I don't know why but I really didn't want to go to work tonight. I was vehemently against it. I don't know why, perhaps it's because I wanted to watch the cricket, or because I'm lazy and I hate work, but I approached it with a sense of foreboding.
First thing that happens when I get there is that I can't find a manager anywhere. I walk in at 6:00, notice the balepress is making a funny noise, finger scan on and after not finding a manager I say ”hey fuck it, screw doing the extra stuff they make me do, I'll just face up like how this shift used to work and hopefully just chill out.”
Unfortunately by 6:10 neither of my shift buddies have arrived, and I decide it may be in my best interests to find out what's going down. So I go to the service desk and ask who's in charge. Apparently the highest ranking employee there is the checkout manager. Great, so it looks like I'm responsible for the whole freaking store.
She feeds me the list of what I'm supposed to do, drinks, ends, half a dozen flat tops to fill, bring in the bales and bin lifter and then face up the whole story. I kinda just laughed, no one would've been able to do that alone in fifteen hours, let alone the three my shift was scheduled for. I enquired about my two comrades and apparently one had been in a car accident and wasn't coming in and the other had been unrostered and was now being desperately contacted because Woolworths are idiots.
So I smile bemusedly and head to the drinks to find out what needs to be topped up. Within two minutes I've been called to the front desk twice to help customers. I get called a third time to go to the service deli, an interesting request, so off I trundle.
I arrive there at 6:15. I can still hear the bale press making noise. The checkout manager points towards the back dock and says ”can you check that out?”. I walk through the plastic doors into the back dock and instantly smell rubber smoke and notice the entire back dock is enveloped in a black cloud. So I walk up to the bale press, press the automatic shut down and then grab a flat-top from next to it and start stacking it with drinks. The woman comes in a few minutes later and I what was going on. I tell her the bale press caught fire and we probably shouldn't use it. I open the back dock door to let the smoke out and I bring in the soggy bales. Pete rocked up around 7pm. Not much happened after that except a pidgeon got in the back dock somehow and then got lost somewhere up near the rollerdoor gizmos.
There's so much Christmas stuff at work too. It's garish. It's been there for a few weeks now, since the start of october. I think Woolworths have been turning up the heater even on those sunny days we've been having because they want people to think it's really hot because they'll associate summer with christmas. The only thing they've got left is to just hire some huge dude to stand at the store entrance and just yell ”IT's CHRISTMAS! IT'S CHRISTMAS! IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS! HEY LITTLE GIRL... IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS! BUY SOME FUCKING SHORTBREAD!”.
I'm not sure if it will happen, I wouldn't put it past Woolworths, especially considering they've said they're rostering me on for extra shifts for Christmas.
No doubt all the nightfillers will be given a christmas goody bag full of shortbread that doesn't sell on Christmas Eve. I swear there's enough shortbread in that store to do something amusing and large. Gimme a break, it's 4am and I've been doing IT Apps homework since I got home.