I came in last Saturday about a half hour before we open. The line stretched from our 13th St. door around to Folsom and then halfway down Folsom to 14th, all seniors. It was starting to rain. I felt terrible for them. I started to dread my shift even more. This will be awful, I thought.
But then I realized that the seniors on line didn’t feel that way at all. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t a party. But they weren’t down. They planned ahead. They had rain gear. They had umbrellas and a very smart co-worker had already bought every umbrella Target had last week so we could hand more out to line-waiters who didn’t have them.
When people started getting into the store, even those who had waited an hour, they were almost all appreciative and friendlier than the average apocalypse shopper. Even the crabby ones has some personality to their crabbiness, not just generic entitlement or using retail workers as targets for their own anxieties and fears. More like, “Twenty years ago a worker here did X so I am going to explain to you – as I have to every worker for the last twenty years – how I want this done.” They got a right to that.
Read the rest at Gordon "Zola" Edgar's blog
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