Retail Slave

My current job holding and title.

Though it's not so bad. I'm at the point where I work in enough areas of my store that I can do pretty much anything I want to keep myself busy. Cash, floor, filling, stock, running, processing, cleaning, cooking?, blowing up coffee machines...it's interesting. Then again, I've worked six months at my current job, which is long for retail. I have to admit I'm getting a little sick of it, especially due to recent events. I suppose it could have happened in any setting, but I'm a little turned off of the mall scene as of this past December.

I also realized that all my best stories come from work. I rarely have anything interesting happen to me in other settings. Even when I travel the events are...well uneventful. I mean the best travel story I have is when I was at a conference with a youth group in Germany two summers ago and we were told not to go anywhere in the conference centre (and the area around it) alone. Sound advice for anywhere you may be traveling (though I've known many to travel alone), but nonetheless and incident occurred, and we were forbidden to be alone. And then my entire team forgot about me. I mean, I don't blame them. I'm not all that vocal, and I AM kind of boring, but still, the group was only 12 people.

Anyway we had these groups ("family groups" I believe) where we met people from around the world and talked with them (which was...a little hard at times since not all of them spoke English or German). I had a rather hilarious encounter with a young Russian man who was trying to ask where I was from. I thought he was speaking to me in German, so I tried to reply in the few words I knew that I could only speak a little German. The guy looked at me as if I was insane, then asked more slowly, in English, where I was from. I had the classic blushing moment as I mumbled "Canada". He didn't talk to me again.

I had a similar experience at the McDonald's across the street from the centre, but I have digressed enough already.

After these family groups we head back to the main hall to eat lunch. I sat with my group and chatted with a German guy named Fabian. Fabian was an interesting fellow. I think he may have been one of the youth leaders, but he was close to my age at the time. I estimate 22. He made a lot of off-colour jokes, told me how Tylenol was not approved by the German health board (or whatever you call it there), bought me one of the more popular German drinks (which contained 2% alcohol...which really isn't a big deal unless you signed a contract before leaving saying that you wouldn't drink) and talked a lot about his wife, whom he had just married the year before. He also came back with me to the hotel the Canadians were staying in to get some of my Tylenol for his back (which is how the German health board topic came about). After that he called me his personal "drug dealer". I remember on the way back that day we were approached by two (Lutherans? Jehovah's Witnesses?) young people, a girl and a boy, asking us what languages we spoke. Fabian said speak English so we both could understand. They then began questioning us about our beliefs in God and Christianity, and whether we believed in predestination. Neither of us were too keen on being converted, so we debated a bit before returning to the conference centre. They continued to circle the centre asking people similar questions.

So after the lunch with Fabian, we split for the day and I went to go look for my youth group. I searched all over the centre hall for them where we said we'd meet to travel back together. We were supposed to head into Leipzig that day to enjoy being tourists. Leipzig was a fantastic city. We spilt off into groups that day of two or three people. I traveled with two people I had hardly known before the trip (and sadly hardly know now). At the time, however, I got to know them quite well. We shopped around the city, took pictures, visited Bach's old church where he began composing, ate tons of gelato (probably more than I ate in the entire month I was in Italy), looked for souvenirs to bring back to Canada, ate dinner in an Italian restaurant (seriously, the entire time we were in Germany, all we ate was Italian food...what the hell...), and finished the day by watching a show in Augustusplatz. The lights there lit up the fountain as the sky gradually darkened. The sun set behind a huge construction site with three giant cranes. I got some fantastic pictures of the cranes against a orange and pink sky.

Before we left, however, I spent thirty minutes wandering around the conference centre in the heat looking for my group. And when I say heat, I mean it was REALLY hot. The temperature outside was about thirty-two degrees if I remember, and it was hotter inside. Why? The building was made of glass. The building, was a giant greenhouse. The building itself was an architectural wonder. Honestly, the most boring building in Leipzig is ten times more interesting than the ones in Calgary. Calgary is...deprived in that area. More than deprived. Devastated is probably a better word. They had this beautiful spiral staircase in the one room that overlooked a shallow pool (about one foot deep). At first the pool was wide open and people dipped their feet in there. I think the pool was supposed to be more...decorative. That or people got a little out of hand. It only took the centre about four hours to rope it off and mark the side of the pool with German and English words, written in tape on the floor. The escalators were even interesting. The metal was painted red and white, so they looked like giant moving candy-canes. Or barber poles. My favourite picture is of be on one of those escalators.

I did get a better chance to look around while I was searching. I was more annoyed at the time, but I got to know the building well. A little too well. I remember most of its layout even two years later. I also remember their annoying system of numbering levels. Level 0 was always at ground level no matter what building you were in. The whole centre was partially on a hill. In some buildings the levels made sense, starting at 0 and moving up to 1 and 2 (1 being floor 2 in North America and 2 being 3 etc.). Then in other buildings, there would be floor -1 or -2, which was like the basement I suppose...only it wasn't underground.

Finally I made my way back to the main hall where lunch was being cleaned up. Still no sign of my team, so I decided to head back to the hotel and wait for them there. On my own. Alone. We weren't supposed to because of the attack on one of the girls at the conference, but I was fed up. I walked back past the kiosks and the "world centre" (with activities I never participated in...I'm lame like that) and headed out past the bus loop out front to the right of a large fountain where people were cooling off (by large I mean like Washington Monument pool large). There was a bridge in the centre with a monument in the centre. I can't remember if I went out to look at it. As I passed the bus loop, I saw one of the Canadian leaders there getting ready to head into Leipzig. I asked him if he had seen my team. He said they had already headed back to the hotel. Thirty minutes before.

I was, quite angry at first. My team had completely forgotten me at the centre. I started thinking it was hilarious about halfway back to the hotel. Our group leader had been so serious about not traveling alone, and they left without me. I wasn't upset. I was a big girl, 19 at the time, so really, it's not like I was a child with no idea where to go or what to do. The principle of the matter was what made me laugh. When I arrived at the hotel, my team was just leaving out the front door. Only half of them realized I was still missing. My team leader was apparently coming back to the centre to page me, but I found them first. HAH. Haha? They also didn't realize I was missing until they were back at the hotel. I guess I leave a STRONG, LASTING IMPRESSION on people. Like memory foam. On steroids.

I think I got a little sidetracked.