Duck and cover

For those of you that read my last entry, which I am thinking isn't all that many, but that is neither here nor there, I mentioned the damage that occurred to our building at work from the snow event, since technically is wasn't storm damage so much as left over snow damage followed by horrible building maintenance.  I mention it again only because it is the part of the upcoming story.

First a trivia question.  If Lance Armstrong and a woman live together, do they also cycle together?  Yeah I know you didn't want me to ask that but sometimes those type of questions just pop int my cranium.  Such as I have been seeing new commercials for Stride Mystery flavor gum.  Okay, but what if the mystery flavor is ass?  Technically to the chewer it is still a mystery until they bite into it, but do I want a mouthful of ass flavor?  Likewise I have been seeing commercials for Everest Technical School.  During the commercial you see some down on his luck girl or guy, who, after making a phone call and taking some classes have everything in life figured out.  Good for them I say, but later in the commercial they ask "If he/she can do it so can you" and I ask, why?  Were they complete and utter fucking morons?  If I go to school there am I going to be surrounded by people who took the short bus to school?

     I suppose I should explain why I am up typing in the middle of the night.  Work was hectic today, partially due to the reconstruction.  They are currently replacing the bricks above the chute we have to the stock room.  The chute come in handy because when we get our larger beverage deliveries we can just drop them down and have someone catch them in the basement and put them away, but with the work being done on the outside of the building the chute is currently unavailable, meaning we had to lug the beverage orders up and down steps.  138 cases from Pepsi and another 38 from 7 UP, plus doing all of the stuff I normally do and by the end of the day I was indeed a tired puppy.  So tired that I cam home after a couple of beers at my watering hole and fell into bed for a much needed respite.  The problem with that is now I am awake.  So much so that I ran out and did some laundry at 12:30am, where I originally started this blog entry on my laptop, then I came home and am trying to pick up where I left off because I am still not sleepy yet, though I am a tad bit thirsty. 

     I suppose I should gte back to the title of this here blog and stop with the prattling.  I get into work Monday morning and shortly thereafter the work crew comes in to begin once again the process of removing loose bricks and replacing them with new ones.  Because we are the closest place to their work, they will run an extension cord from our store, through our back alley, where we keep the trash and what not, and out to the work site.  All had been going well with that process until Monday, when Animal Control had to be called in, as apparently there was a duck stuck in our back alley.  Now how a duck would have gotten back there to begin with is anybody's guess.  Some people are suggesting that maybe someone put it back there as a prank, others were saying that perhaps it had flown over the area from the nearby Monongahela River and just landed back there but now didn't have the room to take off again, but whatever the reason all I know is that it was a duck and it was pretty pissed off, so the folks at Animal Control had to come in and remove it before the workers outside could begin. 

       If that were the only thing that happened Monday I would have considered it a good day, but sadly it wasn't.  And of course it was the last thing to happen that nearly set me off.  A man came in the store just before I was getting ready to leave, saying that he bought batteries and that they didn't work.  This, to me, seemed like nothing more than a simple customer complaint and something that I should just stay out of.  So I did, at least at first.  The guy proceeds to tell his story, whether it was the truth or not isn't for me to say.  He could have gotten batteries that were bad, he could have just as easily switched out the batteries he bought for the ones that were bad to begin with when he left the store and was looking to scam us to get his money back.  I know people a little to well to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it wasn't my call.  Anyway he asks to speak to the manager, and the only one on duty at that point was Dee, who was in the office on a phone call, trying to get the newly installed camera system operational, as earlier in the day, Wayne, my partner in crime at work, had caught someone shoplifting a magazine and Dee was trying to get the new system to printout a picture of the criminal, but was having problems getting the system to work right.  The thing is, we did have a system before, but the information storage on it only lasted a few days, this new system we should be able to pull up footage from any of our cameras in any of our stores for the last 30 days, a pretty big improvement if it actually works, but the system kept freezing up so Dee was on the phone in the office trying to get the system fixed.  Amber explained to the guy that Dee was on an important call and would be with him as soon as possible. But that wasn't good enough, so he starts bitching.  She suggested that since she doesn't know when Dee will be done he might want to come back later on or the next day, which leads to him bitching some more, including letting a few curse words fly.  At this point Wayne steps in and tells him that he needs to calm down or leave. 

     Dee comes up from the office, so the customer with the complaint is pointed out to her and he begins his spiel about the batteries.  Dee asks if he still has the package from them and he doesn't.  She asks the same question I mentioned earlier, that how is she to know he actually got them there and those are the batteries he bought there.  He proceeds to start another tirade finished by calling Dee a bitch.  Wrong move.  That put me right in front of him, telling him to get out.  He starts running his mouth again and again I step closer to him and tell him to get out.  He backs up a couple of steps, starts running his mouth again and again I get right in front of his face and tell him to get out.  At this point Wayne is now trying to grab hold of me, for fear that he thinks I am going to hit the guy.  Not that hitting him was my intent, but I'll admit I was certainly not afraid of him and part of me wanting him to take a swing because I would have dropped him like a bad habit.  Well, save for smoking, which is a bad habit that I enjoy, but that is another matter. 

    The thing is, I can't say that I ever really thought about how I would feel in such a situation.  I didn't know if I would be afraid, technically he did threaten to "kick my white boy ass" when I got off work, so there was the potential of a threat lingering when I got off of work, but I almost welcomed it.  I was hoping he would be waiting, but to my disappointment he scurried off.  Don't get me wrong, I am far from an ideal physical specimen and I may very well have gotten my ass kicked had anything actually happened, but I was more than content to roll the dice and take my chances in that situation. 

        And the worst part is, this nonsense made me miss my bus. 

       Okay, enough rambling for one night, I am going to try to sneak an hour of sleep in before getting up for work.  Laters.