ocularnervosa

 Week 41 Because I've been putting money into the Alternative Fund and it's been a slow week at work I have $8.45 in the Tip Jar. My usual spot is still closed so I had to go to a different store again, it worked out for two weeks so who knows? The place had a mostly empty rack the last time I went there but this week they had some new tickets so I went for the $5 one with the potential jackpot of $20,000, but the ticket was not a winner, and it's not a second chance ticket either. So I'm starting out the month losing. Week 42 I was told my usual spot would be open this week, but it wasn't. I almost forgot to buy a ticket this week but remembered because I had to go to the store, so I picked up one on my way home. It's been a slow week so I had $4.91 in the Tip Jar, it could have been more but I was really honest and gave people back what they overpayed me, good Karma and all. Anyhow since my usual spot is still closed and the other place doesn't have the ti...

 When I got to work the Manager was on the phone. She was only partway through closing her shift when she went outside to talk, I wasn't really listening but I guess she felt it was too private. Later when she came back she had her safe deposit in her hand, she had been walking around outside with a bunch of loose bills in her hand. That must have been one heck of a conversation for her to not have noticed. A guy came in looking for unroasted fresh chile. Sorry dude, you have a three week window from the end of September to the middle of October and you missed it. When I went out to check the trashes there was a blob of ice cream next to one of the cans. I was going to take a bucket of water out and wash it off but the crows discovered it and went nuts, so I left it for them. They actually did a better job than I would have. A guy was in the restroom for a long time and I needed to check the place but I got a crowd. A guy got a soda refill and his total was $1.40, he handed me 5 co...

 The day started off fun! There was a woman hanging out around the side of the building, because the Manager won't run people off, she wasn't doing anything at the time so I let her be. Then she came in and asked if we had a bus schedule....ummmm...we're not a bus stop, why would we have a schedule, you have to go on line for that kind of thing in the modern world. "Someone told her" that we had a schedule but there isn't anyone around who would have done that, step one of "here comes trouble" by the way. Then she started bugging the customers for money or a ride so I had to go tell her to not do that. She told me that I couldn't tell her to stop bugging people so I did the "this is private property and you have to leave" speech, if you say that and they refuse you can call the cops. She told me she was "federal" and I couldn't tell her what to do, she was something alright. So she went and gathered up her stuff, and came ...

It was another day at the Haunted Station and another day of a backed up toilet. Since the mens room was closed a lot of pissers left angry and frustrated. One guy flung the front door open and stormed out, but you knew full well he wasn't going to buy anything. I told the polite people that they could use the ladies room but the rest could go to one of the other stations. I guess they did a test run on the food warmer across the street and the Manager not only forgot to fill up the water steamer tray on the bottom but had it set to high and burned everything. I'm glad I haven't been over there for the past two days. The Crazy Lady worked the afternoon shift at the Truck Stop and I guess she was bitching non stop about it. For years she complained that the afternoon shift people weren't getting enough done and now she knows what it's like to actually be busy all day long. I hope they keep her on the shift for the next two weeks because she will get to deal with the ...

The day started with me having to go and get keys made for the Haunted Station so I can lock up the cash drawer at the end of the night. The Boss gave me money for it but he only wanted me to get the one key for the office. I picked up the keys from the Late Guy and "whoopsy" made a copy of one for the front door too. If something comes up and I have to open I have a key and the Boss won't know. When I went to the hardware store the key guy didn't have blanks that matched, great, now what? But then one of the other employees, who use to work at the Truck Stop, came up to the counter and told the guy to check in the random spare box and sure enough, there were two blanks. So I got the keys, went back by the Haunted Station and dropped off the Late Guy's keys, checked to make sure the new ones worked and then went home to get ready for work. BTW, the Late Guy was complaining about the Part Time Woman, it seems she couldn't dump the outside trash because there wa...

 The first thing I saw when I got to work was a hot food rack, they are going to go through with this. They've been told by multiple people that it didn't work in the past and resulted in a lot of waste, however they are like most companies, the big bosses who live far far away know better than the people who have worked at the place for decades. Oh well, at least I don't have to take the responsibility for it. I hope they don't put hot dog rollers in because those things are the worst. They finally got all the pumps up and running and the #12 pump crashed. Figures. Also the #10 diesel pump will start running slow and shut all the other diesel pumps down. This is going to be fun. And it's raining today, and rained during the whole shift. Because of the bad weather in the area, and rock slide on the mountain, and a tornado in Santa Fe, nobody was traveling so it was slow all day. This turned out to be a good thing because it meant I didn't have to go dump the tra...

 Today started off normally, and didn't stay that way. The Late Guy came by to tell me that the state wants the station to stop pumping premium or plus fuel until they do a through test of the storage tanks. So I rushed to get out of order signs written out and to put them on the pump. Two things, there was no scotch tape in the drawer so I had to cut strips of packing tape and of course I got mobbed by people while I was trying to do it. I finally got everything ready, got to the door and discovered that the Manager had already marked the pumps. As usual nobody told me the second half of the story. As the Manager was closing the safe bill reader jammed up. This meant I was going to have to bundle drop money and I wouldn't be able to get any money back out. I've worked here long enough to keep extra coins and bills just in case. There was a homeless guy hanging around, he's been here before. He isn't trouble, he buys stuff and then sits outside with his dog. However...

 When I got to work I discovered that I had forgot my Dr Pepper, I can buy a 6-pack at the store for the same price of two bottles at work so I bring my own. As I was running to the cooler to grab one, (Cherry Dr Pepper by the way, if I was going to have to buy one I might as well buy the best one) I noticed that one of the trash cans didn't have a trash bag in it, the Manager must have gotten distracted. So instead I ran behind the counter and grabbed one before the crowd showed up and filled up the can itself. When I got outside I spotted the half full trash bag on the side of the building where the Manager left it. So now I had to haul that around to the dumpster as cars were showing up on the lot. Nothing like starting your day at a dead run. And a half hour later I got my Cherry Dr Pepper. Another guy came in to ask about my Bad Hawg (my electric trike). We went through the usual, how much did it cost? How long did the battery last? He asked if they had a fat wheel version and...

 When I got to work it wasn't busy, the Manager had counted down her drawer but I waited for the Late Guy to close his so I could get the register that isn't under the air conditioner vent. While I was logging in a couple of local lowlifes came in, the guy was bleeding from "some kind of wound" and they wanted to know if we'd call an ambulance. The theory is that she stabbed him. The Manager wanted to know what the phone number was to call the ambulance so I said "911?", she didn't punch me. The ambulance showed up along with the EMTs and they stitched the guy up. He could have gone to the emergency room for the same thing. And you know they aren't going to pay the bill. There is an overflow revisor on the fill caps for the big fuel tanks and one of the drivers had dumped diesel in there. The Late Guy, who was working the morning, wanted to go pump it out. He got ready but he got a call from the Boss, the state inspector was at the Haunted Statio...

I walked in to chaos. The Late Guy had a line at his register so I rushed to log in and count in my drawer so he could get out. And it went like that for the next couple of hours. And of course nothing was done. I soon as I got a break I had to clean and stock the restrooms, dump the trash and eventually I bagged 19 bags of ice. And the mop bucket was in the office restroom, why? It hadn't been used, the floors were a mess. The Late Guy is back to being the Late Guy. I guess yesterday he spent the day bossing the Part Time Woman to do the work for him, he's good at that. The thing that makes me laugh is how he constantly complain about how people leave the Haunted Station and he left the Truck Stop exactly like that. I was trying to do the cigarette count but there was a family having a discussion about who was going to pay and were they going to use the card, tap or pay cash. Oh c'mon, I have a break in the traffic and can get my work done quickly but instead I had to stan...

 I bought something from Amazon and when I got it the thing broke as I was trying to put it together so I had to send it back. The problem is that I have to send it via UPS which requires a pick up. I don't know when they'd be coming and I didn't know if I would be home when they showed up, so I arranged for a pick up at the Truck Stop which is open 24 hours and someone is always there. I was going to have to leave it first thing in the morning because again, I didn't know when they would be coming. So I got out of bed early and drove up to the station, and the Late Guy is working the morning shift again, and the Part Time Woman was there too. I went in and chatted with the Late Guy and ignored her. The tank alarm was going off again, this time it's a probe that isn't working. I decided to be a nice guy, went to the back and ran off an alarm report and it went off, I'll see if it stayed off when I go in this afternoon. And then I came home for breakfast, and...

 Because someone offed themselves I had to go to work early. No, it wasn't anyone who worked at the station, it was someone the Manager knew and she needed to leave for the funeral at 10:30, so I got to work a 12 hour shift. The thing that bothers me is there are three people who could have covered the four hours, two of them have been short because the Haunted Station is closed but nope, I had to go in. Oh well, overtime for me. The Manager told me she had gone by the liquor store to pick up some beer for the weekend. She ran into the Doofus (the guy who was fired for showing up to work drunk). He told her what a great job he had and how much they respected him there. Two things, I heard he was basically working as a janitor, cleaning, doing the outside trash and scrubbing the restrooms. The second thing is he keeps bugging the Boss to get his job back. He was full of crap when he worked at the Truck Stop and he still is. I wonder if his brother, Stinky, is still working at a fast...

 When I got to work everything was normal and peaceful. Oh wait, the tank alarm was going off again, and even though you hit the reset it would go off about five minutes later. They keep the door to the office open because the ice machine is in there and the room isn't vented so it overheats and shuts down. I closed the door, screw the ice machine. After an hour I went and hit the "YES, I KNOW, CENSOR IS NOT WORKING, SHUT THE HECK UUUUUUPPPPP!" button and it quit. I guess it needed to cry itself tired. Later in the day a driver made a delivery and I figured "crap, the alarm is going to go off again" but he did something to fix the censor and I didn't have to hear from the thing for the rest of the night.  The Little Debbies guy showed up, he hadn't been there for a while so the rack was mostly empty. There were several bags of outdated mini donuts and yes, I gladly accepted them. They had pumpkin spice and even though they are past their sell by date the...

Today requires a quick recap of the "cluster you-know-what" the stations have turned into thanks to bad management. It starts with the Random Woman putting in her two week notice, however she did it just as the state red-tagged the tanks at the Haunted Station and the place had to close so the Boss told her she could quit immediately and go to whatever job she was starting. The problem was that they didn't hire a new full time person to take her place, they would have had plenty of time to train them for the job but the company decided to save on the salary.  Fast forward a couple of week, the Boss figured the Haunted Station was almost ready to reopen but again he hadn't hire anyone, instead he decided to shuffle around the schedules of everyone else, thus putting us at the razors edge of having people available in case anything happened to anyone. And for some reason I once again got the stupidest of schedules. Originally the Boss wanted me to work Wednesday, Thursd...