how to be a good customer

rule 1: when you walk into the store and an employee says "hi! how are you?". Do not respond by throwing your hands up and practically yelling that you are "just looking" without so much as a 'hello' in return. despite what you may think, we are people too and are just trying to be friendly and helpful. if you don't like it, then go pound sand. heh.

rule 2: when the store is crowded, have some courtesy. yes, we know there is a wait and yes, we are trying very hard to work as quickly as possible. please do not start waving at us and asking us questions as we help another patron. it will just slow us down.

rule 3: along the same lines as number two, should you feel the need to flag us down, and we come over to you, we assume that you already know what you want. this is NOT the time to begin your decision making process. if you have a question, fine, ask away. this is what i'm here for. but when i walk over there and you start to confer with your companion, you had better be talking about me and my dashing good looks, dapper clothing, or whether or not that's a candy bar in my pocket...not asking what kind of ice cream your friend wants.

rule 4: please read the signs. we don't make them because we couldn't think of anything else to do with the scissors. I would estimate that 75% of all questions I get could be answered by just looking aroung. Now I admit, it's a lot to take in and if it's not busy, I do my best to make your shopping trip as efficient as possible so you don't have to look for the answers. However, if you start waving at me from the back of the crowd of people to ask me "how much is all this stuff?" when all you had to do was look 14 inches above my left shoulder, I'm going to be a bit perturbed.

what a weekend

travels this weekend took me to chambana for some good old fashioned drunken debauchery. for those of you who got drunk-texted, i do apologize. hawkins sends postcards, i send drunk sms's. on saturday, we headed out to lunch. Afterwards, I decided I wanted some new illini gear and headed towards Follet's.

The crew quickly put the kabosh on that idea and decided we should go to TIS instead. Seeing as how it was a good 2 blocks to TIS (and crosswalks! two of them!!), it was decided that we should rest a bit before continuing on our 3 hour tour. So the skipper (timmy), gilligan (myself), the professor (marissa), and mary-ann (zack), washed ashore on the irish isle of murphy. For a mere $7, a local, formerly from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin gave us a hearty welcome. The skipper decided we were not feeling quite as welcome as we should, so we ordered another welcoming committee...and another...and another...and another. By this time, I was feeling so welcome, i smacked mary-ann's ass in the bathroom. i started laughing so hard, i couldn't hit the cigarette butt in the urinal to save my life.

Hit the fast forward button through some very ugly bowling, a cheeseburger battle, a drunken stumble to the inn, more beers at the inn, and back home to tim and holly's. I apologize for having to use the remote but my Tivo has a glitch and didn't record all of the events. The one thing my Tivo did record was a phone call that night after dinner. It was from the store. It was mega-busy that day and we're almost out of apples, my cook is sick, and there are no supplies around to make more. I drunk dial my produce guy and fortunately, he has a everything i need waiting for me to pick up. I decide that I will be returning early...very early.

4:45 on sunday came awfully early. I get up to the store with apples in hand by 8am and am working on my first batch. Of all the days for it to happen, my mercury thermometer blows up in my batch of candy apples. Rarely do I get freaked out about getting sick, but today was an exception. For some reason, I had it stuck in my head that mercury poisoning is horrendous and can kill you pretty easily. I call everyone (including the professor) trying to determine if breathing in mercury vapor should put me in a hospital. It turns out that it's not nearly as bad as I had thought and that you need almost a milliliter for it to overload your kidneys.

I throw out those apples and start on round two. I get about half way through round two and Captain Hangover starts firing on the S.S. Minnow. The Minnow doesn't put up much of a fight and quickly succumbs. Cooking candy coating with a hangover and on very little sleep is not my idea of a vacation day. Ah well, such is life.