"Oh, well this is just irresistible," an older customer says while examining a giant wire brush that looks like something a chimney sweep would use.
The next customer has a small black "x" on the knuckle of his middle finger on his right hand. I don't mention it.
A couple more people mention the distinct cold breeze that is being funneled directly onto the cash register and me. But I'm happy just to have an open garage doorway view of the train tracks and trees.
About once every few hours, there's a crash, whether glass or wood or metal. Most of the time no one's hurt. On windy days it's more like once every hour.
Mr. Wong is on his third trip to the register in an hour. I can't tell if he's more hoarder than landlord or vice versa.
I find myself in a lull in between customers and wonder which of the 9 or 10 cleaning, emailing, article-reading, or stocking things I should do. Too late. A customer is already asking me a question.
I like it. Not sure what I like about it, but I think part of it is that it sets a scene quite well and makes one feel like they are there with you. Also, it's not pretentious at all, and I like that.
ReplyDeleteAh, working the cash register. Something I've spent quite a bit of time doing. It can be a very tough job, mentally.
I've had a million of these moments where I want to write them down or save them or tell people about them, but usually someone interrupts my thought, or when I do write them down I forget where I put the piece of paper or I lose track of the email I send to myself, and when I do find it later, it feels like it's not as good as when it happened.
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, I had to blog live in order for it to feel live.
And yes, being a cashier is a really strange mix of mental challenges and stresses. The biggest one for me is feeling that I'm not maximizing the amount of productive things I could be doing during the lulls - and I mean productive in the sense of listening to albums/music I always wanted to listen to and learn, study for the GRE to go back to school, plan what that all will mean, free-write to do something creative, doodle, make something with my hands, or just letting myself zone out by staring out the door at the trees - not productive in the work sense. Although there is that stress too.
It's a funny thing having an indeterminate amount of time (because you never know when the next customer is coming) to do just about anything you want so long as you stay in one place, while having access to music, internet, reading materials, and random hardware materials. It's at once wonderful and stressful.
Then there's talking with the customers, which gets into a whole other world of the types and variations on people you meet on a consistent basis every day. I might need to work on that for another post.