don't care too much that the Muzak is broken, since that just gives us more of an excuse to play our own music.  They did get rid of that horrible tropical-themed playlist that they experimented around with when we switched over to our summer promotions (I never thought the day would come when I would say I missed the original Muzak playlist, but that day came when they switched to the tropical stuff--I think Muzak must have gotten a lot of angry calls from our employees or something), but the normal playlist still sucks.  I have to wonder if paying ASCAP/BMI fees wouldn't be cheaper than this Muzak subscription--it'd certainly make everyone who works in the store happier.  Oh well, at least I got to play Fear of a Blank Planet (in its entirety) on the store's sound system today--that certainly makes up for most of the day.