i am not making this up.

I swear to you that by the end of this you will think that my imagination has run away with me, but I promise all of this actually did happen, and it actually did happen between the hours of 9 and 5 today.

I opened up the store today, as usual. The credit card machine yesterday and Tuesday was having some problems, but I was still able to ring up transactions. It just took some time and an extra little song and dance. What bugged me was that I was the only one on the schedule until 4:00. Tom expects less customers and thus cuts hours so he's not paying two people to sit there and twiddle their thumbs. Its a reasonable idea. However, when you put sale signs on the windows, people go crazy and become needy and need to know the price of this and how steep is the discount and if its $9.99 and 50% off how much is that? So you need two people there to answer the questions and ring up all the transactions. I was a little grumbly that I was the only one there.

Then the credit card machine stopped connecting to the internet again. Hector, the maintenance man from the church next door came in to say he called Verizon, and the problem is with them, not with the modem or network or anything.

I then proceeded to get yelled at by a customer who didn't like having to pay in cash. (This particular customer, I might add, was also picking up something that she ordered and paid for September 1, 2007.) If she knew of any way to get the credit card machine to connect to the internet, she was perfectly welcome to fix it and pay in whatever manner she liked. I actually ignored her. If someone has a problem, usually I'll at least be somewhat sympathetic. This woman, nope. No eye contact, no "I'm sorry," nothing. I took her money and rang it through and handed her the bag, and that was it. If you don't like it, don't shop here. Its that simple.

As I was dealing with another line of customers, a man came up to the counter. "Someone used the bathroom and didn't flush." Oh, ok. "So I went and then flushed and it overflowed." What the heck is wrong with you? Why would you try to flush a toilet that is obviously not working? Why would you use it, knowing it probably won't go down??

I didn't have time to run to the bathroom to clean because once again I remind you all that I was the only employee in the store, and I had a line of customers who can't do math. So I finally got a moment where there were no customers in the store. I opened the door to the hallway leading to the bathroom and there was a puddle out into the hallway. There was enough of a spill that it covered the formica floor and pooled on the hallway carpeting. Yay.

I opened the utility closet door to grab a mop, discovered we don't have one, and grabbed the next best thing. A squeegee on a long pole with a sponge on one side. So there I am, squeegeeing a puddle and sopping it up and squishing it against a bucket so the water will come out, and starting the process over. And as I was working, the door to the utility closet slammed shut.

I went back into the store and looked around. Still empty. I looked to the parking lot to see if any other employee cars were there to see if they were playing tricks on me. No one. I felt the air for wind. Nothing. This bathroom is on a cement floor (no creaky shifting floor boards or door frames that could cause it) and its an inner hallway away from windows. I had left the door open too far for it to be a sudden shift in barometric pressure due to the wind. I have no idea why that door slammed shut, but I propped something in front of it and cleaned the bathroom as quickly as I could.

Realizing we had no plunger, I went up to the church office to borrow one. After finally getting the toilet to flush on the first try, I went back to check on the customers (none) and looked down at my shirt. Toilet water splashed on my shirt, and the back of my leg from where I walked into the squeegee at some point or other. Great, and I have to go to class like this?

A customer came in and I started to ring up the transaction. She wanted to pay by credit card, it wouldn't go through. So I told her I would have to call the credit company for a voice authorization code which I could enter into the computer to make the sale. As I was on the phone (it took a while because the "1" button doesn't work on our phones) there was suddenly a change in the amount of light. I wasn't sure if I was seeing things or what. Then the lights went out, and with them, the phone went dead.

The computers were on still, with the battery power supply beeping an alarm at me. I called Tom, who told me I have ten minutes to shut the computers off before the power supply runs out of juice. After calling Tom, I called Katie and left a message saying, "If at all possible, please come in early, I'm having a DAY. Oh and the electricity and phones are out so don't call the store, call my phone."

Customers kept walking in saying, "Are you guys open?" "Yeah we are, we just can't sell you anything because the power is out." Apparently, according to one of my customers, all of Rt 23 from Wayne to Riverdale lost power.

So, finally, the lights came back on, Katie came in, and I told her my story. I ended with, "so I'm going home early so I can change out of my toilet water clothes before class."

On the drive home, the road to my house was blocked off by flashing lights, so I couldn't even get home to get out of my toilet clothes. In the end, I went the long way around and made it home, where I discovered that the cans and bottles garbage can had blown over in the wind. I think we had a tornado while I was gone. There were GLASS bottles strewn all over the yard. I can understand plastic because they are light. No, there were GLASS bottles unbroken blowing in the wind.

After picking all that up I went inside and discovered our power was out. So I couldn't make myself dinner before class. In the end I made some soup on the stove since gas stoves still work in power outages. Fortunately I did not burn the house down.

The redemption of the day came in the form of a long slender box on the doorstep:









And all that before 5:00! Luckily I still did well on my anatomy exam at class and gave my oral presentation and am happy with what I did.