Retail Hell Starts Today - Be Kind to your Shopkeepers and Sales People

So, it's time for Retail Hell, aka Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. Actually, it's not horrid - we usually get an opportunity to see many of our long-time customers again and wish them a Happy Holiday season. But, it's the start of our holiday schedule also, which means this upcoming Sunday will be my last Sunday off until Christmas. *sigh*

I'll be waving good-bye to my Sundays off 
starting next week. I have a real love/hate 
relationship with the Holiday season. I 
used to adore it, then I started working retail. *sigh*

A guy from our security alarm company showed up at the shop on Wednesday afternoon to install the new equipment etc that will have our security system feed directly into their call/alarm center instead of having to dial out to them. It's the final cog in our going 100% digital. Except, of course, my system, being as old as it is, is not being cooperative. The tech finally figured out what was going on and what he needed to do, but it was already 6:30 pm, Jim was chomping to get home, and so was the tech. So, today is "Second Verse, Same as the First" with the change that at the end of it all, we'll totally be off copper wired phones and alarms and into the digital world. Of course we'll have to do the whole thing again next year at home, but at least this is one huge step. 

We'll probably have a much easier installation of 
digital equipment for our home next year than we've 
had for the shop. When we close the shop, I'm grabbing 
those new digital phones and they'll go home and replace 
my copper wired phone system. 

So, I told the tech that I would be at the shop by 7:00 am, resigned myself to getting up at 3:00 am today instead of my usual 4:00 am so that I could get my 45 minutes on the treadmill going before anything else, and I'll be on time. I still have to eat breakfast, but it's not even 6:00 am yet, so I'm right on time. 

I'm running tight on time today, but still have a bit 
of room to breathe. Barely - LOL. 

Still, I can't spend a lot of time chatting with all of you. I'll let you know tomorrow if I have functional phones or not. *sigh* The phones themselves are still coming up with "place holder" phone numbers from the 218 area code. At least I know why we have those odd numbers, it won't be permanent, and won't affect our being able to use/answer/call/etc our phones. At least, ideally. There's nothing like learning a new phone system on one of the busiest sales days of our year. *sigh*

I'm hoping we'll have a successful Black Friday and 
Small Business Saturday sale this year. We don't do 
sales - only these two days and then our after-Christmas 
end of the year sale. That's it. No constant bombardment 
of "buy this, it's on sale". Instead of sales, we have beads 
on clearance all the time - ones that we have too much 
stock of, and we want to reduce the numbers. These are 
always a great savings and very popular. 

Have an excellent Small Business Friday, and if you can support a small business in your area, please do. All of us are trying to keep our heads above water against the Amazons of the world (and I order a LOT of things from Amazon too, like most of you do). Enjoy your day and I'll be back tomorrow to wrap up the week. And if you haven't voted for my current story yet, I'd sure appreciate your vote. Here's the link: https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1175673.html Slava Ukraini.