The Irish Ewe

Let me preface the following by explaining that I really do love my job. Really.

We got in a shipment of Cascade 220 the other day, and this morning I brought it all in and lined it up. All 33 bags of it. That's 330 skeins, plus the 100 or so skeins I have already on the shelf. For the first hour, I was a little excited - I loved eyeing the new colors that came in, even as I dreaded putting it all up on the shelves.

Let me detour a bit here, and explain how much fun stocking yarn isn't. Yes, it starts out fun, way back at the beginning when you only have a dozen bags or so. But at this point, we're looking at 10,000 or so skeins of yarn already on the shelves (and in cubbies, and on racks, and in baskets, and in buckets, and on tables, and in the windows, and in the basement.) Getting a new yarn in means that you -
1. Unbox the new yarn and see how much there is, space-wise.
2. Pour over order forms and invoices to see how many bags are missing, and take that as-of-now-missing-yarn into account as you...
3. Wander around the shop for 30-90 minutes wondering where the heck you are going to put this yarn. The shop is broken up into weights, with the hand-painted pretty much on it's own in the fiber section/room. Keep in mind...
4. There is always more yarn back-ordered, or on the way.
5. Pick your spot, and move all the yarn currently occupying said spot (for which you must repeat the above steps, and some of the below as well)
6. Sort the yarn into shelf order (for me, that's ROYGBIV color), lining up the bags so you know how many greens or reds you have.
7. Double check that you have enough shelf space.
8. Stuff yarn into cubbies, stacking each color into a nice vertical column, in the color order described above.
9. Figure out what to do with the extra yarn that won't fit into cubbies. Usually I stuff them behind the yarn at the front of the shelf or cubby. Sometimes they have to be bagged and stocked downstairs.
10. Stop every 30 minutes to check that -
a. You are still in the proper color sort order,
b. You still have enough room on the shelf and
c. You haven't forgotten any bags of yarn that have been kicked under the table.

As you can see, this process now takes me a good 3-5 hours, depending on how much yarn there is in a shipment.

So to make a long story short (too late!) I was standing in the midst of 33 bags of Cascade 220, plus 6 baskets of the C220 that we already had in stock, when someone came in. She flung open the door and stumbled down, having failed to read the rather large (HUGE) sign on the door that says "Watch your step!" (in bold.) She stomps a very nice leather boot (looked like kid leather, yummy) and declares how I really should put up a sign about the step down before someone falls.

I smile and bite my tongue.

She then asks if I have Cascade 220.

I smile, bite harder, and hold up one of the 33 bags, and say "we do, in fact I just got a new shipment in today!"

She walks over, leaving the door open, looks down at the bags, and says "Is this all you have? Don't you have any colors that are nicer than this?"

At this point, my mouth is starting to taste rather metallic. I think I have bitten most of the way through my tongue. I manage a smile, and offer to show her the color cards for C220, telling her that we can get a bag of any color in within a week. She waved her hand as one may do to brush off a fly, turned and left without another word.

And she still left the door open.