As The Station Turn 11/12

 This morning I woke up to a series of message pings. All I could think was "what now?" and "How much is this going to F- up my day?" It turns out that thanks to the Wednesday holiday the company that handles paying us was going to be late, direct deposits won't happen until Friday. What a way to start the day. I should mute messages on my iPad, which I keep by my bed.

Well, things are changing again, Bigfoot quit. He's been taking care of his sister and I guess his brother was helping out. I don't know the reason but his brother won't be helping anymore so he can't hold down two jobs and look after her. I'm not mad at the guy, he's in a bad situation, but I am mad at his brother. Anyhow they were on the razors edge as far as people covering shifts and now they don't have enough for all the stations on all the shifts. They could have hired someone after The Random Woman quit and have them ready to go, but nope. I have a horrible feeling that come Monday they're going to want me to work on my day off, I'm not going to do 6 days a week so they better figure out something by the end of this Friday.

Meanwhile the Manager needs to take off early on Monday but since we are short handed there is nobody available to cover her shift for two hours, just two hours. Mrs. Late Guy could come in, work at the Truck Stop for those two hour and then go over to the Haunted Station for the rest of her shift, heck she could even close early, but nope, I'm going to have to go in for a lousy two hours on my day off. And yes, I know what is going to happen, they are going to say "Hey, since you're here why not just stay until 10. Oh and the Crazy Lady, who is suppose to work Monday afternoon, is taking the day off. I have no idea who is going to cover the graveyard shift but if I end up having to work it I'm going to do it on the clock, get the overtimes and if nobody showed up by 10:15 I'm going to text the Boss and tell him I'm on the way out the door because I'm not going to work 18 hours, go home and get a couple of hours of sleep and then go back to work another 8 hour shift. Again, they have one day to get their s- together.

It was steady but not crazy busy so in the middle of the day I got hungry and figured I would grab a quick snack of a pack of donuts. Well, by now you know, here came the swarm. I was busy for the next hour. My donuts sat there mocking me because as soon as I put one in my mouth I was guaranteed to have some chatty person with a million questions so I had to wait.

Here's an example, the place cleared out except for one guy, he was wandering around and finally prepaid for his gas. He went out and filled up, and as soon as he was done the woman he was with came in to use the restroom, she could have done that while he was filling up but.... She took her time in the restroom and then wandered around all over the store and finally bought one thing. She left, then the guy came back in to use the restroom. He took his time and when he came out he wandered all over the store, bought one thing and left. Then he came back in, wandered all over the store, bought one more thing and then left. Finally they pulled out just as the next three cars were rolling in. They were there for a half hour, it should have taken 5 minutes.

I swear the Truck Stop was built on top of a time bubble. I went to the restroom, for two whole minutes. When I came out there were people at the register with stuff they had picked out from the store. The place was empty when I went in, did they even stop when they jumped out of their cars or did they just let them roll to a stop? Did they know the place by heart so they could run around and grab stuff? Or did I get into a time warp between the counter and the restroom and the two minutes for me was 10 minutes for the rest of the world? I don't know.

A guy said he wanted $20 on a pump, OK, I set the pump but he left without paying. He went out and turned on the pump, sat there and waited then came back in. His tap wouldn't work because he didn't have any money on his card so he had to call his wife/girlfriend to transfer money into his account. And I had to wait for the whole process. Did I mention my donuts were sitting there waiting?

It got dark and the canopy lights didn't go on across the street. I knew they were open and I was pretty sure the Weekend Guy was working but no lights. And there was a van parked at one of the pumps for a long time. I was starting to wonder if I should call the cops. The Part Time Woman finally showed up and the lights went on. I visited the Late Guy on Friday and he said he didn't care about the lights because the Part Time Woman was late and he was ready to go home, and the van was a bunch of college aged women who had bought $75 worth of scratch tickets and were out there playing the games. He also told me he was covering Sunday afternoon at the Truck Stop but I still don't know what is going to happen on Monday.

The chip reader on pump #9 stopped working so someone put a Pay Inside sign on it. Well, it started to give me an error message, someone was out there trying to run their card. Was the note gone? They came in and paid and the first chance I got I went and checked, nope the sign was still over the card reader. I guess they figured it was intended for other people, pulled it off and tried to run their card, and then put it back. I don't understand people.

The next customer came in and wanted to fill up but the chip reader wasn't working for him. I said I could hold on to his card while he filled up and that was OK. Except...he stood at the register the entire time his travel companion filled up, keeping an eye on me to make sure I didn't do anything with his card. When they were done I handed his card back to him and rang down the sale, even though he saw that I didn't do anything with his card he stuffed it in his wallet and asked for a receipt. I told him he needed to run his card, he stared at me. I had to repeat, you have to run your card through the reader. He finally he understood and then didn't want to sign the receipt. I should have made him prepay.

Business dropped off to nothing so I figured since the Crazy Lady would be working alone I would try to get as much done as I could. I started doing the walk in cooler but I discovered that someone had put two rows of the same flavor of tea on a shelf, two other flavors were mixed on the same row and one flavor was sitting on the shelf in the back and not in the display. So I had to pull a row off, straighten out the second row and then fill up the third row with the missing flavor. I got all that done and then got busy. Oh well, I got half the cooler done.

Skippy came in, ran some paperwork off the register, chatted on his phone and then left. He didn't say anything about schedules or potential new employees or anything. So at the time I had no idea what was going to happen in the future, I know a little now but I still wonder what is coming.

Two pissers rushed in. It was clear that they weren't going to buy anything but piss and leave. However there was a truck driver in the restroom and he was taking his time. They ran back out the door, I don't know where they went, possibly across the street, possibly behind the trees in the lot next door. Two minutes later the truck driver came out.

A van and a car showed up and a bunch of guys piled out. They filled up their vehicles, lined up for the restroom and bought a lot of stuff. They mostly paid cash so a lot of the Miscreant's marked bills went out.  One of them got made at me because we don't sell beer, he was complaining about we had a lot of space, why couldn't we just put some beer in the place but he was speaking Spanish and I pretended I had no idea what he was saying. I considered telling him I could get him the number for AA but I don't think he'd appreciate it. 

Another guy came in and was looking for beer so I started giving him directions, "go to the stoplight, turn left and at the next stoplight is a convenience store. However he interrupted me to ask about the place next door or the place across the street. I F-ing hate that. If the place next door sold beer I'd say "Go next door", if the place across the street I'd say "Across the street" I was temped to tell him, "Holy Shit! There is a place right across the street, when did they build that?!?!?!" but the night was almost over and I didn't want to have to put up with some pissy alcoholic in need of his fix so I just stood there and stared at him. When he asked for the directions a second time, and I made him ask, I gave them in a very flat tone, while giving him the Get F-ed look. He left quickly.

I didn't know if the Crazy Lady knew that Bigfoot had quit and I wasn't going to say anything. I prepared everything in advance so I could close quickly. For some reason she rushed into the walk in cooler as soon as she had her drawer open, probably wanting to complain that I hadn't done anything but she was wrong. I took advantage and ran out the door. I'm not going to answer my phone on Friday and even though I went by and said Hi to the Weekend Guy I didn't stop at the Haunted Station, I'm avoiding the place so I can have at least one day off this week.  I can't wait to see what disaster happens on Saturday, or what the new schedule is going to be. And again, I'm not working a 6 day a week schedule, they better get their crap together on Friday.