Civility Rules

Yesterday the store had a great big sale. 25 % off everything on regular prices in the whole store brings out a lot of people.

There was civility everywhere. There was no rushing, or pushing, or grabbing for yarn. There was no rush for needles or accessories. Well, there was, but it was a civil sort of excuse me kind of rush.

My job was to run the store computer system to get everyone's proper price and to make sure the discounts were right. The first 10 minutes were quiet, but from that point on, to the end of the day, I was punching people through the till as fast as the computer could operate. It was amazing. We finally took one person off the floor, and had that person bag, and run the debit and credit card machine. As they did that, I'd get started on the next person in line.

The line was unreal. It wrapped around the store, through the shelves, and back. No one ever seemed to get bothered by the wait even with armfuls of wondrous wools, and silks. The air conditioning was running at full capacity, but not once was a single yarn covered person remotely upset or angry, or even rattled by the wait.

And one poor lady had a great reason to be rattled. I tabbed a right key, when I should have tabbed a left (or something - it got pretty foggy there for a while), and found myself in foreign territory. We redid her transaction, and after all was said and done, made one error. She patiently waited (the line thing) while we fit her in to correct things. A very nice lady.

People bought so many good things and sitting there at the till, I got to see them all. Through the evening, colour and shapes and textures were still running through my head. I was overwhelmed by the scope of things hiding in the corners of the store that wise and canny shoppers took home.

The whole thing was lovely, but the absolutely best thing about a yarn store sale is meeting knitters. Nothing is nicer than being surrounded by people who are passionate about the same thing as you, and no one is more polite or patient than yarn people.

Yarn people are nice people. Just plain nice.