you should have offered them four 12×12 squares and a bottle of glue
As hilarious as that is…
… we’re out of glue.
Completely out of glue. The glue slime trend that has swept the middle schools in our area has maxed out all outlets of glue from December 18th to today’s date- February 6th. We keep getting shipments of glue, but they only come in 20-bottle boxes and they are completely gone by the time the weekend is out. Children are buying them by the armful.
And I would find this cute and honestly amazing that these kiddos are getting their first taste of entrepreneurship (mine was in high school, where I made novelty school ID’s) if it weren’t for the involvement of the parents.
Because the kids are like ‘aw, you don’t have any? Ok. We’ll try somewhere else- thank you! Where’s your glitter?’
The parents… oh gods the parents.
Calling us up at 9am- “What do you MEAN you don’t have any glue!? ITS A BASIC CRAFT ITEM! YOU HAVE TO HAVE GLUE!”
“You’re telling me that you DON’T CARRY GLUE?”
“I’m calling your corporate office to tell them just how wholly unprepared you all are because this is the fourth store I’ve called and NONE of you have any glue.”
“Can I pre-order? What do you MEAN I have to order from the website?”
“When will you be getting more? You don’t KNOW! HOW CAN YOU NOT KNOW!? Two weeks at the EARLIEST!?”
“Can you call me when you get some? YOU CAN’T EVEN CALL ME WHEN YOU GET IT IN?”
I once caught one of our framers taking a call like these and I saw her re-inact Winona Ryder’s entire range of facial expressions a la SAG awards, eventually ending in her left eye going slightly wall when the angry parent finally hung up.
And there are some that call every single day, asking the same questions and hoping that they’ll get a different answer. But no. I’m sorry. The Glue Fairy didn’t make a surprise visit last night. We did not plant the glue seeds in time for the harvest and now there is a glue famine. The small child that we sent to fetch more glue has been captured by witches- who are now intent on raising her as their own and we wish them luck.
One day, my brother will have children and they will ask me about the Glue Famine of 2017 and I will recall a very specific instance wherein I could feel flecks of spittle coming through the end of the phone.
One day I shall die and a team of necromancers will raise me from my crumbling sarcophagus and the very first words from my revived, husk of a maw will be ‘WE ARE STILL OUT OF GLUE, CRETINOUS FILTH!’
And this is how I knew that 2017 was going to be a bad year. Retail-mancy: I divine the fall of our nation by the fact that we are perpetually out of basic adhesives. And its not the children that buy them that make it a problem, but the parents who imagine that we somehow have control over the entire damn glue industry.
Why you want to yell at me for telling you the truth is beyond me when you could be putting all that energy towards not sucking. GIT GUD.
I just learned today that tomorrow our store will be hopping on the glue slime trend and making an end cap to make easy access to our stock of glues, glitters, and I suppose we might be adding borax to our inventory.
Need I remind you that this is what our glue stock has looked like for the past two months:
We just got some in two days ago and its already gone.
So you have to imagine the position we’re in here- where we’re advertising glue that does not exist for more than three days every two to four weeks because of these tots are hell-bent on selling slime to their sandbox buddies.
We’re not selling glue. We’re selling the concept of glue. We are selling the desire for glue. We are inspiring others to covet the glue we do not have. The glue is unknowable. It is invisible, intangible, ineffable. One day the glue uprising shall be upon us, and none shall speak its name.
So like just in case you didn’t get the message-
We are out of glue.
Glue we are out of.
Out of glue we are.
We glue of are out.
Because the dozen or so rows where we used to stock our glue is now a gaping cavity of woe, our heathen customers have decided that this is the perfect space to lazily put things that they just suddenly decide they don’t want anymore. And for some ridiculous reason, the most popular thing to leave where an associate can find it is fake flowers.
Not even the first time this has happened, people. People are attempting to build a memorial to the glue that was, and will never be again. The time of glue has passed, we shall remember it fondly. Ashes to ashes, goop to goop.
Rest in Particulate, Glue Aisle.
Its about to get…
…significantly worse.
I’ve had several people contact me about an email that went out from our company, advertising Glue Slime and giving out a recipe (instead of borax, using baking soda and contact lens solution… I weep for our local optometrists). Luckily, we were sent a large ration of glue on Thursday in preparation for the endcap that we just put up.
And for a moment, the balance was restored. We could rebuild! There was enough glue to fill the dozen or so places in its home and have a good amount for the display. Sadly, we were only given a few bottles of clear glue- which is the one that people really want because…. clear slime. But things were looking better!
But little did we know…
… President’s Day was coming.
And the children… needed something to do…
Here is a photo of the display on Saturday morning.
And here it is on Monday morning:
They have ravaged our glue surplus to 1/10th. The glue that filled its home space is completely gone. I am honestly surprised that the meager 40 bottles we have left are still there, and by the time I finish writing this- they may not be.
Why would you do this to us, Mr President?
So while we have those 40 bottles, we can at least fend off the screaming parents, but I anticipate that a considerable amount of screaming will have already started by the time I start my shift this afternoon.
I shall scream as well.
I scream, they scream- we all scream into the yawning void of the glue section in hopes that the Elmer, God of Cheap Adhesives, will hear our cries and grant us the glue we so desperately yearn for. We shall be united in our despair.
We have reached a place in our glue stock where we are consistently keeping up with demand, more or less. We get it in on Wednesday, they all come in on the weekend and we’re out by Monday- giving people one day to bitch and moan because what would these people do if they weren’t allowed to scream at us for a whole thirty seconds?
Well, I came in to work on Wednesday and I found this at our customer service desk:
Look out world- we have the gallons!
People asked for the gallons of glue, they got the gallons of glue.
There were 20 of them on that endcap. I saw a woman buy three of them at once (and of course she wanted to use a coupon on each and every one of them because ‘gosh- who knew that glue would be so expensive!’ Like… lady- you’re getting this at 20 cents an ounce if you get it without a coupon. It’s not expensive, you’re just a cheapskate.)
By the end of Wednesday, they were all gone. We sold 20 gallons of glue in four hours. People were laying down $60 for glue. I could feel my Great Depression-raised grandpa shaking his head from…. I dunno, probably Purgatory.
Now the entire area knows that we have the glue gallons- the word has spread. But we don’t have them in stock and guess what emotions they have over it! If you guessed ‘anger’ then you’re right! So they do what they’ve always done when they need a literal gallon of glue and there are no gallons of glue to be had: they buy a ton of individual bottles.
But now knowing that there is an easier way to do this that is yet inaccessible to them fills them with ennui, and as they walk through the store their excitement over their hoard wanes and they put some of it back.
Now, any person of the retail-worker persuasion will tell you that a customer never puts an item back where they’re supposed to. That would be, frankly, preposterous. So instead, as they lose their grip on their desire for glue, they leave a single bottle where it is most convenient to them- a symbol of their defeat.
This is a fancy way of saying that I found a bottle of glue in every aisle one night because someone got pissy about not being able to buy it by the gallon and forgot to get a basket.
THE EPIC SAGA CONTINUES
how the fuck did we get from 12×12 squares of paper the the glue famine
It is very tiny but I wanted to read it… so I typed it out to save others the struggle lol:
Top: Daily Mail, Thursday, January 28, 2016 Below Picture: All at sea: The boat crewed by Steve Shapiro, above left, and Bob Weise, above right, had to be attended by firemen, water rescue teams, police, the coastguard and an ambulance Headline: Not you two again! Captain Calamities (both 71) trying to cross Atlantic have to be rescued 9 times… and they haven’t even left England yet Article: By Criss Brooke
For two sailors aged 71, crossing teh Atlantic in a rickety old yacht was never going to be plain sailing. But the amateur yachtsmen have become a laughing stock after having to be rescued nine times – the latest while they were on dry land. The most recent incident involving the so-called “Captain Calamities” was the most comical yet – with their 40ft boat Nora tipping over at low tide, causing a candle to start a fire on board. The fire brigade raced to rescue the hapless seadogs, who had moored at the quayside in Mayle, Cornwall. But despite calls for them to be stopped for their own safety, the lifelong American friends continue to be oblivious to the fuss and intend to sail on next week. Steve Shapiro, a screenwriter, and Bob Weise, a former Army helicopter pilot, remain largely good-humored and dismissive of the ‘calamity’ tag. The duo were shopping for food on Tuesday when they were alerted to the fire. The previous day they had been told how to tie up to the quayside to stop the boat tipping over at low tide. But they made a mistake and a fire started when the yacht fell on its side. After surveying the damage yesterday, Mr. Shapiro said: “It appears a candle had not been blown out properly and a spark relit itself. The fire was under control by the time we arrived, and caused considerable but not substantial damage.” Two fire crews, two water rescue teams, police, coastguard, and an ambulance crew all attended the blaze. Mr. Shapiro said Nora was ‘absolutely fit to sail’ and that the pair still hoped to leave when they had the right wind, insisting: “We’ve not had bad luck the whole trip.” The pensioners set off from Norway on their ‘last hurrah’ in July, with the goal of sailing to Maine in the US over a 12-month period in a 38-year-old gaff cutter which Mr. Shapiro bought from a Norwegian doctor. Since then fire and rescue services have come to their aid off the coasts of Norway, Scotland, Ireland, and south-west England. They were towed back to Norway when Nora started leaking. Their battery died near an oil rig, their engine has failed and they have run aground several times. The RNLI and its lifeboats cost (E)415,000 a day to run and Mr. Shapiro – who has caused a significant demand on resources – has made a donation to the charity. But locals in Cornwall have accused the men of putting an unfair strain on rescue services. Fisherman Grant Lorris said: “They don’t have a clue what they’re doing.” Hayle harbourmaster Peter Haddock added: “If they need assistance again it could be dangerous for all concerned.” An article on the sail-world.com website even asked: “Should they be stopped?” Unfortunately for British coastguards their next stop is Devon and they are keen to finish the trip on their ‘resilient’ boat. Barring further disasters the duo hope to begin crossing the Atlantic in March.
I’d like to thank my friend Avistew Teague for translating this!
So important.
This is so well done!
For anyone out there who is uncomfortable labeling themselves as a feminist, I ask you to take a second to read this and ask yourself if you agree with all of these points. If you do, congratulations! You’re a feminist!
And that’s a good thing! Feminists want everyone to be treated with the same dignity and respect, want everyone to have the same opportunities and chances in life, want everyone to be safe, happy and healthy, in control of their own bodies, able to access necessary healthcare and educational opportunities: to be equal.
this is the funniest goddamn joke in gravity falls to me. what is the point. literally what. there is no set up. there is no punchline. he just says “i found it while i was here… practicing” and the footage cuts to mabel filming him on the middle of a fucking island playing a tuba that has never previously been mentioned before he shouts “LOOK, A GIANT TOOTH” i am fucking crying about this goddamn cartoon thiS IS NOT EVEN FUNNY THIS IS A GENIUS SHOW WITH GENIUS WRITING AND BETTER JOKES THAN ANYTHING ON TV RIGHT NOW AND I AM LAUGHING AT THIS 12 YEAR OLD PLAYING A RANDOM FUCKING TUBA WITH THIS RIDICULOUS FUCKING LOOK ON HIS FACE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE IM GOING TO SHIT THE
I try and bring up how he ruined free in state tuition in the name of hippie bashing when he was California’s governor often, but don’t exactly have the biggest platform.
“Worst of all, these students’ sense of the future is constrained by planning for and then paying down their student loans, often for decades. Economists are waking up to the fact that when young Americans enter the workforce burdened with over a trillion dollars in cumulative debt, they become risk averse, unwilling to move, less able to make major purchases, and slower to become homeowners. Not coincidentally, they don’t feel safe enough to register any major protests against the society that’s done this to them.”
Damn.
i am reblogging again because….. fuck ronald reagan forever and ever and ever and ever.
Economists should be adept in their fields, how are they only now realizing that paying off our student debt is a fucking priority over anything else other than food?
Weird, it’s almost like there’s something missing from the study of economics.
“it’s time for the jedi to end” YOU TAKE THAT BACK RIGHT NOW LUKE
actually, luke saying this is a VERY GOOD THING. He doesn’t mean hes not going to train Rey, or that he wants to die or anything, but the Jedi, as an entire order and concept, need to end. The Jedi movie-canonically were VERY controlling, and their approach, which means taking children from parents at the age of infancy, to raise them to a state where ideally they have no emotional attatchments to the world, and shun their own needs as being disgraceful and shameful? The Jedi are the sole reason that Palpatine was able to get so tight a grip on Anakin– because he fell in love and acted on that love, which was the most disgraceful thing a Jedi could do, any not only woud he have probably been evicted from the Order had they found out, they probably would snatch up Luke and Leia the second they were born, or at least monitor the family extremely closely if Anakin and Padme refused. The Jedi try to force people into being blank slates that only do ‘good’ which includes never ever falling in love, never having ‘friends’ and only doing something for the Greater Good– think Dumbledor, but as a galaxy-spanning thing. Luke has obviously uncovered at least part of the Jedi’s true history, and realizes that the Jedi caused more problems than they solved, especially when used as enforcers for a single government, despite their original standing as a religious order
By referring to the order as a “Little Rosa”, you don’t have to make as big a deal out of the fact that you’re seeking help.
And believe it or not, it gets better. Rosa’s also gives out sweatshirts to the homeless (or sells them to the general public) that has information on local soup kitchens and even computer training in the area, on an insert sewn inside the sweatshirt.
May's Blog 