Why I'm glad week four is long over

Things I never expected when I agreed to teach a single online class

that I would have to put off cleaning and laundry and blogging and rest
that I wouldn't have access to my course until the students did
that the school would make so many assumptions that make my job difficult
that the logical resources a teacher needs would be missing, unavailable, not even considered
that a single class could add another 40 hours to my 40 hour work week
that I could get hoarse from dictating assignment feedback into my voice recognition software
that my left arm would hurt more
that my right arm would hurt a lot more
that I would sleep even less
that I would be even more afraid of what would happen if I get sick and lose my voice
that I would feel guilty for

• stopping for gas and a car wash
• getting physical therapy
• spending 15 minutes in a used clothing store to replace a pair of pants that were destroyed
• getting groceries
• exercising
• taking a shower
• eating
• going to the doctor
• meeting with my church small group

(because I could've been using that time to grade)
that I would have to stop reading and writing for pleasure to teach reading and writing to unscreened students who are not ready for this class
that this format does not allow the students who need to learn the most what they need to learn
that I would hate teaching this way this much
that I would want so badly to fix the papers even knowing how much time it would take
that I would be happy when students ignored my repeated pleas to set up conferences to prevent them from failing
that this happiness could make me feel more guilty
that I would not be able to catch up even after a month
that I would be so bad at boundaries

Can I un-quit quitting? and other positively negative thoughts

I have never wanted to quit anything so much in my life as I want to quit teaching this class.  I took a sanity day off work this week (thank you for that advice, Mom), and I got a lot of things I'd been putting off done, and a few new things organized, but I am still so behind that it's making me crazy.

I simply can't catch up possibly because, when I signed up to teach a single class, I seriously did not expect to be putting 30-50 hours a week into a class.  I have a full time job already.  I can't do this.  At least, I can't do this and maintain my high expectations for myself, and if I can't maintain my expectations for myself, is it fair to demand them of my students?  I'm in this horrible moral quagmire, and if I don't figure out how to bend sanely, I will break myself.

I lost another student in my online class last week.

Thought 1: I have failed!
Thought 2:  Well, that's one less set of papers to grade.
Thought 3: I am a horrible person for Thought 2.
Thought 4: Lucky.  I want to quit, too.
Thought 5: And another $200 disappears . . .
Thought 6: It's a good thing this was never about money.

Not that I'm neurotic.  :)

In my thesis (or my spiritual autobiography, as my amazing advisor calls it), I talked about this inability to choose correctly when faced with situations where I can't tell if I should go on (because if I do, maybe I will learn valuable lessons).  I also talked about how easy it is for me to let things go, to quit things because there is an easier thing on hand that I love and enjoy even if it is a bit challenging.  I think I decided to quit quitting, and I am seriously regretting that decisions.

I chose this madness over singing?  Why?!  If I could go back to singing, even if it meant giving up this dream of being a teacher and using my gifts to help people learn, would I do it?  If I could do so without letting anyone (myself possibly included) down, YES!!!!!  In a heartbeat.  But is that the right thing to do?  I'm tired; I've no time or inclination for hard questions.  I have three assignments to grade from last week and five more coming up this week.  I hate this, and it isn't fun anymore.

A person once said that it is always good to have misfortunate friends around because they always show you how much worse it could be.  I'm happy to be of use to you, my friends.  :) 

Also, so you don't think I'm totally negative, I AM SO GLAD NOT TO BE WORKING AT RETAILESTABLISHMENT DURING ALL THIS!!!!!!  Wait, that was negative.  But in a positive way.  Um, how about, I am so glad I have the regular job I have now!  That's true, too.

Priorities: rearranging a life

I just got offered a class to teach at a local university, and I find myself suddenly faced with a priority crunch. 

I was going to audition for a singing group that rehearses Monday nights.  Tuesday nights, I have a writing group.  Wednesday nights I lead a small group from church.  Thursday night is when the anime club I belong to meets.  Friday night through Saturday night, I clean and collapse.  Sunday is two flavors of church and  sometimes a writing group and spending time with a friend.  There is no way I can do all that, handle a new full time job, and juggle a part-time job on top of that.

I am inclined to just scrap it all and focus on the jobs this semester. 

• M: I haven't auditioned yet, but even if I do, I might not make it, so maybe I should table this one for now.  Or maybe I should go for it and pray that if it's a bad idea, I won't get in.  Will I be in any shape to audition next year?  Probably not after a whole year off, but there's no way I can fit the a cappella choir I've sung with for the past six years into the new job schedule in the first six months. 
• T: I've been having trouble getting people to show up to the writing group, and I was only really doing it to force myself to do research on publishing, which I don't really care about, because if I don't have teaching experience, I need some pieces published to potentially get hired, which I already am, so this is something I don't need to torture myself with anymore. 
• W: My small group wants to meet on another night, so this could be a good time to disengage from that commitment. 
• Th: I don't NEED the anime club, and they don't need me since I really don't contribute much of anything (hooray for passive entertainment), but I do enjoy watching things on a big screen and not being required to be in charge. 

On the other hand, in college I learned that you should start out with way more than you can handle, and you can whittle down as you go, deciding what's important.  Of course, I don't have that youthful energy anymore to keep it up for a whole quarter before disengaging . . .

How do you prioritize?  Do you have any advice on what I should sacrifice and what I might want to consider keeping?

This week in giddiness

Things that are nice at work:

• Parking ramp right next to my building: do you know how lovely it is to go to your car after work in the summer and get in and not be baked?
• Hot chocolate: I may have mentioned this a few dozen times.  Free hot chocolate (the good kind).
• A cube in a nicely laid out place where I can see natural light above my cube even though I am not near a window.
• Nice co-workers who do not mind me being neurotic.
• Competent, kind bosses who tell me that they hired me fully knowing I had no experience and are thus not waiting to smite me when I display my lack of experience, who tell me that they hired me because I had the skills and they believe I will be great, who say things like, "We go over this at least three times a year, so there are no surprises at performance review time.  Nobody likes to have something negative just dumped on them in a performance review."
• Trees: our campus is so full of trees that even when you are walking in an enclosed tunnel, you look out and see birds and dragonflies and trees and clouds and the sky and stuff while you are not baking.
• Going there does not make me miserable (confused, yes, but we'll take that over miserable any day).

Tea gets in your eyes . . .

You know you're in sad shape when tea brings you to tears.  Well, that's not really fair; the tea just made me get a little choked up, but it was the hot chocolate that really made me cry.  My favorite kind (except with marshmallows, but essentially the same thing).  And coffee.  And four kinds of creamer.  Stir sticks.  (Also a working microwave, a cleanish fridge, 9 kinds of tea, 2 of which I actually kind of like.  A sink and actual dish soap.)  All freely provided and restocked daily by my new employer. (Okay, well, not the fridge, but it's there so I can put stuff in it.)

It's just the sort of thing you do when you care about your employees and want them to be happy and comfortable and hydrated.  And it's so very different from my last employer that I just kind of welled up. I'm glad no one was looking.  How would I explain why I was laughing and crying at the same time. . . ?

So, this new job - when do I get to feel like it's real?

After I get the email with the start date details that shows the background check is finished?
After my first day?
After my first paycheck?

I've got to figure out how to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it's going to fall, it will fall. I don't need to stress out waiting for it. Sheesh.

(Have you ever felt like this?)

Treasuring the waiting

In the past when I've done job interviews, I've generally had a good time, and so have the interviewers.  Then they feel awful when they can't hire me.  They call me on the phone and just sound wretched about how they liked me best, but they have to hire this horrible person with ten years more experience.  That will probably happen this time, too, which makes me sad.

My favorite story about that was this time I interviewed for an internship at a big company, got that exact phone call, and later, when I was at the annual conference for my professional organization, they saw me from across the room and very non-subtly tried to stay on the far side of the room from me during the entire reception.  It was kind of flattering and mostly hilarious.  Eventually, I actually bumped into one of them (totally by accident), and she just looked mortally embarrassed, like she wanted to grovel and beg my forgiveness for not hiring me.  "We all really wanted to work with you," she said mournfully.  "We were so sorry they wouldn't let us have you."

That made two of us.  Soft skills being more valuable than hard skills my ear.  It all worked out later during the conference when I finally managed to secure a kind of crappy internship at a small company where micromanagement was not a problem, and I got to make a website from scratch all by myself.  It was located near where my older sister lived, so I was also able to live with and make awkward attempts to connect with my sort-of-estranged older sister the summer before she got married.

I wonder if the people I interviewed with will be that disappointed if they don't hire me this time.  I almost brought one of them to tears just during the interview.  (Accidentally, I swear; I was just wrapped up in this one story I was telling that had a kind of sweet ending, and I got a tad emotional, and is it a good sign if they say, "That was a really nice story" and "I had no idea what we were going to talk about for an hour, but the time just  went past and was over" at a big corporate job interview?)  I'll certainly cry if I don't get the job, but we'll burn that bridge if we come to it.

I thought I'd already learned the lesson about how sometimes your best isn't good enough, but I still don't want to learn it again.  I'm kind of treasuring the waiting right now because not knowing NO is better than knowing it.

Ever been in that situation: where the waiting is painful but still seems better than finding out for sure that you've failed?

It hailed today

I have now spent over 30 hours researching for this job interview.  I have read several books.  I have talked to wise people without getting totally neurotic and annoying.  I have researched strategies for answering questions and looked at thousands of questions.  I have made plans.  I will write stories to tell in answer to questions.  I have lots of people praying for me.  If this job was awarded to the person who did the most homework, I would get it.  If it was awarded based on financial need, I would get it.  If it was given to the person who wanted it most, I would get it.

I am unlikely to get this job.

My most helpful inside resource told me he hopes that the interviewers see me as the winsome underdog.  He did not have to finish by adding that there's no other way I'll get it (the four times he started a sentence with, "If you don't get this job, I have some ideas," kind of sufficiently filled in the blank.

I should be discouraged.  I should be giving up on the other ten hours of prep I'm planning on doing before the big interviews.  I should feel done, defeated, beaten.

But I'm not stopping.

Is this peace that passes understanding?  It doesn't feel like secret foreknowledge or anything.  It's not really confidence, either.  It's partly my innate stubbornness and love of a challenge.  Don't tell me I can't, because I'll want to even more was never really a mindset I struggled with as a child.  (Except where tree climbing was concerned.)

Maybe this last push will be the thing that sends me over the top.  Maybe these last hours of effort and attention and work will be necessary for success.  I'm desperate; it's true.  I'm in a bad situation (nothing new).  I'd hate to give up before giving everything I possibly can. 

The rest is up to God.

Spring cleaning Part III: Revenge of the Mags

This week's injury was improbably sustained when I apparently tried to walk through a magazine holder.  In my defense, I was trying to avoid the pillows I was airing out.  In my prosecution, I'm not sure why I was giving the soft objects such a wide berth . . .

I'm whittling away at the piles and files around the room.  Since I've applied absolutely everywhere I could for jobs, and there are no new opportunities, I have had two days to clean and do things on my backlog list of things to do.  I feel a little guilty, but I'm getting so much done.  One more day ought to get all my files from graduate school back into tip-top shape (they got out of order as I was cannibalizing them for my thesis).

I even submitted something to another impossible magazine today.  NOTE TO SELF: Email to find out if they accept simultaneous submissions.

Now I'm just cleaning and catching up and waiting for someone to call me back about an interview, trying not to prematurely despair about what it means that they haven't called yet, trying to decide if I should just make my travel plans anyway, trying not to forget all the research I did on the company and the questions I want to ask, trying to enjoy this time now to organize and be calmish.

And icing my foot.  Because what if they call, and I set up an interview, and my foot's too swollen to fit in my dress shoe?!

:)

The waiting game

So, I'm waiting on this phone interview that was supposed to happen.  I got up early just in case they called when normal people start their work days.  I kept checking my phone in agony (what if I missed it?!?!?!?!) and then being heartbroken when the call still hadn't come.  Alternately sweating and freezing, I would wonder if they liked my resume or if they hated it and that's why they weren't calling.  Did I do something wrong, something to make them not like me?!  Why weren't they calling?!?!?!  Oh, the humanity!

Is this what it's like to be waiting for a call from someone you have a crush on?

If I ever made fun of anyone waiting for a call from their crush, I apologize.

Do you love a good job interview?

One reason I enjoy job interviews (yes, I'm a freak) is that, at the good ones, I always learn something about myself, in addition to learning things about the job.  At my second interview the other day, I finally figured out one of the reasons why I really want to teach college composition instead of the creative writing classes all people like me are supposed to want to teach.  Comp is one of the few interdisciplinary classes first-year students take, and I love interdisciplinary stuff.

Comp isn't interdisciplinary in the same way as a class that teaches, say,  history, art, and philosophy at the same time, showing students how the three happened in relation to each other.  It's more like comp is an interdisciplinary tool to teach people how to observe, analyze, and communicate no matter what discipline they're in.  Anyway, I figured that out during the interview, so it was a worthwhile interview in my book.  :)

Have you ever learned anything unexpected about yourself during a job interview?

Give yourself a chance to fail!

I'm pretty embarrassed when I go back to look at my first teaching applications.  I had good ideas about how to write a cover letter or organize a resume, but I hadn't developed an ability to say things concisely.

Of course, since I still haven't even had a real interview, I can't say I'm anything near an expert, but I blame the content of my resume and lack of teaching experience for those things.  I'm still open to revising my resume and cover letters (each one is personalized), but I have basic templates.

I needed to let myself stumble around failing for a while before I could develop the ability to create these documents successfully.  As I mentioned, getting a job is another thing entirely, but now I can't blame it on clumsy formatting.  :)  Whether this is good or bad, I'm not sure . . .

All this to say: as an adult, I recommend that you be willing to fail at new things, so you can develop new competencies.  We often resist trying new things because we're afraid (correctly) that we'll fail.  Being that afraid of failure means we'll never get to experience success or competence, either.  I hope I will eventually . . .

Fingernails (not on a chalkboard)

I was getting a bit more ticked off than was strictly necessary about not hearing back about yet another job application, and I laughed when I realized my ire was fingernail-related, which is somewhat unexpected and out of character for me. I am not a girly-girl.

Usually, I keep my nails cut very short. That way, there's less chance of snagging and chipping and breaking in the wild world of retail. Also, I can't really file them or make them look pretty because of my wrist problems. (I feel that I should add that even if I didn't have wrist problems, I think I still wouldn't do anything with them.)

When I have interviews or concerts, I let my nails grow out to a more professional-looking length. The interviews were supposed to be scheduled two weeks ago. This means my nails were ridiculously long (for me). This was irksome.

I have decided that I am unlikely to get this job. I am too much of a coward to email the person in charge to find out. I cut my nails. I am strangely happier. Maybe this means I'll get a call about an interview tomorrow. :) I'll keep my fingers with their short fingernails crossed.

MacGyver and Government Work

I finally finished up my application for the one government job I qualify for (no typing WPM requirement).  Sigh.  At least I did so to a great soundtrack: MacGyver, season two.  MacGyver used to work for the government.  See?  It's connected.

Really, I'd already answered all the questions and just had to fill in the blanks online.

When I borrowed MacGyver from my parents, my sister warned me that it wasn't as good as I remembered it.  I told her I wasn't going to give it 100% of my attention, anyway.  If I had my back to it, I figured I wouldn't have to see the mullet as much. 

I did enjoy listening to it.  I got laughs from some clunky dialogue and funny lines, and I enjoyed the let's-use-a-fire-extinguisher-(or paper clip or pen or pocket lint, etc.)-to-stop-or-fix whatever.

Did you watch MacGyver when it was on TV?  What did you think of it then?  Have you seen it more recently?  What do you think of it now?

Government email is spam

If you ever send the U.S. federal government an email, be sure to check your spam folder regularly for the reply.  Yahoo assumes your email from the federal government is spam.  I guess that's not the government's fault, but sheesh.

Why is the government so behind the times when it comes to email?  So much time is wasted sending documents and requests back and forth through the mail (and having them always mysteriously disappear if they're not sent in a traceable format), and it's nearly impossible to access information you need in anything approaching a timely fashion. 

In my more cynical moments, I think the government thrives on this inefficiency and even uses it to its advantage.  It's quite easy for all the delays to hurt citizens while the government crunches on, rolling over us without a care in the world.  It certainly has for my little ongoing OWCP drama . . .

Sometimes I wonder how much more efficient our government would be if it joined this new-fangled internet revolution.  I've even imagined what would happen if Google took over communication duties for the government.  What a silly dreamer, I am, imagining a world where I could immediately access my SF-50 and enter three simple pieces of information into my application for another government job.

Of course, I'm ignoring the whole national security issue, here.  I guess I just don't think any bad people care about my pay band from my '02-'03 job.  I figure Google should be able to do at least as well as my banks, which seem to be keeping more important information private, but I'm really ignorant about security issues. 

Sigh.  Dream wildly on, self, about efficiency.  It's never gotten along very well with bureaucracy.  :)

Chemicals your parents won't mind you enjoying

I recently talked to my parents about a job application after exercising, and I think it's the first time that's happened. (The talking after exercising, not the talking or the job application or the exercising. Glad I could clear that up.)

They thought I'd had coffee, which struck me as funny. I can't drink coffee because

• caffeine has the opposite medicinal effect on me (it makes me tired, gives me headaches, and makes my jaw lock up a bit).
• it tastes of motor oil (so there's no way I'd drink decaf).

Good old endorphins are wonderful. They make you feel chipper and cheerful and tired and pleased.

Exercise: the wonder drug that's strong enough to make your 18th hour working on a government job application tolerable.

Do you have any endorphin-induced funny stories? Or stories about conversations with your parents that were unintentionally funny?

Yet another one sails away

Well, that tears it.  My new friend at work had enough and left.  What a huge, stupid waste.  She was worth at least two of my incompetent sales manager.  There is very little justice in a world where I'm stuck with the stupid sales manager and have to lose a great co-worker because our management is . . .  Yeah, you've heard it before.  Sorry.

But I can't resist this great example of my sales manager's greatness.  Because of this sudden situation, I was asked to come in and work on my day off, and, because I desperately need the hours/money, I came in early in the morning after a late night leading a small group for church.  Then, that morning, I picked up another sick co-worker's shift for that night, but I could only work from 6-10 (so I could get some rest before coming in early the next morning for my next shift).  As I was leaving at 10:15, my sales manager got extremely snippy with me for having to leave before 10:30 .  Yes, she got mad at me after I came in and saved her bacon twice in the same day on my day off outside of my regular availability.  She is a real winner.

I'm looking for a new hopefully less crappy retail job along with my regular job hunting. 

Morale is just so shot right now at our store, and sales, which were up, are dropping.  It's sad because it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be this way.  I wish there were something I could do to make it better, but I really have tried everything I can.

I was thinking about good companies and how they value their employees.  Maybe I'm still kind of an idealist, but I thought companies wanted to hire good employees and use their strengths as individuals and team members to help the company prosper.  My RetailEstablishment never read these books, I guess.  They would rather try to force everyone into the same (bent) mold and break them. 

We're all breaking. 

It's rough to watch.  I have so much to give, and they don't want it.  It's . . . frustrating not to be able to use any of your skills, talents, personality, etc. in a way that helps people.  It's worse when you can't just quit, when you're too damaged already to be sure you'll ever be able to find another job.  Being so invested in one place used to make me sort of stubbornly determined to do my best to help things change for the better, but when you have resistance and an endless landslide of dumb policies coming from your district manager to your store and thus know that the "open-door" policy is a quick way to get fired, it just grinds you down.

At least I'm proud I've hung on for over 6 years.  :)  Find your sunshine where you can, I guess.


Do you have any suggestions for retail jobs that would be good for a cripple?

Layering a Life: Adjusting to a New Schedule

Did you ever go to the city pool in the summer?  Someone would drop you off, you would go change and then go out to the pool and be faced with the biggest dilemma of the day: how to get in the water.  There were two ways. 

1. Go over toward the deep end and fling yourself into the pool, instantly getting wet and experiencing an excruciating moment of freezing cold.  
2. Start at the shallowest part and ease your way into the pool, then walk slowly deeper, letting your body adjust slowly.

In college, I definitely went with option 1.  It exhausts me just thinking about it . . . 

After college, I got hurt.  Suddenly, I was losing energy.  The things I had to do (graduate school, work) took up more energy than I had.  I was losing concentration and mental capacity and memory.  I couldn't trust myself to commit to a whole lot outside of what was necessary.  I was treading water. 

Now that I have my graduate degree, I have that time and some of that energy available.  I'm using it for job hunting, writing, submitting writing for publication, conducting research, church involvement, alumni organizations, blogging, and other things.

To avoid overwhelming myself, I'm doing it in layers.  I try one thing; once I get that into my schedule, I try adding something else.  Eventually, I will run out of energy to spend, and then I will have to stop at that my level of involvement and maybe back off a bit.  (In fact, I think this little bout of the flu may be telling me I've already reached my limit.  Boo.)

However, there's one more layer I'm going to add: replying to comments on my blogs.  Once I show that I can maintain this post-a-day (or a-week) pace without exhausting myself, my time, and my ideas too much, I'm going to start figuring out how to improve the blog designs and quickly respond to comments. 

But first, more orange juice.  And maybe some chicken soup.  (Not because of health value, per se, but because liquid is good for sick singers.)


How did you get into the pool back in the day?  How do you approach new situations now?  (And how would you get into the pool now? :)

Wanting to lose

Like many people, I am pretty desperately looking for a job. I'd like to get into teaching full time this year--though it's unlikely for a newly-minted MFA with no formal teaching experience (since it's hard to get the teaching experience without the master's)--so I've been living this last year thinking of experiences here as my last.

My last winter here with all the moronic drivers. My last months with the view out the store's huge picture windows. My last spring concert with the choir. My last near-death icy driving experience(s) on Highway XX. My last year in retail hell.

Now that it's looking increasingly unlikely that I'll get my desired job, I'm letting myself think about the other side.

Some things I wouldn't mind being here for:

• another state fair free admission and a free meal for volunteering at my old church's booth!
• another autumn leaves turning and falling and leaving skeletons behind
• another year with the friends and mentors from my graduate program we've got work to do on the alumni group
• another Christmas concert how I love that little cathedral

Maybe it's okay to think like that, to ignore the whole poverty issue and the looming personal financial crisis and think about nature and people and beauty and how I will lose them.

Meanwhile, I'm working as hard as I can to make sure I don't see these any of these things again, and that makes me a bit sad. I would leave it all in a heartbeat in exchange for a new job. Practicality can be heartless.

The Joy of Retail: 7 memorable moments at my RetailEstablishment

I've worked full time at RetailEstablishment for the last 5 years. I've stayed with it because, frankly, I'm crippled and can't get any better paying, less crazy-making jobs. If I could type and file and lift and carry and such, I don't think I would have lasted this long, but since I can't (and since the government has said, "Screw you," about my disability), I had to stay with retail while getting more hurt and taking out huge loans to get a degree I could use to get a teaching job (in theory).

The following events actually happened at my RetailEstablishment:

• A homeless man ate a customer's food while the customer was at the counter getting some water.
• Someone pooped in an aisle on the second floor.
• A pair of obviously used children's underwear was left at the information desk.
• A man entered the store and began singing, swearing, and eventually screaming at the top of his very healthy lungs like a tornado siren for over a minute in the vestibule.
• A man obviously not in right mind entered the store, threatened customers and employees, and eventually knocked over a huge, heavy display upstairs in rage. There was glass on the display. Luckily, no one was cut.
• A man walked into the men's room, shed his clothes, and laid on the floor.
• A man snuck into the handicapped stall in the ladies' room and peeped under the divider at a customer.

(This list does not include all of the screaming, swearing, threatening repeat offenders caught shoplifting or trying to hustle money from customers.)

I think every United States citizen should have to work a 2 year stint in retail, like the South Korean military or maybe more like the 2 years of service Mormons complete. If this enforced retail experience happened, I'd like to believe that the retail world would be a better place because customers would know how hellish they can make life for retail employees, and they would not want to make the employees' lives more miserable. In gratitude, retail employees would go even more out of their way to serve their customers pleasantly, efficiently, and happily. I believe no one should be allowed to be in management or corporate management without four solid years of this experience. I'm a dreamer, I know.

Norm Feuti is a genius. You should read his Pretending You Care: a Retail Handbook if any of the following apply:

• You work(ed) retail and want to know it's just as crazy elsewhere.
• You are considering working in retail, and you think it sounds like great fun.
  
• You have ever shopped in a retail store where people work.
• You will ever shop in a retail store where people work.
• You've been treated "badly" by a retail employee and want to know what could lead them to do that to you.
• You are in management, and you don't hate your employees and you actually want to make their jobs easier and their lives better, so they can be more efficient and productive and better at their jobs.

The book is hilarious. I hurt myself laughing. More than once. Not only is it full of well-organized lists (such as the kinds of employees you'll work with and the kinds of customers you'll interact with), it's also full of Feuti's syndicated comic strip "Retail." It's spot on. I'd say about 85% of this book is common to every retail establishment in the U.S. I'm glad the other 15% doesn't apply to my store. Who wouldn't want a glamorous life in retail? (For the record, we don't have a rooftop place like Cooper. Sigh.)

Anyone have any of your own stories to share?