Saturday, November 16, 2024

Shiny at the Store

Bears in the thrift store's parking lot, excited to be GOING HOME yesterday!
Marz named the bears Abbott (taller, paler) and Costello (littler, dark one). They are to be given baths today.


That's the bike pannier ^ I transport soup in, which Ceci had asked about. I put the soup in ziplock plastic bags.
It's not even 4 p.m., but look at how low the sun is, throwing shadows on a slant.

As I left work, I took this photo, below, to show one of the Super Volunteers, Marc, how the glassware he'd shined (wiping every smudgy glass with a cloth!) glows in the setting sun.
I also like the customer's fashion. Are those Crocs?

BELOW: Earlier, I'd helped Jester (aka, Mr Mushroom or Grateful-J) price artificial Xmas trees ($25–$40). You can see some in the mirror, behind us.
Jester is assistant manager now. He is truly an ally in kaizen--continuous improvement, often slow and small. It adds up big time! Staff morale is way up too.

Below is the housewares improvement I'm most proud of:
I stood the big glass plates in racks.
They'd always been stacked flat in piles before. If you wanted to look at them, you had to sit on the ground and unstack them. Which almost no one did, of course.

     Genius, huh?
________________

I hadn't mentioned because it didn't affect me, but the guy who worked in Housewares for a short time before me was fired for  stealing.
Turns out it wasn't just flagrant theft though. Yesterday I found a stash of vintage goods he'd priced low and hid away with his name on them.
I repriced the dishware and set it on the vintage shelf:

I set aside the record albums he'd priced 99¢, to look up later. It included what looked like a first? release of the Beatles' White Album, which sells for hundreds of dollars.

I'd mentioned a coworker pricing undies way cheap for me. Everyone at work does that for one another, and I think it's good and fair--it helps make up for earning minimum wage.
(Full disclosure: when Big Boss rehired me, I got a 50¢ raise above min. wage. (I'd asked for a dollar, but that was a bridge too far.)

Pricing low to buy and re-sell is different. It harms the store to drain off all the cool stuff like that.
_____________________

I'm not feeling great today--not sure why. My first week of working four shifts again? It's fun but physically tiring work.
Or it it emotional tiredness?
Post-election slump?

The Big Picture [religious/philosophical] thought system I like best/believe in most is Physics. (Physics for lay people, anyway--as explained by popularizers like Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Brian Cox.)

This perspective––"You are here"––is cheering and helpful to me:
Chill out!

____________________

Here's Brian Cox being chill ("gloomy but smiley") about the End of the World, with Philmona Cunk (comedian Diane Morgan).
They are so good together, starting at minute 1:22


Luckily I have nothing much to do this weekend, so I can chill out. I'm going to go for a walk around the lake now. It's sunny and cold---brisk! Nice.

Wishing you all well! XO

14 comments:

  1. Looking more like a thrift store than a garage sale..a definite improvement!

    You will be tired and out of sorts with a change in routine..and you are working physically harder than you have been for a while. Plus the time of year...and everything else that has been going on.

    A weekend walk out in the sunshine sounds perfect

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    1. Thanks, GZ, it really is looking better---customers even comment! (I shouldn't be so hard on the people before me though--I did inherit SOME systems...)

      You are right, a change in routine and seasons and political outlook is tiring!
      GOing for that walk NOW. :)

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  2. abbott and costello look to be happy to be going home not only by bicycle but also with a fanastic toy person. pricing low to sell to one's self is not good thrift store behaviour.
    kirsten

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  3. Shiny sparkly objects, clean and cared for can only improve the mood- The plates look great in racks, brilliant! I LOVE the bear duet- they absolutely belong in your home. There will be a welcome home party I am sure, following the bath? A grand event? Little wonder that you feel less than 100%- you have been busy, biking, working, soup making, dealing with humans and of course, the GD election...The good times are NOW, after january things are promised to slide at a rapid jagged painful rate. Today is good....

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    1. You’re right—now is the sweet spot. I will rest and restore today and get back to it…
      ✨ sparkles ✨ abound!

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  4. Great bears! I have several that joined us as rescues from the library's children's room 30 some years ago, and the amount of crud that came out in the wash was astounding. Thank you for the picture of your bike cargo set up - carrying soup in ziplocks sounds like true optimism, but clearly it is working for you! We had a measurable amount of rain for the first time since mid-September and the outside world was sparkling like your glassware display, very inspiring.

    Cheers, Ceci

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    1. Bears get loved up and dirty, for sure! These two look so much fresher and fluffed up now.

      Glad you had rain (where are you again?) we’ve had a little—I hope we’ll have a normal snowy winter—it was brown all last winter!

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  5. When the little Peninsula library has a book donated that will sell well on EBay, they sell it. Does your thrift do that?

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    1. Hi, Joanne – –I did that when I first started but quickly stopped: partly because it takes more time (and storage space)than it’s worth, and partly because the intention is to serve the community. I decided to just mark certain books up and put them in the glass display case, and see if they sell. They almost always do.

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    2. Ditto vintage items—
      Even though the neighborhood is poor, collectors and resellers and people who like cool old stuff definitely hit us up, so we can charge somewhat reasonable prices for valuable vintage.
      Less than we get on eBay but again it stays in the community, mostly, and it makes for a more fun store.
      Goodwill has their own online store, you may know, so you never see the fun stuff on their sales floor anymore.

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  6. I appreciate how much you appreciate your coworkers and their efforts. I love me some Kaizen. And... who steals from their employer... especially when it's a freakin' thrift shop?!
    Nice bike pannier!

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    1. Right? That guy was a jerk—and he was studying business in college! (Well… stealing from the poor…)
      The pannier is snazzy—waterproof!

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  7. Love the Cunk/Cox interview. Surprised that (even) Cox seemed a bit surprised by her questions. So few people really flow with her.

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