Read Free Fortnight continues!
Meet Sparrow, an average man passing an average life…
Monday, October 29
I screwed up the first closing page at the retailer tonight!!!…I am not making that up, tho I wish I were.
It was 2115 on the dot…I had done my stretching and vocal cord exercises and I was right on time for the first closing page of the evening…I dove right in, too, confidently announcing it was 2115 and that your friendly, neighborhood retailer was closing in 15 minutes…Of course, we close at 2200, so customers still had 45 minutes to shop and I didn’t even know I said 15 minutes until Assistant Manager Felicia waddled up to the service desk laffing at me and announcing my transgression, saying it was 45 minutes till closing, not 15 minutes…Whoops, my bad…I got right back in the saddle, too, picking up the phone and pressing #968 and telling everyone that 15 minutes in this case was actually code for 45 minutes, which got a few laffs.
But not as many laffs as my 2130 page…I got on the PA and dove in announcing the time and that your friendly, neighborhood retailer would be closing in and then – call it the instincts all the great ones have if you must – I pulled the phone away from my mouth, far enough so anything I said sounded like I was talking to myself, and muttered “ten…fifteen…twenty…THIRTY MINUTES” as if I was counting to myself which was audible on the PA system, don’t even start, because you can hear yourself over it from the service desk…Well, this had everyone in the area laffing and Felicia almost spit up her soda.
Earlier this wizard had come up to the service desk to cash a check…He handed it to me and it’s a personal, two-party check for $220, $20 over our personal, two-party check limit…It’s also made out to one Jacob, no last name…I point this out to him and he announces he was Jacob and could easily fill in his last name and I say that really isn’t the way it works, not telling him it was probably also a violation of federal law, not to mention company policy…Then I tell him it doesn’t really matter anyway, it’s for $20 too much, so I hand the check back to him and he shrugs and leaves.
About 1930 Felicia comes up and assigns me the task of making sense of the candy displays at the front of the store…There are some on the left as you walk in and more down the main aisle heading to the back of the store, known as Action Alley I am not making that up and some boxes in the displays are empty or half full, which looks like crap…My assignment is to consolidate boxes and get rid of the empties and bring some of the Action Alley candy to the front door display so they get some breakfast cereal into Action Alley.
Sigh…Regular readers of this crap know I have no skill at, and even less interest in, stuff like this…Fortunately, Supervisor Daniel came to help…He’s funny and knows what to do – both key for drudgery like this – and the first half hour goes pretty fast…I spend most of the time breaking down boxes, which isn’t easy because these candy boxes apparently are double reinforced with titanium…Jesus H, they were tuff to get flat…Stomping on them almost wrenched my knee…I am spared from further tedium tho, because Supervisor Mary comes over, asks if I’d had my break yet and shoos me away when I told her I hadn’t…Freed from me slowing him down, Daniel has most everything squared away when I favored everyone with my presence after my hard-earned break and all that is left for me to do is take the boxes – most, but not all, already broken down – back to the compactor.
More training with Jessie at Hotel C tonight…After watching her last night I did everything with her keeping tabs on me…It is not hard, but there is a lot more to do, everything taking about 90 minutes, which I will probably cut down a bit when everything becomes automatic…The big complaint we get here is the lack of a complimentary morning meal…In fact, a lady whined about this when she checked in…We do offer an $8 coupon good for $15 at the restaurant – and the food there is pretty good – but you’d be surprised how popular a free breakfast is…I want to smack these people and tell them look, if you prepared complimentary hotel breakfasts like I do you would, like me, swear you would never eat another one, but nobody wants to hear this…They just want their free microwaved eggs and 95 percent fat sausage.
Sparrow’s Sleep Log: 0600 Monday until 1200 Monday…Six hours, slept pretty well, too, no getting up to use the can…I was in the sack early because I knocked off early from Hotel C.
The Diary of a Nobody is a novel. All elements are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Anything else is a coincidence.
It was inspired by the 19th century British novel of the same name.
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