More on Hallmark

I feel like I should talk more about my part-time job.  My last entry really doesn't begin to scratch the surface of the issues involving that part of my life.

As I said, I have worked there for over a decade.  Right now, that equals a third of my life.  (If my life were to be split into three parts there would be childhood, school, and Hallmark.)  Bigger picture of my life, it will merely be a chapter in a more interesting story, but for now it's a routine.  Just as I was ready to leave high school and move into the next phase of my life so I am ready to leave Hallmark.  But, just like with high school, there will be so much I will miss.

There is something very secure about knowing the ins and outs of a place.  To look at a customer and say with a 100% conviction, "no we've never carried that item."  I know where the display fixtures are because they've been in roughly the same place for the last ten years.  Christmas is quickly followed by Valentine's Day just as surely as the spring follows winter.  Customers will get twitchy less than a week before a holiday and someone will always ask for the next season's cards as soon as you've finished putting up the current ones. 

Then there are the co-workers.  Wonderful women and girls that show up day after day for the same abuse.  The dichotomy of the service industry; always smiling for the difficult customers and then cussing them out behind the back room door.  Fellow sufferers that are willing to step up and help when someone is in need.  Knowing that someone will be there to help out on your worst day, when your daughter is in a tragic accident, or the love of your life finally lost the battle with cancer, or even when you find yourself being rushed to hospital.  Women who bring casseroles and mail cards, who remember to ask about that important whatever that was coming up.  It's a family of sorts.