”Just a typical day in the office”
Ourrighty. This one I’m gonna do in English, since I apparently have some issues speaking in Finnish today (and I just miss writing in English!).
But yeah, this one is about my typical work day. My work schedule is always from 3p till 11p. I have one break that’s either from 5-6 or 6-7: with Krista we take turns who can have the later break (in other words, the better one), but when Dorthy is one duty, I’ll always have the later one, when she goes home from 4.30-6.
Our day starts by going to punch in in a pull barn (no idea where the name comes from) and then we head to the office to collect our cash bags and get post and just chit chat with the lovely ladies there. They always have candy there, so it’s also a good way to get some snacks (my newest love are the Skittles after Reese’s cups). 😉 Then we go to the General Store and open up the locks and put the rope up and the sign stating ”Please, do not enter. Opening soon.” before the bridge that leads to the stand and the snack bar. We open up the windows (they weigh a lot) and decide who wants to go inside and outside. Inside job is to put the cash into the register, turn on the walkie talkie, wipe the counters and put all the racks and show cases to the front. On the other hand, the outside job consists of putting all the clothes on the hangers and takes some time, since there are a lot of them.
Then we tidy up the place as we please and talk to customers, if they wander around before they can go in. At 3.30 Jill or Zach calls us down from the bridge that can we can take down the rope and let the customers go. Then we just greet everybody and count all the light ups for the night, serving customers when they need more sizes, shirts, cups etc. It’s nice that the customers actually talk to you and don’t just freak out, when somebody asks do they need help or anything. Not like in Finland definitely! People mostly just ask about the shirts, about the material, and then talk about weather and yada yada. Moreover, the Finland issue has been raised, when people definitely notice that we’re not from Wisconsin (probably think we’re from Ukraine or smth..) and they just ask what have we liked about the States and are we studying here or something similar. Pretty nice actually! One thing though bugs me that I don’t always get the jokes or hear what people say correctly, so I am left confused more than once a day. 😀
During the show and throughtout the intermission as well it’s pretty slow, so you basically shit chat, or read, or talk with workers if they go by the store. If you’ve had a long night the day before, this is mostly the longest time, if you can’t think of anything to do. After the walk out and a couple of sales, you put the rope back on and get ready for the tonight show. The same routine goes on, until the tonight show’s walk in is done, when we do all the rose vendor boxes. Every night show there are approx. 1-6 people (ticket sellers) vending all the light ups things we have in store. The amount of the ones needed depends on the size of the crowd, so eg. on busy days such as Saturday we might have six people vending. They all have a tray full of light wands, flasher flowers, roses, pink hair clips, bracelets, fiber wands, foam swords, spinners and head bands (which we luckily sold out today, yay! they were so annoying). They sell those during the intermission and after that they count all their money and stuff and we do our own reports and collect the money and give it to Tom when he comes on his golf cart. I love doing the final master report, so I count that and Krista gets everyhting to their original places.
Thereafter, we prepare for the final walk out. When the show has broken, one of the performers, Dieter Tasso, who’s originally from Germany and one of the funniest men I’ve met, comes to sell his T-shirts and entertain the crowd by our store. That’s a busy time for us too selling-wise. When the crowd has ceased, we start to take in all the shirts, bag the money, count the change and print the total reports from the cash register and the credit card device. The windows are closed as well as the doors and we go and punch out. We mostly get off between 22.40-23p, so we’re pretty much one of the last people to leave after the exitors and stage managers. After that it’s mostly party time, so we try to be hasty when closing!
But that’s pretty much my day at the office. Of course there is some other stuff as well, but you get the general picture from this explanation. Whew, lots of text, but now it’s time for me to turn in. Tomorrow I gotta get to the bank to draw out my pay check! ;)
XOXO,
Minna