It's been a VERY long couple of days!
Mostly cool, but wow am I tired. I should be napping, but... when we got back from dinner tonight, I got on the computer and started answering email and so forth, and I'm not passing out as soon as I'm stationary anymore, so I'll probably stay up now. I'm off tomorrow, so I'll get to do some catching up, though I have a 1:00 appointment, so I can't sleep all day like I did Thursday, but even if I'm up till 5 or 6 again, sleeping till noon will do me better than getting up at 8 like the last two days.
So it's the Garden and Home Show, we're through the big opening weekend. I worked both days all day at the show, which was 9am-9pm Saturday, and 9am-6pm today. Not to mention that after those 12 hours yesterday, we went back to the store to pick up more merchandise to load into the car to take in today. Which is because we sold more than we expected to, and that's really cool. But we didn't get back to the house till around 11pm. A VERY long day, yes.
Tonight we went out to Little India after the show. Really our only night to go out most places for dinner as a family while I'm here, since the show goes till 9 every night except Sunday, and next Sunday is the last day and we'll have to tear down/move out right after closing.
Dinner was very nice. We went there first for my mom's birthday in October, trying somewhere new, and we liked it enough to make a point to go back. Really good food, tastes exotic enough that I'm going to hazard a guess that it's reasonably authentic, although I'm not knowledgeable about Indian food to know for sure. Delicious regardless. I love the mango lassi drink, and the fruit-filled naan bread (can't remember the Indian name of it), and every dish we've had has been wonderful. We each order, and do a lot of sharing. They serve the entrees in these dishes that don't look that big, but there is a lot more food and it's a lot more filling than it would seem, and more than plenty for everyone to try everything. Also, it is not a particularly expensive restaurant. Nothing's cheap, but we've spent as much on a meal at Chili's as we do on dinner at Little India, and there is just no comparison between them!
So, dinner was very nice, everyone was in a decent mood for once. My mom is exhausted and overworked, perpetually and worse lately, and my sister is always pretty moody. Has made it feel tense for me around the house for parts of the last few days. Working the show with Mom this weekend was nice though, because it's fast-paced, and we were selling and talking to people, and not feeling quite as tired once we got going, and we do work well together. Much better than being around the house when she's just working late into the night on paperwork, not getting practically any sleep at all, day after day, and there isn't a way for me to help with the paperwork and ordering she's doing.
I'm not sure what days I'm working in the store or at the show for the rest of it. I prefer to work the show, and my sister prefers to work more in the store, I think. But she might want to work the show for part of next weekend, so I might not work it next weekend. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm off tomorrow, even though I offered to help cover the store for the evening, or accompany Mom to the show, even though Monday last year was very quiet and one person can easily run the booth alone for that. I think she doesn't want to overwork me, even though that's what I'm kind of here for this week, to share in the overwork that has to happen to run the show and the store for the week. But also I think she wants to watch my hours because business has been slow and she can only afford to pay me so much, too. So... whichever way she needs it to be, I'll work when asked, I'll have some time off when they prefer to cover it.
Tomorrow my 1pm appointment is some kind of "makeover" thing that one of the ladies from the Mary Kay Cosmetics booth next to us is doing. I am NOT a Mary Kay Cosmetics kind of girl, at least not the housewife and tupperware parties image that Mary Kay brings to my mind, although that might not be a fair or accurate association. But this saleslady is new, enthusiastic, and friendly, and she asked my mom, myself, and my sister, if she could do the makeover thing on us that she is offering to show attendees. Some kind of makeover with before-and-after pictures, so why not, take an hour and it'll be fun. She joked today that I probably know more about her camera than she does, and while I don't know very much, I am interested in seeing what kind of camera she has (I didn't even get as far as asking if it's film or digital, before the conversation moved on), and seeing if I really can apply some of the photography information that Gremlin has been teaching me, to how her camera works. Of course she may be understating her own knowledge and she may know her camera just fine, or it may just be an automatic camera or whatnot, but I have this new interest in cameras and photography now that I know even just a little bit about them! So I'll see how that part works out, too.
Side note: The way payment works at the show, there isn't a phone line in the booth, so we use a credit card terminal in "offline" mode, swipe the cards, enter the amounts, and transmit the batches at night. Which means that the cards don't get approved until night. And yesterday and today, we had one card declined each day. That didn't happen a single time last year. We are told by the merchant account people that basically there is no protection against that if we "choose" to use the machine offline (in other words if we choose to accept credit cards at a place like this show, it's at our own risk), and that we can keep trying to run that transaction again every couple of days.
I said to Mom, we have their names and credit card numbers, and they signed an agreement to pay. We SHOULD have some recourse to use that information to get to them, though I'm not sure precisely by what means. Of course the way I've come to understand that credit card/merchant account stuff protects the theiving consumer, we may not have the recourse that it seems like we should have. And it'll mean calling merchant services and/or Mastercard/Visa, and trying to get information out of them about what we can do. Which is time and extreme frustration. But which is more frustration, just accepting that we got ripped off, whether intentionally or not? Or going through the intense headache of trying to do something about it? One of those nasty things again, much as I try to avoid them. Probably, Mom won't have time to fight this fight, and I probably won't make it a priority right now because the studio is my priority at this point, and so it will probably get dropped, and I don't really want to think about it. Makes me very ANGRY.
I think that's pretty much the story of the show so far... I have to put a little update on the store's web site about it, and I took a few pictures of our booth. When I get those from our camera, I'll post one here too.
Mostly cool, but wow am I tired. I should be napping, but... when we got back from dinner tonight, I got on the computer and started answering email and so forth, and I'm not passing out as soon as I'm stationary anymore, so I'll probably stay up now. I'm off tomorrow, so I'll get to do some catching up, though I have a 1:00 appointment, so I can't sleep all day like I did Thursday, but even if I'm up till 5 or 6 again, sleeping till noon will do me better than getting up at 8 like the last two days.
So it's the Garden and Home Show, we're through the big opening weekend. I worked both days all day at the show, which was 9am-9pm Saturday, and 9am-6pm today. Not to mention that after those 12 hours yesterday, we went back to the store to pick up more merchandise to load into the car to take in today. Which is because we sold more than we expected to, and that's really cool. But we didn't get back to the house till around 11pm. A VERY long day, yes.
Tonight we went out to Little India after the show. Really our only night to go out most places for dinner as a family while I'm here, since the show goes till 9 every night except Sunday, and next Sunday is the last day and we'll have to tear down/move out right after closing.
Dinner was very nice. We went there first for my mom's birthday in October, trying somewhere new, and we liked it enough to make a point to go back. Really good food, tastes exotic enough that I'm going to hazard a guess that it's reasonably authentic, although I'm not knowledgeable about Indian food to know for sure. Delicious regardless. I love the mango lassi drink, and the fruit-filled naan bread (can't remember the Indian name of it), and every dish we've had has been wonderful. We each order, and do a lot of sharing. They serve the entrees in these dishes that don't look that big, but there is a lot more food and it's a lot more filling than it would seem, and more than plenty for everyone to try everything. Also, it is not a particularly expensive restaurant. Nothing's cheap, but we've spent as much on a meal at Chili's as we do on dinner at Little India, and there is just no comparison between them!
So, dinner was very nice, everyone was in a decent mood for once. My mom is exhausted and overworked, perpetually and worse lately, and my sister is always pretty moody. Has made it feel tense for me around the house for parts of the last few days. Working the show with Mom this weekend was nice though, because it's fast-paced, and we were selling and talking to people, and not feeling quite as tired once we got going, and we do work well together. Much better than being around the house when she's just working late into the night on paperwork, not getting practically any sleep at all, day after day, and there isn't a way for me to help with the paperwork and ordering she's doing.
I'm not sure what days I'm working in the store or at the show for the rest of it. I prefer to work the show, and my sister prefers to work more in the store, I think. But she might want to work the show for part of next weekend, so I might not work it next weekend. We'll see what happens. Meanwhile, I'm off tomorrow, even though I offered to help cover the store for the evening, or accompany Mom to the show, even though Monday last year was very quiet and one person can easily run the booth alone for that. I think she doesn't want to overwork me, even though that's what I'm kind of here for this week, to share in the overwork that has to happen to run the show and the store for the week. But also I think she wants to watch my hours because business has been slow and she can only afford to pay me so much, too. So... whichever way she needs it to be, I'll work when asked, I'll have some time off when they prefer to cover it.
Tomorrow my 1pm appointment is some kind of "makeover" thing that one of the ladies from the Mary Kay Cosmetics booth next to us is doing. I am NOT a Mary Kay Cosmetics kind of girl, at least not the housewife and tupperware parties image that Mary Kay brings to my mind, although that might not be a fair or accurate association. But this saleslady is new, enthusiastic, and friendly, and she asked my mom, myself, and my sister, if she could do the makeover thing on us that she is offering to show attendees. Some kind of makeover with before-and-after pictures, so why not, take an hour and it'll be fun. She joked today that I probably know more about her camera than she does, and while I don't know very much, I am interested in seeing what kind of camera she has (I didn't even get as far as asking if it's film or digital, before the conversation moved on), and seeing if I really can apply some of the photography information that Gremlin has been teaching me, to how her camera works. Of course she may be understating her own knowledge and she may know her camera just fine, or it may just be an automatic camera or whatnot, but I have this new interest in cameras and photography now that I know even just a little bit about them! So I'll see how that part works out, too.
Side note: The way payment works at the show, there isn't a phone line in the booth, so we use a credit card terminal in "offline" mode, swipe the cards, enter the amounts, and transmit the batches at night. Which means that the cards don't get approved until night. And yesterday and today, we had one card declined each day. That didn't happen a single time last year. We are told by the merchant account people that basically there is no protection against that if we "choose" to use the machine offline (in other words if we choose to accept credit cards at a place like this show, it's at our own risk), and that we can keep trying to run that transaction again every couple of days.
I said to Mom, we have their names and credit card numbers, and they signed an agreement to pay. We SHOULD have some recourse to use that information to get to them, though I'm not sure precisely by what means. Of course the way I've come to understand that credit card/merchant account stuff protects the theiving consumer, we may not have the recourse that it seems like we should have. And it'll mean calling merchant services and/or Mastercard/Visa, and trying to get information out of them about what we can do. Which is time and extreme frustration. But which is more frustration, just accepting that we got ripped off, whether intentionally or not? Or going through the intense headache of trying to do something about it? One of those nasty things again, much as I try to avoid them. Probably, Mom won't have time to fight this fight, and I probably won't make it a priority right now because the studio is my priority at this point, and so it will probably get dropped, and I don't really want to think about it. Makes me very ANGRY.
I think that's pretty much the story of the show so far... I have to put a little update on the store's web site about it, and I took a few pictures of our booth. When I get those from our camera, I'll post one here too.
Perhaps you should take their digital photo and post the offenders pics up in the Hall ??
I suppose you'd write off something for shoplifting so there's always an element of loss but I recognise the frustration from your perspective. Some bankruptcy arrangements here mean the creditor gets zilch while the offending debtor never actually pays.