"Javyka" From Storytellerkris' Tale Of Magicians And Mysterious Disappearances.She Is Not Wearing Near

"Javyka" from storytellerkris' tale of magicians and mysterious disappearances. She is not wearing near enough jewelry. Her hair isn't right. I forgot the henna on her arms! Many thanks: this pose is based from the stock photo by jlior-d4ver1j on deviantart. There are so many wonderful things on deviantart.

Sometimes "Odd People" come to my workplace...

But today was rather tame in terms of the Oddness.

I work in a retail post office that sells migratory bird licenses. We've been stocked for over a month but sold out for the past week. Licenses sell fast!

All week people have called or walked in asking if there are any licenses left. Most take the news that there are none well, just a quiet "aww" and shuffle out the door to try somewhere else. The shortage is more pronounced than I had thought, apparently, but I am not surprised. Today a man phoned in from Banff because he was trying everyplace within a hundred miles of his location. He had no luck anywhere. The next man who phoned in asking this same question was not so understanding. He demanded to know why the item we'd stocked over a month ago had sold out last week and what we were going to do about it. Well, nothing, really. If there're any licenses left we might get them in, but that was completely unlikely. I told him so. He told me to phone the other post offices to find him a license. When I told him I could not do that (if I were less polite I'd've laughed and hung up) he told me I should phone the registries to demand more licenses for him. He believed the fact that we were out of a popular item that was stocked for over a month (yes, I'm repeating this important fact) was all our fault and we should fix this problem for him. I told him he could try the registries office, wished him good luck, and hung up. And then started laughing. He was the only jerk customer all day, but he was an oddball.

People are just weird

An optimist sees the silver lining around every dark cloud. A pessimist sees the dark cloud in every silver lining. A cynic knows that somebody is going to get hit by lightning. A pragmatist sits under shelter and wonders why those idiots are outside staring at the sky.

Arachnophobia and curiosity

So, there apparently exist yellow spiders. I was plucking dead heads from the bright yellow pansies in the backyard. One of the pansies suddenly stepped forward on its leaf, four legs at a time. I jumped back with far more agility than I've ever showed before. A yellow spider. A large yellow spider. No visible marks or dots, just yellow. It sat there. I stared. Fascination warred with fear. It was such a bright colour but it was an eight legged aberration. Finally amazement won out over all and I ran for my camera. When I returned the spider had vanished back into the leaves. If I poked at the flowers again it might emerge... Fear won this time as to where it might reappear. So no pictures. Yellow spiders exist? Too scared to Google the name.

Strange Things People Mail (part one)

Not just the oddest people come into our humble little store, but also the oddest objects are posted through the mail!

- A piano. An actual piano. It took three of us to bring the thing into the store, and we really only got it as far as the door.

- A Christmas tree. A little artificial tree in its box. The owner picked it up today.

- An alarm clock. With batteries. And already set to go off every three hours. We couldn't open the parcel to turn it off without breaking at least one federal law so we had to pretend it didn't exist there in the corner shelf. Nearly drove my supervisor batty.

- A toy train. With batteries included. Would not have mattered if not for the fact every time we bumped it a very loud train whistle would emit. I had a minor heart attack the first time I nudged it by accident.

- A toy dog, with the stupid batteries included. Same as above, but the bloody thing would bark whenever the box was bumped. A few of us were horrified until we figured it out.

- Crickets. Supposedly for a lizard's meal. They were alive when mailed, which makes me a bit squeamish, but thoroughly dead when the owners arrived a couple weeks late to pick them up. Bonus points for a side of the box breaking open and little cricket parts raining down on my coworker.

- Chicks. I kid you not. Baby chickens. This is finally.... well, not illegal as it should be, but discouraged.

And it's not even Christmas yet.

I have the worst poker face

Now, the retail post office is located adjacent to a dog training and obedience classroom. As in, we share a wall and have a permanently locked door connecting us. Three nights a week or so there are dog training classes. We can hear the commands, barks, growls, whistles, clapping, and squeaky toys. All the retail minions are used to the sounds... so we forget that our customers might not be so unperturbed. My coworker and I calmly cashed customers through a fair but not terrifying line up. Awaiting his turn, this one man kept looking around. As he was surrounded by brightly coloured Canada Post paraphernalia, I was unconcerned. Until he came up to my coworker's till to pay and asked: "Do you hear dogs?" I looked up before she could answer. "What? Dogs? No, why?" And she caught on. "No, I don't hear dogs. Why?" He was amazed and a particularly shrill arf-arf-arf filled the beat before his next question.  "Are you sure? I mean... there isn't a dog in the store, is there?" Both of us denied hearing anything indicating a canine presence, and even the customer standing next in line behind the poor guy joined in. Wiping this growing grin from his face he piped up: "No, I don't hear dogs either." Now the poor man looked very worried. The customer still waiting flashed me that wicked grin and I lost it. Seeing me crack up gave the game away. My coworker with the much better poker face told him about the obedience classes. He was much relieved and hurried on his way. The next few customers in line were still chuckling for a while, and it took me a minute to regain control.