“I’ve got a rough plan of where each product type needs to go which will be a starting point but we can change things around if we want to. Anything you think would work better somewhere else, just say. Shall we walk the store?” Rachel said, brushing the crumbs off her hands as she stood up.
It was retail speak for having a look round. As they did, Rachel answered Gudrun’s questions about the placement of various things, some of which were different from the other stores she’d studied as part of her training. She took photos of everything and made copious notes which impressed Rachel no end.
They heard the delivery lorry arrive before anyone had banged on the door, it was so noisy compared to any of the other traffic that normally went past. They propped open the door of the shop and prepared to carry goodness knows how many boxes into the store. Everything was packed on huge pallets, taller than either Rachel or Gudrun and about a metre square at the base and there were around ten of them. Rachel had been expecting lots of individual cardboard boxes like they usually dealt with in the UK so she had to quickly revise her plan for unpacking. By the time all the pallets were unloaded and everything was in the store there was no floor space left to be seen. They collapsed onto the sofa and decided that they needed more coffee before they could even attempt to start unpacking the boxes.
They tried to identify what was in each box from the notations on the outside rather than having to open all of them as they went along. Once they knew which supplier it was from Rachel could tell which area of the shop it belonged to and they made piles of boxes according to that.
It was late afternoon before they had checked all the boxes and the shop looked like a bomb had hit it. There were piles of boxes everywhere and despite their attempt at organising as they went along, there were plenty of suppliers whose stock was split between different areas of the store so Rachel wasn’t sure their careful organisation was going to help anyway. They picked their way through the boxes to the window sofa and slumped down, completely exhausted.
“I didn't expect there to be as much as this,” said Gudrun with a sigh, all the excitement of the morning long gone. “Do you think we’ll have room for everything?”
“It’s definitely more than we would normally have but it will be more expensive to send lots of smaller amounts of stock over from the UK so I suppose they decided to send enough to see you through for a bit. At least if we have no response to the Design Call we won’t have to worry about the shop looking empty.”
They began unpacking boxes together so that Rachel could show Gudrun the tricks of how to arrange everything on the shelves, then Rachel took anything that should be in a different area over to where it should be and any spare stock down to the stock room. They took it in turns to do that in the end because Gudrun thought it would be a good idea if she knew where everything was down there.
Rachel’s phone rang and seeing that it was Anna, she signalled to Gudrun to take a breather.
“Rachel Richards. When were you going to tell me?”
“About what?”
“About anything. You have left me to fend for myself and I don’t knowanythingabout what you’re doing and I bet there’s something because I know Adam was coming to stay and I know you went on a date with that bloke so, come on. Catch me up on everything.”
“I am here to work, in case you had forgotten,” Rachel said, smiling at Anna’s outburst.
She glanced over at Gudrun and briefly thought that they’d get on like a house on fire if they ever met each other. Although whether Rachel could contend with both of them needing to know the ins and outs of everything…
“Work? I’m sorry? What’s that? Haven’t you been climbing mountains and stuff?”
Rachel spent the next few minutes explaining that she’d broken up with Adam and told Anna that she liked Jonas. All of this was interspersed with regular gasps from Anna.
“I justknewthings were going on. I think I’m psychic,” she said. “So how did Adam take it?”
“I don’t know. Not great, I mean, it was awful but I haven’t heard from him. He mentioned that he was leaving his job but it didn’t occur to me to ask him about that given what I’d just done. But I am a bit worried about him. Do you think I should ring him?”
“Hmm. Maybe not. His ego’s probably bruised so perhaps it’s better to give him a bit of space. Weird though, that he’d leave his job.”
“I know and I really can’t believe that he would have done that without discussing it with me. Obviously, it should be his decision but it’s a big deal to do that without telling your partner and I was still his partner then.”
“Well, that just makes the decision to break up all the more right. I mean, he didn’t come to visit you and hello? - gave you no notice. Someone else could have come instead.”
“You, perhaps?” asked Rachel, grinning.
“Oh, that would have been a great idea,” said Anna as if it had never occurred to her. “And he probably snogged someone else, don’t forget.”
“Yes, he actually did.”
“He admitted it?”
“Yes, with not much prompting. I don’t think he thought it was anything to be concerned about but there was more than just kissing anyway.
“Blimey, so, overall a good decision. And I assume you’re seeing the Icelandic hunk now?”
“Yes, sort of although he’s away for a few days.”
“Go for it, Rach. Be happy.”
“There’s just not much time until I have to come home. It’s going to be really hard, I wonder whether we’ve done the right thing.”
