At 4pm we were only 1/3 of our way to the daily goal I had set, and the staff was getting frustrated. So, I decided to change things up a bit. That hour I had a cashier at every register, half of them being new people who just started work yesterday and are doing wonderfully well.
I told the team that if they got a certain number of book drives items in one hour, from 4-5pm, I would sing a song to them...any song they wanted...on the salesfloor, right then.
By golly if they weren't keeping me updated every time they sold another book for the book drive (which is benefiting kids at a local foster care and family care facility, almost like an orphanage, though we don't have those in Texas). We have walkie talkies that are incredibly useful, and I kept taunting them over the walkie that they'd better hurry up and meet their goal or they'd get no song from me!
But they rallied and they worked and they got the good people of Dallas to donate enough books that hour to meet their goal! They told me they wanted me to sing Over the Rainbow with bookstore lyrics, so I quickly wrote some lyrics about the cashwrap and working as a cashier and such. Everyone in the store wanted to see/hear me perform this song, my lyrics chicken scratched on the back of a piece of paper I was going to recycle.
Of course I couldn't have the entire store in one place at one time, so I waited for the right moment of few customers in the area and sang my song to the cashiers. I then sang it again over the walkies. Customers were giving me strange looks, but the staff loved it, and I received applause. Yay! I signed my lyric sheet and 2 staff members were discussing which of them should get it.
But wait! The team was bound and determined to make me sing again! They met the goal again that next hour, so I regaled them with a tune about Chaucer the holiday bear set to the tune of Climb Ev'ry Mountain and sung like Il Divo (the 4 classical crossover singers who wayyyy overuse vibrato--they have a new CD out and we're playing it overhead because it's selling really well). I really got some strange looks with that one, because it's difficult to sing like Il Divo and be quiet about it. I gave that signed lyrics sheet to a cafe seller.
The next hour they almost doubled the goal, but I told them I was through for the day.
Whew! Nutty Jenny. Now we'd better be back in first place. I just worked really hard to get us there.
(And I think the part that tickles me most is that they wanted my signed lyrics sheet...so cute!)
2 comments:
What a hit those two episodes would have made on YouTube!
What do you think the new people told their friends and loved ones about you after they got off work?
I am sure you had splendid vibrato.
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