Technology and Hobby Lobby

One of the strange things about my place of employment is the lack of technology. There may be a computer hiding out somewhere in the "office," but there sure as heck aren't any on the floor. That means the following:
1. everything is priced by hand with a price gun
2. everything at the cash register is rung up by hand according to said price gun stickers
3. if something doesn't have a price, someone in that "department" has to go either find the price on another item or look it up in the book.
4. this book i speak of is simply an REALLY long computer list put in a binder-type thing. this means the department person that was paged has to look through hundreds of pages to find the item and get the price
5. the department heads must use this book to order every week. they walk around with the book and find out what is out and order accordingly
5. the only way we know what's on sale is by looking at the weekly sales flyer and the item in question to see if they match

all of this leads to some funny conversations. my personal favorite is when someone asks me to scan something to find out the price or to see if it is on sale. when they ask about price, i normally just turn the item over. i feel kind of bad about this since it's kind of like stating the obvious, but you do what you have to do.

the other day a man came up to me with a garland and asked me if it was on sale. i knew it wasn't because garlands were on sale the week before and things are rarely on sale two weeks in row. i looked at the sales flyer, and sure enough, it wasn't on sale. i politely informed the man that the item was not on sale. he came back with a logical point, "but it was right by a sign that said half off." i went to look at the sign that said half off, and it was there, but it said half off flowering bushes. now only a trained hobby lobby sales associate like myself knows what the crap that is. anyway- i pointed to the sign and explained, but he still wanted me to scan it, "just to make sure." i understand why he asked. every store in the country has a scanner. heck- at borders the computers will even tell you which aisle it's on. but if you look around my station, you will see no signs of a computer. my boss and i were discussing the situation later and laughing. she said, "i'm always tempted to look at the item, make a scanning noise, and then hand it back and say, 'i scanned it. not on sale!'"

so there you have it. not a very exciting blog, but i am trying to keep up my daily self-imposed rule. bye.