A tourist in the garden center

Sunday. And a four-hour shift. What is the computer in Bentonville smoking?

Scheduling hasn't gotten much smoother. We're short cashiers and the schedule still spits out oddball shifts. 7 1/2 or even 4 hours instead of 8. Then after you've made other plans, they want to know if you want to stay.

Saturday they sent me to the garden center. "You'll probably be there all day." Joy. A greeter and two cashiers and the floor staff were there. What on the planet was I supposed to do? I gave the door greeter a 30 minute 15-minute break (apparently, telling time isn't a strong suit), and then gave one of the cashiers a lunch break. By the time she was back, the second cashier had gone to the front on the excuse that she needed a bathroom break and whined to a manager about the first cashier, that she had taken too long of a lunch. Get it straight -- she was fine -- the greeter was overdue. But a customer service manager came back to bawl out the first cashier and jerked me out of there. And I didn't mind a bit. That place gets scary when the temperatures warm up. The staff are scarier than the guests. At least the guests and I are on the same wavelength.

Do I know which trimmer string goes in this spool? Nope. Do I know if we'll be getting in bigger containers of Preen? Nope. Why don't we have any geraniums? Ma'am, probably because 30 customers before you snapped every one of them up, or they're still afraid they will freeze at night. I don't know if we have any more cushions in that pattern anywhere, nor do I understand why they don't have any matching drain dishes for that particular color of planter. (If it were up to me, I'd sell them as a set, not as singles.) Frankly, about all I can do is scan and bag stuff. I'll help you with that.

See my blue smock. That means I work front-end registers. I wish I had a sign to wear everytime they sent me to garden, tire and lube express or sporting goods: "I don't belong here. I don't know anything about this department. I can't advise you about guns, plants or automotive batteries, and please don't ask me to cut keys. You're lucky anyone is standing here to ring you up. But the usual suspects are all at lunch."