how can it be past my bedtime already?

damn you, internet! damn you!

ch has to go get his wound inspected tomorrow morning. i'm opening the shop. ugh. today was hard. tired. as ch said, we came in to prop each other up.

i do need to tell you the pterodactyl story, though.

so on valentine's day i was mostly in the back, tagging deliveries, routing deliveries for the walkers, and making will-call arrangements. but michael had gone to lunch or the bathroom or something, and i was keeping an eye on the front. i hear this group of 3 stupid straight men come in and mary's on the phone with a customer and i hear her say to the new guys, "um, all that's already been sold!" i let mary stick to her customer on the phone while i take on the guys by the cooler, who have opened it up and are fondling all my will calls, poking at the plastic of delivery orders. i dive between them and the cooler, and am like this stuff's already been sold, let me show you what you can buy, you have options. and the guys are all offended, like dude, i was just looking at it! calm down!

it's valentines day. in a flower shop. you want to see calm, go to the health club or something.

so as i'm walking to the available tulips and boxed dozens, one of them says to the other, dude, she came flying in here, shreeking like one of those, what is it, like a pterodactyl or something. at which point i said, you know, i don't think i'm going to be able to help you. you're going to have to wait to have someone else help you. and i walked to the back.

now granted, it's a great insult. much better than something uncreative, like screaming harpy or something. but it still made me feel bad. (BADLY, it's an adverb.)

with any job, you're going to have bad customer service moments. another winner of yesterday was when a customer was giving michael a hard time, she brought in balloons for him to blow up. and i said, no, you can't, the rule is 3 hr. turn around. she was NOT happy to hear that and stormed out. less than an hour later, she stormed back in, with inflated balloons and a paper wrap of flowers. can we help you? we asked. no, i want to speak to HIM! she said, pointing her boquet at michael, who was on the phone. "THIS IS THREE HOUR TURN-AROUND!" she proudly announced, shaking her balloons at him. then she stomped out again.

so today, a woman comes in, and says to ch and i, you have an employee who works here who helped my boyfriend yesterday- she has short jet-black hair, she's short, not really skinny or large.... ch and i look at each other. mary and i are the only women, we both have brown hair, and she's large and i'm definately skinny. dennis, perhaps? i ask. she's like, well, maybe it was a guy, but i want you to know that that employee lost you three customers. at this point i knew. i said to the woman, who was continuing with how rude the employee was, and how she's gonna tell everyone she can not to shop here, "oh yes. that was me helping them. they were trying to buy my deliveries." i turned to ch and said, "they were the ones who called me a pterodactyl." and i again retreated to the back of the shop, leaving ch to defend me. he did an excellent job, saying, "ma'am, it's valentines day." which she found to be no excuse. then her BOYFRIEND came in, and ch ended it with i'm sorry if my employees behavior offended you, but it's a very stressful time, and i know she thought about their comments for the rest of the day. it's not very classy to call people pterodactyls. i don't think i want those sort of people as customers anyway.

so i felt loved, yet guilty. cause you know, i love my job. i believe it is my job to bring joy to peoples lives, to create a physical embodyment of their emotions. i believe in my company ( i told someone the other night at square dancing, when we were talking about working for the man, that your life's pretty good if ch is the man) and i want everyone to love us as a buisness as well as me personally. i was shaking i was so upset by the whole incident. then we watched them through the glass wall go over to the hair salon where the girlfriend was getting a manicure and pedicure. and then. the boyfriend. comes back into the flower shop. he wants to apologize. he says to me, he wants me to know he never called me a pterodactyl. it was the guys behind him. i apologized for being rude and screeching. he then asks ch sheepishly, what we have for sale. ch negotiates a short rose vase, bargaining calls it a peace offering. so within 15 minutes of girlfriend saying she was going to make sure no one she knows ever buys anything from us again, who's buying flowers from us but her boyfriend. oh, sweet, sweet justice. we watched him go back over, i saw him with the flowers standing over her, with her feet in the basin. we couldn't imagine she'd do anything but use the vase to knock his front teeth in. but we saw no more drama. it was 2 and we had to eat lunch.

really, i have nothing more to say. i just want to set a record of some sort with the huge number of occourances of the word pterodactyl in this entry.