Got Any Milk?

It was a normal Sunday morning in the Polly household, The Booger was running late, Mr. Fat was being a nuisance and The Mad Man was in dire need of some coffee. The Booger made it to school on time, Mr. Fat was relegated to his box and The Mad Man set about trying to make himself a cup of coffee.

All was going well until he poured some milk into his mug and discovered that it was spoiled. A quick search revealed that it was the last bag of milk and with a sigh he began to pour it down the drain.

My little brother had a couple of friends sleepover the night before. One of them emerged from the depths of the basement and seemed surprised to find us standing in the kitchen. Franks friend stared at us for a minute and then remembered his manners, giving us a quick 'good morning' and 'thank you' before running out of the house to catch a bus home.

Just as the last bit of spoiled milk was emptied into the sink The Mad Man exclaimed "Boy, it's a good thing he didn't want any milk!".

Champagne And Video Shoots

Every year Gottex (the company that owns Gap, Nike, Berksha, Zara and a bunch of other franchises in Israel) throws a big party for all of its employees. The party is apparently the "event of the year" and a pretty big deal. Each chain picks an 'employee of the year' from every branch (I think there are around 60 branches total of all of the companies) and presents them with a certificate at the party.

I was chosen to represent my chain despite the fact that our store is fairly new (and one of the qualifications is to have worked with the company for at least half a year). When my managers first told me that I was chosen as the employee of the year last three months I was a little apprehensive but then they told me that there was a prize along with the certificate and lets be honest, who doesn't love prizes?

I was finally getting used to the idea of having to go up on stage in front of thousands of people to accept my certificate (and prize!) when I got the message that they were heating things up a notch this year. They decided to make a music video of the star employees to screen at the party. Yep that's right, in addition to having to go up on stage in front of thousands of people, I was now going to be in a music video. Perfect.

After receiving the "exciting" news, the week seemed to crawl by at a snails pace. I was absolutely dreading the whole ordeal. But despite my begging, pleading and fervent denial, Thursday morning arrived and I was sent off to Tel Aviv to confront my worst nightmare.

The train seemed to shoot down the tracks at hyper speed and I arrived in Tel Aviv in record time. There was supposed to be a van waiting for us at the entrance to the station but I was twenty minutes early and there was no van in sight. I made my way over to a nice shady tree and sat down under it to ponder my next move.

Just as I was about to give up hope, I noticed a girl decked out in full nike apparel. I asked her if she was also looking for the van and she said that she was. She sat down next to me and we were comforted by the fact that if the van never showed up at least we'd have each other. A couple of other people joined the crew and we sat around chatting about the music video that none of us had any interest in doing.

Eventually we realized that the van wasn't coming to us and so we set out to find it instead. After fifteen minutes of aimlessly walking through the giant parking lot, we found the van full of impatient people that had been waiting for us. Everyone clambered in and we set off for the studio. The drive wasn't long and we were hurried into the building and up to the studio.

First stop was makeup and styling. The stylist didn't actually have any clothing from gap so she left me in the clothes that I had come in (a dress that my manager loaned me for the day), but she added a scarf and vest for some extra "pizzazz".

After makeup and styling we were sent into another room for champagne, sushi and other snacks.

Everyone drank, ate and took selfies galore. My phones camera is a little lacking in quality and doesn't have a front facing camera. It clearly couldn't compete with all of the samsung galaxys and iphones so I left it in my bag for a majority of the time. As a result, I don't have many pictures of me...

The only picture that I was in, I'm not exactly a selfie aficionado.

They called us in in groups and had us lip sync to a parody of ke$ha's timber. I gave them my best "deer stuck in the headlights" look and they nodded sympathetically while saying "We'll work with it..".

The camera is blocking me but you can see my fingers holding the gap card on the screen! 

After the verses were all worked out we all had to dance to the chorus while lip syncing (yes there was a dance...). I tried to hide in the back but was too short and got moved to the front. I once again proved my incompetence on camera but there were lots of other people flailing around so hopefully I'm not too noticeable. We had a freestyle at the end and after repeatedly performing my one and only dance move (spazzticly trying to "raise the roof") I gave a wholehearted rendition of "run away as fast as possible" (by far my most effective dance move).

Despite the terror of knowing that hundreds of people are going to see the video and the fact that I have to go on stage to get the certificate afterwards, it was actually a lot of fun. I don't think I'll be doing anything like this again any time soon but I'm glad that I more or less survived. They wouldn't play back the footage for us so I guess we'll have to wait two weeks to see it at the party.

A Day At Mamilla

From the way that my manager had been talking about it, I had expected the machsan at mamilla to look like the remnants of a particularly devastating natural disaster. Instead of the epic levels of chaos that I had expected, I was greeted by (slightly overstuffed) shelves of meticulously folded clothing.

Dazed and confused I was introduced to my protege who immediately informed me that "she loved folding things". I tried to smile reassuringly and asked the manager for some paper, scissors, markers and a table to sort things out on. The manager complied with my requests and I began the task of trying to explain how to go about properly organizing the machsan.

After giving her a basic rundown of how it works I headed over to the shelves to see what exactly I was up against. Other than the meticulous folding, there didn't appear to be form of order to the shelves. It was at this point that I realized that organizing the place was going to take a miracle. Unfortunately, I was fresh out of those...

My protege watched skeptically as I began the arduous task of removing all of the clothes from the shelves and organizing them by code on the table before returning them to their rightful places. I then wrote the codes down on little papers that I had cut out and stuck them under the corresponding stacks of clothes. Feeling rather good about the whole ordeal, I turned to my protege to see what she thought. She just stared at me with a vacant expression, things were obviously going well.

I sighed and did my best to reiterate the process. She nodded and then got up to refold the clothes that I had "ruined" when I moved them. I was glad to see some enthusiasm on her part but disconcerted by her lack of comprehensive skills.

I explained that removing, organizing, coding and then refolding all of the clothes would not only take an absurd amount of time but was completely unnecessary. I suggested that we focus on getting things in order today and then fold it all at some other point and time (preferably when I wasn't there). This seemed to mollify her fears and she hesitantly agreed to the deal.

I gave her a relatively simple area to work on and then returned my attention to a particularly overstuffed shelf of t-shirts. After some trial and error, she appeared to have gotten the hang of things and we worked steadily for the next few hours.

We stopped for a quick lunch and then returned to the bowels of the store to continue our mission. About an hour later my protege was in quite a state, throwing bits of paper in the air as a form of amusement. The manager came to check on us and sent my weary protege home. I finished up the rest of shelves in the section that I was working on and then headed home.

I'm not sure how well my protege understood the lessons that I was trying to convey but I wish her all the best luck in her mission to organize the rest of the machsan.

As for me, I've got my own machsan to reorganize thanks to a surprise delivery that arrived early yesterday morning after a misunderstanding at the main offices.

Birthdays, Thunderstorms and Surprise Inspections.

Things have been a little crazy since my last post. We celebrated Israels 66th birthday with waffles, ice cream sunday's and a delicious barbecue.

Patriotic ice cream.

A big ol' truck arrived bright and early Wednesday morning and stacked box upon box behind the store. My coworkers worked diligently to unpack the new collection while I enjoyed a day off, lounging about and watching TV from my air conditioned room. My fun came to an end when the manager called to ask me if I would be willing to come in and lend a helping hand. 

After much deliberation I decided that the TV watching could wait and hopped on a bus to save the day. I was greeted with cheers and applause (mainly because everyone was exhausted and delirious) and put in charge of organizing the machsan (which thanks to my coworkers inability to use common sense, was not an easy task.). 

Six hours later I had the place in some semblance of order. It was getting late and an unexpected thunderstorm had arrived to break the brutal heat wave that we had been having so the manager told us to go home and get some sleep. 

It was still drizzling the next morning as I made my way into work (thunderstorms and drizzling might not sound strange to anyone living outside of Israel but I assure you that it is very uncommon weather to have in May for our little Mediterranean country..). I spent the day organizing the entire machsan, making sure that each thing was in its rightful place with its code written beneath it.

After work on Friday I headed into Jerusalem for shabbos to spend time with my friends that I hadn't seen in a couple of months (or in some cases years...). Em regaled us with tales of her and her roommates misadventures and I was reminded that living at home might not be so bad after all. We were all sad when shabbos came to an end and it was time to say good bye. 

This week has been a little intense. Every once in a while Gap sends a fancy shmancy representative to inspect all of the stores in Israel. Our store is the first store in the world that opened solely for babies and kids so it was really important that it looked perfect when they arrived. We spent every second we had organizing, folding, cleaning and even steaming the clothes until the store looked like it was straight out of a catalog. 

I wasn't working on Monday when the representative came to inspect the store but from what I heard it went really well. In fact, they were so impressed at how neat and orderly our store was (especially the machsan) that they requested that my managers send me to the chain in Jerusalem to help them organize their machsanim. I've heard that the word 'chaotic' is putting it mildly when it comes to the machsanim in Jerusalem so I'm a little apprehensive of the whole ordeal but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see...

Attack Of The Giant Mutant Flies

Earlier this afternoon I went to pee and noticed a loud buzzing noise emanating from an unknown source in my bathroom. Last summer my neighbors insisted on saving hundreds of (mostly empty) soda cans and beer bottles in a rather unsightly mountain on the side of their porch, conveniently located right next to my bathroom window. This disconcerting habit of theirs gained the attraction of the local bees who decided that the next obvious step was to build a hive next to the soda can mountain (and right outside my window).

Unfortunately for me, my window didn't actually have a screen in it and my new neighbors were overeager to introduce themselves. My fear of bees did nothing to help the situation and eventually The Crazy Lady had to macGyver a screen out of a pop-up laundry basket and a piece of screen that she found somewhere or another. The new screen worked its magic and the bees were wise enough to leave me alone. I enjoyed the bliss and quiet of a bee free bathroom and in time, I forgot about the trauma that they had caused me. That is, until earlier this afternoon....

I began to panic as a dark figure sped past me and into the shower. I weighed my options and decided that it seemed like the sort of thing that I should most definitely let someone else take care of. With my mind made up, I fled to the safety of the dining room where I was promptly distracted by a bar of exceptionally tasty chocolate.

The rest of the afternoon sped by and I forgot about my little predicament until the inevitable happened and I once again went to pee. Upon entering the bathroom I was dive bombed by a bee but noticed that they looked a little off. I didn't stay long enough to investigate but instead called in some reinforcements. The Crazy Lady was first to answer my cries for help and came up the stairs wielding a dish towel. We heard some buzzing near the light fixture and The Crazy Lady tried to get the bee while I sought refuge downstairs.

After a few quick whips with the towel the buzzing stopped and The Crazy Lady informed me that the "bees" were actually just giant flies. She then steeled herself before locking herself in the bathroom with the remaining flies. I watched from the window as her dish towel spun heroically in the air while her foes fell at her feet. She fixed my "screen" before victoriously emerging from the battlefield.

I decided that the time had come to clean my bathroom and got to work immediately. I was spraying the counter with anti calc when I was dive bombed by the biggest fly that I have ever seen. I tried to swat at it with a towel but it simply crawled into the light fixture and continued to taunt me. The Crazy Lady once again came to my rescue and slayed the giant beast. I resumed my cleaning while my mother watched from the hall.

I can't help but wonder if this was just some sort of an elaborate plan to get me to clean my bathroom, perhaps she was in cahoots with the mutant beasts all along....