A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
Well, Spencers is a great place to work so far, and I'll get more into that later. But just want to let everyone know that I'm doing good there, already fitting into and knowing what I have to do, and it's only been 3 days. :: I'm still working on 2 juggling videos now. I know I said I was working on just TriBX2 and the Stupid Tricks video last time, but now it seems as though I'm starting to gather enough footage for my next main toss juggling video. We'll see what happens. And while I'm at it, I may as well lay out all my ideas for juggling videos right now. I'm working on: 2 videos with plot lines that I haven't started yet. A chronological video of my 7 ball progress, which will have footage that I didn't get to put in any of my videos, and will release once I qualify 7 balls. The Stupid Tricks Video. And an idea I'm working on, not for a video, but for the next Renegade show I'll be attending. :: Gaming news? Got an early gift in the mail from grandma, a $40 gift card to Gamestop, and I've already got Brawl paid off, great. :: I've started uploading things to DeviantART once again. On a regular basis that is. I don't know why, but now I'm swinging back into doing some photography and I'm setting up a few batches to release sometime in the future. Plus, now that DA Video has launched, I'm doing a few things there, including time lapses of me making art in Photoshop. It's a series I'm calling "The Art of Art", and I've already released one of the videos, it's up on my Deviantart.com page.

Oh, and I also said I'd start putting out a few MP3's of mashups once in a while now that I have my mixing program working. Well, here's the first. I made 2 before this, but I don't think they're really any good, at least not good enough to release. So this is the 1st release. Bon Jovi vs Alpine Stars - It's My Patrol. Enjoy, and I've got another one lined up for next week maybe. I'm starting to like this stuff, even more than before.



Daily Life:
Let me describe my first day of work at Spencers. Well, I come in, and I already know what's going to happen, I'm going to be walking around the store blocking items, helping customers, and pushing our sale items. It's pretty simple to describe, but until you've worked in customer service, you have no idea of how hard it is. Especially when you're sent to the front of the store to greet every customer and push an item. You basically have 10 seconds maximum to talk to a customer as they enter the store before they get annoyed, and you have to actually start a conversation with them that way they don't feel like their being telemarketed to. My strategy is basically a 3 line strategy that's worked pretty well so far, and it does change with what people say. I basically start like this "Hey guy, how's it going?". They then respond in the usual way that they like saying hi. I then say "Anything I can help you with?", and this is the part where what they say and react lets me know what item to push on them if any. If they say "Nope, just looking.", that's the cue for me to push an item or two, and the item I'll push is determined by what gender and personality I can judge they have. I would usually just say "Ok, well our ____ are pretty cheap right now." or "Alright, well we got our ___ are on sale ____ for ___." and then I'd leave them alone. If on the second question they don't say "just looking", that's my cue to say "Alright, let me know if you need anything." and maybe push an item if they don't look like their in a hurry. And then of course if they are looking for something specific, they'll say so after the second line, and I'll help them with it. And that's basically how my greeting strategy is. Pretty simple, intuitive, and it works.

Other than that though, I did have an interesting situation my first day. Keep in mind, this is Spencer's Gifts, and I was told during my interviews that there may be loose/excited women coming in looking for things. So there's a girl that comes in, about a 7 but who am I to complain, she says hi, and immediately starts up a conversation with me. She asks "What do you think of my boobs?" I say "Is that a trick question?" "Do you think they're real?" "Look real to me.", and then she whips out her phone and sends a quick text message. She then asks me "So, where do you keep, you know..." "items?" "yeah." "Back center of the store." "You wanna come back and help me with them?" and this is where I screw up. Me being told about the "loose women" thing in my interviews and the presented opportunity basically lead me to take the bait, and I wasn't thinking about anything else. I follower her to the back and helped her look through the "items". Basically, acting like she's coming onto me, and being cute like that. Another customer asked me something and I helped them with that real quick because it was a simple question, and as I was turning back, I realized there was noone watching the front of the store. I think she saw that and she said thanks and headed out of the store.

They're the equivalent of the Patel family at Shoprite. They were the scamming team. She brings the guy from the front of the store away from the front while someone (who got the text message) grabs something from the front and walks out. Great plan, I have to admit, of course now they're not getting away with it a second time. I told my new manager, and she said thank god "Eh, happens to everyone once." I think I'm going to like working here more than I thought. The only problems is I need to get better shoes, the ones I'm wearing now start hurting like hell after 3 or 4 hours.

Juggle This:
God Damn. I haven't barely even TOUCHED my props since I started working, and before that, it was Finals Week. So I basically haven't done anything more than 4 balls since Monday. I'm rusty as hell right now and I know it. But hey, at least I'm thinking about what the next tricks I may be able to do will be. I've concluded that when I get the chance, I might be able to make a neck roll flourish. We'll see if it works or not. Until then...

*one day later*

Heh, I just made that neck wrap flourish on camera. I'm pretty shocked at how good I still am with clubs. I can actually progress with them still. That and I've got every other flourish I know down to on command if not performance ready. Besides that though, I'm starting to organize my footage for video 12. I'm just not sure when I think I'll release it, because I've got lots of toss juggling footage, seeing as how I only used box footage for my last one, but I'm just not sure how I want to do this one. We'll see what happens. I'm still coming up with stuff to use, so I don't know.

JoJ, I'm thinking I'm going to postpone it for a while. Because now that I'm working again, I'm just not going to have the time for it, especially since I'm also going to be taking a winter course as well. I'm thinking I'll release episode 29, which is the last one we recorded a week ago, and then episode 30 will be a "this year in juggling" episode, where we review what big things have happened in 2007 and what else. And that will release on the 31st. But I know for a fact, I'm going to keep doing JoJ eventually, podcasting is just way too much fun to stop doing. Just takes up a hell of a lot of time and energy which I won't have anymore.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150