Notes 14
Daria's folks invited us all over for Christmas. That's going to be a little tough, since I'm pretty much managing a retail operation, and the boss is probably going to want to take time off around then.
I want Daria to be there, for sure; she and her parents need to get over this past year.
I talked it over with Ziggy, and he understands; he knew about the war between Daria and her mom. Thing is, Christmas Eve is a rush day for the store, so I'm planning to work to the last minute. After that comes the mini rush for returns, pickups and exchanges, although the boss feels that it's not going to be as bad as it usually is because of Daria's ideas. Ziggy loves Daria.
She had come up with the little worksheet that incoming customers are offered coming through the door, which really makes it easier for both customers and the sales staff to figure out a great present. A large number of these customers aren't musicians, but rather are buying gifts for one. Daria's worksheet makes it easy to find out what instrument the recipient plays, skill level, kind of music, what bands they like, and so on.
That simple sheet is letting us handle a lot more customers, with a lot less stress; she had also suggested routing customers around the back with a pick ticket for bulky things to be loaded directly into their cars.
Even simple things, like wrapping amp heads up for customers to put under the tree, and holding the big speaker stacks for later pickup? How come nobody thought of that before? It looks like we're going to move twice as many full Marshall stacks in the next couple of weeks as we did last year. All the recipient has to do is drive up to the back and hand over the numbered gold ticket, and the stuff gets loaded in his vehicle. Much easier than trying to giftwrap a couple of boxes about the volume of a refrigerator.
So now, the plan is that Anita, the assistant manager, takes over the week after and gets an extra 20 hours of comp time on top of that. Plus, Ziggy's paying for a plane ticket for me to fly down to Lawndale on the last flight out Christmas Eve.
Cool.