I attend a pack-and-send.
It's hot out, and not much better in,
as a loading bay counters the aircon.
A flushed woman emerges from a corral of half-wrapped plasma screens.
Her smile is drawn.
To her right, a baby inches off a foam mat.
From another room comes toddler talk, followed by a clattering sound.
‘What are you doing, Jason?’
…
‘Jason?’
CRASH!!!
The woman dashes to the noise.
And returns with an apology.
I ask for a quote to send my package.
She rifles back and forth through a price book that looks as worn as she.
Finally, with what seems great mental effort, she calculates the fee.
I chose to buy cardboard tubing, and post it myself.
As the woman cuts the tubing to size, she nudges the baby back onto the mat, and glances to her left for Jason.
He emerges from her right, and confronts me with a large, whippy, metal tape measure.
The woman disarms him, and shepherds him back with the tube, before laying it on the counter.
‘Five dollars, thanks.’
‘No worries; could I have a receipt please?’
‘Sure.’
As she takes out an old-fashioned receipt book, the phone rings: a customer query.
She puts the prospect on hold, fishes for carbon paper, and fails to find a blank receipt.
She rumages in a drawer for another book with such mounting despair that I tell her not to worry.
But she presses on, scribbling out the details of a cancelled receipt, and writing mine.
I apologise for taking up so much of her time for a measly five bucks.
She nods her thanks, and returns to the phone.
But the prospect has hung up.
Jason vanishes.
The baby crawls.
The plasma screens beckon.
And the hot wind slams the front door behind me.
[First published on MYOB business blog. Voice changed to active to reflect present arcs.]