Monday Morons--I don't know how to do that

Friday I went to a couple of Walmarts, a Michaels, and a Hobby Lobby. I should have done all of that about a week earlier, but I was concentrating on the garden project, and then there was all that rain, and the day after that they were advising everyone to stay at home if you did not absolutely have to be out.

I didn't think that a craft project qualified as something I absolutely had to go out for.

So Friday morning I hit all the usual places (except for Jo Ann's Fabric), looking for stuff to make a witch hat and other stuff that might go with a witch costume. Next month we'll be promoting the new Harry Potter movie, and also Saturday I'll have a use for some the costume, so I need to get on with making the hat.

At the first Walmart I did not find the textured felt that I needed, and I was about to leave when I thought I might as well look over the discounted fabric. And I found a remnant that I wanted, and I found some other interesting black fabric that almost matches I dress that I have. So I thought that I should have about two yards of this fabric, just in case I should want to add something to the dress.

Now, cutting fabric is not brain surgery, but you aren't allowed to do it yourself in the store, and you can't just get any passing employee to do it for you either. There are a limited number of people at a Walmart who are allowed to perform that particular task, and also they have to have this particular gizmo to put a proper sales tag on the fabric which is different from most of the other sales tags, and there are a limited number of these gizmos to go around and a limited number of employees who use them.

So I did not see an employee in the fabric department, and after looking around a bit for one I figured that she was either on break, or else she'd been ordered to go off and do something that wasn't normally supposed to be her job, because the store thinks that just waiting around to help someone doesn't count as work and they find other things for you to do on the other side of the store if you don't look like you are busy. So I hoped that she wasn't on break and wouldn't mind being pulled away from this other thing that really isn't part of her job, and I went off to find someone to page her.

And the closest other department was photo, and there were two of them and they looked rather busy. But it doesn't take much time to page someone. I did the polite thing and waited for someone to stop looking for something and told one of them that I needed help in the fabric department.

Now, if I had been really lucky, one of them would have been the employee that I needed. Otherwise it would just take a second for one of them to page the person I needed.

Instead I was told "I don't really know how to page anyone."

I have never been told that before.

I just stared at her a bit, and she said that she would find someone who could help me.

I went back to the fabric department, but I didn't hear anyone paged on the speakers. But that didn't necessarily mean that no one had been called to help me, cause most of them carry walkie talkies now, and I figured that someone passed along the message that way and someone would come and help me. I again hoped that someone's break didn't get interrupted.

But no one came. Another employee passed me, and this employee was a lot more helpful than the one I first talked to, and she just asked if I needed something. And then she said she'd find someone. And then she came back and said that the girl who normally worked there hadn't come to work that day because she had a sick relative who lived in one of the areas without power, and she'd gone to help out with that and possibly take the sick relative to the hospital.

Anyway, this employee said that she would cut the fabric herself, only the little gizmo that makes the sales tag wasn't there. I guess it wasn't there because they don't leave it there overnight, and the girl who normal works there hadn't gone to get it, so it was in an office or something. So she called someone else from another department who uses the same sort of gizmo, and someone came and cut the fabric for me. This particular employee said she had been going back and forth between two departments all morning.

So I got my fabric and all was well, and I went on to the next place to look for the textured felt, which I ended up getting at Hobby Lobby, the last place I went to that day.

But I thought it was really weird that the girl in the photo department told me that she didn't know how to page anyone.

I haven't worked for Walmart, but there was a time that I did work in several Walmarts, when I had worked for a vendor. And there was also a summer that I worked for Kmart. And I knew how to page people at both places. If you work for Walmart or Kmart or in another place like that, you are always running in to customers who need something that you can't do or you don't know where something is or you do know what to do but you can't help them because you've just clocked out, and you have to get someone else to help them. So paging is like the first thing that they teach you when you go to work at one of those places. And this girl was telling me that she didn't really know how to do that.

What's up with that?