Mannequins and New Jersey Diners

Yesterday I spent an hour calling all the different department stores in Miami (where our production team is headed in a couple of days.) trying to find mannequins that we could rent/buy for our wardrobe department. Part of me loves the challenge of something like this. I get to use my sleuthing skills and track down things, weasel it out of people and generally be my charming self to get my way. It's like playing a very fun character. Part of me hates having to sit through the computer controlled voice operators who speak so calmly and can't actually understand you.
"I heard Juniors department. Is this correct?" "No!" "I'm sorry. Please repeat the department you wish to be connected to."
It's so satisfying to get snippy with them until you realize it's not doing you any good and is probably only making it worse. Finally when I reach one live person I asked if I could speak to the visual merchandising department. Or, if it's a cheaper store 'for the person who's in charge of the mannequins.' And then, inevitably I get shunted to someone who doesn't know anything about it. Or I get told that 'We don't rent them out." 'Okay, well, do you someone who might?" "No." Thank you for your help." Bitch. I started calling costume stores and got the same response. Finally someone recommended some prop stores. At one of the prop stores they refered me to "Jerry." "Jerry" refered me to "Mike Dane" I googled Mike Dane + Miami and found only one number, a home number, which I then called. And called back this morning because the pager number given got no response from him. Apparently the only guy who can help me in Miami isn't into returning calls. Great.

I spent the majority of my day in a storage facility in New Jersey. Matt and I, another PA had to pack up various things to be shipped down to Miami and then sit around and wait for FedEx to pick them up. And when I say 'pack up various things' I mean an entire pallet and then use plastic packaging wrap to Saranwrap everything into a nice, unbudgable pile. Once we were finished with that we went to get lunch at the Tick Tock Diner and kill some time. We had four hours.
The diner was exactly what I expected a diner in New Jersey to be. Full of old, affluent Jewish people, business men that look like car dealers or toilet bowl salesmen and big beefy guys. I'm glad somethings live up to my expectations.
When lunch was finished we went back to the storage unit to move the pallet outside for the FedEx guys. That was when we realizd the pallet wouldn't fit out the door. We had a stack of fifteen Gatorade water coolers and had to wrench three out to squeeze it out the door. We just barely made it. Then we stood around for an hour until the truck arrived. After that we headed back into Manhattan. What a glamorous life, television is.