Workin' it

After yesterday, the contrast with my highly inactive summer couldn’t be bigger. Working two jobs and doing a full-time study is no sinecure. In the fourth week of my new busy life, the ultimate culmination was the 15 hour work day I had yesterday.

For my first job, I had to cycle to Nieuwegein, where I assist an elderly woman in doing her household jobs. She can only barely walk, so I vacuum clean the house for her, dust her stuff, polish her kitchen floor…that kind of stuff. She is very kind, and more often than not we are also drinking cups of tea and coffee for more than an hour. It’s also the only time of the week when I allow myself to eat a cookie. She knows I don’t eat snacks normally, so she always has something special for me 🙂

I leave her house usually at 11:50 am, when I’m off to my next job at the computer store. This is another 30 minute cycle trip, and I had 30 minutes left to eat my lunch. The store opens at 1 pm, and you wouldn’t guess, but monday is a very busy day. People who bought stuff over the weekend sometimes come to bring it back, or people who ordered stuff from the website come and collect it. There were about ten people waiting in front of the store, so a little invasion took place when we opened the doors. I actually like the monday, because the time goes by very fast! In my fourth week of working this new job, I’m starting to like it more and more. I discovered that I really like to help and advise people in what to buy. Yesterday I sold my most expensive laptop so far and I felt really proud ^_^

Working in the store has resulted in some funny moments already. Yesterday, for example, two guys just couldn’t believe a girl would LIKE to work in a computer store. The look on their faces when I told them I LOVED computers was priceless. When I asked them if they liked to see more women in computer stores they said ‘yes, more of that please!’, but that was no surprise really. I also had other women express happy feelings of seeing a woman in a computer store. MyCom has 23 shops all across the country, but our store is the only one with women. Not just one, we have three!

Last friday, my last customer of the day was wasted. He was trying to buy a sound-cart, but he was barely realising what he was doing. He didn’t say goodbye once, but like 5 times. The stench of beer around him was appalling.
That same day but a little earlier, another guy offered me a zen meditation course after we had talked for about 20 mins. He also asked what I was studying.
Almost every day there is a customer with whom I end up talking for 30 minutes or so. And I like it! I like chatting with people. It’s very cool to meet so many people and talk random things with them. I realised that two years ago, I wouldn’t have liked it. I was much more close-minded when it came to things like that. I preferred to keep to myself and avoid strangers as much as I can. How different it is now!

Ok, lets get on with the story. At 6 pm the store closed, but that wasn’t the end of the day by far! We had to count all the products in the store, to see if some things were missing (lots gets stolen around here). I went to score some food with two colleagues, and while we were eating the boss had a little monologue about how things were going in the store (not too good of course, but when is it ever good for a boss?). When that was done and everyone had dumped his or her two cents we formed into pairs to count everything in the store.

The first person had to scan every item in a section, while the other looked on the laptop if everything was correct. This took about two hours and of course, mistakes were made. The mistakes had to be found out by hand. Lets say that someone had counted 3 of item X, but according to the computer system there had to be 5 items X. We had to find more of item X. It was in the store of course, but there could be more X’s at defects, in the storeroom…basically everywhere. This is when my mood finally went down. It took a long time to find all the mistakes, and we couldn’t even solve all. The best processor we are selling was gone (the Intel i7, worth 260 euro) and it wasn’t on display in the store. Did one of us steal it?? We will never know, but fact remains that it was gone.

At 11:30 pm, the boss finally dismissed us. It was a long day, but it didn’t feel that way until the last two hours. This morning I’ve been busy cleaning my whole room, because the cat had fleas -__-