organization sucker
(*no caps alert, feels like a no-caps kind of entry) boy do i love a good holiday sale. although i do have to brace myself for the hoards of people at the suburban mall. luckily, i'm in michigan for the holidays and shopping hasn't been too much of a hold-your-breath-and-count-to-10-experience. in fact, yesterday was downright civil. victoria's secret was a little too voluminous (pun intended), but i should've expected that, and it was my first stop so my patience cup was full. at the end of my adventure, i landed at nordstrom's. i wasn't even really looking for anything, but since we were waiting for my dad to come meet us and we were sitting in the shoe section, i began looking for boots. i wish i'd taken a picture of it, but imagine shoe racks - many, many shoe racks - and then children running through each aisle pulling and throwing shoes, shoes flying everywhere. a shoe party, a shoe palooza, a shoe celebration, someone took a bat and played shoe pinata. this isn't what happened, of course, but it's what it looked like. tons of shoes hanging off their racks, lying on the floor, spread in areas around the racks. for someone like me, it's a little crazy-making. i'm not ocd. an observation of my apartment and my living spaces would tell you i'm not - but i like things organized if i can help it. and if i have the time, i love organizing. lucky for nordstrom's - their number system was leaving customers waiting for 10-20 minutes until a shoe rep could assist. so after i found a boot i was interested in and took my number, what did i do? well, i began putting away all the shoes. why? i don't know. i'm killing time there and the shoes were making me insane. size 9 and 10 shoes in the size 6 and under racks, boots laying in the floor in piles and shoes just strewn in every walk way... i just couldn't leave it. the rack i was organizing was a boot rack where all the boots were hanging by these special boot hangers.
as i began organizing the boots, i knew i was putting myself in that dreaded position of looking like an employee. nothing wrong with being an employee or working at nordstrom's - far from it. i just know that i hate being asked if i work someplace where i don't. and i strongly dislike all the questions that come with it. maybe mostly because when you let people know that you don't work there - it's been my experience that they're not just disappointed but a little annoyed or angry. like as if to say - why don't you work here? how come you can't help me?? maybe they're just embarrassed about the honest mistake but so many people compensate in a weird way. i digress. anyway, choosing to organize a whole shoe section leaves you wide open for questions and false assumptions that you are an employee. and so it began...
Lady "do you know where the tory burch boots are?" Me - no.
Lady "do they have this in a size 6?" Me - sorry, I don't work here. Lady "oh. then why are you organizing the shoes??"
yeah, exactly. why am i organizing the shoes?!? they're just going to end up on the floor again. i'm not going to get any credit for doing it anyway. why oh why am i wasting precious time organizing a rack of boots?
well, in the end, maybe the answer is simple. i'm an accomplishment driven person. and i don't discriminate. i love big AND small accomplishments. and for a portion of the afternoon, the nordstrom rack of boots went from being a complete disaster to a well-organized and neat display. and it made me feel like i DID something.
