Helping out in the store

Yesterday I got to spend the afternoon downstairs in the store instead of sitting at my desk. It was a blast! Around holiday times everyone who has an office job, here in Austin and in all of our regional offices, is encouraged to help out in the stores. There are sign-up sheets and you can work as a bagger, or whatever is needed in grocery, bakery, specialty, produce and floral. I've generally volunteered in grocery and bakery in the past. One thing I learned in grocery was how to "face" product - that means turning all of the cans and shelf items so their pretty labels are facing forward. I do it out of habit now, even in other stores!

Yesterday there were lots of "helpers" from the office upstairs, however I got what I think was the primo assignment - working in floral. Below are Stony and Meg who showed me all the ropes. Stony told me he is named after a character in a rodeo movie, I think it was called Wild Horse Rodeo, starring Alan Ladd.
My assignment was to process boxes of flowers and prepare them for display on the floor. Basically, I opened boxes, removed the flowers, gave them a "fresh cut" and placed them in black buckets with water. The nice part of this job was that I got to work outside in a little hidden work area behind produce. It was a beautiful day in the 70's so being outside was perfect. Here is the cutting table where I worked. You can see the type of box the flowers come in, the bucket and the cutter.

Some flowers came with little nets on them. Here is a before and after shot.

I didn't have time to take a picture of every flower box I opened (we went through 2 large pallets during my 4 hour shift) but here are a few...

It was a lot of fun, and all of the store team members seemed to sincerely appreciate the help. Occasionally someone would do a "shout out" over the store speaker system thanking us for being there. I think I will sign up for floral again at Christmas!