I think Beth paid more attention to checking her phone for updates on her daughter then she did to counting.

She showed me how to enter the figures with their different categories and transfer everything from her laptop to the store’s computer. Things like that don’t require skill, just fill in the blanks and do what the prompts tell you to do. She seemed surprised that I only had to be told something once. I wondered about the other people she was used to working with. I thought about telling her that she may want to consider an upgrade of personnel. However since those other persons included her daughter, I decided to keep my comments to myself for a change.

This particular store is one of a chain of auto/car repair stores on the peninsula. Supposedly someone from Greece got stuck here in Virginia during Hitler’s time and decided to stay and make a go of it. I think all of the employees in the store are related in one way or the other. Which is kind of like a place I used to work.

It took us most of the day to count all of the stuff on the shelves and in the storage sheds. Nothing inside the sheds was in any kind of order. Most of it consisted of parts stuck anyplace they would fit. The best way to do that was to pull everything out and sort it in the open. Then, after it was scanned, stuff it back into the storage sheds anyway I could.

Beverly was right about wearing clothes I didn’t mind getting dirty. At the end of the day I was hot, dirty and tired. When I went home I had to study for my classes. It is too easy to let things slip and tell yourself that you will catch up later. ‘Later’ never comes, if people don’t do things when they need to be done then something else always comes along later. Always.

In this case the ‘something else’ came first thing in the morning right after we started on a store in Denbigh. We had just set up and were on the first set of shelves when Beth got a call that her daughter was on the way to Sentara to have her baby. Beth was frantic, this would be her first grandchild, by her only child, and she was terrified of something going wrong. I told her “I got it. Go see your grandbaby.” She was torn between staying with me and driving there as fast as she could. Even still I almost had to push her out the door.

Fortunately this was one of the smaller stores but I was still there until after six that evening. I did three other stores myself that first week. On the following Monday I had to do the main store/warehouse where the other outlets got their supplies and inventories. In the other stores we were mostly politely ignored but in this one they were watching my every move. If it was just the men I could have marked it up to their “being guys”, but the two women who worked there were checking me out too. Wearing old jeans and a junky shirt I am simply not that good looking and neither one of them gave off any kind of a gay vibe so ‘wtf’.

Over our usual dinner of Chinese take-out, I talked about it with Ann while she was getting ready for work. She made some cute remark and laughed it off saying it was only because I was alone and not with Beth. Still, little things bother me.

I have gotten pretty good about reading Ann since we met, there is something she wants to ask but is trying to figure out the right way to do it. I will probably say ‘yes’ to whatever it is.