Multiply 365 Day 157 - Ship of Fools (A better song than a blog)

Tomorrow looks like it will be a big day.  Finally the reset of the store is taking place, plus I have a grocery order coming in, I have to place orders for both Pepsi and Coke, install a new Pepsi cooler, possibly install another cooler for Full Circle Vending since the cooler they delivered on Saturday still isn't working properly, and while all of this is going on, somehow keep the store passable for customers.  Anyone got any ideas just how I am supposed to pull that off?  Because I am pretty much clueless.

I did learn something at work today.  It make go down as a third truism, behind "Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed" and Every day is a day closer to my last day".  The new one may end up being "We will never escape our incompetence."  I had been talking to the Ultimate Retailer people because of an issue I had on Saturday, where I put some prices into the system but they didn't cross over from the register I used to input them into.  When I talked to Shawn, he said that it is probably because of a synchronization problem that we have, which is creating some other issues as well.  The problem being that in order to completely address the sync problem, we need to grant access to all of the registers at the same time to Shawn, which is hard when you are open 24/7.  Ideally you have to pick a time when you are slow and then make a mad dash for it.  Shawn's part is a relative big one, but not a time consuming one, he can probably have the registers synced up in about 5 minutes.  As luck would have it, this morning is started storming outside, which is a good business killer and we were having moments where we had only one or two customers in the store at a time, so we decide to make the attempt today.  I grabbed the manual cash register we have in the office and took it upstairs to run while we had the system down, Shawn started doing the prep work he needed to do on the office computer and then on his cue, we would switch to just running the manual cash register for 5 minutes while he did his thing.  Shawn calls and says he is ready, we have one customer at the counter, it would seem like it is perfect, no?  Except our people managed to move so fucking slow with one customer that they turned it into two, then three and we ended up aborting the attempt.  Anyone with a modicum of skill could have banged these orders out, no problem, but not us.  Not now, probably not ever.

I would be remiss in not mentioning something that happened Monday morning, one that shows the type of clientele we service on a pretty regular basis.  I had went in early Monday morning, in part because I couldn't sleep and in part because I knew that no one manned the 3-11 shift Sunday night, so the coolers would be a disaster come Monday morning if I didn't get there early.  So I hopped on the bike and made the sojourn in (I have biked two more days this week, out of a possible two) and the ride in was cool, just because I haven't rode the bike trail that early in the morning or late at night, depending on your mindset.  Anyway I get in about 3am and start stocking coolers and what not.  Around 3:45 am two guys come in, a smaller white guy that if I had to make an educated guess, I would say was gay and a larger black male whose sexual orientation I am unsure of.  Anyway, they walk through the store and head to the back counter to grab a couple of hot dogs.  While they are back there, the presumably gay guy is getting the hot dogs and the other male is sort of touchy with him, rubbing his back and what not and grabbing his hand to pull him toward the register after the hot dogs were properly condimented.   At the register the gay male pays for their purchases and when the cashier goes to give him his change, the black males sticks his hand out like he is going to get the change.  The gay male brushes aside the hand of his partner, gets his change and they leave the store together.  About 15 minutes later the cops are in the store asking questions.  Why you may ask?  Apparently a block from the store, the black male pistol whipped the gay man, leaving him lying barely conscious in the street, taking both the gay man's money and credit cards.  Presumably he got the hot dogs as well.  But these are the types of scum bags we deal with on a daily basis.  Fucking crackheads, crooks, people who think taking their children to the methadone clinic for their monthly check in  constitutes a field trip.  It is not uncommon to see jail bracelets in the trash, that people just released from the county jail up the street decide that their first stop on the road to freedom is our store, so they show up and throw their plastic jail bracelets they just cut off in our trash.  

Quite the fun stuff isn't it?  And the party just continues tomorrow.