Blogger 365 Day 208 - Am I done yet?

     I guess this is a bit of a followup to yesterday's blog, but I decided that I would go in today and do the extra cigarette order that came in after I left, so I woke up really early, like 4am early and putzed around my apartment for a bit before getting ready and leaving my apartment around 5am.  Because it is Sunday and I am out the door very early, I know that I am probably not going to catch a bus right away , so before going to the bus stop I once again stopped at the gas station and grabbed my morning coffee, and then made my way into work. 

     Sure enough I got to the bus stop and waited.  And waited.  And was just about to say waited again when Mary came to the bus stop and her and I talked for a bit.  For those who don't know Mary (and that would probably be just about everyone who reads this blog), I worked with Mary like 20+ years ago when I was working at the Original Hot Dog Shop.  While I have since left there, she did not and apparently they had her on the night shift last night because she was just getting off work at like 5:30am.  We hadn't had a chance to talk in a few months, last time was when she had stopped in Gus Millers (when we still owned it) to buy lottery tickets and cigarettes and I was there doing something, probably grabbing the morning reports or some such nonsense.  To see a familiar face hat early in the morning while waiting for a bus was a good thing though, we were both headed into town, me to go to work, she was going to change buses downtown to go home, so we talked for a bit, blowing off two buses that would have taken us to our destination. 

    Finally we decided to board a bus, still talking on our way into town, but by the time I got off of my bus downtown it was 6:20am.  Oh well, I only had to do the cigarette order then leave, but since I was going to be there anyway I decided to start tackling the shelf tags that were left behind from the store reset a couple of weeks ago.  The store was supposed to be retagged, but ever since that day I have noticed that a number of shelf tags we had are no longer there and other tags were put up in such a half assed fashion (like sticking them on the product itself rather that on the shelf below the product) that each time I place an order I find more things that they screwed up.  On top of their less than stellar reset, they also left behind two full sets of shelf tags for literally every item that they carry and we could possibly buy from them, including plenty of items that we will never use.  I decided I would started the process of weeding through them, looking for replacements for some of the tags that are now missing and finding tags for items for which there was no tag.  As an added bonus it gave me a chance to order some things I may have missed on Saturday as well as give me ideas for filling existing holes in the coolers and shelf spaces with new product ideas.  So what was going to be a 15 minute cigarette order/project I managed to turn into a two hour project instead.

     Just as I was getting ready to leave one of the girls on duty (we had a shift change at 7am) said she wasn't feeling well, so I had to call around and find someone to come in and replace her.  On top of that, the fountain soda machine was out of ice and when I went to grab some bags of ice to refill it, there was no ice, so I had to call our ice vendor and verify that we had an order coming in today and if so hopefully they could put a rush on it. 

     Finally about 9:30 I make my way back to the bus stop where there is a sign saying the us stop is closed because of construction further down the street and I could catch my bus on the adjacent street corner, so rather than catch my bus on 5th Avenue, I would catch it on Smithfield Street.  Except the bus never came on Smithfield Street, instead it stopped on 5th Avenue, exactly where the sign said it was not stopping.  Groan.

    I did eventually catch a bus and make my way back to Oakland, as I got off the bus my cell phone rang confirming that Brian (not the owner, another Brian) was indeed coming in to replace Lindsay who was sick.  Cool.  I finally get into my apartment and after settling in I took a short nap, now I need to get up and be functional, do some laundry and cleaning and get my old TV out of my apartment now that I have set up the new one.  It works quite, which is good, but my need for having two TVs in a studio apartment is pretty much nonexistent, so I need to put the smaller one out on the curb for trash day on Tuesday.   Lots to do yet, so I best get back at it.  Toodles.