As The Station Turns 8/9

 Hell Week Redux: Day 2

Today started off pretty good. I went to get the tank readings and looked up, there was a dollar bill stuck on top of one of the fuse boxes. Why was it there? I don't know. Who put it there? I don't know. Where did it end up? In my pocket.

Mrs. Last Guy told me that it had been a slow and boring morning. This is a quick way to curse another shift. Sure enough I was overrun with customers for hours. I had to dump the outside trash twice. It's worse than mopping the floor.

Today was "Small Children" Day. Everybody who came in had toddlers who were at the age of walking and exploring. I wouldn't mind but it means that they all take at least 20 minutes to find their stuff, have a discussion about not buying the stuffed animals and finally picking something out. At least there wasn't the "pick something out, you can't have that, hurry up" conversation.

Yesterday I intentionally loaded an almost empty roll of paper towels into the men's room to see what would happen, and it worked, they actually put a new roll in. However they didn't put toilet paper in the stalls. I had to run and put three rolls out. The ones in the men's room were almost empty and "whoopsy" I didn't replace them. We'll see how they are today.

I was replacing the paper in the credit card printer when I noticed a scrap sticking out of where the machine cuts the receipts. When I pulled it out it had a date on it, from last year. Once again you can see how often people clean things.

A regular came in, I've been seeing here for years. She calls me Randy, my name isn't Randy by the way. I don't correct her.

The guy with the Cheese Slippage came in and his credit card is working again. He asked if he could get a soda for a dollar. Sorry pal, not in this economy.

The Storyteller came in. He was talking about long term plans and I mentioned how I should have stayed in college. Instead of listening to what I was going to say he went into his story about when he went to drafting school, a story I've only heard a dozen times. I realized that he's one of those people, he wants to tell his stories but isn't interested in hearing other people's stories. At least I only see him a couple of times a week, when the Doofus worked there he would do it every day. I got so tired of being interrupted to hear one of his stories again that I stopped talking.

A guy came in and wanted to know if I knew any really good golf courses in the area. I told him "No". He asked if I didn't know about the golf courses in the area and I told him that there aren't any good courses in the area, they are all little municipal courses that are tended to by the locals. Pretty much a lawn with a hole.

A really old woman was being led into the restroom. This means she's going to be in there a long time and I'm going to have to clean up a mess. The entire time she was there the place was empty but as soon as she left the crowd showed up. One guy came running in and rushed to the restroom, am I going to have to reclean both restrooms? I had to wait a half hour and sure enough, when I went in I had to dump the ladies room trash, for a second time, because of an adult diaper. Oh well, that's the fun part of the job. btw, the other guy looked around for beer and then left. 

A guy bought a bottle of water and tried to tip me $2. I handed it back to him and said it was too much. He was kind of surprised but took his money back. If you're going to tip someone do it for services rendered, I just rang up a bottle of water for him. And if he wanted to give the $2 away he could have put it in the charity jar.

Another guy came in and asked me about a restaurant that probably closed 40 years ago. Sorry, long gone.

It was the last hour of my shift and I was in the middle of the usual rush, other stations in the area close down and suddenly we're the only open place on the tourist strip. One guy came in and bought 7 bags of ice. I figured I was going to have to leave it for the next shift but then the place cleared out and I didn't have an excuse, I went and bagged the ice.

The Graveyard Shift Guy came in and at that moment there wasn't a crowd so he managed to get in his drawer quickly, for a change. It's funny how that works out. Anyhow I got out of my drawer and left, two days down on Hell Week, four days and two double shifts to go.

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