I just bought a size 7.5 off of someone, and it's too big, even with my thick sports socks on. That's the thing with Craigslist exchanges. There's a real person involved and you actually have to be assertive like you're supposed to be in real life (yeah right, not my real life) if you don't want it.
If it's some big chain store, you just bring in the receipt and the employee hired for the customer service desk takes back your unwanted item, and gives you the store's money back for it. If it's an online purchase, no human encounter required! Just package it up, smack a return label on that shit, and boom--gone forever. You don't have to see it eye to eye ever again.
We agreed to meet at Coffeesmith. It wasn't clear whether we were supposed to meet in the parking lot (as is rote) or inside the establishment, so I stood outside my car for a bit answering text messages in the cold. Some cars pulled into the parking lot: an old Asian couple, a young Asian couple. Coffeesmith regulars. Maybe 5 minutes passed (I was right on time, surprisingly) and I decided to put on my identifying marker on (my backpack--I'd said I'd be working there afterwards--which maybe indicated "meet inside") and make my way in.
Not 1 minute passed and a young Asian (! not a granola white person?) woman, maybe a few years older than myself, knew just who to go to: "Are you the one asking about the climbing shoes?" she asked with a Vietnamese accent. No canvassing eyes or anything. She must have been staking me out in her car where I couldn't see her (I'd looked into the driver's side of all the cars around mine).
She got chatty, which surprised me, because in our email correspondances she didn't even mention her name (I did) or identifying characteristics at all. I was ready to just try on the shoes and be on with it, but she maintained conversation as I was eyeing the pair of shoes. "So, are you a student? What are you studying?" So I asked her, "So why did you decide to sell your shoes?" And she gave me a whole history of her climbing, i.e. she has 3 climbing shoes and is trying to get rid of them, she climbs at Vertical Rock ("How's the Sportrock in Sterling?") with her fiancee, she only climbs a 5.8 which makes it difficult because others are either lower or higher than her, she used to have a monthly pass but then she started going only once a week and less and less because of traveling for work (I should have asked: "Where! I want your job!").
She asked me how often I climb, and I'll bet she didn't even need to ask me to find out because I tried the shoes on with my socks (too much slippage for real rock climbers). I asked her who she climbs with--Meetups? And she (not I!) extended the invitation to climb together. I made the subtle suggestion, but she gave the explicit offer.
So basically I paid a girl 50 bucks to be my climbing buddy. I don't even know her name.
Maybe the shoes will fit my sister. We can be an Azn Grrls! climbing group.
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Recreational work
So I've been meaning to record some of my day-to-day happenings at my part-time job (front desk at a recenter) for a while now. I've been there for 4 months now, and every day I could write a good few paragraphs about the crazy things people say and do and what's going through the mind of my relatively reserved self when I encounter it.
I usually work pretty consistently 6am-11 or 12 three or four days a week. My supervisor was always Derek, and I always worked with the same front desk volunteers: Lee, Roberta, Skip, and Anna. Ken didn't work the FD but I saw him twice a week TR. But since the new school year's started up (most of the FD are in school), schedules are desperately shifting. Vince, who pretty consistently works the 6am shifts when I'm not, has classes in the morning. Alex, who used to work most of the evenings, has shipped off to Australia. And so now I'm doing from 6am's and 11am's and to 8pm's and catching up with volunteers and managers I haven't talked to since September when I started.
For the past week or so we've been chasing a mouse. I came into work one morning and the door to the back desk was shut with more than the usual 1-2 people behind it. It was strange because everyone who works at the recenter (everyone, from volunteers and FD and instructors) go through the back. I thought there was some kind of hush-hush manager's meeting going on. I asked what was up, and someone said that there was a mouse. I thought they were just trying to make me go away.
So we've had a lot of shut doors this week. First the back office, and then the other day I heard some shouting and then I couldn't get into the storage/mail room.
The last time there was a mouse at the front desk, it was dead, and I was a volunteer. It was a Saturday morning when I worked 8a-12 every week to get free gym access. The managers were trying to get Jessica (FD then, now a FD manager) worked up, so they invited her to check out what was in this gift bag. And in the gift bag was a dead mouse. She screamed. I asked what in there, and as they were laughing at her loud reaction and extending the bag for me to get in at the joke, I felt sad for the little thing. Mice are actually pretty cute and furry (I'd seen one at the recenter at my alma mater; it jumped from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor, and lived to skitter away to a safe corner somewhere away from stomping tennis shoes).
They caught the mouse yesterday; how--I don't know. I asked Derek and he described something about pouring the mouse into a drip coffee machine and turning it on brew or something like that... I didn't catch his whole story but it was made up anyway (I'm sure it was a good one) and I just wanted to know if it was alive and they'd let the little thing go into the wild.
FEBRUARY 2012
I usually work pretty consistently 6am-11 or 12 three or four days a week. My supervisor was always Derek, and I always worked with the same front desk volunteers: Lee, Roberta, Skip, and Anna. Ken didn't work the FD but I saw him twice a week TR. But since the new school year's started up (most of the FD are in school), schedules are desperately shifting. Vince, who pretty consistently works the 6am shifts when I'm not, has classes in the morning. Alex, who used to work most of the evenings, has shipped off to Australia. And so now I'm doing from 6am's and 11am's and to 8pm's and catching up with volunteers and managers I haven't talked to since September when I started.
For the past week or so we've been chasing a mouse. I came into work one morning and the door to the back desk was shut with more than the usual 1-2 people behind it. It was strange because everyone who works at the recenter (everyone, from volunteers and FD and instructors) go through the back. I thought there was some kind of hush-hush manager's meeting going on. I asked what was up, and someone said that there was a mouse. I thought they were just trying to make me go away.
So we've had a lot of shut doors this week. First the back office, and then the other day I heard some shouting and then I couldn't get into the storage/mail room.
The last time there was a mouse at the front desk, it was dead, and I was a volunteer. It was a Saturday morning when I worked 8a-12 every week to get free gym access. The managers were trying to get Jessica (FD then, now a FD manager) worked up, so they invited her to check out what was in this gift bag. And in the gift bag was a dead mouse. She screamed. I asked what in there, and as they were laughing at her loud reaction and extending the bag for me to get in at the joke, I felt sad for the little thing. Mice are actually pretty cute and furry (I'd seen one at the recenter at my alma mater; it jumped from the 2nd floor to the 1st floor, and lived to skitter away to a safe corner somewhere away from stomping tennis shoes).
They caught the mouse yesterday; how--I don't know. I asked Derek and he described something about pouring the mouse into a drip coffee machine and turning it on brew or something like that... I didn't catch his whole story but it was made up anyway (I'm sure it was a good one) and I just wanted to know if it was alive and they'd let the little thing go into the wild.
FEBRUARY 2012
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