As The Station Turns 7/20

 I woke up to a Ping on my iPad. I figured it was the Late Guy asking me to show up at the Haunted Station to help him with the pump hose. He has asked me and the Weekend Guy to come help last week but had gotten the wrong hose, it was one for a high volume diesel pump not a regular gas pump. I considered ignoring it and saying I didn't see it until I was heading out the door for work, but I went ahead and checked. It was the Boss asking me to cover the afternoon shift Downtown. That's gonna suck and be good at the same time because I don't have to put up with the moody crowd at the Truck Stop. I had to find out what my drawer number is for there.

I did my shift opening paperwork and then the Downtown Manager decided to double check my cigarette count numbers. She changed a few, which would have been fine, but at the end of the night none of my numbers matched up with my sales, and since she had scratched out and written over my numbers I didn't know what the original ones were. In the end I didn't total things out, I just left it as it was. This is why I hate people messing with my paperwork but since I was only there for one day I let it slide. Plus the Boss knows I'm not going to steal cigarettes.

I don't like the register at the Downtown Station. It's hard to read the buttons, the credit card reader isn't working and you have to run them all on a separate system so at the end of the night I was a $1000 off. And in order to sell cigarettes you have to scan the code on the back of people's IDs, and the scanner doesn't like to read the codes. I spent the whole day trying to find that magic spot where it would work.

Also I shouldn't complain but the Downtown Station is filthy. Dust everywhere, the floor needed a good sweeping and mopping and there was several expired items on the shelf. Again, I don't work there full time so I didn't go crazy.

If all that isn't bad enough their air conditioner sucks. All the beverage machines and a couple of coolers are behind the counter and they put off a lot of heat. They have several fans but all they do is move hot air from one point to the other. And every time I tried to go stand in the door to catch a breeze someone showed up and back behind the counter to the hottest part of the building. I also kept my soda in the ice cream freezer until it started to develop ice crystals.

At least I felt safe, they keep a gun behind the register.

The Downtown Manager gave me a key to the building so she didn't have to come back and lock the place up at 10 PM. The good thing was when I needed a restroom break I could lock the doors and nobody could come in the building.

I was heading outside to check the trash cans and who should wander up but The Minstrel. He's been officially ordered out of the stations and I reminded him of that. He decided he was going to argue with me and I told him I could have the police come talk to him, he decided to leave. Later I caught him hanging around again and once again I had to tell him to hit the bricks. I also found out he's mooching off an older lady. She is probably alone in the world and took him in, all things considered I don't think that will end well.

A woman came in and told me half her life story, her four marriages, her battles with cancer and how someone put a curse on her. Well, there's that.

An older guy on a scooter kept coming by looking for the woman who normally works the shift. Three times I told him she took the day off. I have to wonder why he was looking for her but that's none of my business. 

I was trying to sweep the floor and I kept getting Tag Teamers. One woman was looking for a specific candy bar but I don't know the place so I didn't have an answer for her. She had to call the person she was shopping for to find out what else they would want. Eventually I did get the floor swept and mopped.

Towards the end of the day I found a SIM card sitting on the counter. Did it fall out of someone's phone? Did they have it in their pocket and dropped it when they were counting out their change? I have no idea but nobody came back for it during my shift. 

Since I was working at the Downtown Station I figured I would stamp some classic Trump Smells bills. I figured I could drop them in the safe at the end of the day and they'd get mixed up with a lot of other bills. However I did enough cash business that I sent them all out to bounce around town. The funny part was at the end of the night a guy came in to get lottery tickets and paid me with one, and I know it was his first time in the building that day. I must have given a bill to someone, they spent it somewhere and this guy got it and brought it back. I hope a lot of the local maga end up with them.

I created inventory sheets for several of the stations, it lists out the cigarettes and their prices so the employees can keep track through the day plus the lottery ticket number. It goes in with the paperwork at the end of the day so the accountant can keep track of the sales and if the station is robbed they know what the last number on the lottery tickets were and they can stop payment on the stolen ones. About a month ago cigarette prices went up so I made new ones for the Truck Stop and the Haunted Station but I hadn't been by the Downtown Station in a while. They had whited out the old numbers and just wrote in the new numbers, and they are hard to read. So I was trying to get the prices and here came the Tag Teamers. Eventually I got them all. (Today I redid their list and dropped it off with the Downtown Manager along with her door key)

I was counting down the minutes until closing time when I discovered the clock on the register is about 15 minutes off, it was closing time. And sure enough, here came a rush of people. I had to wait for them to leave before I could lock the door. I ran though my list to make sure everything was done and then went home. The nice thing about closing up a place is you don't have to wait for the next shift to show up, go through the problem of clocking in and then wait for them to slowly count in their drawer and then double check everything on the calculator. Not to mention how grouchy they are on a Monday, I didn't miss that at all.

Other than stopping by the Downtown Station I avoided all the other stations today.