To Box or Not To Box

I have spent the holiday weekend fulfilling customer requests for trays or boxes. We do not normally *provide* said trays or boxes, and the company says that we are not to keep the trays available for the customers at checkout. We throw them in the dumpster--and while the company is willing to overlook our having those trays handy during the open for business hours, at the end of every day, we are required to gather up whatever we've saved, and chuck 'em in the dumpster.

If anyone brings us a tray, they can have it--like I said, we throw them away. On a good day, we have plenty to hand out, but in general, we aren't allowed to keep 'em handy, and we don't. (They do clutter up the place, and they are pretty filthy.)

Anyone who has ever been nagged to death by a child knows that simply asking over and over and over and over and over, no matter how you change the wording around, does not magically create whatever is being nagged for.

Oh, wait, never mind.

Of course it does--except when you're asking for a tray or box that does not exist. If you can't see it hanging out here with me by the register, I do not have it. Period.

I can call every vest wearing associate in the store, and you still ain't getting a box or a tray.

I've been saying it for 7 years: "I'm sorry, I don't have a box or a tray. I have plastic bags, and I have sheets of plastic. Bags. Plastic. Bags. Plastic."

No matter how many times, in as many minutes, you ask me about boxes or trays.

Unless, of course, you're the one person in all this time, who brings me flowers snuggled into a tray that was just exactly made just exactly for those flowers, and asks, "Shouldn't you be putting these in bags? Are you sure they're safe for the trip home in this tray?"

Eye rolling cashier says "What?"