Blogger 365 Day 275 - We wuz robbed

     Literally that was what I almost woke up to this morning.  I say almost because I had in fact already woke up, I had thrown some Cream of Wheat in the microwave and had just finished eating it and had reached that point in the morning where I was stuck between should I stay up and go to work since it was so early (it was almost 5am), or do I risk laying down for another hour or so where I could fall asleep and end up oversleeping and being late for work.  Part of the joy of being one of those people who wake up half a dozen times a night.

     I had thought about it and figured another hour of sleep wouldn't hurt when my phone went off.  Not my cell phone but rather the house phone.  Any time a call is coming in before 5am, it is almost always bad news.  Who calls that early just to say hi?  I started thinking of all the problems my mom had been having recently which was more than enough encouragement to pick up the phone.  But the call wasn't from home, there wasn't any family emergency, rather Ed was calling me.  That seemed a tad odd, Ed never calls my apartment, on those rare instances where he is calling me at all it is on my cell phone.  My mind began to relax a little, I am thinking since it is Ed probably the worst that it is about is someone called off or one of the registers was down, or the lottery machine was jammed or some such silliness.  But it wasn't silliness, instead it was a phone call that the store had just been held up at gun point, and how quickly could I get in to pull tbe taps from our camera system for the police.

     I quickly threw on some clothes and walked up the street to the bus stop.  All thing considered I made pretty good time, I was in the store before 5:30 am and in the office reviewing security camera footage.  I was thinking that it would be a race between Ed and myself to see who could get in first, I didn't expect Brian to come in early but thought that Ed would be in in relatively short order.  By 6am I had already spoken to the police once on the phone, giving them a pretty good description of the robber and I had pulled security footage of him from 4 different cameras and burnt it to DVD. 

     With nothing else to do, pending  a visit from the burglary detectives, I went ahead and started my work day, pulling reports and reloading lottery machines.  Around 7:30 I had gotten the number of money orders we had sold the day before, money that goes to Western Union.  I texted Brian the total so he could transfer it from our main bank account to the Western Union account.  He texted back, asking if I realized what time it was, and what did I do, sleep at the store?  So I clued him on what was happening, apparently Ed didn't call him yet, though even if he had Brian lives a good probably 45 minutes away by car, he wouldn't have been able to rush right down to the store and if his son's were staying with him he would have to get them off to school before anything else. 

     Still it came as a surprise when Brian did get in the store early, or at least early for him. After a couple of texts back and forth and one phone conversation where I relayed what I knew based on the camera footage, Brian made pretty good time in getting to the store around 9am.  He even beat the robbery detectives to the store.  I can't say the same for Ed, who really didn't come in any sooner than he normally would which meany yours truly was left to deal with all of the nonsense regarding the police and trying to figure out what was taken and how much.  All in all just an incredibly hectic morning, made even better when once again our deli manager decided that she didn't want to work.  I am not even sure what the excuse was this time, she came in, was in the store for maybe 5 minutes and then said she had to leave.  I would like to say that this is an isolated incident with her, but it is just par for the course, she is good for one call of a week.  How she remains employed is something that Ed would have to explain, because if I were truly allowed to call the shots I would have ended that nonsense months ago.  I think even Ed has finally reached his breaking point on that front and if so good, let's make a move and get someone in who wants to work and be there and we will move forward. 

     The results for me was that today ended up turning into another 12 hour day and even as I sat down to bang out this blog entry after a nap my phone rang again from the store, there are issues with one of the registers once again.  Looks like I may be going back in again.  But for now I  just want to grab a shower and wash today off before I get back at it.