As a cynic, I've never been a huge fan of Valentine's Day. In fact, I used to wear all black every February 14 merely to spite all the happy couples (and I'm sure they cared). However, I never realized how much I could hate the holiday, even as a person in a relationship, until I started working in a floral shop.
The real planning of the biggest day in the industry began on January 2, once Christmas and New Year's were officially out of the way; however, I believe the teddy bears and boxes of candy and floral picks made to resemble conversation hearts and hundreds - I kid you not - of make-you-puke-sweetness balloons were ordered sometime in November. The end of January was marked by the issuance of an official February calendar by corporate to make sure that all Kroger stores made bows on the second and started inflating the hundreds of balloons on the fifth.
And the flowers. My God, the flowers. Kroger 412 in Oxford normally gets one skid of flowers every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The number of boxes on the skid varies greatly; sometimes it's a mere 3, one for each of the bouquets Krogers throughout southwest Ohio sell. There's usually at least one box of random roses, million star, leatherleaf, and/or limonium to sell as single stems. On the Friday before Valentine's day, however, there were four and a half skids and something like 60 to 100 boxes of bouquets, potted plants, and filler. And we still ran out of million star and limonium by noon on Valentine's Day.
Another thing I never realized was how unoriginal men are. We probably had 15 boxes of nothing but dozen rose bouquets. And yes, the front case is still full of them, and there are still three boxes of them in the back (each box holds 10 bouquets), but we sold a whole hell of a lot of them. I personally am not that impressed by red roses, but then I've had an interesting history with them. Anyway, they seem to be all men know to get their significant others.
That's the other thing about Valentine's Day: there's no possible way to keep up with the customers. All three of us who normally staff the floral shop worked that day, and we brought in three people from other departments to help out. In one case that was good, as we got a cashier who knew what she was doing and could crack jokes with the rest of us. In the other two cases, though, we got people who didn't really know the first thing about floral. Not that it's a hard job, but, well, as far as jobs in Kroger go, maybe it is. And one of those two hopeless cases had a real problem with not being in charge of everyone else (she never normally is at Kroger, which is why no one likes her; she's basically a bitch with control issues). The approximately 120 square feet the floral shop sits on was sheer madness that day. If it had gone on much longer, the three of us who worked the late shift probably would have fought over who got to take the trash to the back, which ended up being about 10 minutes of sanctuary.
Yesterday was, in contrast, peaceful. Serene. I stood behind the counter and pulled apart all the carefully assembled Valentine's Day snack packs that no one bought, and I sold three bouquets of a dozen roses (the price went back down from $29.99 to $12.99. That's right, guys - if you're going to be that unoriginal, you might as well be a day late and pay less than half for it). Today I'll probably get some reading done; I might even finish my book.
