Unhinged

It's the little things that drive you crazy. I have had this conversation with my Dad on a number of occasions.  You fight your way through the big stuff.  Unexpected surgery during a busy holiday season?  Put your head down and get the job done.  Band together, family first, take care of who needs to be taken care of and figure out who is going to hold the fort until we are back on smooth seas.  As a unit we handle the big stuff.

Back to the little things.  For example, a price gun that runs out of sticker tape in the middle of stamping hundreds of fudge boxes.  Watch me go unhinged.  It's not actually running out of stickers that make me nuts. It's reloading the darn price gun.  It's not that complicated really and there is an instructional image on the gun.  How easily the tape reloads is directly related to the time that you have to finish the project.  Last week I tried for ten minutes to reload the price gun to no avail.  Frustrated beyond all I handed it over to Suzanne who promptly loaded it in twenty seconds flat.  Isn't that nice

Sometimes you find the pricing gun empty.  And the next one you pick up is empty as well.  This is what is commonly known in the Snowflake employee circle as "sticking it to the next guy".   It happens with pricing guns, tape dispensers, staplers, ribbon, sticker rolls and the big tube box.  When I am guilty of such an act I like to leave a "Post It" note behind to let the next person know that it was me who "stuck it" to them.

I hope that when I leave this earth I go to heaven.  Now what could that possibly have to do with what I have been writing about.  Well if I don't make it to heaven on the first shot surely I will spend some time in purgatory.  I am pretty sure I know what will be there.  The good Lord will want me to learn patience and so my purgatory will be filled with tape-less price guns, shipping tape dispensers with the tape stuck around the roller, ribbon spools where you can't find the ribbon end, jammed staplers, cardboard and packing peanuts full of static.

I won't be alone in my little purgatory space of endless irritations. After all "Sticking it to the next guy" is the Snowflake employee way.  I'm pretty sure I will have a chocolate friend or sister with me.