Hammered!

7:12 am - Sunday - 54º F, humidity 59%, wind 4 mph out of the east southeast with partly cloudy skies.....chance of rain today....forecast high is 76º F.

Okay, so maybe I jinxed Saturday by writing how 'un' busy Friday was......when will I ever learn not to say everything I think out loud???  Saturday was the exact opposite of Friday!  Those who were fortunate enough to work the 'OPEN' shift missed most of the busy part of the day....those of us who worked the 'MID', or 'CLOSE' shift got hammered by the crowds.  From the time I clocked in at 1:30 pm until things began to slow down around 7 pm it was crazy!  At one point we did not have a single break in people buying ice cream for over two hours.......I worked as cashier for most of the shift, and I think I was processing a customer at the cash register every 30 seconds for most of that time period.

As I have written previously, I would say 99.9% of the people we serve food to at the 'Fountain' are happy, smiling folks.   Saturday that did not hold true.   It seemed as if every other person was unhappy about something......I think crowded conditions bring out the worst in vacationers, and I totally get that dynamic.  If you are still in the workaday world with school age children and you want to visit most national parks you will be doing that in the summertime when everyone else is doing the same.  Being retired we can visit national parks outside of the summer season and avoid the worst of the crowds.  Sometimes I have to remind myself of what it was like taking vacations in the summer time when everyone in the world was doing the same.  Nonetheless, that does not excuse the behavior of many of our customers on Saturday.  On more than one occasion fellow workers had to take 5 minute breaks to cool down before they said something to a customer they would regret.....the rudeness and lack of consideration on the part of a significant number of our customers Saturday was startling.  But, that is the lot of the seasonal worker......you often are treated to seeing the best in human behavior, but you are also likely to see the worst as things get more and more crowded.  TLE and I saw this at TVC over the past 3+ summers.  All you can do is, with a smile, process the unhappy customer as quickly as possible to get to the next happy customer.  Sometimes the unhappy, rude ones come in droves as they did Saturday.  The reward is that eventually the crowds dissipate, and your regular evening customers return after a day of site seeing to buy some ice cream and share, with wonder, the things they have seen that day......sometimes they have pictures on their phones they have taken that they want you to see.  This brings a smile back to my face.

I spent over 6 of my 7.5 hour shift working as a cashier again.....this time under extremely hectic conditions.  I was proud of how well I handled the pressure and only made a couple of mistakes......one was particularly galling.  A lady presented me with a gift card to pay for her purchases.....I swiped the card as I always do.....waited for the receipt to print, which it did....then handed the 'receipt' and card back to her.  As she put the card and receipt in her purse I turned back to the monitor to see a message.....it took a little bit for me to read the message.....it said there was not enough credit on the card to pay for her paltry $4.50 purchase.....I turned back to advise her, and ask for another form of payment, and found she had vanished like a 'fart in the wind'.  Yup, she scammed me.....doh!  I wonder how many other cashiers she has 'gotten over on' this week.

At last 8:30 pm arrived, and we displayed our ' SORRY WE'RE CLOSED' sign, then got busy cleaning up our work area.....on this day it was Nancy and I.....Nancy is the most thorough cleaner with whom I have ever worked.....I'm pretty picky, but she puts me to shame.  Actually Nancy makes me raise my cleaning game to a new level.....:-)  My comments are not intended as a criticism of Nancy.....I totally appreciate her cleaning ethic, and her efforts do cause me to work a little harder at my cleaning efforts.

By 9 pm we had 95% of the cleaning done, so I excused myself to go 'count down' my cash drawer.  Now that I'm doing this on a daily basis it gets easier and easier.  Within 10 minutes I had my drawer counted down to the required $300, and put the rest of the cash in the bag holding all my credit card receipts to be picked up later.  About 15 minutes later TLE joined me and 'counted down' her drawer in a similar amount of time.

So, now it's on to Sunday (our Friday)......what will the crowds be like Sunday?  We'll see!  By the way, if you wish to subscribe to our blog you will find a list of our 'FOLLOWERS' in the right hand column.....just click on the 'FOLLOW' button and you will be 'subscribed'!  We would love to see that number get up to over 150!

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