8/31-9/1

One thing about working the graveyard shift is trying to keep track of the days. The average person goes to work on Monday morning and goes home on Monday night. I go to work on Monday night and go home on Tuesday morning. The average person has Saturday and Sunday off. I have Wednesday from 6 am to midnight, all day Thursday and Friday until 10 pm off. Trying to make plans for my days off is tricky plus I have to adjust my sleep schedule to match what other people want to do. It's not unusual when you work the dark hours to have no idea what day it is when you wake up, thank goodness for the calendar on my computer. 

I had a plan for Wednesday, it's the end of the month so I had to go to the bank and make a deposit so I could pay my bills plus my car insurance is due and I have been accepted into an art show so I have to pay the entrance fee.  Also the manager was passing around a school fundraiser, I ordered some things and they needed the money by Friday  so I was going to get some extra cash and drop it off at the station.

I went home on Wednesday morning and went to sleep, as usual. When I woke up I looked at the clock and it was 10 in the morning, this was going to be perfect. I figured I would get up and hit the bank, drop off the school money and head home. I could take an afternoon nap and all would be right with the world. I kept telling myself to get up and start the day and then I rolled over.......the next time I opened my eyes and looked at the clock it said 3:30 PM. I had falling back asleep for 5 hours! The manager only works until 2 so she would have gone home and the streets would be packed with the after school crowd. I just didn't want to go out so I went to bed early, at 3 am, and would try again tomorrow. 

When I woke up on Thursday morning it was just after 9 am, this time I drug myself out of bed before I had a chance to fall back asleep. I got up and headed straight to the bank. After making a deposit and getting a few extra bucks I figured I would first stop and visit my friend at the other station the company owns. The first thing she asked me was "don't you ever answser your phone?" I asked when she called and she told me it was around 8 in the morning. I told her that when I am asleep I don't hear anything.

She had called because she wanted me to cover her shift on Friday morning.  I was wondering if I would be able to work the morning shift, be off for the afternoon and then cover the graveyard at the other station. Perhaps she saw me trying to reason this out when she mentioned that since there are three people on the Friday shift I could cover the morning and take the night off. That would work fine with me because it would be another day without Ray. So she called the manager to make sure none of the other shift members were taking the night off and everything was squared away. The best part is once agian I can hint around to Ray that they are getting me ready to take over the daylight shift, I know it makes him crazy.

I then stopped off at the other station, I still had to give the manager the school money plus the woman at the other station had something she needed dropped off, and my visiting would save her a trip. When I got there the manager asked me how things were going and we had quite the conversation. We talked about Ray, which I found out he got fired from his last job for stealing, I'm definitely closing my register when I step away from the counter from now on. We talked about the woman on the afternoon shift who talks to herself all day. We talked about things that are suppose to be getting done but aren't and I promised her I would try to get Ray to do the necessary shift work and keep him from doing what doesn't need to be done. In the end we talked for almost 2 hours.

So now I plan to stay up the rest of the day, no mid day nap, then go to bed around 9 tonight so I can get up tomorrow at 5 and get ready for another day shift. This time it will be better because there is only one person on shift in the morning so I won't have to deal with anyone else and the other two employees come in during the morning shift, one guy works Friday and then doubles on the weekend so he gets his 40 hours in two and a half days, so I can take off early if I want. The best part is since I am just filling in I don't have to do any of the side work. And as I mentioned before, it's another 24 hours away from Ray, it's a win/win for me.

~

Ooo, and some gossip. It seems Ray and the woman on the afternoon shift who talks to herself non stop shacked up. Boy talk about the perfect couple, they are both self centered and self destructive. I guess the manager is keeping an eye on both of them and they are on the edge of the chopping block. It's hard to believe anyone could move to the front of the potential to be fired list ahead of the hippie but they have succeeded in doing just that. It's going to be very very entertaining, especially if the talker gets mad at Ray and calls his wife.  

Found money 10 cents. 

9/2

It's Labor Day Friday, 4 am and I am wide awake. As I said I traded shifts and will be working this morning instead of tonight, which works out find for me. Most of the potental grumpy tourists are still at work and won't be hitting the road until well after I am at home. The night shift is going to have to deal with all the people who went to work today, ran home and hopped in their cars and hit the road. They will be tired, the family will be complaining and driving them nuts, they will be surrounded by all those other bad drivers (they are the only ones who know how to drive and that cop was totally wrong in writing them a speeding ticket) and the first person they see will be someone behind the register at a gas station. They are going to dump on the night shift becasue of the high price of gas or because they had to wait for the restroom and so on. And I get to miss it all. Saturday is a lot calmer. Sometimes I really like my job. 

 ~ 

So I was off to work. I needed to punch in but the time clock was different so the manager at the truck stop promised to do it for me. I figured I would lose a few minutes since I showed up early but that was no big deal because I would probably spend at least a half hour doing nothing, it all balances out in the end.

I got to the station and started the day. I tracked down where they stored the coffee and brewed up a pot. Then I got out the cash drawer and counted in, I had asked them to leave me extra change in case I couldn't get the drop safe to work, but the didn't which I wasn't surprised by. Then I went to log into the registers computer. I punched in the code numbers the woman gave me and....nothing happened. I tried again and still nothing. I knew if I did it a third time and failed the system would think someone was trying to rob it and lock up so I called the Manager. She dropped by and I found I was at the wrong log in screen, soon the situation was resolved and I was ready for business.

I went to the fuse box and flipped the switches according to the instructions I had been given. I noticed several of the interior lights didn't go on so I rechecked the fuse box, luckily they had been labeled so I was able to find the necessary breakers and the store was up and running, and just in time for the first customer.

The customers couldn't get the pump to run so I told them to clear it out and start over, still nothing so they left. I checked the fuse box a third time and discovered along with the main switch I also had to turn on the individual pumps for the different grades of fuel, thanks for the complete instructions! The next customer rolled onto the lot and this time everything worked, now I was up and running.

The first two hours were so slow. I loaded the ice hopper on the soda machine, I dusted, I organized the lighter rack and even moved a few of the racks and swept underneath them. The woman I was filling in for always complains about how busy she is, I am going to mock her the next time I see her.

Around 8 things picked up and I had a steady flow of customers for the rest of the day. The owner showed up to pick up last nights reports and the bank drop. He asked me how everything was going and I said it was fine, you don't tell the owner any complaints especially about other employees. He did what he needed to do and then took off. It was around this time some guy came in and asked me how my guitar playing was going and I gave him the strangest look, I never played an instrument in my life. I guess he had me confused with someone else, which happens.

At 10 the afternoon guy showed up, on Friday they work an off schedule with the morning woman working 6 to 2, the afternoon guy works 10 to 6 and the weekend guy works 2 to 10 when the station closes. I asked him if he wanted me to stick around or if he wanted to run things himself. He said he didn't know and asked what I wanted to do. I told him I was just filling in and it was his choice. He finally decided that if I ran the register he could do all his side work so I stuck around.

Finally at two the weekend guy showed up and I counted out the drawer. The afternoon guy decided to help me out and started counting the bills, and screwed everything up. In the end I think I shorted the weekend guy by $20, I hate when people decide to help and mess up my count. But I was just filling in so I didn't really care. I finished up my paperwork and then took off.

I stopped at the truck stop to make sure they clocked me out and chatted a bit about  the goings on. It seems that the chatty woman on the afternoon shift keeps messing up so the Manager had to have a formal chat with her and officially wrote her up. What do you know, thanks to someone else's incompetence I am one step closer to a daylight job. The Manager again asked me how everything was going and did I need anything, this seems to be backwards since managers are usually telling employees off. 

Finally I went home. I ate lunch and hung out for a while and then I fell asleep. I woke up around 9 pm and now I am wide awake with nothing to do. I think I will go out for another after dark walk and take some photos since I don't have to go to work until tomorrow night. Wish me luck. 

No found money. 

9/3

OH MY GAWD! I spent several hours over several days organizing and cleaning the walk in cooler. When I left on Wednesday it was perfect. When I returned last night it was a disaster. In just three days they managed to undo everything I did.

When I walked in there were cases of this and that just randomly stacked everywhere. The bottles and cans on the shelves were randomly piled together and you couldn't tell was was behind what. There were the same items on two of the racks and stuff on the shelves that wasn't on any racks.

I had to take everything off the shelves and regroup just so I knew what was in the cooler. Once I was done I had to find what was missing from the display racks and fill them. This was followed by pulling all the milk since someone had loaded all the newer stuff on the racks and had all the older stuff on the shelves. Then I had to mop up the sticky mess from when someone had broken something and didn't bother to clean it up. I had to sort through the cases of soda that were just tossed together in order to find what was in what. In the end I spent two hours and now it's all clean and organized, again. I wonder how long it will last this time.

After that I went up and watched the register. I told Ray it was going to be a slow night since everyone who travels on a holiday weekend was already where they were going. He proceeded to tell me how wrong I was since they had been so busy the night before. Guess who was right. I have started finding things to do when Ray goes off on one of his unbelievable stories so I spent most of the night stocking shelves and cleaning things.

Ray did manage to corner me to tell me all about his father in laws car. He was talking about all the engine trouble the car had, you have to remember that he claims to be a certified mechanic at this point in the story. Ray was trying to describe one of the problems and he literally said "the thing and the thing". I grew up around mechanics and even worked for one during my college years so I know a thing or two about engines, and I never heard the technical term "thing". It made me laugh, internally of course.

I had another chuckle when I got to work. The chatty woman on the afternoon shift seemed to be hanging out for a long time and when she left I noticed she had written instructions on the side work she thought Ray and I should do during the graveyard shift. Since she is just another low wage peon I took her list, crumpled it up and tossed it in the "to do" file. Considering she was officially reprimanded she should concentrate a little more on her job and a little less on being bossy.

At the end of the night the morning shift people were late once again. In the end I worked an extra two hours. Since it was the end of the pay period I checked my time card and discovered I worked 12+ hours of overtime, looks like I will be getting a nice fat check come payday. Normally I would complain about people showing up late and not doing there work but as long as there is extra cash at the end of it, I'm happy.

Found money 15 cents. 

9/4

When I walked into work if felt like you could cut the tension with a knife. Something was going on and I didn't want to know what it was. All I wanted was a reasonably quiet night.

It seems that there was a fight going on with the afternoon shift. The chatty woman seems to think she is a manager and can tell everyone what to do. The other woman on the shift is a "let someone else do it" kind of person. So when the chatty woman ordered the other woman to stock the cooler, the fight was on. Personally I am glad when the afternoon shift stays out of the cooler because I spend as much time taking the wrong stuff off the racks as I do putting the right stuff back on it. Anyhow they were both mad at each other.

The thing was the chatty woman had disappeared outside somewhere so the "let someone else..." woman was running the register by herself. I counted in my drawer and logged into the register so she could leave and I wouldn't have to put up with whatever was going on. Ray showed up but he wandered around and then went to find the chatty woman, after all they are having an "oh so secret" affair. The "let someone else..." woman finished up and took off. This is when the new troubles started.

It seems when the "let someone else" woman took off she didn't close out her register. Ray couldn't log on and the chatty woman had disappeared again, her car was still on the lot but as best I could tell she took off with the other guy she is screwing around with. Ray was in a panic since each employee has their own code and he couldn't close out the afternoon shift in order to log on. I told him to just wait since the registers are like any computer and shut themselves off when they are idle for too long. After that he could reopen it with his code and there would be a time stamp so anything that was wrong could be traced back in the records. Instead of doing something else until that time Ray plopped down and did nothing, hello there is plenty of side work to do!

Ray decided to just go ahead and run off the register as is, an incredibly stupid move, especially since they are watching him and he has a record of theft from his last job. The chatty woman showed up to pick up her car and Ray got her to use her code to close the shift and then he could reopen, but by then the drawer was off the amount he had taken in. I on the other hand was going to do as much as possible to stay as far away from the mess. 

Business tapered off around midnight so I hit the walk in cooler. It's amazing but when it's cleaned and organized it only takes 20 minutes to throw everything on the racks. It would have only taken 10 minutes if I hadn't had to spend half my time pulling stuff off the wrong racks and replacing it with the right stuff. I am seriously considering writing the Ten Commandments of the Cooler including "Thou shalt read the labels. Simply because two bottles are the same color does not mean they are the same product" and "Thou shalt stock the milk by the expiration date".  It's just that I hate note writing people.

After I got finished Ray decided to go clean around the lot, while I stocked the candy rack. It never fails, this was about the time we got a wave of customers and Ray was nowhere to be seen. It's not like I have any problem waiting on people, even when there is a line, but from wherever he was hiding he could clearly see we were busy. An hour and a half later, I kid you not, he wandered back into the building and then decided to clean the outside windows, and disappeared again. So three hours later he finally showed up, ironically when a good looking woman showed up, what are the odds. To be honest things went a lot smoother when he was off hiding.

I did have a good laugh in the middle of the night. About a week ago I was chatting with someone about cleaning the restrooms. Whenever people who work at places with public restrooms start talking the conversation always shifts over to "the grossest thing I ever found". After a few stories I brought up the incident of the dead guyat the place across the street. the building was spilt into half gas station and half diner, and both were usually open all night. They were connected by a door and on both sides they had their own restrooms, that way if one side was closed for whatever reason the customers could still use one of the restrooms, although normally they could use either one. When it came to cleaning them the employees on both sides took turns and if one was occupied they just left it for the next go round.

One busy weekend they began to notice a sour smell. They searched around and soon found it was coming from one of the restrooms so the knocked on the door and there was no answer. They got the key and unlocked the door and inside was some poor guy, dead on the toilet. The coroner determined he had a massive aneurysm and had died on the spot, and had probably been in the restroom for the past three days. It had been such a busy weekend and since nobody was expecting the guy anywhere, and since each side had just figured the restroom was occupied and the next person would clean it, nobody had gone looking for him until he got rather ripe.

The thing that made me laugh was I commented that the restrooms weren't too messy but they were a bit smelly. Ray suddenly says "did you ever hear the story about the truck driver who died across the street?" Well first off I was the one who had told him the story and second it was just an average tourist, not a truck driver.  I don't mind people retelling my stories but the least they could do is get them right and remember that they are in fact my stories. Oh Ray.

When 6 am rolled around I had finished my work and rung out my drawer so when the manager walked in I rushed over to the time clock and punched out. I didn't want to be there when she had to hear about the cash drawer mess, the afternoon shift not closing out properly and Ray working on someone else's numbers. I know, it was the cowards way out but I didn't need the drama, let Ray answer for his own goof ups. Thank goodness tomorrow is Monday, I bet you don't hear that a lot. 

Found money $1.42 

9/5

Labor day is one of the worst days to be working at a gas station. All day you have to deal with grouchy tourists. Most have spent the weekend at either their parents or in laws house. They have been told how their job isn't good enough, they aren't raising the kids right and they aren't doing proper maintenance on their cars. They have been driving for hours, completely surrounded by idiots and morons who don't know how to drive while the kids have been fighting in the back seat and their spouse has been complaining about the weekend. And they have to go to work on Tuesday. You are the first person they see and they take it all out on you, Why is your gas so high!", "Why are your restrooms so messy!", "Why are your squeegees not brand new!" and so forth.

The good thing about working graveyard is most of the people are long gone and all that is left are the late night travellers. Most of them are too tired to complain and just want to get back on the road as soon as possible. The night went by without any major incidents.

The Shift Manager spent most of the night cleaning. She polished the fountain and coffee area and spent about 2 hours scrubbing down the restroom. It does make the night drag a bit when you are stuck within visiual range of the register but if I don't have to clean the restrooms I am not going to complain. She, the shift manager and one of the afternoon people were asking me about Ray, I get the distinct impression they are trying to get him fired but I wasn't going to get involved in that. Let them come up with their own reasons and count me out.

Since Monday had been a holiday we didn't have the usual 5 am rush but they made up for it today. I had done around $500 in cash sales all night long but I probably took in an additional $200 between 5 and 5:30 am. I was glad that both the manager and the hippie showed up on time so I could clock out and go home. I hadn't slept well the morning before so I went straight to bed and was out like a light. I slept until 2 in the afternoon, I think after covering the morning shift on Friday I am once again adjusting to the sleep schedule.

Found money $1.11

9/6

After Labor Day things generally slow down for the next couple of months. It's the time when you have to get inventive about filling time. I was expecting a long night. I was surprised that we were pretty busy for at least the first three hours. It may have been people who took an extra day for the long holiday but there was quite the crowd. I was happy, it kept me awake.

I don't want to be crude here but I have to say this, there was a stunningly beautiful woman in the station. Normally the beautiful people don't come out late at night. Don't get me wrong, nobody is ever going to ask me to be on the cover of GQ and most of the customers aren't ugly, although there are those few who have a face like a sack of potatoes, but most are pretty average. There is a colorful selection of tattoos and piercings and the occasional customer who you have to see what restroom they use in order to know if you should call them ma'am or sir so to see a naturally beautiful woman dressed in style in a smelly gas station in the middle of the night is a rare thing, and I had to stare. It was the higlight of my night.

Other than that the majority of my customers were carnival people. The Colorado state fair is just ending and the New Mexico state fair is just about to start so they are all in transit. One group broke down in the middle of the drive and were trying to do a quick repair. They bought a set of the cheepy pliers and were doing a patch job on the cooling system. If they were lucky it was just a leaky hose and if they were unlucky it was a hole in the radiator, I didn't ask which. They asked how far Albuquerque was and I could see the guy doing the mental calculations to figure how far they could get with several gallons of spare water. Luckilly there are several highway reststops along the way where they can get water but it was probably going to take them an extra two to three hours if they had to stop every 50 miles.

The shift manager went on another cleaning binge and I was stuck keeping an eye on the registers again but with the steady flow of customers it wasn't too bad. The only problem was that it seemed people were tag teaming, one would wander in the building and drift up and down the asiles. They would finally select some item and pay for it and as they were walking out the next one would come in and repeat the entire process. I swear there were only 5 people in the building but they each took so long to select and pay for their stuff that I couldn't do any of the side work for an hour. 

The night went by mostly uneventful and finally it was quitting time. I had to stick around for an extra half hour and run the register while the morning crew did their paperwork and got ready for the day. I got lucky because one of the women hadn't been feeling well when she got up and almost called to see if I would cover her shift, and I would have said yes, but she started to feel better and came in anyhow. I said "See you Friday" since it's my weekend and the manager asked if I was going to come pick up my check later in the day. I told her I was in no hurry to deposit it, my bills are paid and I have extra bucks in the bank so I figured I would just wait until next payday and save myself a deposit slip. She commented that it would be a good idea if I came in and got it today so I promised to stop by when I woke up. Something is up and she didn't want to say anything in front of the rest of the help. Well I will find out later.

~

So I woke up around 10 am and when to the station to pick up my check. Turns out something was up, the chatty woman had been officially repremanded last week complete with a write up and she still continued to screw up so they were cutting her walking papers and last check. They are going to ask the other woman on the graveyard shift if she wants to work afternoons but she has passed it up before since she has a second job. If she says no then I will be moving to afternoons starting on Friday. Yea, I will be returning to the world of daylight and regular sleep. The only problem is I am going to have to consider investing in a DVR so I don't miss my favorite shows. I will find out either later today or tomorrow if I am going to be on the afternoon shift or have weekends off on the graveyard, wish me luck. I don't know how Ray will feel about it since he has been sucking up overtime to get a daylight job plus the fired woman is the one he has been having an affair with. I guess I will see how everything plays out on Friday.

And on a final note for the week, Ray is constantly complaining he is poor and needs extra money. So when I dropped by to get my check I had to laugh because he was asking the morning crew if they thought I would cover his shift tonight. He was just out of luck because I promised my mother I would drive her to Sams Club tomorrow so I plan to sleep all night tonight. I guess I will check in on Friday and see what time I should show up. Ironically if everything works out next week I will have to change the title to something about swing shift. Tune in next time....

Found money, 27 cents and a silver nickle.