Well, our Epic Puzzles & Games sign finally lights up. We’re very excited about that, since it gets seems to get dark when we’re eating lunch these days. The landlord fixed the street sign so it works now too, so yay for visibility! For some reason, though, it’s gone dead slow at the store even with the new shining beacon of light that is the store sign. We’re getting a little panicky here as we wonder: “Isn’t it getting to Christmas shopping time? What happened to all the customers?” I know they’re out there because it’s impossible to go anywhere on the weekends with all the traffic. Maybe they’re still waiting on buying fun things and are just buying jeans and stuff right now?
Or weight-loss supplements. Let me tell you a story:
Last Saturday evening, one of the stores in our strip mall had a party for all the people that buy/sell their weight-loss supplement. We have a relatively small parking lot here, and they took up every space and were parking in places that weren’t parking spots. I went to ask them to leave a couple of spots free for our customers and they had some people move, but I still had to keep going out every minute or so to ask people not to park in front of our store. It was a little frustrating, to say the least.
Flash forward half an hour or so to another car pulling into the spot in front of our store. As I walked outside to see if they were customers or party-goers, I noticed that it was the car that belongs to the store-front that was having the party. I asked a bit curtly that they not park there, and the driver’s response was, “Well, I’ll move but you’re rude. It’s not my fault that the parking lot is full.” Flabbergasted, I motioned to the car logos and replied that it is his fault because they own the store that’s having the party and, thus, they are the ones who filled the parking lot. His reply? “It’s my parents’ store, and it’s not my fault our business is successful and yours isn’t.” Just…wow. He appeared to be willing to sit there and debate my rudeness all night if necessary, so I merely apologized and requested again that he move. Then we moved a couple of chairs outside with signs stating that the parking was for our store and not to park there otherwise, which solved the problem.
So here’s the question: how do you tell someone they’re rude for airing a legitimate complaint and then justify saying something so horrible? He told me several times that he had good manners and that I should be ashamed of myself. Whatever, dude. Glad you were able to get on top of that pyramid scheme and rook your friends.
/end rant
Hopefully we’ll see you all soon, and hopefully you’ll get a great place to park. 
Dawn
We had people draw on a wall we were planning to tear out in the store. It turned out that we have some very clever friends and customers! You can’t really see it all in the picture, but here it is anyway. It turned out so well that I’m considering having a permanent “put your thoughts here” wall. 
