Saturday, May 05, 2007
Pearl on Saturday Night
I worked at Pearl Arts & Crafts in Woodbridge NJ full time from August 91 to Nov 95, & did two more enjoyable part time stints there later in the 90s, in the book dept. I always worked Saturday nights. The manager appreciated it, & I rarely had anything else to do. Occasionally, I'd go out to a bar to hear a local band afterward. Usually, I just went home. Saturday nights were easy. The manager & owner left about 6. Most of the kids smoked pot on supper break; they reeked if they had crowded into a car in parking lot. If Pearl had drug-tested, the store would have had few employees who cared about arts & crafts supplies.* Caring about customers was another matter. What management there was on premises Saturday nights sensibly expected little in the way of real work. The store was never busy, customers tended toward friendly browser types, artists, crafters & college art students not looking for anything in particular. There was a lot of socializing bwteen departments.
After 7 pm, we got what I called "dateless dandies." These were people in their middle to late twenties dressed for clubbing & bar hopping who got out of the house early & were starting their evening via retail stores. (In Macy's the female ones hit the fragrances for a free sample of something expensive.) At Pearl, we got the wishful thinking artist wannabees, & always women fascinated by the airbrushes they'd encountered in nail salons that afternoon. For a couple of years, the airbrush area at Pearl had a short, laid back kid who went to The Art Institute of Philadelphia during the week, he knew his stuff, they could have put him just about anywhere in the store. He was always buzzed on Saturday night, & he'd position himself on a stool behind the airbrush counter, assembling & disassembling the same airbrush without even looking at it, as he stared at the attractive women asking him questions about how difficult it was to learn nail stenciling. Very, but why discourage anyone? His goal was to keep them at the counter as long as he could.
The store closed at 9, everyone became restless around 8:30. We were supposed to straighten up our areas, nobody bothered much with that, & by 10 past we were all standing near the registers waiting to punch out, which we couldn;t do until the registers were emptied. Yet, once outside, if the evening was mild, we tended to hang out for a little while. Some of us would have enjoyed walking across the parking lot to Chi-Chi's or TGIF for a drink, but those places were always packed by that hour. I envied the younger folks- a long, interesting night might be ahead of them while I went home, had a sandwich, & watched Walker, Texas Ranger.
*Pot couldn't enhance the workplace experience for me, it would befuddle me, make me suspicious of everyone, & I dislike fluorescent overhead lighting. It was an enhancement when I worked in a small graphics studio with a lovely woman named Lori, & then we just got Chinese takeout & stayed late some evenings listening to music & talking, off the clock.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
After 7 pm, we got what I called "dateless dandies." These were people in their middle to late twenties dressed for clubbing & bar hopping who got out of the house early & were starting their evening via retail stores. (In Macy's the female ones hit the fragrances for a free sample of something expensive.) At Pearl, we got the wishful thinking artist wannabees, & always women fascinated by the airbrushes they'd encountered in nail salons that afternoon. For a couple of years, the airbrush area at Pearl had a short, laid back kid who went to The Art Institute of Philadelphia during the week, he knew his stuff, they could have put him just about anywhere in the store. He was always buzzed on Saturday night, & he'd position himself on a stool behind the airbrush counter, assembling & disassembling the same airbrush without even looking at it, as he stared at the attractive women asking him questions about how difficult it was to learn nail stenciling. Very, but why discourage anyone? His goal was to keep them at the counter as long as he could.The store closed at 9, everyone became restless around 8:30. We were supposed to straighten up our areas, nobody bothered much with that, & by 10 past we were all standing near the registers waiting to punch out, which we couldn;t do until the registers were emptied. Yet, once outside, if the evening was mild, we tended to hang out for a little while. Some of us would have enjoyed walking across the parking lot to Chi-Chi's or TGIF for a drink, but those places were always packed by that hour. I envied the younger folks- a long, interesting night might be ahead of them while I went home, had a sandwich, & watched Walker, Texas Ranger.
*Pot couldn't enhance the workplace experience for me, it would befuddle me, make me suspicious of everyone, & I dislike fluorescent overhead lighting. It was an enhancement when I worked in a small graphics studio with a lovely woman named Lori, & then we just got Chinese takeout & stayed late some evenings listening to music & talking, off the clock.
Labels: Pearl Arts
