I had the pleasure of running the event for my Toys R Us. Lucky me. OK, first of all, one of my co-workers left me an instruction booklet that was sent to us for the event. It was the Celebi distribution manual from the Journey Across America tour. So I was confused because I read the instructions on the website about how you had to trade a pokémon for Mew and Celebi was a special download. It got my hopes up b/c I was hoping the website was wrong and the Mew distribution would go like Celebi. If only it were that easy. Yesterday morning we open up the stuff for the event and there's a different instruction manual, this one the proper instruction manual for Mew. I don't know WHY we got the Celebi manual too. And lo, it is not a special downloading cartridge like Celebi, it's a copy of FireRed with every box in the PC and the 6 party spots full with nothing but Mew. Which is cool in its own right. However, to have to initiate a trade with each customer, then have to switch out for new Mews every six trades was tedious and time consuming.

So, the event was supposed to last from noon to 3PM. We had people lining up at 11 in the RZone. I started at 11:50 to get a jumpstart. We had to move the line from the RZone to the front of the store (the "seasonal" section) because it outgrew the RZone. My managers cut off the line at 1ish and didn't allow anyone else to get in line. I finished the lucky ones who got in line at roughly 4:40. My manager felt bad for the kids who she had to turn away and asked me if I'd come in at 7AM this morning. I agreed, and we had a special extra hour for a handful of the people who didn't get in line yesterday. That was only about 15 extra people this morning at 7. The people both yesterday and today - kids, parents and teenage/adult pokéfans - that were ridiculously grateful to me. I felt like a Pokémon Goddess.

So, in essence, I got paid to play Pokémon for 4 hours yesterday and almost 2 hours this morning. However, I sat in front of that line for four hours straight yesterday without a break. My only consolation is that I had first and last dibs on that cartridge. Not only did I get 4 Mews (two of them are actually for my boyfriend since he couldn't make it) I also got dibs on any of the traded Pokémon that I wanted. Thanks to the kids in line yesterday and this morning I got 3 different shapes of Unown, 2 eggs, 2 Igglybuffs, a Torchic, a Treecko, a HootHoot and a Vaporeon, which saves me a bit of time and trading effort on my own part.

I doubt I could get away with keeping that cartridge. Nintendo sent us two copies of FireRed loaded with nothing but Mew and they stated in the paperwork that everything would be picked up by the Nintendo rep on their October visit. Now my region's rep is a really cool guy and he hooks me up with tons of swag and gives me the GameCube demo discs and once gave me a copy of DK Jungle Beat, but if he has to return stuff that has to be accounted for, he won't bend. And I know this b/c I've begged for GBA and DS demo carts and he said they have to be sent back and kept track of. I dunno. Maybe I'll luck out. I mean, Limbofunk said he got to keep the LeafGreen from the event he did 2 years ago. I won't be able to beg for myself, though. I won't be working the day the Nintendo rep comes in cuz I'm in school now. *sigh* can't win 'em all.