Thursday, March 08, 2007

Are you my mother?

Yesterday, I volunteered at the fair trade store. After lunchtime, the store re-opens at 2:30. Usually, one of the two other volunteers fetches the key and opens the store by the time I arrive at 2:30. Yesterday, I arrived at 2:35. Neither of the other 2 volunteers were there yet either. I was not warmly welcomed by another volunteer who normally works in the back office and normally doesn't work on Wednesday afternoons. I find her to be obscenely bossy and am not a fan of hers thus I chose Wednesday afternoons to volunteer knowing that she would not be there. Yesterday was my lucky day. So...as I'm opening the door to enter and about to grab the sign we place outside to let customers know we're open, she runs up to me with a confused look on her face. "Is Marie or Anne here yet?", I ask. "No", she replies. Maybe she forgot who I am so I re-introduce myself to her. She then tells me that the store opens at 2:30 and it's tres important that I arrive before then. I just nod and continue to put the sign out. Then I put my stuff down and head over the cash register. She tells me, with her permanently frowning face, that she just came by to make a photocopy (don't care) and will wait with me until someone else arrives. Then I move a piece of paper, that is used to record the end of day totals, to the place were Anne, Marie, and I normally keep it which is under the table in a box. She watches me do this and then instructs me that the piece of paper belongs on top of the table and pats the area where it should be. I look at her and say, "We normally keep it here." And then she responds to me that that is wrong and that it always goes "here" and then pats the area again. Listen woman, you don't work in the store, you're not working today, it doesn't matter where the hell it goes as long as we do everything correctly before closing and we do plus we're adults here, we've been volunteering here for months and have been doing the same thing each time and nothing has gone terribly wrong (yet), and you're not my boss. Oy vey. I just left the paper in her preferred spot until she left. Is it because I don't speak French very well that certain French people think they can speak to me like that? Anyway, Marie arrived 2 minutes after I did. She got the same speech as I. Lucky girl. At the same time that she was getting the speech, she was looking my way and watching me roll my eyes over all this nonsense. We enjoyed retelling the story numerous times during the remainder of the day which preceded many laughs. :P

4 comments:

Rebecca H. said...

Good times! You sound just like me!

Anonymous said...

Lord have mercy, save us from bossy women! Freud would have a field day with her, yes?

julia said...

PMT, do you think?
Or a severe shortage of niceness-genes!
Don't you just hate negative people!!!

Jane said...

I have seen this many times with the Spanish speaking moms at my school. English only secretaries or even at times the Spanish speaking principal will kind of dismiss them because their English isn't too good. Very annoying to them I am sure. Glad you could roll your eyes with a friend. It really helps!