The Hat Trick (ON HOLD AS OF 2/17/16)

Chapter Sixteen: Bailey

Probably what you all have been waiting for.

Brooke

Sunday was probably the most uneventful day of my entire unexpected adventurous week, unless you count me having a heart to heart with Cass as soon as he and Beck walked into the vestibule that morning. And by “heart to heart” I clearly mean me giving him a piece of my mind for not telling me exactly who Dill was when he too had many chances to out the hockey player.

My mom, the pastor of our small church, wasn’t exactly happy with my behavior that morning; she didn’t know why I was royally chewing Cass out. I had decided to keep that bit of information to myself for the time being until a more opportunistic moment to tell my parents that I met one of my favorite hockey players presented itself. Until then I was “grounded” for using “piratey” language in church. By grounded I mean mom just threatened me with the thought of being grounded, oooh very scary mom, and her version of “piratey” language was just me saying bullshit once to Cass, just once.

Whatever mom, I’ll be Captain Hook for the day. But I needed to get my point across to Cass and to Beck because she knew what the heck was going on that night too. In their defense they defended my honor and they honest to goodness didn’t think that anything would have escalated between Dill and I past that night. Well surprise, surprise he was supposed to be calling me someday to talk? . . . Lord I don’t even know what the heck is going on anymore.

I need to go back to school; crazy things don’t happen at school. The craziest thing that could happen would be my French teacher giving us a “surprise” pop quiz. I just needed to make it to Monday that was my only thought. Which made me sound like a weirdo because who wants Monday to come faster? No one, except me because all I had to do on Monday was go to work and then go to Bio and Math class later that night.

Monday morning proved to me that things in my world were righting themselves once again. It was a bitter cold, rainy morning the weather man said that the highest it would get was a whopping four degrees . . . yay Kansas City bipolar weather.

At the morning meeting that we have right before the store opens my General Manager said that we would get a rush because of the weather, what I wanted to know was who in their right mind decides to go shopping in four degree weather, people who shop at one of the most top leading Outdoorsman stores in America apparently. Everyone and their mother’s, cousin’s uncle twice removed decided to come to their favorite outdoors store and wreck complete havoc on the employees.

January is the most feared month in retail, because all the holidays have passed and really no one wants or needs to buy anything anymore. So, because it’s a Monday in January my department the ‘Footwear’ department was understaffed, not purposefully but because it’s the second week in January and its four degrees outside raining cats and dogs.  But to the people shopping it might have well have been December 24th and the store was closing in an hour, complete anarchy. Days like this happen in the retail world, but rarely so no one not even the managers are prepared for days like this.

It had been just me and my team lead for the first two hours of madness that the store had been opened, she and I were running around like chickens with our heads chopped off we were trying to help and satisfy every customer that came through our department. Another thing that sucked about Retail Land in January was that after a great holiday season we were low on a lot of things that customers needed. Wrong size boots, not the right style, one size eight in the entire system, two size fourteens but no size ten, and the list goes on and on. Eventually customers start to get a little feisty, that’s when you the salesperson wants to punch everyone including yourself in the face.