Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 

The kiosk has been open for 2 days now. And while my dispassion for it has not yet reached the epic levels of last year's "give me a match, some gasoline, an alibi and some marshmallows", I am still left feeling rather unimpressed with things. In cases like this, one always has to assume that something will go wrong when a temporary kiosk gets put into a mall. (And yet, you'd think that after 8 years of doing this, they'd have most of the bugs squashed by now...or am I being too optimistic?)

Here's a basic breakdown of the last few days, brought to you in a point-counterpoint form. (Now is most certainly the time to disregard your mother having taught you "not to counterpoint at people, it's rude.")

GOOD: the kiosk arrives on the day it should and is mostly assembled.

NOT SO GOOD: by mostly assembled, I mean the contractor never put in the closet used to store the curtain. So he left it in the middle of the mall corridor, failed to mention this fact to anyone, and when he called back to say he'd be installing that piece the next day, he told us to go looking for it in the completely wrong spot. (Smeghead...)

GOOD: we had electricity going into the kiosk on our first day, and this morning we had a working phone line. (Fantastic, I say, considering last year it took a week to get one and two weeks to get the other.)

NOT SO GOOD: on the other hand...is the curtain rod supposed to just rip right out of three of its support struts like that? Isn't the whole point of the rod, you know, being able to actually hold the weight of the curtain at any given place around the kiosk?

GOOD: luckily, the company handyman (whose great sense of humour is rivalled only by his contempt for the ineptitude of the idiots at Head Office. Oh, the stories he's told us....) was able to come by today and fix the track. And the drawers. And the cupboards.

NOT SO GOOD: unfortunately for poor Tom the handyman, ours was Winter kiosk #6 he'd had to fix so far in the last few weeks. Two of those were major repairs almost requiring the whole kiosk to be dismantled and reassembled.

GOOD: it didn't take 2 months for us to get our hat racks and mirrors. They actually sent them along with the kiosk this time!

NOT SO GOOD: what the hell am I going to do with 4 scary-looking, styrofoam mannequin heads? (Beyond using them as bowling pints, natch)

GOOD: we received fewer boxes of stock than we had around this time last year.

NOT SO GOOD: we're still waiting for our box of much needed kiosk supplies to arrive. (It's on the manifest, dammit! Make the box manifest itself already!)

GOOD: on the Friday before the kiosk went up, we received the computer monitor, the computer, the receipt printer, the standard printer, a lot of miscellany cords to connect them all together, and a swanky scanner I still covet.

NOT SO GOOD: the cash drawer was auspiciously missing.

GOOD: for some silly-arsed reason, the Guleph kiosk got 2 cash drawers and kindly sent us one.

NOT SO GOOD: 5 minutes before the box from Guelph arrived with our drawer, I discovered that we had in fact already received the original cash drawer meant for the kiosk. Someone else had received it, not bothered to tell me about it and hid it in a part of the stockroom I don't normally check out. (Smeghead...)

GOOD: but that doesn't really matter, since we've now got our cash drawer.

NOT SO GOOD: the one sent to us directly by our Head Office (coincidentally, the one that someone at my store neglected to tell me we got) had one of those old-fashioned bells that rang really, really loudly whenever the till popped open. You can hear it from halfway down the corridor. Great way to let everyone know we've got our cash open for grabbing.

GOOD: the cash drawer Guelph sent us had no ring-a-ding-ding function, so we were able to set ourselves up, prime the system and start using our computer.

NOT SO GOOD: which would have worked great if the computer itself wasn't bunged up horribly. The damned thing couldn't stop cycling through the opening screen. It constantly reset itself whenever it reached one specific point, and even the guys at our MIS department couldn't poke at the problem.

GOOD: and yet the MIS crew, in seeing this problem, immediately set about creating a new replacement computer exclusively for our kiosk.

NOT SO GOOD: the new computer won't arrive until Thursday sometime. At best. So we're stuck with cash only, and having to do manual receipts.

GOOD: the day is almost over and I can go to bed.

NOT SO GOOD: I have to get up early tomorrow, take stock of the store and actually make everything look presentable. Again. (I swear, you're gone for two days, and somehow everything manages to bundle itself in a nice wicker handbasket and express-mails itself straight to hell.)


Today's Lesson: your cat will try and sit on your head whether you want him to or not.
posted by Phillip at 8:40 PM