As far as I know everyone behaved themselves this weekend. Thankfully the cold I picked up last week has mellowed out although I still have the cough. If it really was bronchitis it's going to take a while for me to recover. Oh well, I only have to last 5 days and then I get another two days off.

The night started off with having to break a roll of pennies. Sure enough the very next customer pays 25 cents, all in pennies. Do they wait? Do they watch? Do they get together and plan this out? I have no idea.

Hipsters came in. They are probably a common site in places like New York or L.A. but here they are as rare as sighting a Dodo bird. I considered taking a picture but they were looking at me so I didn't. I don't think anyone at work would care about the sighting but I got a laugh out of it. 

As the night went along my sinus began to swell up. My eyes and head hurt and sure enough, I left my cold pills at home. I finally broke down and bought one of the single serving packs we carry. Normally I avoid this because they are too expensive.

A Jack Spratt couple came in, if you know the poem you know what I am talking about. Of course they were the opposite, he had to weigh a good three hundred pounds and she looked anorexic. I couldn't, nor would I want to, imagine the two of them having sex. I wasn't surprised when he bought a pile of junk food and she got a bottle of water.

The station orders most of it's stuff from from a single company. When it arrives it comes in sealed plastic crates and when you open them up you have to break off the little plastic tabs. The manager collects and hides the tabs around the building to see if the shifts are doing their share of the cleaning. Normally I just clean around them, and I told the manager about it, but I decided to have some fun so I found a bunch under the soda crates in the cooler. I took them and hid them myself. Lets see if the morning shift does their share of the cleaning, the Easter egg hunt is on. 

 The night rapped up, the morning crew came in on time and I went home. Things are a lot different since the hippie quit.

 

Found money 45 cents.

Things are so slow. This is the time of year when nobody travels and weeknights the station is empty. This is also the time of year when we began to invent things to do.

In the years past the manager would make the various shifts clean the ceiling. Nobody wants to do it so she would mark sections with the shift letters and each shift was responsible for cleaning that area. This time Amy was so bored that she got out the ladder and did the whole thing by herself. I kept reminding her we had 6 weeks to kill but she finished the whole job in one night. The next time you go into a convince store look up and see how clean their ceiling is.

Some guy came in and just before he paid me he coughed all over his money. I handled it very carefully and washed my hands after he left. If I wasn't already sick I might be mad but now I will pass the bills on to someone else and they will catch whatever he had.

Amy was wiping the ceiling around the register and punted the stapler off the counter. Although she did break a bit of the plastic it still worked so I just put it back together and didn't tell anyone. As long as works I figured no harm no foul.  

Finally the night crawled to an end. I had spent the majority of it making sure Amy didn't fall off the ladder and doing all the other picky little jobs around the place. Spring Break is a long way off and I know I'm going to run out of ideas on how to keep busy. Wish me luck.

 

Found money $1.31 

1/11 

When I got to work and counted in my drawer there were two rolls of nickles. If you ever worked retail you know that nickles are the least used coin when giving change. Since a quarter gives you that odd 5 cents you only use them when the change is between 5 and 19 cents and amounts like 30 cents, 55 cents and so on, so two rolls is totally unnecessary. Usually V from the morning shift is the one who does this so I asked why she keeps leaving so many nickles in the drawer but it turns out she was off today. P said she was the one who put all those rolls in the drawer. She said she didn't have any single to feed into the safe, you have to put bills in to get dropped money back out, so she used a $5. I kind of wondered why she would say that when I was counting $41 in singles but I don't try to figure out what passes for logic in that woman's brain. So now there will be two rolls of nickle rolling around in the drawer for at least the next week.

Since it's still so slow I figured it would be a good night to do a super clean on the cappuccino machine. There was lots of loose powder inside so I took out all the hoppers, pulled off the plates and then got the vacuum. The hose was too short to reach into the machine and the straight attachments wouldn't allow me to get into the small cracks so I improvised, I picked up the vacuum and held it on the counter. Amy gave me an odd look but it worked. Having scrubbed it down I then filled up the hoppers and put the whole thing back together, and for once nobody came in and asked me how long it was going to take. I then took one of the tabs off the delivery crates and place inside the machine, I wonder how long it will take someone to find it.

It was such a slow night that when I closed out at the end of the shift my total cash intake was $120. There wasn't even anyone interesting coming in. If it gets any slower and I run out of stuff to do I'm going to have to bring a book. Is January over yet?

 

Found money 25 cents.

Crap. I've lost my notes for what happened on the 12th. I do remember that when I went to fill up the cappuccino machine I discovered that the tab I had hidden was gone. It seems the day after I gave the machine a total clean Diane came in and cleaned it again. What a waste of time but if it made her happy who am I to complain.

I worked with Steph that night and I know she was singing at the top of her lungs while cleaning the restrooms. Talk about an echo chamber. She didn't dance around while sweeping that night so I didn't try to video tape her. And she told me she hates to vacuum so I did it, I don't mind. 

I also remember that I went in to do the cooler that night. I found that someone, probably P from the afternoon shift, had loaded a shelf with the wrong stuff. It really ticked me off so I wrote a nasty note about someone not being able to read labels and they had better pull all that product off the shelf. Seriously, I work at keeping the cooler in order and to have someone come in and make a mess out of it so I have to spend an additional half hour re-straightening ticks me off. I plan to leave all that stuff on the shelf until whoever put it there clears it back off.

I have no idea how the night ended and I don't know if I found any change that night. Oh well, that's what happens when you get behind. 

 

 

There are 12 pumps at the station. 8 regular and 4 diesel pumps. About three years ago someone pulled a trailer over the steel pipe in front of the #10 pump and snapped it off. Seriously, it was a steel pipe filled with concrete and they managed to break it off at the ground level. Some drivers. Well shortly after that someone managed to turn the corner too quickly and slammed into the pump. Luckily there was no fire but the pump was destroyed.

The company had a pump left over from another station they owned, they had to shut down the diesel pumps because of a tank leak and never reopened them. They mounted the pump, got a technician to come up from Albuquerque to wire in the system and then had it inspected. It was up and running and...sure enough someone ran it over. Two destroyed pumps at the same spot.

The company had to buy a new pump. They mounted it on the fuel island but the technician had just been in town and wasn't due back for a while, since it costs so much to have the guy come up the company decided to just wait for his next scheduled visit, which is probably coming up soon. The pump didn't have a nozzle on it and the main board wasn't hooked up. Well....

When I came to work the first thing I saw was the destroyed pump. It turns out some guy was pulling a goose neck trailer loaded with gas well pipe. He had pulled into the #9 pump at an odd angle and when he went to pull out the trailer slammed into the pump. The guy backed up and then took off. Everyone saw him, he did it around 10 in the morning. There were several people shouting at him to stop but he bolted. Since he was pulling the trailer his truck plate was obscured but his trailer plate was showing so they got the number and called the cops. The police figured he was hauling pipes to one of the local drilling sites so they were going to ask around. We'll see what happens. And it goes without saying the station owner was really really pissed off, three destroyed pumps in two years, that adds up.

 

 

 

 

                                                #10.3 

 

In the middle of the night a semi was towed onto the lot. It seemed the driver ruptured a fuel line so he wasn't going anywhere. His cell phone wasn't working because he couldn't get service in the area and his company couldn't send out a repair guy until Tuesday since Monday is MLK day and everyone had the day off. The joys of working for a company with official mechanical rules.

Since it's Friday there were the three of us on shift, me, Amy and Steph. Well Steph had to work on Saturday and hadn't gotten much sleep the night before. She asked if she could take off early and I said I didn't have a problem with it, it's still slow. So at 4 she clocked out and left. The owners won't be mad because it's two hours they don't have to pay her.

Around 5 some people came in and asked where the bus station was. It seems they were picking up their son, since the bus didn't come to their town, and they had no idea where to go. We gave them directions and they left.

A customer came in and asked if there were any crazy people who hung out around the station. We told them no but occasionally there were people who came up off the highway, well it seems there was a guy across the road shouting and making a lot of noise and the customer was worried. Then the guy crossed the street, still shouting and now he was throwing his bags. The customer got really worried and Amy decided it might be a good idea to call the police. The customer then said the angry guy was getting into a car with an older couple and I knew what was going on, it was the couple who had been in earlier and asked about the bus station. Amy called the police but they already had a car in route.

The father then came in and explained what had happened. It seems the son had been dropped off at the  bus station but the office was closed so he was stuck out in the cold. He had seen his parents drive by and had tried to flag them down, then started walking in the direction they were headed. By the time he had gotten to the station, about three blocks he saw them pulling out and heading in the opposite direction so he was trying to stop them. They turned around and pulled back into the station and he had lost his temper, a bit of post traumatic stress from his tour in Iraq.  The situation was cleared up and by the time the police car rolled on the lot the family and the worried customers were all gone. But it was an entertaining half hour.

The morning crew showed up on time, mostly and I went home. Normally I would be looking forward to the weekend but I had told Amy I would work for her so I have to come back at 10. Oh well, it's extra money for me.

 

Found money 40 cents.

1/14 

The rule is that a half hour before the end of a shift one drawer gets closed so that the incoming shift can count in and log onto the register right away. So when I walk in A is still working her register and P is just counting down her drawer, so I had to wait. She finally finished and I count in the drawer, P was screwing around with her paperwork and doing the safe drop, but hadn't closed out the register. I got pissed and complained. She said "well the person on the second register is suppose to close out first", her made up rules by the way. I got mad and said "no, someone is suppose to be closed out so I can count in and start my shift!" I'm so fed up with her milking the clock and causing me delays in starting my night. She closed out the drawer and left.

About a half hour later the phone rings, it seems P forgot to clock out and wanted me to do it for her. I told her OK but instead just left a note for the morning crew. She may want to scheme to add time to her time card but she might as well forget trying to get me involved right now.

It was another long and boring night, nothing was going on so it was a clean and stock night. I went through the items on the shelf and made sure the older stuff was to the front and the newer stuff was to the back. Also I found out that someone had gone in the cooler and removed the product that had been stocked on the wrong rack . I don't know if the person responsible  or the vendor did the job when they brought in new stuff, either way I left up my note.

About the middle of the night Steph went to clean the restrooms. When she came back she was pale white and was complaining about being dizzy. I figured she was coming down with the same thing everyone else had so I told her if she was really sick to give me a call later and I'd cover her shift. I know what its like to work when you are sick and I know how hard it is to find someone on short notice. I guess I will go straight to bed today just to be on the safe side.

When I went out to dump the trash I had to laugh. These people pulled up in a Mustang. They had the car packed and there was someone in the back seat, they struggled to get the woman out. When I was done I went in the building and they were chatting with Steph. They told her they were on their way to California, boy did I feel sorry for them. Steph asked if she could go along and they told her they had no room, and they weren't just saying it. As they were leaving I told her to go look out the window at their car and as she watched them stuff the woman back into the rear seat she changed her mind. 

The morning crew showed up on time again, boy it's different without the hippie. I went home and went to bed. Considering how Steph looks I fully expect a phone call before the end of the day.

 

Found money 26 cents.

Sure enough. Around 2 in the afternoon Steph called. It seems she tried to go to her day job but couldn't finish out her shift so she went home. She was about as sick as she could get and asked if I minded covering for her tonight. I told her no problem and went back to sleep, I was going to have to get up later, eat and get ready for work.

It was another long slow night, is it Spring Break yet? Amy started telling me about her ex boyfriend, the one who beat up her brother and got extradited to Tennessee for an outstanding felony warrant. It seems someone told her that he was cheating on her when they were together. If that wasn't bad enough it turns out he wasn't cheating with another woman but instead had a boyfriend on the side. Amy was shocked to find out they guy was bisexual and worse that everyone but her knew about it. Needless to say that even though the guy has been gone for a month he managed to upset her again.

The only interesting customer of the night was a guy dressed like a longshoreman. Seriously, he was wearing a pea coat and a wool cap. I was tempted to ask him what time the fleet came in but I don't think he would get the joke. Oh well, on a slow night you take your entertainment where you can get it.

Amy and I got into a discussion about guys. She wanted to know why they were so complicated and I pointed out that women expect too much, that the average guy only thinks about two things, food and sex. She decided that she would do a survey and posted a message on Facebook and was going to ask around her other job tomorrow. A driver came in and he got involved in the conversation. Turns out he is a religious guy and added a third, God. I hated to tell him average guys don't think about religion that much but it was too close to closing time to get into a long argument, so I didn't say anything.

Morning shift, closed out, went home and went to bed. And the best part is I have another five nights before my next day off and I still have this lousy cough. Woo Hoo!

 

Found money 15 cents.