Flower Feelings, Memories and Emotions - Some I Miss, Others Not So Much

I was at physical therapy the other day and a funny thing happened. PT is for nothing terrible, just a weak ankle that I had been putting off..... so, the nice young man that was helping me with my exercises asked me what I did for living. I told him that I had owned the flower shop located right in the same complex. (If you ever need PT, JagONE in the Forrestal Village is amazing). 

A customer was doing her PT on a table next to me, which went pretty much like this - "We miss you, we loved your shop, who do you recommend we go to now".  I can't seem to go anywhere without someone running up and asking how retirement is going. As of writing this, we've only been fully retired for exactly 15 days because it took a month to close the shop down, plus we are still collecting money, selling assets, changing insurance, etc. so it's still very new. 

But back to the young man that was helping me. He asked what my favorite flower is and I told him that  I pretty much love all flowers but my favorite were roses, especially pink ones. All flowers make me happy and none really make me sad. 

Flowers can really invoke very intense positive and negative "feelings" in people.  A lily could remind you of your favorite grandmother or it could remind you of a funeral. I always said that flowers were an emotional gift for both the sender and the receiver. 

Some of the "strongest" positive and negative responses I received from clients had to do with the emotional feelings attached to flowers. You hoped to hit the positive ones but truth be told we hit some negative ones too.  I always tried to be empathetic and do whatever I could to fix any bad feelings our flowers may have brought up by listening and offering to replace them. I admit that it was one of the few times in my career that I could be pushed too far. Yelling, threatening and even cursing sometimes happened. A carnation in a floral design ruined your birthday? We had to tread softly when mentiong that a spouse ordered that specific design from our website so we were obligated to use those exact flowers. Not only did WE not know their hated flower but now the hubby was in the doghouse too. Oh poor guy. 

So I guess this is my first post about what I miss (seeing those roses every day) and what  I don't miss (bringing up bad feelings due to a flower someone received). I went into work every day with the hopes of making everyone happy and I mean everyone - Sender, Recipient, Employees, the Hubby, the Bank, the Landlord, the Tax Man - well, you get the idea... but I guess it was never possible to hit that mark 100% of the time. Being around flowers everyday - pretty amazing... so that I will definitely miss.