What I've Learned About Cheese...

The following are the things I've learned about cheese while working in the Mail Order room of our local cheesehouse:

1. Baby Swiss can be kept in the refrigerator indefinitely if it hasn't been opened. No kidding. Six months. Two years. Twenty five years. It will sharpen, but it won't spoil.
2. People call from all over the country to order Baby Swiss. People from California seem to really like "our" cheese.
3. On December 13th, we shipped out 1500 packages of cheese. Keep in mind that there were only four of us working in the mail order room and only three working in the packing room. 1500 packages. That's a lot of cheese.
4. In one day, we ran $14,000 worth of cheese orders through the credit card machine. This was no mistake. I meant to type three zeros. We really sold over $14,000 worth of cheese that day.
5. Don't mess with people's cheese. They will hunt you down and kill you with a cheese shaver.
6. Baby Swiss cheese can be frozen. Take it out of it's original package and wrap it in newspaper, and then in freezer wrap. The newspaper is to keep it from forming ice crystals.
7. A person really can each cheese tidbits for lunch every day. Just ask me.
8. When a person finally gets tired of cheese tidbits for lunch, she can eat grilled butter cheese sandwiches.
9. When a person finaly gets tired of cheese tidbits and grilled butter cheese sandwiches for lunch, she can eat Patty Melts. There is no getting tired of Patty Melts.
10. Some people have no problem paying more for shipping than they do for the cheese. This especially applies to people who can't seem to remember what day Christmas will be. They like to wait until three days before Christmas and then determine that there is a Gift Cheese Emergency, calling us in an urgent voice begging us to charge them $50 for second-day air to ship their cheese to California before Christmas. I guess I don't blame them. It's kind of hard to keep track of when Christmas will come, since it keeps moving around every year. If only they would make it on the same date every year so we could have THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE DAYS TO PREPARE!!!
11. Some people have to call the mail order department every single day to track their cheese.
12. Some people have to call to figure out how two 2-pound wheels of cheese could possibly amount to four pounds of cheese.
13. Some people don't understand why they have to return $125 worth of cheese when we accidentally shipped it twice. These same people can't understand why it wasn't okay to go ahead and give it to all of his kids and why he should have to pay for it.
14. Some people like to make mail order employees cry.
15. It's just cheese.
16. People like to send cheese to people who don't like cheese. The people who don't like cheese don't understand why they can't return it to us for cash.
17. People believe we can read their minds. When they ask us to send two wheels of cheese to each person on their Christmas list, we're supposed to know that they only meant that they wanted to send one wheel of cheese to each person on their Christmas list. These people want the money refunded, even though they have sent cheese to fifty-two people in locations around the country.
18. People don't understand why it takes more than a day for their cheese to get from Ohio to Puerto Rico.
19. Some old ladies who order cheese can't remember their own address. They don't understand why we can't send them their cheese anyway.
20. Cheese is good food.