Hand to mouth
2015 09 09 | journal
I failed in clearly explaining to someone the other day why I have problems working retail - specifically in the nature of stocking and price-checking the strips along the shelves.
I can’t read anything below my knee level (even if I were bending over) or over eye level (without standing on something). Anything on a bottom shelf, I'd have to lay on the floor to be able to read it. While some kinds of stocking are simple once you get to know where things go, price accuracy is not. In many stores it's done by computer and hand-held device - you have to visually check what's on your hand-held against what's on the shelf strips. This I cannot do. I can’t run the machines in the stock room that are used for accessing stock on high shelves. In areas where the stock is shelves and racks and peg boards full of very small things, I'm lost. As a shopper, that's kind of a nightmare for me. I always ask for help. I have to. When I was working to help set up a Target store, I also couldn’t read the instructions on putting shelves together. The print was horrendously small.
Looking at a buffet table is just plates of colours. There are plates of red things, yellow things, brown things. A lot of cooked meats tend to look the same from my vantage point, though some cold cuts are easier to pick out than others. If it's trays of sandwiches, they all look the same. All I see is bread. I have to get people to tell me what food is in front of me a good deal of the time in situations like that. Luckily, I at least know veggies and fruits just by the colours - except for the time I thought the cubes were cheese, and they turned out to be melons. Yeuch. I hate melons. I ate it anyhow, so as not to be rude. It's also handy that I like both tomato and red peppers, because they both look the same to me.
I have to admit, I have grown to love the labels above the food at the Nations steam tables. Those I can read.