Suspicion and Dislike

**see footnotes

A lady visited the store today; She had the diamond from her mother's engagement ring, and wanted a necklace custom designed using the diamond. She was worried though, and wanted us to promise to use the exact same diamond in the necklace that she was giving us in the velvet bag.

It seemed like an odd fear to me....or if it was a legitimate fear, what a crappy jeweler to swipe somebody's diamond and exchange it for a cheaper one! We handed her a loupe and showed her how to recognize her own diamond and ensure she got the right one back. She left, a bit less suspicious and a bit more jewelry savvy.

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Our most frequent customers are other retail jewelry stores in town, who have limited repair abilities beyond cleaning and polishing. We do everything for them, from soldering engagement rings and wedding bands together, to resizing, replacing stones, straightening prongs, repairing settings, everything.

The owner of one of these stores came in today and practically pitched a bulky envelope at me in her haste to be rid of it. The rest is just touchy enough for me to claim qualified privilege and quote the remainder of the story --

"So there's this customer, this big black man named Eli. He has no taste and spends the majority of his time in jail. Now this is silver" (gestures at the offending ring) "and its ugly - just awful - but it's what he wants so we have no choice. Just...well....replace the missing stone and see if you can polish it up" *doubtful glance at the stained ring* "He just likes the gleam, you know?" (I feel like the word she was looking for was BLING...)

"We moved locations five years ago and we thought we'd lost him. We were sick - just sick to discover him waiting on our doorstep. Heaven only knows how he found us again. And the WORST part is - we have to hear about his jail time! Listen - I don't want to hear about it! If you were stupid enough to get there, just keep it to yourself...."

It was a colossal hunk of solid silver, weighed about a pound, and the head, studded with sketchy looking sparkly stones, was almost the size of a golfball. I was excited for Eli's evident pawnshop snag, and I sincerely hope he is pleased with the new shiny version when we clean it all up.

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loupe - pronounced "loop," this handy tool is a magnifying glass designed specifically for looking at fine jewelry. Obviously, in basic form, it makes visible aberrations you can't see with the naked eye.
http://jewelry.about.com/od/jewelryappraisal/ss/loupe.htm


solder, soldering - pronounced "Sotter, sottering," the soldering torch is an open flame that burns at 1700 degrees F. Pyro!
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-solder-for-Jewelry-purposes/


envelope - every piece of jewelry that enters the store gets a special envelope with a number stamped on it. Please don't lose your claim check with the job number on it. And please know that we record your contact information on this envelope, which is subject to remain in our less-than-exemplary filing system till the end of eternity.


qualified privilege - ie.....don't sue me ;-)
http://www.duhaime.org/legaldictionary/Q/QualifiedPrivilege.aspx

I may have forgotten how to blog....but I have full confidence in my ability to remember how this is done with the greatest of speed. Your indulgence, please, as I rediscover my inner blogger.

As a prequel, future posts are likely to revolve around my adventures at work, and the people I am lucky enough to meet there.

My current place of employment is a small jewelry store, owned by a wise, gentle, honest, thoughtful, and very talented man whom I am very thankful for. Business is slow, but life goes on.

Very, very rarely is more than one person in the store at a time, but every now and then, they all synchronize their errand schedules and rush in at the same moment. At which point I quickly become useless as my employer is the only one who can answer most questions about the jewelry, and I glide around trying, and failing, to make graceful small talk with the other people invading the show room.

The aforementioned scenario of crowdedness happened yesterday, actually. A wiry old man, perhaps 70 years old, was waiting with a very small green and silver clock. So I say to him, "Why, this is a wonderful clock. How cute!" Like I said, I fail at graceful small talk.

"CUTE! CUTE? This is not a word I frequently use!!! Why would I use a girl word like that?" I thought he was angry at me, but he went on.

"These GIRL WORDS include lovely -- wonderful -- cherish -- adore!!" With every new word offensive to his masculinity, he parodied a different exaggerated pose of a lady batting her eyelashes.

The UPS guy is watching from behind. He's doing a good job of keeping a straight face, too, but his mouth is twitching and I expect him to laugh out loud.

The gentleman then moved on from "girl words" to rap his knuckles on a display case with jarring resonance.

"Oh! Well, now, don't mind me. It's the Army in me, just tapping out morse code here...." I decided not to ask what encoded message was being sent, or to whom, and just changed the subject.....

Thankfully, the jeweler saved me by coming over to attend to the man, saying "Ok, sir, let's see that watch." Technically, it was a "clock," and the man instantly pounced on this fact. "WATCH! WATCH? You can't wear this on your wrist!! You could wear it on your foot, I guess, if you had good balance --"

At this point he's got the clock balanced on one foot and he's balancing on the other foot, hopping around on one leg.....I wanted to throw up my hands and call a hip surgeon that very moment, I expected imminent doom.

He didn't break a hip, actually, and the UPS guy got a bit of entertainment out of it too.