Borders...

Well it has been an interesting week and not for good reasons. On Thursday, Redgroup (who own Borders) went into voluntary administration. they told us not to panic and that it would be business as usual. That I could cope with, I knew it was coming. Someone I work with said it was a relief to finally have it happen. I'm not sure I felt relief. I was definitely sadder than I thought I would be, but working on the theory that they cold take a few months to sort their stuff out I wasn't too stressed.

That is until I got to work on Friday morning and was informed we wouldn't be honouring gift cards, or at least not without the customer spending twice the cards value. honestly I couldn't even say if it was legal though I guess it must be.

So anyway, yesterday was hell. In the end it was the nice customers who got to me. And I totally broke when someone asked me if I was a full-time employee and wished me the best. I was so pissed off with myself. It is just a job and here I was crying over it. Unfortunately it was a job I fell into - kid's books - and I really love it - when I'm not dealing with crap management decisions.

those kind of crap decisions continued in abundance yesterday, firstly with the gift cards, then with the store manager not being there for the first 3.5 hours the store was open, then with the regional manager getting pissy with me for answering the phone with 'good morning Borders P**** yes we are open'. Apparently it was negative, not helpful and we should be acting as if everything was business as usual. He didn't know who I was because I don't use my name but did mention it to the line manager who took the call. My response was 'he can kiss my ass'. It clearly wasn't business as usual and I cut a bunch of people off at the pass by answering the phone the way I did. I couldn't begin to tell you how many calls I answered asking if we were open.

Then there was the customer abuse - I found out today that after I left they ended up calling in security guards, and someone in one of the store was spat on. I can understand the anger but why take it out on us, we didn't make the decision, couldn't do anything about it and don't know how long we will have jobs.

I wanted nothing more than to go home and sit somewhere quite with a big glass of wine and try and forget. Not really an option when you have two little children. They don't want to understand and I don't want to stress them out. So I tried to act as close to normal as I could. I went for my run a little earlier so I could play in the spa with them.

Now it was my run that was a bit interesting because that is when I try to talk to God. I deliberately don't take music with me for that reason. I walked on to my driveway and asked if He had anything for me and the reply I got was 'come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest'. I laughed and told Him he was very funny. I don't know what's going to happen with my job and He says to rest.

Needless to say I don't rest well. I've tried that and it's never gotten me anywhere. Then again 'blessing the work of your hands' hasn't seemed to work any better. Sure I like my job and it pays our bills but I come home and write and seem to have gotten nowhere. I put in a lot of extra hours reading and researching for work and while it's appreciated it doesn't help financially.

Later in my run I admitted I was scared. The response I got was 'I've been scared to'. That almost made me stop. I struggled to get my head around it. I thought I was hearing what I wanted to hear. I can't ever remember hearing someone preach that before. If that was the case I though something in the Bible should back it up. To which the response was 'I came to be a man and experience everything a man does'.

Whoa, what a thought. If I'd been the one going to the cross I'd have been pretty scared even if I was sure it would work out alright. Who in their right mind wouldn't be scared to suffer like that? It is important to note here that people confront their fears all the time so I will try not to worry about the things I have no control over and walk a balanced path between resting and not sitting on my butt being lazy.