You can learn quite a bit from retail training manuals.

I stared at them all day today. An eight hour marathon of staring at white pages with black letters in a stark white, quiet, and quite chilly training room. After a while, you're not really reading anything. The book starts rambling on about Policy and Procedure for euthanizing a twelve cent goldfish, and the mind starts to wander, as you may well imagine.

Today my mind started to wander off to my boyfriend. I haven't really gotten personal in this blog as I have in others. This time, however, I am making an exception. Breaking down the wall, I think is what they call it. Anyway, when my brain couldn't stand thinking about just how to go about euthanizing a goldfish for one second longer, it rested on Mike. We've been together just over four years. Recently, we've encountered some problems in our relationship. I'll spare you the gory details (you're welcome). I'll just say that these issues have gotten fairly serious. Serious enough, today at least, to leave tear stains on the corporate logo on the front of my work binder. Something tells me that wasn't the first time that ever happened. I digress.

I sat there staring at this ridiculous training manual, and I started to think about the good stuff in our relationship. The really good stuff. I had never been camping before, and he decided to take me. He racked up a 300 dollar credit card debt for that little endeavor. The first night at camp we had this knock down, drag out fight. I ended up screaming, "Go fuck yourself" and proceeded to march off into the darkness, and well off the beaten path. That man managed to forget that I had just hurled an obscenity at him that pretty much took a giant dump on the whole sweet thing he was trying to do for me. He came after me so I wouldn't get lost. He held me close and told me not to be afraid of the dark and the spiders.

Somewhere around the section in the manual on what to do in case of a freak hamster attack, I got to thinking about the time that he drove from Georgia to Pennsylvania to rescue me from my mother's house. I had just dropped out of college, and I didn't have a car or money or even a driver's license. He loaded my stuff into his Jeep and off we went. I couldn't drive, so he did. We stopped about every 15 minutes or so toward the end of South Carolina so that he could sleep. He drove both ways all by himself just to get me here...just to get me close.

It went on like that all afternoon. Mindless policy after mindless policy in those books, and I couldn't tell you the specifics if my life depended on it. I didn't learn a damned thing about managing a pet store. I did, however, learn what I need to do now. Which is exactly why when I came home tonight, I got on the phone with my insurance provider (the contact information conveniently found in the training manuals), and got ahold of a couple's therapist.

I'm not giving up on us like I gave up on those ridiculous manuals.

I'm convinced that the same companies who make sex toys also make cat and dog products. They just add or remove some bells and catnip, and it's really all the same thing.

We carry these things called "cat teasers." They're a group of feathers on the end of this long plastic stick which strikingly resembles a flogger (don't ask me how I know that). The only difference between the stuff you see in Spencers and the stuff we sell are the bells. It's all in the bells.

We also carry a dog shedding brush called, I shit you not, "The Furminator." I wish I could post pictures. The handle that's attatched to the shedding tool is enough to make Freud blush. And it's called "The Furminator." It also costs around fifty dollars. You know it has to do more than brush the dog for fifty dollars.

The best, however, are the stickers attatched to the plush squeaky toys. They have little messages on them that say things like: "Bite Me, I Squeak and Rattle" or, my personal favorite: "Hug Me, Squeeze Me, Tug Me." I plaster them all over my shirt like a nine year old. There's nothing quite like walking into a convenience store with a sticker that says: "Squeeze Me, I Squeak!" stuck to your breast.

I guess all of this sexy merchandise gets our customers in the mood for love. I saw people fucking in a van on my way out to my car this evening. The store was closed, and we were all a little freaked out that there was a big scary van idling in the parking lot. We did the appropriate exit strategy so that no one was leaving unattended. The van was parked very close to my car, so I looked inside. I saw a large, naked leg pop out from the back. It was disturbing on so many different levels.

Who says working retail is a boring job?

Work was fairly uneventful today, especially for a Sunday. Most Sundays are genuinely a religious experience. I hear "God bless" at the end of most conversations. The south is truly like a different planet. The majority of people down here love God, and they'll be damned if you don't love God as well by the time they get through talking to you. Once I was helping a woman who was fostering a wild baby bunny. She really snuck up on me with the religious knightstick. I didn't see it coming until she smashed me with it.

Woman: "I'm afraid to let it go. It's so small."

Me: "Well, really, it's time. At this stage in their development, they've left the nest. I know he seems small, but that's nature. The strong, smart ones survive. The weak, slow ones don't. It's sad, but it's the order of things. You should be proud of yourself for getting him this far, really."

Woman: *takes me by the forearm* "You know, Kate, Jesus loves you."

Me: "Ummm....thank you?"

Woman: "He does. He loves you so much, and He takes care of all living things."

Me: "Oh, look at the time! My co-worker is probably livid with me for leaving her alone on such a busy shift. If you need anything else, you just let us know! Have a super day!"

Woman: "Thank you, dear. God bless!"

Apparently I had offended her by making even the vaguest reference to evolution.

We also find bible tracts around the store occasionally. It's always on Sunday. They're not the cheery, happy, fuzzy bible tracts, either. No, they are the ones that threaten your very soul if you don't completely surrender your money, children, home, and brain to "The Church." That's always what got me more than anything. "The Church." What fucking church?? There's only one? It's like when people make reference to going out to "The Club." Which bloody club? At any rate, we find these tasty religious tidbits littered on the shelves and mixed in with the educational pamphlets about training classes for dogs. It's annoying because, A. Customers think we promote that garbage, and B. We have to clean it up. I think if there is a God, the one thing that would piss him off the most would be some poor schmuck just trying to make ends meet having to clean up after one of His so-called followers.

I digress.

I work with the cool manager again tomorrow. There should be stories. At least, I hope so.

I went to my "home store" to pick up my paycheck today. It was my first paycheck that included my pay increase. I literally hopped up and down when I saw just how much it is. When I was there, I talked to my manager about keeping the Grandmother on in Specialty. The guilt had finally gotten to me. She okay'd all of my scheduling requests. End guilt. I still have to keep an eye on the Grandmother, however. Perhaps I can change her for the better.

For the last week, I've been in management training at a different store location. It's proving fairly useless. They sit me in front of workbooks with cheery looking, colorful, alltogether depressing logos on the front, and I read them. Then I complete quizzes corresponding to the text I've read. Lather, rinse, repeat. I've spoken to the person who is supposed to be in charge of my training, oh, probably 4 times. Our conversations go a little something like this:

Me: I'd really like to shadow you or something to learn how to run the front end. I feel like I'm going to be completely unprepared when I'm actually management.

Guy in charge: Everyone is unprepared when they start. Just do as much as you can in the books and we'll go from there.

Me: Go where?

Guy in charge: Next week I'll have you learn some stuff. Right now I'm kind of busy. *wanders away stage left leaving me to stare at his pronounced bald spot*

Luckily, there is one very cool manager who has kind of taken me under his wing. Well, really, I've sort of pestered him so much that he shows me stuff just to get me to shut the hell up. I had a lot of fun working with him last night, and probably learned more in one shift than I had all week just staring at the asonine workbooks.

In general, the people at the training store are very nice, including the guy who's supposed to be training me, despite what I said. All of them are more or less veterans of the company, so (when I get to actually work), I'm working with the best. There are, however, a few exceptions. One of these exceptions works in the specialty department (fish, bird, reptile, small animal). She's a teenager, and I believe this is her first job. She's...perky. Very perky. To the point of nausea. She talks about her "newborns" non-stop. Her newborns being 11 baby rats. She claimed that she had to have a lighter workload this week coming up because, get ready, she had to be home to socialize her rats. You should have seen the look of relief on her face when the scheduling manager told her she was only working four days. Said employee also likes to talk about her "learning disability." She calls in numberplexia. I'm fairly certain she made it up right there on the spot. It took every ounce of strength that I had not laugh.

I'll update more on Sunday after my shift. I always have stories on Sunday. People come in after church with a sense of entitlement that needs to be hauled with an eighteen wheeler.

Where to begin?

I guess I'll start by saying that I think a retail pet store took my soul today.

No shit, no joke. I feel like they took it. I was sitting there talking to my boss, and I could feel it getting sucked out of me. It wasn't like she, specifically, was taking it. She's a nice woman, and I don't think she's the soul-stealing type. No, I think it was the ghost, demon, or whatever thing floating around that embodies retail. The invisible, hideous thing sucked it out of my navel and, if I'm not mistaken, disappeared into the pink OSHA poster hanging on the wall. The one that tells you where you're supposed to go if you fall off of the forklift or a large can of dog food brains you.

My Manager: "So, Kate, how's your first week as Pet Care Manager been treating you?"
Kate (me): "I like it, I really do. It's nice to have a challenge."
MM: "What do you think of the associates?"
K: "I'm surprised that I really like them all. I'm not the kind of person who loves everybody."
MM: "How about Terri?" (names have been changed)
K: "She...likes to complain. She mentioned not wanting to be in the department. To a customer. I think she'd much rather be on register, from what she's said. I really don't quite know how to handle it. I can deal with anything except someone not wanting to be here. That, I don't know what to do with."

This is where it all goes downhill, in case you didn't see it coming.

MM: "I'll move her to register. I'll make sure to watch her very carefully. She won't be able to handle it. She'll be gone in a month."
K: "Sounds good to me."

Sounds good to me?!?!?!

It was at that moment that my soul was stolen out of my body. See, before this promotion to Pet Care Manager, I was the person who didn't want to be there. I loudly, boldly, stupidly proclaimed this to anyone who would listen (well, maybe not the customers). I took long breaks, I did things half-assed, I made fun of customers. I wore a bandanna and too much makeup and a necklace with little tiny handcuffs...above the virgin Mary necklace. I was the typical bad employee that's half well trained so she gets to stay. Then, of all things, I got promoted (think Peter Gibbons). I wear the nice button down manager's shirt and the nice khaki pants and the nice conservative makeup. And today, officially, my soul was taken away.

The woman that will soon lose her job is a 54 year old grandmother.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls...I got a grandmother semi-fired today. Which is why my soul is gone. Such is life, I guess. I hope the retail demon isn't using it for a beer cozy or anything.