Oftentimes, I fail to remember that if I make a post based on what I think that people like me would enjoy that my target audience is getting narrowed down to 1.

    Well, if you read my post from a few days ago, you heard that I am about to be the Store Manager of my very own store in Bryan, Texas/College Station (home of Texas A&M University).  Anyways, I’m sure that you would assume that this means that I have garnered a lot of experience when it comes to treating customers.  This is very true.  However, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t reveal to you some inside tips on my special method of dealing with customers that I call “Getting them the hell out of my store so that I can work in peace”.  You see, in the retail environment, there is a very delicate balance between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction.  If this sounds cruel, you must bear in mind that customers are in the store for 30 minutes (if I’m even close to lucky) and they demand to be treated like royalty, whereas I am in the store for upwards of 12 hours and every last one of them give me a royal headache.  In a way, I suppose it makes me do better at my job seeing as how I will do almost anything to get them to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.  But in order to do this while retaining most of my dignity and pride (emphasis on “most”), I have to use a few tricks I have developed for making these people happy.

    Eadie’s guide on what the employees are REALLY doing.

    Greeting the Customer:

    A good employee is supposed to greet every customer that walks into the door.  This seems like an obvious statement, but I want you to really soak that in.  EVERY.  SINGLE.  CUSTOMER.  If we plan on retaining any degree of sanity, we have to figure out a way to virtually transform our human bodies into a computer.  In other words, we say the exact same shit to everybody that walks into the door.  All at once, in a dramatic twist of irony, the company’s goal of making the customers feel like their visit is special gets degraded into obnoxious repetition.  So to the customer:  when I say, “Hi, how are you, welcome to Shoe Room”, understand that I really, really, really, don’t want to know how you are.  Not only that, but I don’t want to know how your kids are, how your husband is, or even why the fuck you need shoes.  The simple fact that you are walking into a shoe store with soul-less loafers on your feet speaks volumes about why you need shoes.  But don’t get me wrong, don’t ignore us either.  Nothing says “hey shoe monkey, you’re wasting your breath” more than not even acknowledging my attempt at making you feel at home.

    Shoe Measuring Evasive Procedures:

    Everybody who has ever worked at a shoe store knows that the last thing you want to do is measure somebody’s barking dogs.  When we see the lady with the five kids come in through the front door who was in here 2 months ago start walking straight toward us without turning to go down the children’s isle, we know what is up.  Within seconds we are digging through our bag of tricks to come up with anything that would relieve us from having to deal with five pairs of clammy feet.

        Customer:  Hi, can you measure my foot?
        Employee:  Dammit!

        Customer:  Hi, we were in here yesterday and we bought the wrong size…
        Employee:  Well, you just need the next larger size then?
        Customer:  Actually, could you just measure Timmy’s fungus-prone foot?
        Employee:  Dammit!

        Customer:  Can you feel his toes in this, does it fit him?
        Employee:  Yeah, this feels a little loose, maybe you should go down half a size…
        Customer:  Can you just measure his foot to be sure.
        Employee:  Dammit!

        Customer:  Do you guys have one of those things to measure feet with?
        Employee:  This is a shoe store ma’am, of course not.
        *hands customer foot measuring device*
        Customer:  Actually, could you do it, I don’t want to get the wrong size…
        Employee:  I’m still working on my degree for shoe-sizing so your credentials are currently equal to mine.
        Customer:  Yes, but the yeast infection spawning out of my right ankle is sensitive and if I adjust my foot wrong it has a tendency to rupture and then I need to get paper towels to clean up the mess.
        Employee:  What?
        Customer:  Just measure my damn foot!
        Employee:  Dammit!

     Self Service vs. Full Service

     Shoe Room is a self service shoe store.  We are able to provide shoes at lower prices because (in theory) we remove the cost of labor by placing all of our product on the shelves where it can be seen and accessed by our customers.  This reduces the interaction time between the customer and the employee so that the entire shopping processed can be streamlined at the customer’s convenience.   (Prepare for an intentionally run-on sentence for the sake of capturing the mood generated by the customer’s incompetence)  This means that when you walk in and ask me where the Clark’s are and I point you directly toward the bin where we have them and then you ask me where the Clark’s Blackberry’s are and I show you how they can be located directly under the display and then when you ask me if we carry them in black and I show you that they are also on display right next to the brown ones and then you ask me where you can find them in either a 7, 7.5, or 8 and I show you where they are in the run and then you ask me to pull them out for you and then you ask me for those sizes in the black too THAT IT MAKES ME WANT TO RIP YOUR THROAT OUT BECAUSE WE WOULDN’T CARRY THEM RIGHT WHERE YOU CAN GET YOUR GRUBBY HANDS ON THEM IF THE COMPANY INTENDED TO PAY US TO DO THIS FOR YOU.    Anyways, this goes to you as well short Mexican lady who doesn’t speak any English and comes up to me with an armful of display shoes and assumes that I know Spanish and asks me to bring her each of them in 6 and 6.5s to whom I kindly make believe that I can’t speak her primitive language.  If I’m a dick for doing that, what is she for assuming that me, a caucasian just trying to scratch a penny in my own damn country that we brutally snatched from her government’s hands during the Mexican/American war, would be able to speak Spanish?

    Lack of Public Restroom

    This is one of the worst parts of my job.  Apparently, these bleeding heart parents with all their kids think that I am some kind of sick fuck that gets a real kick out of telling these people that we don’t have a public restroom.  Why do you even ask if we have a restroom if you are going to get all huffed up when I tell you we don’t.  You might as well just come at me already pissed off and save us both some time.  Good, now that we are passed that, what makes you think that since I told you “no” that my answer is going to change once you reveal to me that it is for your 3 year old son?  Do you think that if you say the words “but if he can’t go, he is going to have an accident” suddenly some magical door will just open up somewhere and reveal a golden pisser?  It’s not like it’s my fault that our floor plan has an employee-only bathroom located so deep into our stock room that Cortez would get lost trying to find it, posing a HUGE loss prevention hazard.  It gets fun however when after I tell them for the 2nd or 3rd time we don’t have one they decide to ask to speak to a manager.  I then get to practice my move I like to call “the 360 degree whadya need?”  I basically spin in a little circle and tell them the answer again.  Then the customer will pull out what all customers must think is the most powerful weapon in their arsenal:  the words “I’m never shopping here again”.

    “I’m never shopping here again!”

    Good.  Really.  Seriously.  Good.  I didn’t ask you to come in in the first place, and I don’t get paid commission, so I’m certainly not twisting your arm to buy a pair of shoes.  Now get out of the store before I start throwing things.

    Paying with a Card

    So, we have a conveniently located sign placed on our antiquated card readers that informs customers that “It is slow!!!!”  The original intent of this sign was so that customers would not get alarmed when the “verify in progress” screen is being displayed for so long that the shoes they are trying to buy start to go out of style (which doesn’t take very long if they are shopping from us).  However, the sad fact is that somehow, somewhere along the way, people started to decide that this comment was funny.  Not just funny, but an absolute knee-slapper.  Yes, I know I have a sign on my card reader that says “it’s slow” there is really no need to indicate that to me.  No, it isn’t funny, especially not when EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER that pays with a card (and even some that don’t) have to make an audible comment about how gosh darn funny it is.  Also, I’m pretty sure that your friends and family have eyes and can read, so there is no reason to point at it and read it out loud so that they too may bask in its cornucopia of humor.

    The Shoe Store is the Battlefield!

    That’s right, going to work everyday is going into a warzone.  The customers are the enemy invading our country.  Our job is to repel the invasion using our weapons of shoes. 

    That basically sums it up.  The name of the store I work it is not called Shoe Room by the way, I ended up deciding half way through this post to censor the name of my company on the (not so)off chance that some pencil-pusher with too much time on their hands has nothing better to do then sit down and google my company’s name, read any blog they see about it, and then determine if that person should still work for the company.

    Until next time, good luck with life.

My plan is to start posting more of my art on this site.

Until then, enjoy these candles (for those curious, I drew them using an old facebook app called “graffiti”)

I want to hear the best reason why somebody would want to buy this.

    Are you unsatisfied with the Coca-Cola pinup girls hanging on your wall?  Are your Marilyn Monroe posters fading?  Does your Princess Leia cardboard cutout make you sweat like it used to?  Are you looking to put some Nostalgia back into your Nostalgia?  Then come on down to Eadie’s pop culture memorabilia of yesteryear.  Why, with something from this collection, your house will resemble a 21st century museum in no time.  Slap bracelets be damned, for the clueless rock-dwellers among us, I present thee with the Pop Culture Clearance Sale.

    Robert Pattinson poster.
    Asking Price:  1 whopping cent.

    Sure, the Twilight saga still has full steam, but haven’t you noticed?  Nobody cares about Edward Cullens anymore.  It’s all about hot Native American Taylor Lautner and his role as “OMG an Indian is playing a werewolf, everybody quick, overlook the racism!”  I’m not really sure why the global attention switched between the two stars, I mean, Taylor was in the first movie too.  I think it may have something to do with that what-the-hell-is-growing-on-his-head hair-don’t he’s been sporting around for quite a while now.  I must have missed the memo that said unkept and unshowered is sexy.  Hell, I should have been on the cover of GQ for every month if that was the case.

    Brett Favre Packers Memorabilia.
    Asking Price:  5 bucks.

    While Favre is still undoubtedly hot shit right now in the NFL, he hasn’t played for the Packers for two years.  Now, this shouldn’t mean anything since he was with them for 16 years, most of which were astonishing, but everybody remembers how he left.  Now the wise would be quick to point out that it was actually the Packers’ management that ultimately led to Favre’s schism with the organization but a wise person in the NFL is an oxymoron.  Unfortunately for Favre who was quoted after his smack down of his former team on Monday Night Football a week ago as saying “I hope the Green Bay Packers fans know how I feel about them”, it may not matter because Green Bay fans don’t seem to care how he feels about him.  Time will tell when Favre marches into Lambeau Field later this year to either thunderous applause or a resounding boo.

    Jokes About Kanye West.
    Asking Price:  GTFO

    One of the fastest spreading internet phenomena was also one of the fastest dying.  Not only is Kanye West versus Patrick Swayze not funny anymore, but it is finally actually approaching being distasteful.  “George Bush does not care about black people” is still worth a few more chuckles than anything else about the Kanye “gay fish” West.  I must admit though, the George Bush one just may turn out to be an undying classic.

    Hating Gay People.
    Asking Price:  eternal humiliation

    Remember back when laughing at gay people was cool?  Now you will get scorned and called closed minded.  (It’s funny how if you don’t think exactly the way open-minded people want you to think, that you are considered uncultured… but more on that never).  What is in right now then?  Actually, it looks like hating Jews is making a pretty strong comeback.  It’s time to dust off your ovens and break out your Nazi propaganda again.  Man, I’m going to get trashed for this one.

    Video Games.
    Asking Price:  your girlfriend

    Video games seemed to have reached their heyday with the PS2-GameCube-Xbox era.  How many of you can honestly say that you never hung out at a friend’s house and did nothing but play one of these systems for hours straight.  What’s that, many of you can say that?  Well, bully!  But the point is, how many people even own one of the “next gen” systems yet?  I just got my PS3 a month or two ago, and aside from Little Big Planet and Blu-Ray movies, it mostly just collects dust.

    The Lord of the Rings Fan-Club
    Asking Price:  always free

    Waitaminute, this never even was cool… moving right along.

    Fergie CDs
    Asking Price:  anything to help get her career back from Lady-Ga-Ga

    After I typed that, I sat here for a good minute realizing that I couldn’t even remember the name of any Fergie songs.  I’m not saying either of the two of them are good, but who can deny that they have almost the exact same voice?

    Kevin Jonas’ Chastity Ring
    Asking Price:  $1,000,000

    That’s right, I went there.  If you think that price is steep, imagine what it was month’s ago.

    Until next time, good luck with life.

Hope has never hurt anybody.

   In setting up what I am about to say, it is important to take into consideration the fact that I am 20 years old.  While this age is not often considered terribly young, it is difficult to mount a case in support of any degree of experience or wisdom unless it be in the sacred art of booger-picking.  Especially in the business world, somebody of the age 20 isn’t just considered young, they are rarely even considered.  Also, this age is very commonly considered a young age (not to mention a foolish age) to be getting married, something that I will soon be undertaking.  I cannot say that this is entirely untrue for most circumstances, but I feel confidant in saying that I consider this to be an advantage in my part because (and seriously with no intentions of exuding boastfulness) I consider myself above an average 20 year old’s maturity level, and foresee my marriage at a young age to be beneficial in that my spouse and I will have more time to grow with each other, accompanied by more memories to share.   What it is very safe to say that I did not expect then, was for any adults around me to take much of my bravado seriously due to my “limiting” age.

   So you can imagine my surprise when I came back from a four day “vacation” filled with filling in gaps in the wedding preparation to the news that I would be asked to accept a promotion at my job.  Now, this is not just any promotion.  I am currently the Lead Assistant Manager at the Rack Room Shoes where I have been happily or otherwise employed for a grand total of 11 months.  In fact, I have only been Lead Assistant for about 2 weeks (having just moved up from 2nd assistant).  This all means that in order to get promoted, I would be becoming a Store Manager.  I, Walter Eadie, 20 years old and with less than 1 year experience in the company would be receiving my very own store to be completely in control of.  The catch is, I will have to move to Bryan Texas, where the store is located.  For those of you poor unfortunate souls who are not Texans, Bryan Texas is directly abut to College Station which is the city in which Texas A&M University is situated.  Not only are these small twin cities located at least 150 miles in any direction from decent civilization, but my store would be the ONLY Rack Room Shoes in the area.  If something went bad, I would be completely on my own.

    The reason, according to the Regional Manager, that I am considered such a strong candidate for the job is a direct reference to my youth.  Apparently this store has been hit in the face by a shit-storm of problems, starting with bad management and trickling its way down (like reverse Reaganomics).  Now, he threw in all sorts of technical mumbo-jumbo in a courageous attempt to boost my ego and sell me the job.  But after some clever reading between the lines on my behalf, I basically figured out that what he really meant was “I think you would be the only one who would actually want to take it on”.  Apparently, this job requires somebody who has got something to prove, to take on this level of a challenge.  I can’t say that I find it complimentary that I “have something to prove” but if it nets me a HUGE salary boost, I’ll take what-may. 

    I have said before and I’ll caution to say it again that I feel that the only reason managers get paid so much is because they are basically signing on to be the fall guys.  In a perfect world, once an employee is properly trained, they should know exactly what to do and really don’t need a slave driver right there behind their back.  However, if a store is not meeting it’s sales standards, they can’t fire the whole store, because they would have nobody to turn around and run it for at least a few days and a much more direct loss of profit would be sustained.  Instead, they can take an employee and pay them just a little bit more to have somebody to throw a big fat finger at when the going gets tough.  While I will continue to stand by the validity of this statement, I have learned something over the last year that I think also must be thrown into the entire mix.  You have to ask yourself, “are you a liability or an asset”.  This is where that “something to prove” stuff really starts to come into play.  Since I have never felt that my actions stand poised to avenge some unknown vendetta, I was initially confused when I was told that I met that age-old adage.  I never felt that I was underpraised or undervalued (although who can really deny that they don’t feel they are underpaid?).  Yet the picture is starting to focus now.  In the eyes of the business world, everything is an investment.  In theory, the more money you pour into an investment, the greater the intended yield.  Since I am the investment in this case, by all means I would like to have some serious money poured into me, but I have to present myself as being capable of generating a return.  Therefor, I need to assert myself to the company as an asset to give them further reason to expand on me, their investment.  Apparently, I have been doing just that.

    If I have bored you, I am truly sorry.  I know that almost none of my posts have ever been in this sort of tone before and I do not doubt that you weren’t expecting this.  However, if you have made it this far, I must impart an appeal to my audience.  If you are truly one of only two things: a liability or an asset, how do you think you fit in.  Believe me when I say that I am in this case expanding this to far beyond the realm of business.  This truly has a global reach.  Think about it, there really are no shades of grey, because if you are not moving, you are simply in the way.  Are your environment, your surroundings, and people you interact with better off with, or without you being there.  This question is slightly rhetorical simply because I know what answer everybody would want to say, I mean that’s a no-brainer.  But really, think, and if you are not, what do you think you could do to flip the ball in your direction.

    I promise I won’t be so serious next time.

    Until then, good luck with life.

     You may or may not have heard of the book called Twilight.  It is a novel adapted from the first part of a popular series of crappy movies about vampires trying to fit in and deal with their personal problems similarly akin to the way emos and scene kids attempt to make friends on their first day of high school, all nicely presented in a manner that would make Anne Rice sigh with disappointment if she hadn’t converted to Catholicism for which she now sighs in disappointment at her own work.  If that doesn’t win sentence of the week I will probably shoot myself.  Anyways, as a result, vampires haven’t been this cool since Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise starred in a movie that they probably should have never made. 

    The only problem with this sudden influx of popularity is the fact that for as cool as vampires have become lately, all of the cool has actually been sucked right out of them (in a sudden twist of irony no less).   Let’s face it, back when Nosforatu first started appearing in a coffin near you, vampires were… wait for it… SCARY.  They were large monsters with strange names and stranger accents that melted in the sun and OH YEAH, KILLED YOU!  Now vampires are beautiful, sexy, athletic, romantic, and emotionally fragile creatures with a thing for poetry and apples.  Shows like True Blood take the whole “OHSHITRUNITSAVAMPIRE” thing and replace it with “Oh, honey look, a vampire, maybe we should give it some of Timmy’s lunch money and tell it not to cry because everything is going to be okay.”

    A couple of years ago on halloween I remember going to see the movie 30 Days of Night with my friends.  Actually, I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D with A friend because my other friends didn’t want to go and my movie got out right when their movie was starting so I checked myself into a five-finger-double-feature (a clever spin on five-finger-discount that I just now invented and claim all rights to).  TO MAKE A LONG STORY SHORT: I watched 30 Days of Night and remember thinking to myself that it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen.  Little did I realize that that was the last time that I would ever see vampires looked at with the respect that they deserve as serious and menacing creatures (at least the movie was attempting to make them seem serious and menacing and it succeeded until the vampires actually came on screen). 

    At some point in reading this post you have probably asked yourself “wait, is this a rant about vampires or a rant about emo kids?”  Well, if I were a betting man, I’d have to say both, although betting men don’t typically straddle the fence, at least not successful ones.  The fact is, what is next on their list of things to ruin for us?  Blue jeans, dinosaurs, poetry, and rock & roll weren’t enough for you to systematically destroy so that you have to take vampires too?  If you even THINK of touching zombies I may have to start a petition to have our National Anthem replaced by Metallica’s “One”.  Yes, that is a threat.

    Until next time, good luck with – wow, somebody get me the president…

    Jesus, Mary, and Joseph there is so much content as of late that I could use to jump-start my return to Xanga.  After a quick test-run on my last post, I feel confidant that I still have enough readers to not make me feel like I am completely wasting my time.  Really, you guys are awesome.

    But to get down to brass tacks.  

    I am pretty sure that I don’t need to say ANYTHING about Obama’s Peace Prize award (and if I do, then you don’t know me).  Besides, from what I’ve seen, that topic has been beaten pretty hard around here anyway.   I am getting married in less than a month to my lovely and beautiful Amberly, but many of you also know that already, and nobody likes to hear about that anyway.

    No, I’m going to leave the political and personal doors closed for today and let those play out as they may elsewhere.  (Feel free to send me a message though if you do have any questions).  Instead I think my return to the game shall be as though I have never left it.  Meaning that I shall initiate my inundation of idiosyncratic and off-topic observations or just post some stuff that I think is cool.  Also, for those of you who kept track, and you are gonna have to dig WAAAAAAY back for this, you will notice that I never finished my “letter of the day” series.  This had to do with many factors such as a general site over haul and increased traffic which made me refocus some of my thoughts.  But for those select few of you who remember it, I have (I actually have always had) BIG plans for the letter ‘Z’ (the only letter I never finished) and then I may even start the series back up again for a round two.

    As for my smarmy sardonicism, expect lots of that too, because there is still plenty of biased yet educated hate in my heart to go around.

    Until next time, good luck with life.