Mushrooms, Pigeons, and Bank Rides

This morning when my alarm went off at 7 am, I seriously regretted joyfully agreeing to volunteer at 8:30 am. However, I managed to guilt myself into getting out of bed and was actually only about 5 minutes late arriving at the store. So yay me. Volunteering turned out to be pretty cool, though (I got to wear an apron, and I love wearing aprons), and I'm really happy I got involved. I spent the first few hours restocking shelves, breaking down boxes, and careening down a cobblestone hill behind a dumpster while trying to move it into its proper pick up location. (Always find the safety brake on dumpsters before attempting to "gently roll" them downhill.) As the morning wore on, people started showing up and buying things. It turns out the store's very popular with students on their way to morning classes, since we have tons of pastries and things. So a few minutes before every hour, we'd have like 10 or more people flood the store. Grace taught me how to work the till, and supervised while I stumbled my way through serving people. Everyone who came in was super nice and patient with me once I told them it was my first day, and they all said some variation of "cheers, thanks love!" upon leaving, which was just awesome. 

Around 11 another volunteer named JJ came in, and Grace left me under his supervision. He's a local with a really thick accent, so we had hilarious times trying to communicate. At one point, when we ran out of £1 coins and were discussing who should go to the bank, he said what sounded like, "Well, you can tac me bank." After he repeated the phrase 3 times, I looked at him with confusion and ventured, "bank? You want me to 'take your bank?'" To which he said "yeah, me bank." Me: bank?? 

Him: BANK. Me: Take. Your. Bank. I have NO IDEA what that means. 

At this point he gave up on spoken language and started trying to communicate via mime. I watched his flailing for a while and timidly volunteered "bike?" to which he replied, "YES, YOU CAN TAC ME BANK — baike (attempting to do an American accent)!!" The whole time he had been trying to tell me that, since the bank is far away, I would need to ride his bike to get there. When this dawned on me, I agreed that he should probably go to the BANK with his BIKE, and leave me alone at the store.  

Of course, about two minutes after he left, a group of 8 to 10 people came in, all wanting things that were difficult to ring up. I managed to figure everything out, except the price of a mushroom that this lady wanted. She was super particular about it, and there was no price posted on the mushroom shelf. (EVERYTHING else in the store had a price on it. She had to pick the ONE thing without one.) So eventually I just guessed what the price was and pretended like I knew. By the time JJ got back everyone was either gone or downstairs in the lounge area of the store, happily drinking their instant coffee that I had had to frantically figure out how to make. I was standing, wide-eyed and traumatized, behind the counter. He asked how it went, and I said, "Oh, um, you know, okay. A ton of people came in at once, and I had to guess how much mushrooms cost." He understandably did not see the connection between those two things, but eventually figured out what had happened. He told me it was fine, as long as I had written down how much I had charged. I of course hadn't, claiming that I thought since it was just one tiny mushroom it wouldn't matter. Apparently, it did. But he was nice about it, and said not to worry. So I'm not. It was just one tiny mushroom, after all. 

After that, things were pretty calm, except for the havoc caused by a pigeon that kept hanging around the store front. It would lurk under the display shelf outside and, when people came up to look at things, it would get spooked and fly out in their faces. It was not a very intelligent bird. At one point it actually wandered into the entrance of the store and almost knocked this guy over when he tried to come inside to buy something. It flew straight at his forehead in an attempt to get out, and he went flailing backwards out of the store. Upon recovering, he walked back into the store, and joyfully announced, "you've got a bloody f*ing pigeon in 'ere!" Much to my relief, he seemed more entertained than angry and he still bought stuff.  

So, other than the mushroom lady, all the customers were friendly and patient. It was so amazing to get to interact with *actual British people* and very entertaining to see how much of a kick some people got out of my accent. I mentioned to JJ that I'd been having a hard time meeting Brits, and he offered to have me over to dinner when he and his friends get together. So all in all I had a really nice time, and I felt like I helped out quite a bit, which obviously is the most important thing. 

Now I'm off to go do more reading for class and to write an essay outline. I hope you all have a great day!