Deliveries

The delivery people make my days more interesting. Between mailmen, vendor representatives, and deliveries, I see up to 12 outside people a week. Usually it's the same person each week, and we get a delivery a day, plus FedEx or DHL 3-5 times a week (occasionally twice in one day).

The weekday mailman is pretty normal—quiet, looks like a family guy, all business. Delivers the mail, picks up the mail, a "hello" if we're lucky, then he leaves. But the Saturday mailman belongs in an institution! His appearance alone is shocking; he always has some stupid joke to tell. If he's feeling particularly chatty he'll hang around for a few minutes and talk about anything and everything. The DHL woman is pretty boring, while both FedEx people have some personality but nothing too shocking. After a while the delivery men learn where we want them to put the delivery (depending on what it is) and who to find for a signature. When the usual delivery men are away, it's so weird having fill-ins. It's almost like training a new employee—that goes here, that goes there, make sure you don't damage the floor.

The vendor representatives usually stay the same for years, so we can really develop a relationship, good or bad (usually good). One of them now, though, is a real dud. Not the personality to have the job he has. He gave a training session which most of the employees slept through. That was a good use of company money!

I think I might have gotten one of the previous vendor representatives fired (oops). He was supposed to be giving a demonstration in the store and called to reschedule. A couple of days later his boss called to make sure he had given the demonstration, I said no, and before we knew it we had a new representative. Too bad for him. Obviously he had been neglecting his job if his boss had to check up on him.

It feels like the outside people are part of my store, yet I don't have to put up with them all the time (about 3 minutes is all I can take of the crazy mailman!). They bring some laughter after a bad customer or some news from the outside world when I feel terribly isolated by my store walls. There's no kissing my butt to try to get a raise or keep from getting fired…..it feels like a more honest, if more surface-level, relationship. I hope they like us as much as we like them.