What happened while I was not working yesterday

"We missed you! Yesterday was miserable."

Aw, I was missed at work. That's absolutely fabulous.

Unfortunately, my joy at being told how appreciated I am only lasted as long as it took me to clock in and head to my desk. Once in my personal space, I quickly became irritated.

Raspy, who worked the desk for one day, took it upon herself to change my desk around, starting with adjusting and arranging the cord of the phone so she could stick it on the left side of the desk. Raspy is right handed, like myself. So I asked her why she had moved my phone to the other side of the desk.

She said, "Oh, it's easier for customers to use the phone on the left side."

The lines of my phone can not be tied up while customers chat on it. When people need to use the phone, they are given the phones with long extension cords from behind the counter. I can not do my job if I can not answer phones. And now I know that at some point yesterday she let some random, germ infested person use my phone and probably ignored some calls in the process. This was very irritating by itself.

But then I noticed that she took down all of my signs.

"You are under surveillance." 

"Shoplifters will be prosecuted."

"Supervise your children."

"Please Present Sales Receipt."

And my personal favorite, "Unattended children will be given espresso and a free puppy."

She took all of them down, and the one about the espresso and puppy was actually my personal property that was a gift to me from Dizzy last year. I could maybe forgive the phone thing. And I don't really care about most of those signs. But my personal gift? And then she had no idea where she put it when I asked about it this morning. It took her an hour to dig it up.

Aside from that, she took some of the toys out of the toy box behind my desk and stuck them in the Lost and Found under my desk. Those toys were not lost and found. Those toys are the personal property of the store for children to play with while they are here. It keeps them from playing with expensive things like drum sets and guitars.

When I asked why the toys were in the lost and found, she said, "Oh, they were the small ones I took out of the toy box. I was afraid someone might stick them in their mouths and choke, so I took them away."

Small toys? These toys, while not the size of the stuffed animals and various noisemakers in the box, are too big to go easily in my mouth, and could not possibly fit into the mouth of a child young enough to try it. If she was worried about choking hazards then it would have been much more intelligent of her to remove the LEGOS from the toy box because those are small enough for anyone to swallow.

But even the LEGOS are a moot point because toddlers and babies small enough to want to put toys in their mouths are always supervised by their parents while they play with the toys. No parent is going to walk into a store and just leave their baby at a box of toys unattended, especially when it's made quite clear that the receptionist is not responsible for watching them. Even if I was willing and able to watch their kids, no parent is going to trust a stranger with their baby. 

There was no point in her doing that except to irritate the hell out of me because I had to turn around and dig all of the toys up out of the Lost and Found and put them back in the toy box. And those toys don't even have removable parts. Does she really expect a kid to be able to pick up a dinosaur eight inches long and shove the whole thing in his/her mouth? Unless this kid has excellent gag control and is a master of deep throating, (highly unlikely in a toddler) I can't imagine how she thought the dinosaur was a choking hazard. It's bigger than my hand and is one connected piece of rubber. 

I honestly think she was bored out of her mind yesterday and just decided to do busy work to help pass the time. But rather than cut up old posters for scratch paper, or making new signs for the different departments that have signs that are starting to look wrinkled and worn, she decided to rearrange and "organize" and area of the store she had no right to touch.

I'm sorry, if I worked at an office and a temp took my desk one day while I was out sick, I would be royally pissed if they rearranged my files, changed the picture on my desktop, moved my phone, or put away my personal things. Sitting somewhere for a whole eight hours does not give you the right to change it. That just irritates the person who comes back and uses it every day.

The only person who is allowed to rearrange anything around this desk aside from me is Former-Nun, who works this desk two days a week. And out of respect for my greater share of hours spent here, the only thing she does is move the phone on the two days she works, and then she puts it back to where I have it so that when I come in everything is just as I like it. And she does that without even being asked.