Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about explosions and spillage.

THE PROMPT: "HOW WAS YOUR DAY? WHAT HAPPENED?"

Good evening fine readers of minimal talent. I hope everyone's had a pretty good day so far. As far as you may figure, mine might sound exciting. I can, with full confidence, disclose that that was definitely not the case. Interesting? Maybe. I can fully assure you that by 10:30am I was very pissed off and ready to walk out on the job today. I don't want to blame it on the "vacation mentality"...I've got the next two days off, but I wasn't looking past my tasks today at being able to relax for awhile. It wasn't like that at all.

Saturdays are typically my "inventory" day. It's the pointless task of scanning my assigned departments where I have no product. If the system agrees that I have none on-hand, I order it. If the system disagrees, I have to go find it. If I don't find it, I have to then perform a function where I change the total for those items to "zero". Then I go and count a randomly chosen department and count everything that we have more than five of. Again, if the system agrees, I move on. If the system says I have more, I either find them or keep the count at the higher number. If the system says I have less, I increase the count to what I find. It's designed to keep inventory on the shelf but at a minimum, so we're not stuck with too much overstock. It's flawed. But that's my job...counting things that don't exist and ensuring we never have less than the system says, lest the system send us more. If it were an accounting job, I'd be in jail. Instead, I earn a paycheck. That's retail livin' for ya.

So I'm counting nothing and doing well at it in the detergent aisle when I hear a woman carrying on about something. I look up and she's turning in a circle toward her elderly mother, saying "I don't know how this happened! The top must have come off." She's holding a bottle of dish soap, shaking it in what seems to be a mini panic attack. As she's turning to try and face her oblivious mother, she's stepping in dish soap. Effin' great. And the curious part? She walked away without saying anything else to me, and there was no sign of a broken dish soap bottle anywhere. No way could she have bought it, because half of that bottle's contents were now on the floor.

So I went to the break room and grabbed a handy little product called Spill Magic (http://spillmagic.com/ie/index.html), which is an absorbant powdery substance that almost solidifies liquid spills. Stuff's pretty amazing. I laid it down, put up the wet floor sign, and went to the office while it soaked in for a sip of my coffee and a healthy rant about what just happened. I grabbed the broom to sweep it up, and- WTF?? Some moron drove their shopping cart right through my piles of Spill Magic/dish soap, leaving a cart wheel trail. Who does that? I shook my head.

As I was sweeping it up, from a few aisles over came a loud crash, then a woman saying "I'm sorry!" and then chuckling. It was damn near uncontrollable chuckling. Annoying chuckling. I shook my head again, and, still carrying my broom and dustpan, decided to give in to my curiosity. When I reach the beverage aisle, my jaw dropped. The broom and dustpan left my grip. I wanted to cry walk out and go home. I'll do my best to explain what I saw: A stream, about one foot wide, from the back end of the beverage aisle, going toward the front of the store. It ran the length of the aisle, petering out as it reached the photo lab. That's a good 20 feet, I'd say. Toward the end of the stream was an empty two-liter of cola, severely dented at the opening. This woman must have grabbed the 2L of Coke, which is at the end of the aisle, and then dropped it in such a way that it landed on its cap, which was shattered into pieces about halfway down the aisle, and the pressure of the carbonation propelled the bottle all the way down the aisle until it crashed up against the photo counter. Or, in layman's terms, it was a big fucking mess. The worst part? That I saw the lady who dropped it turn the corner with her cart and proceed to the checkout. An embarrassed "walk of shame"? Maybe, whatever, I don't care. Don't just yell "Sorry!" and book. Own your miscue and help us clean it up. It's not funny either, lady, so don't laugh.

Like I said, I dropped my clean-up stuff and just went back to the office. My voice was trembling as I explained what I just saw (pretty much the same way I explained it in the last paragraph). And of course, my boss and the assistant thought I was exaggerating, so the assistant came out and was pretty floored. There it was, the Coca~Cola stream, in all of its brown, sugary WTF'edness. The assistant was nice enough to mop that one up...but what the hell is wrong with people who blow right past a wet floor sign to go down an aisle that someone is clearly making a motion with a mop that would insinuate he's mopping the floor?? Who does that?? Why?? It's days like these that make me want to consider changing the title of this here nugget of internet tastiness from Who The Hell Do I Think I Am?? to Who The Frig Do These People Think They Are?!?

The assistant did make a good point: He returned to the office and said to our boss, "He's right. We had an active shooter in the store!" (You'll need to read yesterday's entry to get that joke, unless you already did.)

And you thought I was done there, didn't you? Ready for the MUSICAL BREAK!!, are ya? Well no friends, as the fun is just beginning!

My afternoon was spent counting the most neglected department of the store...the end where we keep all of the reader glasses. Nobody who's anybody, and that's errrryyybodyyy, cares about this rack. Nothing is hung in the right spot, and half the time glasses are just deposited on the base of the displayer by customers who have to try on eight pairs before finding one with the right style and magnification. It's an embarrassment. I didn't think it was possible, but I gave myself a fantastic headache while putting something like six different kinds of magnified lensed glasses in their correct places...it's a fair estimation to say that maybe 10% of the glasses were actually in the spot they belonged in. I barely was able to finish my work by my 4pm endtime.

I knew Jess was working 'til 4:30pm. I knew she had a little bit of a drive ahead of her. But I wasn't happy when she pulled up just after 5:30pm like it was no big deal. Two days in a row of this shit is too much...especially when the plan was to drop some girlie-party stuff off at her relatives' house, in a third-kind-of-opposite direction before going home. Nope. Not me. I just wanted to go home. Aaaannnnddd.... she was supposed to go to a few other stores to transfer product. Yup, I'll take the one-way ticket home, and you can do all that. I'm done for the day.

At least I'm getting Mighty Taco while she's out. If there's a silver lining to be found, Mighty is the place that always comes through. http://www.mightytaco.com/main.php

MUSICAL BREAK!!

Appropriate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ

VITAL STATS:

Hi, Jess' relatives I didn't get to see earlier today! Miss you guys!

Sabres are down 1-0 about halfway through the 2nd in Ottawa. Decent game so far, but this team isn't scoring and is missing top scorer Thomas Vanek. But Nathan Gerbe just tied it!! Whoooo hooo! This team really does scare me though in the 3rd period...they've seemed to run out of gas lately in toward the end of the last few games. Not good for a team looking up at the playoffs in the standing.

Alright, I'm out. I'm all set here, thanks. Feel free to leave a few words of "WTF Dude!" down below wherever it is you came across this. One thing I can guarantee in life: tomorrow will be a better day, because I do not have to work. Peace, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSCO9fuzlec