Saturday I worked the 10am-6pm shift at the register and I think the combination of good weather, I use that term loosely because being from New England anything above 34 degrees in February is considered 'good', and Valentine's Day caused half of the State to be in Barnes & Noble that day.
When I say the line was 50+ people long for 3 hours I am not exaggerating. My fingers are sore from typing and I probably groped a million dollars in cash over the course of the morning. At one point there were 6 cashiers going at once and the manager even jumped in to try and make the line move faster but it didn't matter.
No matter how fast we moved the line just kept building as it snaked around the store.
With all of this back up you'd think I'd have people to bitch about but today it's the opposite. I want to tell you about two little girls that made me smile. Even though I wanted to pull my hair out.
At about noon time a mother and her two kids come up to my register, the son was around 15 and the daughter was probably 12, she was also autistic. Her mother told me that they were teaching her about money and she wanted to pay herself.
I told her it was no problem and I rang up her book and told her it was $10.61.
She very carefully counted out her $10 and then proceeded to count (out loud) the $.61 she was going to need.
One dime at a time. (All the while the line is getting longer and longer and I don't care because she's still counting.) When she realizes that she doesn't have a penny she seemed a little stricken but her brother told her to give me a nickle and I would give her change.
Which I did. And she counted each penny to make sure that there were four. (And the line is growing - and I still don't care.)
Once this was all done her brother says to her, "It would have been easier if you had just given her two quarters instead of all those dimes." At which she replied, "Robbie! I'm still learning."
That's right Robbie, she's still learning, give her a break.
She made me smile even though I was starving.
Little girl number two came at about 3 o'clock. I'm not certain if she would be considered a "Little Person" or not but she could barely see over the counter, everything about her was miniature.
She also had long, flaming red hair under a winter hat.
She handed me her Barbie Fairies book so her mother could pay for it and it was at this point I noticed that she had the same red hair as one of the fairies on the cover.
When I pointed this out to her she whipped off her hat so she could compare it to the book and says with a huge smile, 'She does have my hair doesn't she?!'
Her mother told me she would talk about that for the rest of the afternoon.
And even though I had three hours left of my shift and 600 more customers to go in line.
She made me smile.
This little baby is now in our hallway and Quint LOVES it! The kids call it her igloo.