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  • General Store Oddities.

    I work at one of those "family-oriented" Hardware stores where the husbands go into the tools section and grunt to each other, and the housewives go to pick out an entirely new set of furnishing for their house or decide to repaint the house in polkadots using a single can of "Polka-dot Paint" that they insist the paint guy can and will mix for them lest they get it at some other identical store.

    1) (Boring One) We have a compactor. It's one of the more interesting activities in the building, as the opportunity to crush things is obviously highly alluring to its workers. (I do happen to enjoy crushing boxes as well.) We recently had a large compactor jam, and everyone just kept the button held in the hopes that it'd crush things. I climbed into the compactor's "lobby" and began to punch at random boxes, when I saw the problem. Someone had shoved in a -very- long box, which basically acted as a cross-beam across the area above the actual compactor part. It was supporting all of the boxes. No boxes could reach the lower area to be compacted.

    Know how your compactor works. All our compactor does is move boxes a bit to the left and then retract again to repeat. Nothing is really crushed; just shoved to the side a little.

    2) The middle of the store is where we keep all of the furniture sets. In the summer, we'd get all manner of people coming in and just sitting down without a care in the world. There are some pretty awesome sets there, actually. There is everything from hammocks to an odd circular cushioned chair that faces every direction, that you'd see in a lobby of some fancy marble corporate office building. People would just come in and sit down. The paint guy, who has direct line of sight to these folks all day long, has definitely reported that a few of them have been there for many hours at a time without even getting up. There was this old man who walked in and sat down, and didn't move for (Seriously) eight hours. I think he got up once to visit the restroom. If even.

    3) We have a small break room upstairs. Not much to it; a table, three chairs, a microwave, and a li'l fridge. Bland, really. There are glue traps in every corner. We have had mice up there, of course, because some people are messy. A few weeks ago, there was a pigeon in one of them. I have no idea how a pigeon got upstairs, much less into the building in the first place. Although technically the compactor is next to the stairs leading to the break room. The odd part is, the pigeon was on its side, legs sticking out opposite its head, not on the glue trap.

    4) I think there is a ghost in the store. Someone keeps coming in and cleaning up one of the aisles in the middle of the night, but only one of them. Aisle 4, with all of the scented candles, ... people keep coming in and messing up the aisle beyond repair every night. I'm usually one of the last ones out of the building, as I like to help my awesome manager tidy up the front areas while he counts the change in the registers. We leave together, and I am in constant sight of aisle 4. When I get in there first thing in the morning with the manager, the aisle is entirely tidy, while every aisle adjacent to it looks exactly as it was the night before. Perhaps there are some odd magnetic forces at work that only scented candles can feel.
    SC: "Are you new or something?"
    Me: "Yes. Your planet is very backwards I hope you realize."

  • #2
    I wanna work at your store, just to see that stuff happen.
    "Is it hot in here to you? It's very warm, isn't it?"--Nero, probably

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    • #3
      Ooooh, think of how much mula you'd make if you could somehow bottle and mass-produce your friendly little poltergeist.

      Besides, organizing candles sucks. Let them at it.
      A lion however, will only devour your corpse, whereas an SC is not sated until they have destroyed your soul. (Quote per infinitemonkies)

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      • #4
        Maybe the pigeon is the ghostly cleaner. Sort of a poultrygeist.
        "All I've ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who out-drew ya"

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        • #5
          *throws a nice ripe orange tomatoe at Sheldonrs*

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          • #6
            I am Very Interested in your Ghost. Please send it to my apartment. Thank You.

            Signed,


            Lazy in Lynnwood

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            • #7
              Quoth Can I Help Your A$$? View Post
              I am Very Interested in your Ghost. Please send it to my apartment. Thank You.

              Signed,


              Lazy in Lynnwood
              Can I have it when you're done?
              I don't go in for ancient wisdom
              I don't believe just 'cause ideas are tenacious
              It means that they're worthy - Tim Minchin, "White Wine in the Sun"

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              • #8
                At the swamp, on one of the backroom walls, there's a huge, red paint splatter. I tell people who ask about it that somebody got stabbed in the neck on that spot.

                On another backroom wall there is a smallish yellow paint splatter. I tell people that's where somebody else popped their zit.

                Then, out on the salesfloor, is the "door to nowhere." The one-hour photo machine used to be next to the door, and the door led to a small storage area for the photo machine's chemicals and a hot water heater. It was always locked and the photo person had the key.

                Actually, the placement of the photo machine was an oddity in itself, since my store was the only one in the company to not have its photo machine up front at the service desk or in the electronics department. It was just in a corner by grocery (formerly HBA). Years before I began working there, that area of the store was electronics, but then electronics was moved and the photo machine left where it was. When we remodeled, the photo machine was moved to electronics at the back of the store, and the door to the storage room locked and the key probably thrown away. I wish they would've taken the lock off the door and let us use that room for storage or something.

                There's also a handicapped fitting room in apparel that I can't recall ever being used. I think I was in there when I worked maintenance so many years ago and it was just being used for storage, which would've led to some awkwardness if a handicapped person ever needed to use it.
                Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

                "I never said I wasn't a horrible person."--Me, almost daily

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                • #9
                  Heheh. Cute. :P


                  I found a new one today. The new Plumbing Guy (Around 22 years old, pretty "rap" / "punk" but an awesome guy.) went 'round the Hardware desk where I'm working with the paint guy (We're all around 18 - 23.) and he just said "Everyone follow me." and he went to the vending machine near the bathrooms against the back wall. He put in a dollar, pointed to a bag of $.85 Combos (...Why did I italicize that?!) and punched in the code 5 C C 5 (Its corresponding number was C 5 ) and the bag popped out, and so did about $1.05 worth of change out of the change slot. So he basically beat the system. He tried it again, and it worked then too. We were pretty amazed.
                  SC: "Are you new or something?"
                  Me: "Yes. Your planet is very backwards I hope you realize."

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                  • #10
                    Our system is set up so that I have to scan an ID for age-restricted items. Last month I sold some condoms to a teen guy (who is technically not legally allowed to have sex in many states), but I had to ID some lady in her 40s for cold medicine.
                    "Is it hot in here to you? It's very warm, isn't it?"--Nero, probably

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                    • #11
                      Quoth Food Lady View Post
                      Our system is set up so that I have to scan an ID for age-restricted items. Last month I sold some condoms to a teen guy (who is technically not legally allowed to have sex in many states), but I had to ID some lady in her 40s for cold medicine.
                      I had a young lady come in one day and she picked up a pop and as she was walking to the counter to pay one of the local police came in. She asked me for 3 boxes of condoms(3 in a box so 9 condoms total...). I sold them and the pop to her and after she left the cop told me I should have carded her for the condoms.

                      I told him it never even entered my mind because I would rather her be safe then to not sell them and her catch something. He agreed but told me to start carding for them. WTF they GIVE them away in some schools around here....

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                      • #12
                        Quoth VenomX View Post
                        I told him it never even entered my mind because I would rather her be safe then to not sell them and her catch something. He agreed but told me to start carding for them. WTF they GIVE them away in some schools around here....
                        Unless its the law or store policy, just grin and nod. Then go back to what you were doing before.
                        The Rich keep getting richer because they keep doing what it was that made them rich. Ditto the Poor.
                        "Hy kan tell dey is schmot qvestions, dey is makink my head hurt."
                        Hoc spatio locantur.

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