As The Station Turns 10/15

 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 food place, I saw that they were hiring and wondered if they fired him.

The tank alarm was going off again. I guess it had been blaring all morning long. I was busy but the first chance I got I went to check it and I discovered that if you print off an alarm report it shuts up. I'm not going to tell anyone, let them figure that out for themselves.

I'm starting to think people intentionally don't look at the pump numbers. Pumps have been numbered since the oil embargo since the 1970's, and most of these people started driving long after that. You should  know by now but all day long nobody knew what pump they were at. This can't be accidental. I'm going to start staring at them until they go out, look at the pump number and then come back.

Pepsi made a delivery. They use to dump it in the middle of the cooler and leave but I guess the drivers got told off so now they are actually stocking the shelves, like they are suppose to do. However several hours later I got a chance to go in the cooler and the guy had left all the empty boxes laying around everywhere. It's a good thing I was there because the Manager would have run the guy down, kicked his butt and made him come back and finish his job. Naturally as I was trying to clean it up I got a crowd of people. Not to mention something had leaked on his dolly and left a trail across the floor.

Another thing I hate is when I go to pick up something to scan and the person has to grab it back to turn the bar code. I know where the Freaking bar code is so pulling it out of my hand isn't helpful, it's annoying. I'm tempted to stand there and when they say something I'll reply, "I'm just waiting to see if you Done!" Once you set it down Leave It There! And I mean literally, a guy pulled a bottle out of my hand to turn it so I could see the bar code. ARRRRGGGG!

It rained last night but it had been dry all day, and some guy still managed to track mud all over the store. Not only that but when he pulled out his wallet little chunks of mud fell out of it too. What the hell dude? And he didn't bother to try to clean off the counter. Some people's children.

A guy wanted to prepay $50 and handed me a hundred dollar bill. However there was a second one folded into it. I handed it back to him along with his $50 in change. I joked that I could have considered it a really big tip. He didn't want to do that.

Last year the state started the prework on the bridge project, which included putting out orange barrels when they had one lane closed while they did core drillings and testing. After they were done they left the barrels behind. Today they came and picked them up. Does this mean they are ready for the next stage or are they going to put the whole thing off for another year? I guess we'll find out in about four months.

Someone was waiting for the restroom and another guy wanted to know if the door was locked. Not for 25 years dude. 

Someone had dropped a bunch of paper towel bits around the soda machine. Why? The trash can is Right There and has the words Trash Can on it. I grabbed the broom which triggered a crowd. I still don't understand how that works. And of course the crowd had to gather around the soda machine. 

A woman started to drive off with the nozzle still in her tank. Thankfully it didn't pull the hose off but I had to wonder if it damaged the handle. Nobody complained for the rest of the day so I'm not going to worry about it since I have Friday off, and if anything happens the Boss tries to figure out how to blame one of the employees.

Later in the day I could hear the hand dryer going off in the ladies room so I knew they needed paper towels, and I got busy. I'll say this, unlike the other shifts I did fill it up the first chance I got.

Mr and Mrs Late Guy showed up later in the day. Mrs had to show Late Guy something on the register. I guess he's doing the morning shift on Friday, that should be interesting, I wonder if he showed up on time. Plus since it's Friday and he's going to be busy. I hope he leaves a mess for the Graveyard Shift Guy, who works the afternoon shift.

It was time to check the trash and the place cleared out. I got to the door and a car pulled on the lot. They drove up to a pump, then pulled around to a different pump, then around to the diesel pump, then left. I had to wait for the whole show just in case they were actually being customers. I have no idea why people do that.

A scammer called, I told him I was busy and didn't have time for his BS and hung up. The jerk tried to call back but I let it ring. You know they are scammers because the name of a city comes up on the caller ID instead of an individual's name.

We sell a popular brand of chewing tobacco and it's about half as much as over in Colorado. Needless to say we get a lot of people who come to buy in bulk, however the manager only puts it out two rolls at a time. Some guy came in and bought both rolls. Then another guy came in and wanted to buy a roll but I was out. He got pissed and said he was going across the street. Good, they've been closed for a month so you aren't teaching me any lessons. Also the staton next door doesn't sell tobacco products at all.

The wind came up and tried to blow off one of the trash cans so despite there being people in the building I had to run out and grab it. I left it on the side of the building where it was safe.

A woman was looking for a lost cat. She came in and told me all about it, she was almost to the point of tears. I let her talk and just agreed with her or threw in the occasional sympathetic word. Personally I was thinking she was wasting her time because when I find missing cats it's usually after a car had run it over. I still hope the best for her.

Everyone came in and were freezing. They had come from Texas where it's still hot. Personally I consider it light jacket weather. 45f by the way. 

All week long people have been telling me "Good Morning" even though it's dark outside. I gave one woman a pass because she obviously had been asleep on her trip. The rest I just had to wonder, it's the middle of the afternoon or just after sunset, not morning.

Towards the end of the night I noticed something was leaking from under the freezer. This was not good. When I opened it up it was still cold but starting to defrost. I checked the thermostat but it was set to the lowest point. I looked around but I couldn't figure it out. I thought I was going to have to call the Late Guy and have him come haul everything to the Haunted Station and put it in their empty freezer. Then I checked the plug, it was pulled out. I don't know how this happened, the socket is out of the way behind several machines. And the plug is on the bottom of the socket, if it had gotten knocked out the one on top would have been knocked out too. After thinking about it a long time the best I can figure is someone had yanked on the cord, probably someone's kid. Anyhow I'm not going to say anything because then I'd get a lot of complaints about how come I didn't notice sooner. Also because it partially defrosted it meant stuff was going to freeze to the bottom, but I'd be off when they discovered it and I'm going to play ignorant.

If you've ever defrosted a freezer you know how it smells. I needed to disguise the smell where the water had leaked out the bottom so I figured I would mop the floor, the place was empty so I could get away with it. Sure enough, I mopped in front of the counter and the restrooms and a crowd came charging in. After an hour and a half I gave up, I had mopped up enough of the leaked water and you couldn't smell it anymore. I did remop where they had tracked up the wet floor but that was it. 

The Crazy Lady came in and despite them updating the facial recognition software the time clock wouldn't let her clock in. When I tried to clock out I had the same problem. I didn't care, I was leaving early and they would round it up to 10 pm and I'd get an extra 10 minutes on my check. Plus since I had worked an extra four hour I'm going to be in overtime. Screw their crappy system. 

When I got home there was a skunk running down my driveway. It headed off into the back but when I got out of my car I jingled my keys all the way to the door so if any were just hanging out they knew I was coming, didn't panic and spray me. 

10/16

When I had gone to bed I was tired, hungry and my legs ached. I slept in and got up late. I considered going for a walk but it was cold outside so I went for a drive instead, I needed to do some stuff. I stopped by the West Side Station to say Hi to the Weekend Guy. He is a little pissed because they aren't telling him anything about the Haunted Station and he's almost out of sick leave so they won't be paying him for the days he's missing. I said they should have him working at the Truck Stop a couple of afternoons a week. He thinks the place may open by next week but personally I'm not expecting anything until November. I also have no idea what my schedule will be once they reopen, so far I've had three changes and then went back to my current one. The future is up in the air. I guess we'll see.