The Store

I'm still enjoying the relative warmth and humidity of the South Pole dish pit at lunch and dinnertime two days per week, when this year's stewards have their days off. But this summer, the majority of my work time is focused around this room, instead: the South Pole station store/post office. This first shot is the view of the store from behind the counter...

...and here's one looking back at my workspace from the back of the store. (That's outgoing winter-over M sitting at the store computer, trying to get me set up to update the recreation schedule on the overhead scrolls in the galley, as coordinating rec at Pole is also part of my job this summer.)

The store is open for 1-1.5 hours, five days/week, and on two of those days, right after the store closes I get out all of the post office materials and the PO is open for an hour. So the actual opening times total less than 8 hours per week--but it's amazing how the rest of the week is sucked up stocking, organizing, etc.

We are going to have to do some major reorganizing in the store this summer, as we are losing some of our already-precious storage space and will need to be able to keep more inventory actually in the store rather than in closets. So maybe I will have to post some "after" pictures at the end of the summer. But for now, you can imagine me tooling around in this room for a good chunk of most of my days, which so far is great fun.