I worked as a merchant last summer, selling strawberies, mushrooms peas and all sort of stuff on a quite good location at the "city square". Work was ok, but my fellow vendors, not to mention one of my bosses, were quite a problem.
There was 4 other people who were also hired to do the vending. 3 out of the 4 were somewhat quiet. No matter how I tried to chat with 'em they wouldn't really want to talk. Now, I don't know 'bout you people, but I'm awfully uncomfortable when I have to spend an 8-hour day in a small stalt with a person not saying a word. But we can count that as my problem, my friends usually say that I talk too much. Anyway, the silence wasn't the only thing that bothered me with them. The fact was that I couldn't leave 'em alone for a second.
There was this one guy, two years younger, who was every day as if stoned. He would start the day by saying something like "I'll take the peas" and after that, he would just stand next to the peas, stare into emptiness and wait for a customer like a zombie. On the first day I worked with him (I was supposed to "train him", since I had been around for 2 weeks already), I went to go get myself a cup of coffee from the pub near the stalt. When I came back I saw a group of people standing in line for strawberries. I hurried myself back and served the customers, while the kid was still standing next to the peas, utterly ignoring the crowd on his left demanding for strawberries.
Then there was this teen girl, god knows how old, who seemed to have huge problems with simple math. I had to keep an eye on a girl who was definitely over 15, and avoid her to give too much change, nor prevent her to bill for too much.
The last one of the three was your typical queen bee, who spent most of her time on a cellphone, talking to her boyfriend or chatting with her friends who came to see her "work her ass off" on location.
But luckily there was this one girl who was almost my age (she was 1 year younger I guess).She was also talkative person, and had similiar interests as I, so we ended up talking when ever there wasn't any customers. Luckily for me, I ended up to work with her almost every day, which made the work hours go by quickly. Only annoyance was that the local drunks usually tried to hit on her, coming up with smooth pick-up lines and so on, which sometimes resulted intoher asking me to drive them away.
Then there was the boss. Well, actually there were 2, and one of them was really cool and nice, but the other one was an old, grumpy chainsmoker who forbid us to sit while in work because "It wouldn't look tempting for the customers". Ironically whenever he was at work too, he would have a chair with him. Did I mention that he's a chainsmoker? I swear to god, he must've spent atleast 1½ pack's in a day. Sometimes he would also mysteriously disappear for hours without any good reason. He would also constantly try to pair me up with the girls, coming up with ideas such as "You should massage her shoulders" and when I'd reply with "I don't think so" he would proceed into doing it himself. He was also somewhat bitter towards the merchants of the rival stalt, with who I used to chat daily.
That's RaNkeri's summerjob 2007 in a nutshell for you
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