Within our second assignment in Desteni I Process we have to write our experiences during the day and what thoughts, feelings and emotions do we have throughout the day. Here I am sharing all of that in one event that happened during my day.
I am working at a store with women’s clothes and the store is closing at 9 pm. I usually prepare all the things that are necessary for closing the cash register 10 minutes before closing (calculate how much money was in cash and credit cards and also gift vouchers, I also count the exchange money and all the other things that our employer requires from us). At 8:50 pm there were still customers in the store and I was thinking what the hell they are still doing in the store at that hour, because it is nearly closing time and they know that. I was really angry and pissed off because now I will have to stay 10 minutes longer in a store than normal. I judged them for being rude and ignorant because they don’t care about the time. Then it occured to me that I have to be there until 9 pm either way, so why am I bothering with that kind of thoughts anyways? Then one of them went into the wardrobe to try on the clothes. So a lot of things started to go through my mind. First thing was that I now have to wait for her because she might buy something and I can’t prepare my cash register for closing because of that. I was annoyed and frustrated by this thought because there was a lot of exchange money in there and there were a lot of coins that I had to count (for one and two cents – the smallest ones). I remembered that my co-worker went into the bank and exchanged that money for a lot of coins so we have enough to give back to the customers. I started to blame my co-worker for my frustrations because she was “guilty” because I have to count all the money and waste my time with that. I really wasn’t in the mood for counting, I was too lazy. Then I started to wonder when the customer will come out of the dressing room, so I could close my cash register. I am not payed for extra minutes that I have to spend in the store waiting for my customer. How can’t she see that we are closing? It’s time for her to leave the store immediately. I will go home late again because of that. I was feeling sad, because I wanted to go home and have a decent warm meal to eat (I am not allowed to eat in the store when I am working alone – and I am sometimes alone for 4 hours), have a sit (we have to stay on our feet all the time – we don’t have any chairs there) and relax from “a hard day at work”. It’s not that hard but I was making an excuse so I could participate in my emotions and consequently in my feelings. Then I started to experience a fear because there was a slight chance that I couldn’t close cash register properly because I could make a mistake during my work and working with money and charging the customers. So I immediately started to worry about that and I became nervous because if something isn’t right then you can’t close the store and you have to be there so long until you close your cash register correctly. This can take at least half an hour if you can’t recognize the problem. So I suppressed my worries and started to think what is taking so long for customer to come out of the wardrobe. Is she trying to steal something? I immediately went back to see what she is doing and then in a second I decided that I am going to ask her if she wants to buy something so I know if I can close my till now or I have to wait a little bit longer. Normally I am too afraid to ask somebody something like that because I want to present myself like a good, understanding and patient person and worker. I really surprise myself by asking her that. I felt good about myself pushing through this fear but at the same time I was tired of waiting so I really didn’t care what she is going to think about me at that moment. When she said that she is going to buy some clothes I was in a mood like “let’s get this done quickly so I can go home and close this thing down”. I started to think what still has to be done after she pays for her clothes (I have to write down a report of the profit that we had on both tills during the day, how many customers we had and how many visitors, what was average amount and quantity per invoice and so on…) so I became again nervous because it was already 5 minutes after 9 pm and nothing was prepared. I also started to worry when I am going to go home and I was a little bit annoyed because in general I have to wait for customers to live the store and they are just watching stuff and not buying anything. I was also sad and disappointed because I can’t turn down the lights a few minutes before closing so the customers could see that it is time to go home. But instead of turning off the lights I turned off the radio because I expected that the customers will hurry a little bit when they see that we are closing. But that didn’t happen…So I was like doomed when this didn’t work according to my plan. When all customers were gone I started to “finally” closing down the till and again this fear overflew me because something can get wrong (mostly I fear when working with money that I made a mistake when charging to a customer and I gave her back more money than I should and if I make that kind of mistake I have to give money out of my pocket into a cash register) and money can go missing and I have this feeling until I count all the money in the cash drawer, until every cent. And if I have the correct amount of exchange money there, I have this relief like I was having today. I felt happy that I don’t need to put my money in there.
