Entitled Karen says I know nothing about home goods because I'm a man.

Many, many moons ago, I worked in a department store.

It was a weekend contract gig while I was at university.

It had departments for a variety of things.

And for no particular reason, I ended up in the basement of homewares.

No grumbles for me, money, even if it was minimum wage, is money.

Work was easy and my team was awesome.

First week there, I recall someone saying,

retail would be great if it wasn't for the customers.

I was saddened by hearing that.

What am the rose mentality to have for a place you spend most of your waking week?

It took me a few years to find out that it was 100% true.

The amazing customers absolutely do not outnumber or overshadow the monsters.

One thing in retail I didn't realize was how amazingly helpful good memory is.

And believe me, back then especially, I had a phenomenal memory.

We had to type in dissection codes and prices into a printer for barcodes

and place them on stock.

I very quickly got a reputation.

See, most people would remember their specialty codes.

They were about 15 digits long.

A few season withered husk with manager name tags would remember a few other specialty codes.

I had them memorized for the entire basement.

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