solo in the plant centre

I arrived at work to be greeted by the boss, who told me he had some bad news for me.  I wondered whether this was that I was going to be put on short time until March, but it turned out to be that I was going to be on my own in the plant centre, as both the manager and my colleague who normally works on Mondays had called in sick.  The owner asked hopefully whether one of the other part timers wouldn't be in, but since she was one of the people the manager was due to lay off until spring as of last week at the owner's instructions, the answer to that question was No.

When I opened up the shop I discovered a very tall, thin parcel at the back of it, which was obviously some tree packaged up and ready to go out by mail order.  I thought our normal height limit for parcels was four feet, but somebody must have been feeling lucky, or talked nicely to the delivery company.  The parcel had a name on it, but no address, and I sighed mentally and resigned myself to having to hunt around for the paperwork later on, so that I could work out what to do with it.  At about nine o'clock a smiling van driver in a luminous green vest appeared, saying that he had come to pick up a parcel but it wasn't in the usual place.  I showed him the package in the back of the shop, and the names tallied, but I had to dolefully confess that I didn't have an address label.  He said that he did, and produced one printed out with the address and consignment number, which he stuck on the box.  He left with my fervent thanks ringing in his ears, having done his Sir Galahad deed for the day.

By ten I'd picked up all the plants that had fallen over in the wind, and was starting to feel a little dull, when the phone began ringing.  The first call was from a woman, who from her voice I guessed was quite young, wanting to know whether we had Quercus x hispanica.  I went to see, and found we had one plant of a named variety, but none of the straight species.  It turned out that she wanted forty.  I guessed she was calling from a landscape company.  I don't know where you would go to buy forty Quercus x hispanica, but I don't think any retail plant centre would keep that number of them in stock, ready to sell just like that.  We normally sell around five a year.  Landscapers do tend to give impossible plant sourcing tasks to very young members of staff who don't understand the market or know what they're doing, and it wastes their time and ours.  The most entertaining request was from the man who rang, with no hope in his voice, asking whether we had around forty plants of Berberis 'Georgei' in seven and a half litre pots.  I explained that unfortunately we hadn't been able to obtain that one for some time, and indeed had a list of over twenty customers waiting for plants if only we could get them, so I rather doubted whether there were forty Berberis 'Georgei' for sale in the country at that moment.  He said he had begun to suspect as much, and in a way was grateful, as I'd given him ammunition to go back to the landscape architect and explain that they'd have to rethink that part of the planting plan.

A few customers looked as though they might have liked tea, but the owner had given me dispensation not to open the cafe.  Apart from the hygiene aspects, operating the till, and the telephone, and finding plants for people, and doling out advice on which plant to choose, is more than one person can do, without trying to do refreshments as well.  It was pretty quiet, and customers were very good about waiting to be served, and my friend in the office helped out with the phone, but you can't run an operation like that smoothly with just one person.  The owner came out in the late morning to cover while I had some lunch, but then had to be somewhere else by one o'clock, so I had one twenty minute break in a seven and three quarter hour day.  It felt like quite a long one.