Miranda

Chapter Fourteen

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

~Miranda~

The entire month of December flew by in a blur, just a few more days until the New Year ticked over. Holiday shopping was in it's height and we had plenty of new sales and merchandise to keep people coming back, which meant that we kept busy. I had worked nearly every day of the week, fitting in the plasma donations when I could to keep up with Grandma's ever-growing needs. Her care had moved up a level recently and her care team seemed concerned that if I didn't visit more often, she would continue to decline rapidly. I had gotten a book from the library about Alzheimer's and while I know my visits lifted her spirits, I wasn't sure that not being able to visit was causing the decline. I think they were just trying to guilt trip me. I did try really hard though.

Last month I made the Thanksgiving Dinner they hosted, and she spent the whole time reliving her youth with me, it was great but she thought I was her sister Dorothy, who had died some 20 years ago. It made me sad to see her like that and the melancholy that came after that visit lingered with me for days.

It didn't help that I was exhausted from work and Justin's constant nighttime visits. I hadn't had a peaceful day to myself in a very long time.

We were finally in the winter doldrums as I liked to call them. That strange week between Christmas and New Year's, where you don't really know what day it is and everything is just kind of lazy.

The day after Christmas is always a bit crazy as people are returning or exchanging gifted items but after that come the doldrums. As a professional retail worker let me give you some advice. Don't come the day after Christmas, wait around two weeks, we will have all the items returned by the not so savvy people put away and new merchandise that might suit you more on display. Also, it will be less crowded.

So, I was not in my usual efficient form the day after my latest visit to Grandma. I had brought her a present for Christmas, a pair of Isotoner slippers that had been returned because of a tiny little stain under its bow, an item usually put in our return to distribution center pile, the people who deal with broken or damaged merchandise. I had asked Nick if he could still sell them to me at a discount and he had, for only five dollars when they were usually twenty. She had really liked them, and I doubted that she would ever see the stain, but then she got really agitated and couldn't remember who I was and thought that I was there to steal something form her. I had tried to calm her down, but the staff eventually had to get involved and I left feeling worse about the whole affair.

'Another day, another dollar' I thought morosely to myself as I handed the sticker gun to one of the cashiers after explaining how to scan and then label the items marked for clearance. We had been doing this all day, I kept one cashier on the register at both sides and the second one was given the gun and a pile of items to sticker. It was lazy busy work but needed to be done and we had ample time and personnel.

I walked around to the other side and checked on them, satisfied that everyone was gainfully busy, I made my way back to customer service to see if Valerie needed her lunch break.

Twenty minutes later I am about to go and eat my lunch real quick too when a page comes over the head set for an item in the electronics cage, I wait a second to see if Justin is going to respond but he doesn't, so I tell the cashier that I will be right there. I cut through the office to the stock room and freeze when I hear a female giggle. No one should be back here at the moment, so I am curious and try to sneak up on the people. I assume there are two because no one giggles like that without a reason. But my clumsy self knocks a plastic bucket used to hold the high end jewelry items in the safe every night to the floor. Luckily it is near enough to the office door that it looks like I have only just entered. I snatch it up and shove it on the shelf, still trying to catch whoever is in here doing things they shouldn't be doing. Yes, I know, hypocritical of me, but the things I do in here aren't by my choice.