Recharging - Do Not Disconnect!

Yesterday it struck me how much of my life is forever on recharge. I say 'struck me' because getting on the bus to go to work yesterday I discovered that there was no juice, no life, no anything left in my mobile phone, or my iPod. Ugh. (The real armageddon comes not with the fall of civilisation, but a couple of days later when nobody can listen to the latest Kylie through their earbuds.)

Toothbrush. Beard trimmer. All on the recharge list. If I was any butcher I'd probably add a cordless drill to that too.

So I'm on recharge this morning (in more ways than one). The phone and the iPod are plugged in and I'm doing my own recharge with a coffee, some web surfing from the sofa and a bacon butty. My cold of the week previous turned into the past week's chest infection, and coupled with an insane week at work, meant that by the end of this week I was running out of juice myself. As I said to my boss on Friday, this sale is breaking my spirit.

Oy vay. May you live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse supposedly goes. The last week of our big four week Winter sale coupled with having a class to teach yesterday (due to a scheduling snafu, we don't normally hold classes during our sale) and a mostly unrelated, but cascading series of resignations at work, made for a rather busy week.

That's understatement, fyi.

The previous week saw the resignation of our general manager and inhouse designer, who took a job in the fashion industry. Then our shop manager resigned, to take a job in the finance and banking industry. Then our Melbourne store manager (who is only 19 years old) decided she wanted to study, and resigned. Then one of our casual staff (and a favourite of mine, boo!) resigned because she can't keep pace with working for us and finishing her medical degree. Then my arch nemesis resigned, without even bothering to show her face and do it in person...

So, mostly bad.

After the required reeling, my boss and I were galvanised into action and we've already got two potential candidate's for the shop manager position in the main Sydney store. It's also allowed us to think about some restructuring of the Melbourne store, and to think about how we want the staffing of the Sydney store. I'm currently wading through many (frequently laughable) applications for the shop assistants positions we advertised. Seriously, would it kill you people to read the job description, and at least make some attempt to write English/address the job criteria/include a cover letter/use a spell checker?

Not all change is bad, and although it means some short term scrabbling I think it will allow us to make positive changes in the store and reinvigorate the place. Get some new juice back in the batteries, to risk overstretching a metaphor. Time for a recharge, indeed.