For Your Needs Away From Home

Many people ask me if I like Michael's. I think my tendency to ramble will take over if I stay with essay form so here's a list of what I like and don't about working at Michael's.

My department is the following things: silk flowers, yarn, wedding, Easter eggs, embroidery, latch hook, baskets, candles, silk hanging baskets, St. Patrick's Day, foam cut-out crafts, and I'm still supposed to keep the leftover Valentine's Day stuff clean on the clearance rack.

Don'ts

• Avoiding management. I don't like this for two reasons a) because I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing and I like to know what I'm supposed to be doing and b) I'm supposed to become a manager -- and I can't avoid myself.
• Hours. I work from mid-afternoon til nine usually. Which is kind of a pain because I have to miss choir practice and singing at the nursing home, and I like those things a lot.
• Petty corporate rules -- like the "cashier compliance log." Everything at Michael's come from Irving, TX. Occasionally, when I get to work my time card is missing. It's in a binder where my mistakes are pointed out to me in no uncertain terms. I have to sign the form (not initial it and not date it) and then I'm allowed to sign in for my shift. This may be a fine system but I got in trouble for not circling the phone number (when I wrote in down by hand) on a check. This was my first day on the register and that was my only problem.
• The fake pollen on the silk flowers generates very real sneezes
• "I'm looking for a round container, you hang it on the wall and it's in blue packaging. I need to know where that is. Now." People get angry when I don't know where stuff is.

Do's

• Wearing an apron. The novelty has worn off a bit, but I still like the fact that I'm instantly identified as a part of something. I'm expected to know things and be polite and professional. In the orientation for the first job I ever had they made us all take turns walking around the room wearing a cape. Just to get the idea that being at work is acting. You have to act interested and act like the right kind of employee. An apron is kind of the same thing -- it helps me take a job that I mostly don't like and reminds me to do right.
• Wrapping things in paper at the checkout counter. I think it's neat that some lowly cashier (me) gets to "permanently" determine how that item (frame, mug, vase, etc.) will be protected. Whenever I buy something that has been wrapped, I always try to re-wrap it the way it was wrapped originally. Especially if it's a gift. It's just nice to keep the folds in the same place.
• Price tag gun. 'nuf said.
• Helping people, and hearing their stories. I can't remember anything in particular but the next point is a pretty standard example.
• The nutty people that I meet. I met a lady with a 15 foot tree that she decorates for each season in Victorian style. I helped her pick out the Easter eggs she would use this year.

I am not getting as many hours as I want and I'm not so sure they are actually going to make me the manager they said they were -- there's a sign out front saying that they are hiring another one! But I'm working really hard at being cheerful and Mrs. Paul (kirker) has offered me some part time work as sort of a personal assistant as she runs the, several, family businesses. I will probalby learn payroll, and I'm going to learn to paint end o' this week. She would only probably want me about two days per week, but I think that could be really fun and I know it'll be really helpful.