Dear Dreams

[Friday, 27 October, 2006]

In my second day of working in the warehouse sales, things did not go smooth again.

Since I was told to reach there an hour earlier than the previous day, at nine o’clock in the morning, sleeping at two plus was killing me. The alarm clock and my phone failed to pull me out of the bed and I was almost late.

I walked all the way there again and saw Tze Siang near the place who told me it was still locked. The scary woman and her boyfriend reached next and through her talking over the phone, we knew the holder of the key was just on the way to Pasir Ris, and would take more than twenty minutes to reach.

Liying reached with her friend, Jingling and we went down to have a quick bite at the joint Cheers and Delifrance at Boulevard. I did not really like the service and the spring roll was just of normal taste. Anyway, it could be noisier if Yitian was around but she was sick. After we got back, the place was not opened yet.

Beginning of work was a briefing, which I thought was not a very pleasant one. The announcement of restriction to chatting was quite crappy, creating very bad atmosphere for all the staffs especially those who were not related to that family business.

Tze Siang, Kwang Han and I were tasked to collect belongings from the clients before they could go in as there was no CCTV or any security against theft. The hectic of the job required more than two persons. One problem was that the old man at the front was not alert enough to catch all the customers with big bags to guide them over; I gave chase to a few of them further into the sales area.

There were also big problems like the customers did not want to leave their belongings there and we met some very crucial cases. There was limited space, no shelves, and therefore it was useless even when we tried our best to put close range of numbers together; things got so messy when there were many customers approaching at one time.

I took three bottles of mineral water and left them at the counter. An arrogant guy called Kevin came over with another guy, insisting that the station required only two persons. He was right about the old man not able to do his part of job efficiently to lead customers to deposit their belongings over, but his tone sucked. Then, he and his follower took two of the bottles on the table without asking, drank half and left them there; it was so rude of him.

Soon, Kwang Han was pulled away to distribute flyers. A newcomer was inserted into our team as part-timer, who seemed quite relaxed. That guy’s presence was of little use actually and he did not stay for long and I was not really sure what he was supposed to do; perhaps he was one of the neglected lucky guys.

After some time, David, probably at the age of fourteen, was told to join Tze Siang and me; his arrogance could match Kevin’s. Since he was somehow related to the family, he could have much say. He was lazing around often, degrading the morale of the rest of the non-related staffs. He disappeared from my station soon.

It was all thanks to Yuqing for helping out us at times. I had tried my best to serve each customer with smiles and the quickest speed I could offer, but it was never enough. I accidentally injured myself a few times since the number tags were all laminated with sharp edges; the skins at the joint of nails and fingers were cut.

I got so tired. Even before my operation, I could not stand for so long due to my knee injuries; but I had to hold it for almost the whole day. We had a few chairs but the family-related staffs took them away due to limited number of chairs; how selfish.

My work area was the saddest station other than being described as the toughest by Yuqing. We got to see all babes coming in, compared to previously inside the store was huge difference but it was sad when the babes were leaving; whereas we would not feel anything inside the store.

Lunch time was great as we could finally sit down to rest. Liying came into the store and there was some exchange of greeting. Next was Nat who I always called her “Xiao Mei Mei” (Little girl in Chinese) and she came in just nice to witness Yuqing having a seed of rice on his cheek. Suddenly I was accused of being flirting; I thought a little crap was good enough to disperse the boredom and frustration accumulated. It became so quiet once I stopped talking.

I saw a few cute girls and one looked identical to Huiyi. Others were very skinny and stylish while some older ones were gorgeous. Tze Siang’s CCHSM cute girl came with her mum for the second day. We wanted to help him get the number but did not get any good chance since we could not leave the station. As we entrusted the job to Yuqing while we went to take dinner, her dad had come along too and our plan failed.

Anyway, there was an extremely bad situation while Yuqing was away to get us dinner. His aunt, Pauline, came over to lecture Tze Siang and I just because a customer was holding the blue plastic bag and claimed that we gave it to him or her. It was stupid since anyone could just buy something and bring the plastic bag in to smuggle items out; just a blue plastic bag alone was a bad way to accuse us. This totally changed my impression of Auntie Pauline.

The boyfriend of the scary woman was said to be aiming at Yuqing and Kwang Han’s friend, Chun Ming, and it changed my opinion of him.

I guessed I was just not very comfortable with rich people; most of them were too carefree and thus had more confidence than others, which did not mean they were cleverer than normal people. People who tried to act smart and gave others pressures were pests of the working society.

At the end of the day, Yuqing, Chun Ming, Tze Siang, Kwang Han and I had a little dessert feast at Lau Pa Sat, where we chatted about the whole event. We got to know from Yuqing about the situation and characteristic of the people.

The work was definitely a new experience and I got to know more things about warehouse sales thanks to Yuqing, even though that was the first time Yuqing’s aunt was organising it.