10/5

Really, two months of this?

So a quick recap, Amy, the new coworker, got a phone call that her brother was in the hospital because he had been shot by her psycho ex boyfriend, later she found her brother had just been badly beaten. Since she wasn't going to be able to work I told her to clock out and leave. The following Wednesday morning I was verbally warned about the incident. Needless to say I was pissed off.

Today was payday but I made no effort to  pick up my check very early. The last time I did I got stuck working while the manager ran out to make a set of keys. If they pulled that agian I would have to remind them that I had a verbal warning for someone leaving work during a shift and since they had implied I stole money I would have to refuse to have anything done with someone else's drawer. I would have to comment that perhaps the other morning shift worker could get off her phone to her useless boyfriend and do some actual work for a change. It wouldn't be pretty. Instead I waited until the afternoon shift was on the job. I'm not sure if I will go by tomorrow either.

As for the rest of the day, well agian I wasn't too productive. I need to go for a nice long walk but the weather was lousy today so that didn't happen. Instead I vegged and tried to get over my lousy mood. It's now 1 am and I am still complaining. Maybe tomorrow I will take that walk.

Found money, nothing. 

10/6

Here was the plan, I was going to get up early, go for a nice long mind clearing walk, stop off at the station and explain where the missing money was and come home. I don't know why I make plans. I woke up early and the wind was blowing so hard street signs were leaning over, trees were thrashing about and leaves were flying everywhere. I wasn't walking today.

I still went to the station but I drove. I went in and demanded changes, I got into a major shouting match with the manager saying I was insulted over the implication that I was a thief and why were there one set of rules for the morning shift and one set of rules for everyone else and if things didn't change then they could just cut me my last check! Yeah, I didn't really do that, instead I told her that I remembered where the missing money was and she called the bookkeeper, who hadn't looked through the paperwork. Everything is straightened out. Plus I really don't mind that the hippie is always late, I eventually pick up a full extra day of overtime pay per check. Ka-ching, and as long as they are willing to pay it I'm willing to cash those checks.

I then went home and...well I didn't do a whole lot of anything, agian. Seriously, I need a kick start. I thought getting angry at work would do the trick but I have a temper like a thunderstorm, I rumble and grumble and then it all blows over. One minute I'm as angry as I can get and the next all's well with the world. What I need is to try to impress a hot babe, that is the best inspiration ever created, lets face it the astronauts walked on the moon so women would swoon, hey that rhymed.

I decided that I would try again tomorrow so I went to bed early again.

Found money, 10 cents.

10/7

Having gone to bed early I was sure I would wake up early, but just going to bed doesn't guarantee you will go to sleep. I tossed and turned and lightly dozed but never really slept. When I actually went to sleep is unknown but I woke up around 3 in the afternoon. So much for my plans. Worse the wind is blowing, there are gray clouds hanging on the city and it keeps trying to rain. No walking today. 

~

It was a dark and stormy night and I was off to work. When I arrived the afternoon shift was unprepared, as usual. They hadn't counted down any of their drawers so I did the pre shift paperwork as I was waiting. Finally they counted out one drawer and I logged in, off to work. 10 rolled around and nobody else was there, Friday is overlapping schedule day so there are usually three people on, where was everyone else. Amy finally showed up and the afternoon crew left, I guess Diane took the night off but nobody told me. 

The night started off with an update on Amy's psycho ex boyfriend, looks like he isn't going to be trouble anymore. It seems that last week when she went to get her stuff back he had called the cops claiming she was trying to break in, even though it's her name on the lease. As the police were looking around they couldn't help but notice the big screen TV, and checked out the serial number. Sure enough, it turns out it had been stolen. Psycho ex tried to claim he got it from Amy's brother but the only problem was it was stolen from another town several years ago and Amy's brother wasn't living there at the time. Ready for the part that leaves a bad taste in your mouth? It was stolen from the house of a guy who had just passed away and his family hadn't had a chance to clean the place out yet, yep psycho ex stole from the dead, what a humanitarian.

But being arrested for theft wasn't the really good news, it turns out psycho ex had 5 outstanding felony warrants in Tennessee. The local police decided they didn't want to mess with the guy, our local police are lazy like that,  so they started the extradition process right away. Psycho ex tried to claim they didn't have a legal search warrant but he was the one who invited them into the house, d'oh! All things considered psycho ex probably won't be back for a long time, if ever at all.  And if for any reason he does come back the police will be all over him just waiting for him to make one misstep. They may not be the best police force in the world but they are highly vindictive. Gotta love a small town.

As for my night, it was pretty busy. Amy was telling me Thursday night had been pretty steady and her and Diane couldn't figure out why. I told her Monday is Columbus day and although it's a second tier holiday there are people who take a long weekend and with the price of fuel dropping 30 cents a gallon in the past week people are actually travelling. People wandered through all night long so it went quickly.

I took a look in the cooler early in the shift and I just shook my head. Stuff had been thrown everywhere and it was the usual mess, I wasn't looking forward to cleaning it up. Surprise of surprises, Amy volunteered to do the job, and I didn't stop her. I did tell her that everything piled out in the hall had to go on the storage shelves and she still wanted to do the job. After two hours she finally finished. She hauled out three loads of crushed boxes and several soda flats, it was that bad. Towards the end of the night when I swept and mopped I did the cooler floor and was surprised, she did an outstanding job. I hope she sticks around for a while.

Speaking of sweeping, there was a lull so I decided it was a good time to get started. I got most everything done when people started to show up. The good thing about sweeping is people can walk around without ruining your job but....I was just about finished when some woman came in and started making a cup of coffee, and guess where the only spot I had left to sweep was? She would put some coffee in her cup and then add some flavored creamer and some sugar, then more coffee, more creamer and more sugar. You would think I was making this up but Amy commented on it too, it took that woman 20 minutes to get her coffee. And just when she finished here came the next one and the next one. From start to finish it took me a half hour to get the floor swept. By the time the restrooms were cleaned and the floor mopped it was an hour and a half from start to finish. I swear, if you want that much cream and sugar in your coffee just get a cappuccino, they are premixed!

It was almost 6 and I commented on the hippie being late. Amy thought he would be on time, after all he had been early on Monday. I pointed out that the only reason he was early was the manager was always in a bad mood the first of the week and the other 4 days he was always late. She wanted to bet but I didn't want to take her money, after all the psycho ex had trashed her car and she was going to need every dime. The morning shift woman showed up and Amy's ride showed up so she said goodbye and an hour later the hippie came drifting in. With all of Amy's bad bets I could be up 20 bucks right now.

I went out to drive home, yes  I drove to work.  It was cold and misty all night so my windshield was frozen over, looks like we may have an early winter. I cranked on the defroster and dug out my ice scraper and cleared enough to see where I was going. Finally I got home and went to bed. Only 4 more days to go.

Found money, 45 cents. 

The ice pattern on my frozen windshield.  

10/8

It was no surprise that tonight was going to be extra slow so I made plans. For once, things worked out so all in all it turned out to be a good night. Maybe things are becoming too routine.

The night started off with Amy telling me the latest saga in her strange life. It seems within 24 hours of her and the psycho ex he had already hooked up with another woman, or at least the woman he was cheating on Amy with moved in with him. Anyhow Amy finally got her dog back from the ex, especially since he is about to be sent to Tennessee, but the new girlfriend of the psycho showed up in the middle of the night and kidnapped the dog. What the hell it up with this dog? Now Amy is going to have to go back to the police and report the dog as stolen, and the girlfriend of psycho ex is on probation so she will probably end up in court. Such entertaining people tend to work the night shift.

Anyhow since it was going to be a slow night I got a bucket of soap and water and scrubbed down the candy rack. It is set up along the front of the counter, kind of like the last temptation racks at Wal Mart. The problem is just about anything gets spilled down inside of it from popcorn to coffee and it becomes quite messy. So I took everything off, making sure to put it back in the right spot so the manager doesn't order the wrong stuff, then gave the racks a good wipe. The entire job took around 2 hours and it looks great, well it won't tomorrow but it looks great right now. Of course along with dropped paper and such I also found a lot of pocket lint and a bit of the coinage, the real reason I did the cleaning. he he he.

I was about half way done cleaning the candy racks when these two guys came in. They knew Amy so they were chatting, which I wouldn't mind but they were doing it right in the middle of where I was working. Instead of getting angry I decided it would be a good break time. The thing about the two guys was they stunk of the illegal weed. They had better hope the cops didn't pull them over because their smell alone was probable cause for the officer to request a search of their car. Thankfully they left and I got back to work. 

After that Amy once again volunteered to do the cooler. It only takes about 20 minutes when the place is organized. She said there wasn't that much to put on the shelves so it is pretty obvious the afternoon shift was slow too, they never do the cooler. It was slow enough that we were even able to sweep, clean the restrooms and mop the floor uninterrupted. We finished everything two hours in advance and thankfully the Sunday paper showed up so we had something to do.

A funny, well to me, part of the night was some poor guy who broke down. He had a blow out and managed to limp into the station. He didn't have a spare so he called several emergency tow companies but was only able to get hold of one of them. They told him they didn't have tires and he would be better off waiting until they could contact a tire repair shop and arrange to fix it, the only problem is that he was going to have to wait until the morning. When I left he was still sitting out there waiting. Here's an important note, if you are travelling to the more rural places in America be sure you have a spare tire and some emergency repair tools, because there are times when you will be on your own.

At the end of the night I closed out my drawer and was shocked to discover I was around $40 short. How could that be? I did less than $200 in business, and forty dollars would be a fifth of what I took in. I double checked my safe drop but it was correct. I double checked my drawer but I didn't leave any extra cash in there. Finally I double checked the incoming figures from the afternoon shift. Even though the individual amounts for the coins and bills was correct the total was off, by over $30 bucks. Seriously, how do you screw up adding things on a calculator? I guess from now on I am going to have to do more than just count the coins but re balance the entire drawer before I log on. Sheesh!

Then came the biggest shock of the night.  Sunday runs the same every week, the woman on the morning shift goes out on Saturday night with her useless boyfriend and gets drunk, then first thing in the morning she calls and begs someone to cover her shift until 8 am. I would tell her that she is suppose to be an adult and is way too old to be acting like an 18 year old who just moved away from home but I like the overtime. Amy is trying to clean up the financial mess left by her ex psycho boyfriend including paying for damages and the rent on their apartment so she asked if she could stay and I didn't mind. The thing is the hippie also spends Saturday night getting stoned and shows up late. But shock of shock the hippie actually came rolling in around 6, well after six but still within the range of "on time". I was just barely cleaning out the coffee pots and brewing up fresh for the morning and was totally caught off guard. I actually got to go home on time, for the first time since I started. Maybe the manager's mid week tirade put the fear into him, I wonder how long that will last.

Found money, 52 cents, mostly from the candy rack, and a silver nickle. 

10/9

It's a cold dark night...

Since the temperature has been in the low 40's I have been driving to work. When I arrived the lot was full and I had to park in the managers unofficial space. I had to remember because when things cleared out I was going to have to move. She is always in a bad mood on Monday and being in her unofficial parking space would make things worse. So around midnight I ran out and backed into where I normally park.

I posted this once but I will repeat it, Big Name Multinational Oil Company dropped us as one of their stations. There was an explanation of "you don't sell enough fuel" even though we are the busiest station within a hundred miles but I heard various guesses why including the representative of the company didn't like making the drive. Anyhow after just over 2 months the signs are finally being switched and we are now the Crossroads Truck Stop. Maybe now I won't have to deal with angry people who's Big Name Multinational Oil Company cards don't work at the pump.

The night started off with a pile of luggage. There were two women who were waiting for the off schedule bus, otherwise known as the Mexican bus (most of the passengers don't speak English including the two women who were waiting). The problem is the bus shows up when it shows up and the two women were just hanging out. Finally it arrived an hour and a half later. I had to laugh because some guy stopped in to get air and he hung out with them until the bus arrived. I didn't know what they were saying but I had to wonder if he offered them a ride in case the bus failed to show up. 

I was surprised at how many people were in the station. Normally Sunday's are slow after midnight and then pick up again around 4:30 but we were busy all night long. They were also some of my least favorite customers, the "just one more item" crowd. They come up to the register and buy something, like a bag of chips. They go away and then come back and buy something else, like a can of soda. They do this three or four times. Now it wouldn't be a problem but every time they do they pay with a bill and in a matter of minutes run me out of change. I feel like screaming at them "I just gave you pennies, now give some of them back!"

I had planned on washing the HABA (health and beauty aids, mostly single serving pills and travel size toothpaste) racks but with all the people mulling around I didn't get the chance. Instead I took apart the cappuccino machine and cleaned it, it was nasty. I try to do this once a week but with the cold weather rolling in I will probably have to do it twice a week. Once that was done I just messed around. Amy volunteered to clean the cooler agian and I didn't complain.

About 4 in the morning, when business dropped off and after the restrooms were cleaned, I went out to dump the trash, I made the mistake of looking at the thermometer and it was around 40 f. Needless to say I rushed through the job.

It was almost shift change time so I started preparing my drawer for the end of the night. I was surprised to find I had almost $200 in fives. I went ahead and dropped a hundred dollars worth in the safe and then rolled up all the quarters, it was the usual story about breaking a roll and then having a string of exact change customers. I kid you not the next group of customers were back to the one item and big bills and I ran out of pennies and quarters. The next customer's change was 36 cents, I had to open the roll for one stinking coin.

You probably know what happened next, just after opening the roll of quarters for one stinking coin the next customer paid me in all quarters. It was a half hour until shift change so I re rolled the quarters since I now had plenty of loose quarters in the drawer. Then I had a line of customers who agian paid in bills, there went most of my quarters. I was right on the edge of having to re unroll the coins when the manager and one customer showed up. The customer was a guy I know so I begged him to give me exact change, and I even floated him the pennies, just so I wouldn't have to once agian unroll the quarters and count them. In the end I had 10.50 in quarters and 63 cents in pennies. Whew.

Since it is Columbus Day the construction guys must have taken the day off so there wasn't a 6 am rush. The manager got all her paperwork ready and kicked me out, even though the hippie hadn't arrived. I got home at a reasonable time and went straight to bed. All in all not a bad night.

On another note, when the weather turns cold I sleep better. In my old 9 t0 5 jobs, when the alarm would go off in the cold and dark morning hours I would want to go back to sleep. Now I go to bed in the cold and dark hours and sleep until I wake up in the afternoon. Today I slept an extra hour without interruption and I loved it. See, there are perks to losing your regular hours job.  

Found money, 10 cents. 

10/10

You know it's going to be a fun night when the first thing you see is flashing lights. It's been cold the past few nights so I drove to work again but as I approached I could see police lights, two crane style tow trucks and something large sticking out in the road blocking the west entrance to the truck stop. As I got closer I realized it was a semi trailer, but it was sitting on the ground. I thought perhaps there had been a roll over but the trailer was upright, this just didn't make sense.

When I went inside the building I got the full, well mostly, story from the afternoon shift. It seems around 5 in the afternoon there was quite the accident. I wasn't sure who ran into who but there were two semis involved. One made a sudden lane change, I didn't catch if it was the front truck or the rear truck but either way the rear truck ended up under the trailer of the front truck. The impact was hard enough to knock the axle off the trailer. The wrecker crews spent the next five hours seperating the two vehicles and then trying to figure out how to get an axle-less trailer off the road. Around 11:30 the DOT officer, who was keeping the lane clear and overseeing the operation came in the station, they were all done. It only took them 6 hours to finish up the operation and the wheel-less trailer was sitting in the vacant lot next to the truck stop, with a bit of curb and guard rail damage. I spent the rest of the night telling the tale to people, mostly truck drivers, who had been by the day before and had noticed the new trailer sitting on the side of the road.

The next interesting event was some technician had showed up to do pressure tests on the fuel lines. This has to be done to make sure there are no leaks so the gas isn't contaminating the ground water. In order to do a full test the tech had to shut down the pumps and hook into the main line. This meant that from 10 to almost 1 am our pumps were out of order and we had no customers.

Normally being shut down would stink since Diane spends the majority of the night on a major cleaning bing and I am stuck behind the counter but she didn't show up, I guess she decided to take a four day weekend. Instead I was working with Amy and so we decided to tackle cleaning the HABA racks, which we had put off the night before. I broke out the bucket and a cleaning rag and set about washing down the shelves. The problem is you have to take everything off from the single servings of asprin to the travel size toothpase to wash the shelves and then put it all back on in order. Inventory and ordering is done by shelf position so if anything is out of order then too much of one thing will get ordered and not enough, if at all, of something else. So I had to clean one section at a time.

By 11:30 I had finished a thrid of the job and deciced to take a break. Amy was bored and asked if she could take over, hey I'm not one to argue with someone who wants to do work, so I let her. The only problem was Amy didn't stop cleaning, she finished the remaining 2/3rds of the job. I almost got stuck behind the counter with nothing to do after all but the pumps were still shut down and so with a lack of customers I was able to do the rest of the side work.

Even though we didn't sell any gas people still came in, mostly to use the restroom.  One customer came in for a pack of cigrettes and was chatting on his cell phone. I've always been torn about people on their phones, on the one hand it's incredibly rude since I don't want to inturrupt them to tell them their total or to say "thanks" but on the other hand they are probably naturally rude people and if they weren't distracted by their phones they would be complaining about everything and anything. So if you are the type of person who approaches a counter while on your phone I figure chat away, then I don't have to deal with you. 

Anyhow the guy was on the phone and I caught part of the conversation that went something like this:

"Which house do you want to meet at?''....."Is that the one I burned down?"......"The one I did the wiring job on"....

Then he walked out the door. I figured he was one of three things, A really bad electrician, an arsonist or a terrorist. I reasoned he wasn't a terrorist since he probably wouldn't be meeting someone at a house he wired to explode. I figured I should probably have gotten his business card and that way if he was a lousy electrician I would know not to hire him.

The end of the night rolled around and Amy said that she would keep her register open while I counted mine out. I told her I didn't mind but she was going to have to be able to get out of her drawer quickly so the manager could do the store closing and then open the register in time to wait on the morning construction worker rush. I then complained about the one woman on the afternoon shift who took a full 20 minutes to count down her drawer and close out her shift. I began to wonder how long it took me so I looked at the clock when I started and again when I finished running the register report, it was a total of 5 minutes. Amy said she could do the same so when it was her turn I kept track, and again it took a full 5 minutes.

Amy's ride showed  up and she left and I took over the register for the manager so she could do her preshift work and I waited on the construction rush, the hippie hadn't showed up yet. She wanted to know why Amy and I kept looking at the clock so I told her about timing the drawer and the delay doing shift change from the afternoon. She wasn't happy and told me it was clear that the afternoon shift was just milking the clock. I hope I didn't start something I will later regret but I don't have to see the slow afternoon woman until Friday so hopefully any butt chewings will have worn off by then.

The construction crews cleared out, the hippie finally showed up and I headed home. It was a slow but productive night and all in all it went pretty fast. Diane should be back tomorrow, or later tonight, and she will go on another of her cleaning binges and I will be stuck behind the counter. Oh well, at least it will be my Friday and I will have a full two days off, and I plan on ignoring my phone during that time.

Found money, 20 cents. 

 10/11

It's my Friday and I'll sneeze if I want to. So towards the end of my last shift I began to feel that familar burn in the back of my throat and I knew what was going to happen, sure enough a head cold was coming on. At least the headache was going away and I could still breathe. I decided that I felt good enough to go to work.

When I showed up one of the afternoon crew met me in the parking lot. She had gotten rather paranoid about some guy hanging around back and wanted to check it out while I was there. Turns out he was waiting for the off schedule bus and didn't want to come inside the building. She had freaked out over nothing. 

Diane didn't show up again so I worked with Amy once more, when the manager came in later in the morning she mentioned that there was something going on with Diane's father but that was the last I heard of it. Since it was going to be another slow night I figured we might as well continue with the cleaning.

Amy wanted to clean the light fixtures but I told her I didn't know how to get the covers off the floresent tubes and I didn't want to break them so she was on her own. After several attempts she gave up and agreed my shelf cleaning idea was better. 

I took the first half and washed the north side of one of the chip racks. The cleaning part goes quick but the taking all the bags of chips off and then puttting them all back on takes forever. I started at the back side near the cooler, cleaned up the north side of the rack and then I cleaned the side facing the register. All in all it took around two hours and looks great. The only problem is that the whole time I was working people kept wanting to walk down that one asile I was working on, even though none of them actually took anything from the shelves. I finally got the Wet Floor sign and just blocked both ends. 

After I finished my shelves Amy decided that she was bored again and wanted to do the rest, no argument from me. By that time the water was cold and dirty so I took the bucket out and dumped it around the outside trash cans, they were getting kind of nasty, and them mixed her up a fresh batch. She went to work and I did the rest of side work.

It never fails, there was no one in the building so I figured it was a good time to clean and stock the cappicunio machine. I filled it yesterday and several of the hoppers were nearly empty. Would it kill one of the other shifts to occasionally check it? I had just shut off the machine and opened it up when some guy came in and he had to have a cup. I told him 10 minutes, which is an honest estimate, so he decided to fill up his tank and use the facilities and all the other stuff he could be doing instead of getting in my way, Thank you! Finally I got it all ready and turned it back on and here came the customer, he was satisified and on his way.

Then I mopped the floor. There were two people outside getting gas and they had been there a while so I figured the were done so I mopped the restrooms. Yep, some old guy who had been sitting outside the whole time came in and tracked up the floor. He left so I mopped again and another guy who had been with the same people came in and retracked up my floor. I gave up and waited for them to leave. Seriously, the last guy had hung out for almost 30 minutes before he came in, and he saw me mopping! Grrrr.

It was about a half hour before shift change and Amy asked if the hippie was working today. I told her no it would be the manager and the woman from the morning shift so they should be on time. Of course "on time" means 5:55 just as the construction crew hits so I told her we would be doing a quick change again. Surprise, the woman from the morning shift showed up early, maybe she's fighting with her useless boyfriend again, and so we were able to start the chageover early. Just as I closed out my register the first of the construction guys rolled in and so did the manager. The day report ran and they were able to log in to both registers. It was a first, there were two people on both registers during the rush and neither of them was me! I said, after all was done, that they were going to get to work early. The manager just shot me the eye.

I clocked out, before 6, and went home. You know when you get that "I'm too busy to be sick" attitude? Well I had it all night long but now that I didn't have to anymore I could feel my nose starting to swell up and my head began to pound. It was time to pop a couple of cold pills and go to bed. And before I left I mentioned to the manager that I was going home to be sick, that way nobody would call me to cover their shift. Now, to bed for the next two days to sleep this one off and be ready for the real Friday, which is my Monday.

And on another note, for two whole days I don't have to repeat a second hand story of how a semi trailer ended up on the side of the lot with no wheels. Seriously, how many times can you tell the same story? Hopefully it's gone on Friday and I won't have to deal with it anymore.

Found money $1.15