Multiply 365 Day 227 - Who needs two?

So a strange question was asked of me at work yesterday. While I was doing my thing, which I can't even recall at this time, Ed asked me if I had any plans for Thursday. I thought about it for a second, then said that Thursday is usually my volleyball night but that is all. I asked why, and Ed said he was just curious and I said if he had something in mind I could always blow off volleyball, thinking that he may be asking me to work, but he left the issue drop, so so did I.

Today I get into work and it starts with Sammy and I doing what we always do, dominating. We get some serious work done on the coolers before the grocery order arrives at 8:30. Little did I know that Shane (Sammy's son) was also scheduled to work today from 9-5, so now I have three people. I send Shane down to the other store to help out with their orders and stocking their coolers, since they were in pretty sad shape when I was down there on Tuesday. We start putting the grocery order away and I end up walking through a Pepsi order with the rep (another 230 cases coming tomorrow), then I make it back upstairs and Sammy is called to do a change run for the store. So I am just starting to work on the grocery order when the delivery guy shows up, apparently we had another 5 totes of product burined on his truck that he found after dropping off the order at Universal (I knew we had some stuff missing, but just assumed they forgot to load it), and those totes were mostly candy, a section of the store we had finished already, so now I am back tracking but I managed to get those put away and start working again on the rest of the order when Sammy comes back. Between he and I we had the rest of the order put away by noon maybe. So I take the invoices downstairs and give Ed his copy and put a copy on my desk to be broken down and Ed has just hired another person, I now have four people on my crtew at the same time. And Sammy and I are so far ahead at this time that I really don't need 4 people, so I have the new guy tagging items in the basement, since it is hard to train someone when most everything is already done.

I end up back in the office, I break down a few invoices and work on a couple of things and Dee asks me to look up gold testing equipment for this pawn shop venture Ed is thinking about starting. She says she looked online last night but couldn't find anything, I think I found stuff in about 30 seconds. I would like to say that I did something miraculous, but all I did was type gold testing equipment into a Google search bar and clicked on the first link. I am the one eyed man in the land of the blind at this point. It was a retailer that sells that time of equipment to jewelry stores and pawn shops. I didn't bother doing any comparison shopping buy checking out three or four different links, I just printed the page and said here is roughly what you want and what you can expect to pay.

So I leave the office, I am helping the new guy out with some projects he has been given and also just doing a quick walk through of the store with him, showing him where most things are kept. Not that I expect that knowledge to stick, that just comes with repetition, but it doesn't hurt to at least give the grand tour of the place.

I make it back to the office and Dee is the only one there, Ed is putting some stuff he ordered on the floor and has enlisted Shane in his project, so I am just working on invoices and I get to regale Dee with the story of the firing of Curtis, incluidng my telling him off the day before he was fired and hanging up on him when he called the Sunday after and started brining it up again and she just starts laughing and asks why i didn't tell her this sooner. Of course then I had to add the celebratory breakfast sundae that I had the following Saturday. I think she was highly amused, given she was laughing about it.

Eventually Ed makes it back down to the office and again he asks me if I have any plans for Thursday, I am thinking I might be involved in one of those Groundhog Day moments, but then he says he has two tickets to the Steelers game THursday night. It is just an exhibition game, but apparently the seats he has are on the 50 yard line, and I haven't been to Heinz Field yet, my last Steelers game was at Three Rivers Stadium many moons ago, so I go ahead and take him up on his offer.

It was also payday today, so after work I decided that I would take in a WalMart run. Unlike many people that share my political affiliation (Democrat for those not in the know) I like WalMart. I am not one of those people that bemoans what the employees are paid (their pay rate is pretty much on par with other stores doing retail, like K Mart and Target) and when I feel the need to buy shit, I might as well make it the cheapest shit possible. I am not made of money, so if I can buy a loaf of bread for $1 versus paying $1.69 somewhere else, guess what? I am going to pay the dollar. Simple as that. I am not asking them to perform a back alley abortion on the cheap versus visiting a licensed and trained medical practitioner, I am just asking for a loaf of bread. And they provide it at the best cost.

What I was looking for though was a pair of shoes. The last pair I bought (at Target) didn't even last two months and already they are falling apart and worse, they are aggravating an already painful foot condition. Not only do they do nothing for the pain in the heel of my foot, the heel is one of the parts of the shoe that is already cracking and giving way, making walking in them even more painful. If I could, I would walk barefoot at work, it would hurt less, that is how bad these shoes turned out to be. So I had a reason for my trip, I figure if these shoes suck too, at least they suck for less money than the last ones did. But the ting about Walmart is they have so many things I don't need, but then I se the price and I convince myself that, well maybe I do need them after all. So I find two pair of shorts, $7 a piece, one denim and one digital camo. Sold!!!! Two t-shirts, one a cool Venom (Spiderman villian for those non comic book geeks out there) tee and another that simply says "Sarcasm is a body's natural defense against stupid." $7.50 each. Sold!!!! The loaf of bread I talked about earlier, $1. Sold!!!! 8 pack of Reese Peanut Butter Cups, $1. Sold!!!!! The cheapie shoes I bought ended up being a pair of Starters on sale for $15. Sold!!!!! One subject notebooks, .20 a piece. Sold times 5!!!!!! It took a lot of willpower not to come out with handfuls of stuff and limit myself to 4 bags.

So now I sit here, unpacking bags and drinking RC Cola (2 liter bottle, $1) and waiting for my peanut butter cups to get cold in the fridge as a nice dessert to cap the day. And tomorrow is football. What can I say, life is good.