Seedy Sales

Sales is not exactly my forte, I have tried, really tried, why I thought it would be a good idea to buy a retail business is almost beyond me.

I liked the idea of helping Georges parents to be able to retire, and also the idea of not having a boss or co-workers apart from George, however I don't think that I fully thought through the whole process entirely.

I failed to imagine the calibre and demographic of our customers and their lack of education and etiquette, now I know that it takes all types and such things as education don't always account for the level of interpersonal skills that people possess. That no matter where you live, it is almost a certainty that you encounter unpleasantness from other people, but in our case things are not diluted because the population is so small so it seems unproportionally insane.

I lose a lot of customers/sales sometimes because I can mis read the situation or completely stuff it up in how I handle it.

All those little tricks that salesmen use, I just can't seem to get a handle on them, I am no smooth talker and I hate to rip anyone off, when we first started I had to remind myself that people actually went home with something they wanted, we weren't just taking their money, I know how hard I have had to work to get what money I have, yet some people just don't seem to have any concern for it and have no problem buying disgusting looking trinkets that don't actually do anything.

Which is interesting because when we buy things to sell in the shop, we don't buy what we would like, if we think it is revolting and tacky then it will sell.

Today a man came into the shop and wanted to borrow a pen, I told him he could buy one for 80 cents, he didn't like that at all, but I stuck to my guns and told him to go and borrow one from somewhere else because I sell pens, I don't lend them.

Had he approached the situation in a different way I would have been happy to lend him a pen, but his manner and tone when he asked me without even saying please, I wasn't prepared to be a good samaritan in turn for his rudeness, turned out I am the worst person in the world and now have a black mark against my name, because even though this guy was from away, he used to live here and knows everyone, in fact George even used to work for him, all over a pen.

So he was out in the street slandering me to everyone that would listen.

And I cried like a girl when no one could see me.

It's a tough game.

Getting High

Cannabis, marijuana, weed, pot, hashish, yarni, dope, gear, wacky tabaky; these are some of the more conservative names for this drug, let alone the colloquial versions, of which in my naivety, I have no idea what they are.

I do however, now know what this drug smells like.

I had a vague idea from when I was living and working in Sydney, but I was never really sure, until I moved to Dellaren, it is really quite distinctive.

The cops seem to turn a bit of a blind eye to the drug trafficking in Dellaren, I believe there have been a few 'busts,' but if you want to smoke a joint in the street, in the middle of the day, around children, go right ahead.

I am seen as a bit of a prude, so the drug scene is very much out of my view, but I hear snippits that it is certainly alive and well.

I definately see it's effects and on occasion have been privy to the abuse that comes from using this as well as other hard stuff.

Last month while working at the doctors surgery, I received quite a ear bashing from one man who wanted a doctors appointment, even though we have no doctor, he needed some paperwork signed so that he could continue getting payments from his insurance company, which the previous doctor had refused to sign anyway.

This man, lets call him Rod, had a car accident while working on a property and broke his neck, which he received compensation for, his neck has now healed completely, nothing wrong with him, fully capable of working, apart from maybe his personality and motivation, physically though, nothing hindering him.

Rod, it seems has a little problem with substance abuse, when he decided to come and give me a serve, without taking a breath for long enough for me to explain how we could help him, everyone who was working in the hospital that day came running to see what was happening, because he was loud enough to stir even the deaf residents living a block away.

After raising my voice to him, to try to get him to stop for long enough to say something, which didn't work, he left the hospital yelling all the way down the street, my boss came to see if I was alright, the nurse came out to see what was happening, as she thought he was after some drugs, I was alright, it actually felt pretty good to stand up for myself, which is difficult in the shop, even though there was not a resolution it felt good, might have been a bad move on my half but at the time I didn't care, my boss was alright with it and Rod hasn't stepped foot near the shop since, which is ok by us, and there haven't been any other ramifications that we are aware of.

Rod, I found out later has also managed to shoot himself in the head without actually killing himself, shame really.

He also decided it would be a good idea to lure his next door neighbour into his yard while having an altercation about a dog, only to be hiding behind the gate, waiting with a steal baseball bat ready to bash his neighbour over the head.

Only little does he realise that his neighbour, who is no better than Rod himself, carries machetes and other similar knives concealed on his person at all times, bad luck for any poor unsuspecting person who may aggravate the bastard.

I have no idea who ended up worse off, nor do I really care, I do however find it pretty amusing, I must be a little unhinged.

So when Rod called my boss to see if he could get in to see the doctor when we had a locum visiting, she told him that he needed to apologise before he would get in to see anyone, he said that we owed him an apology because I was the one that attacked him!

This is all deemed normal behaviour in Dellaren, which to me seems a little outlandish and this is only a taste of what I am discovering every day about the lives of the people of this little town isolated in the scrub of 'North South Wales' as it was referred to by a telemarketer the other day.

Scrambled

This has been a pretty full on month... thinking that we were still in August! My head is scrambled so much that I find it difficult to even string a sentence together. My mind is filled with fog and grey matter, everything is whirling around in a dizzying spin, that I literally lose my balance when I try to stand up too quickly, luckily though no one has noticed.

So many things have been happening that anger me into a state of confusion and forgetfulness.

I never knew how difficult it was for some people to complete a task that for others is so mind numbingly simple.

This was last week, I was so scattered that I couldn't even finish writing what I had started, and now, even thinking of it, I can't remember entirely what it was that got me so fired up.

I know I have been having trouble changing my name with a number of different companies, who manage to change my surname but not my title, so that even though I am married I have remained a Miss!

I never knew that owning a business would open up so many avenues of frustration; dark dank ally ways crowed with rats and people sticking their legs out, trying to trip you in the confusion of the crowd of things that swarm around you everyday, begging to be done, mixed in with the personal chores that need attention on top of all of that.

There are moments of light when someone opens a doorway to help, or when the sun creeps out from behind the clouds and sneaks in between the cracks in the buildings, on days like this things are easy, they flow smoothly and you wonder what all the fuss is about.

We can go for days, weeks even, when things seem settled, the customers are pleasant enough, when it has been put into perspective, sometimes we deal with a person and think, 'crazy!' but then we think about it if it had been in another situation, in another place, at another time, and compare them to some of our other customers and you realise, 'Ok they weren't too bad.'

Then there are times when one, after the other, after the other, are just insane and you go a little mental, sometimes I imagine we can be a little rude or abrupt to an undeserving customer whilst trying to comprehend the insanity of some situations or people that we have just encountered.

It almost seems sometimes that people tend to be absent minded or completely self absorbed to the point that they are unaware of any human interaction that they might have encountered while in the shop. I must admit I know there are times when I have been like that, I will have to remember to be more aware of my surroundings in the future!