Snow Day

Well I hope all you guys out there had a very merry Christmas. The Business was closed for 3 days, and then we got a bonus snow day. We thought Monday was going to be a blizzard, so we stayed closed. Then it turned out to be a giant bust, so I spent the day shopping for post Christmas bargains. Yeah me!

Yesterday was the first return to normal. Audrey did not come in, which only confirms our suspicions that the only reason she did show up last week was to pocket some spending cash (at our expense). I talked to Cindy and Trina and we figure that she probably took almost a third of our total customers for the week.

One of you guys asked what tricks she was pulling to get away with it. Well, she pretty much tried all of them in the book. Her favorite was just taking the next guy through the door, regardless of which girl was up in the rotation. Trina said on Wednesday day shift she took 3 guys in a row by just taking over the front desk and telling Trina she would call her when the next guy came in. She said after the 3rd customer she was ready to just put on her jacket and leave she was so pissed.

Another trick of Audrey's is to just tell customers that she's the only girl there. That one works best on the phone. Then she just makes sure that when he shows up, he doesn't see any of us. I used to fall for the old "Could you go out and get me a pack of smokes?" routine. Then I'd get back just in time to see one of my Regulars coming out of HER session room. Then to add insult to injury, he would sometimes think I blew him off!!

The best thing to do to keep anyone from stealing customers is to just sit and stay at the front desk. I did that last week and even so, Audrey would pull rank with "I got this one..." I was seeing red at the end of each shift. I swear, we were all ready to walk.

And poor Maude... The front desk is usually her domain during the working day. But ever since that blow out over the Christmas decorations, she would just hide in the back office. Talk about uncomfortable. You could just feel the tension whether you were in the front or back of the building. Ugh.

But apart from the fact that work totally sucked all last week, my holiday was good. A long weekend of family and friends. And let me tell ya - all my nieces and nephews were LOVING their Aunty CJ. Thank Gawd I took care of most of the shopping BEFORE Audrey got there and cut our tips in half.

This week before New Years is usually dead. We've gone back to a 1 girl per shift schedule, and will probably stay this way till the end of January. So now we spend our time eating Christmas cookies and fruitcake all day. The one and only good thing about having Audrey around is that she would bring in treats she made herself. If there's one thing we can all agree on it's that even though we all hate Audrey's guts, that bitch can cook.

CJ