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This is going to take a little explaining. My place of employment, The Biggest Grocery Store In The World, has an aisle near the front end of the store which is topped with two decks of steel storage racks that extend about 20 feet above floor level (referred to as "the steel", "the racks", or "the rafters" depending on who you ask). We use these racks to store pallets of bulk-buy merchandise and miscellaneous backstock - every night at the beginning of the graveyard shift we bring the forklift out to lower the pallets onto the sales floor to be worked, and at the end of the shift we put them up. The lower level is a good 7-8 feet above the ground, not that that has on at least one occasion stopped a customer from trying to climb into the rafters to grab a case of bottled water and injuring themselves on the way down (but that's a story for another time).
This anecdote occurs as I was on my way to the time clock to sign in for my graveyard shift last night, shortly before the forklift driver is set to clock in and start lowering the boards. My path to the time clock brought me past the steel aisle, where I was approached by a 30s-ish gentleman accompanied by his two daughters. One of them (who was by no means a toddler - she looked to be somewhere in the vicinity of 8-10) was in her socks only. The customer and I have the following exchange;
Cust.: Excuse me, sir?
Me: (I'm not on the clock yet and I'm not really obligated to pay attention, but I'm a nice guy so I do so anyway assuming he's probably just trying to find the boneless olives or something) Can I help you?
Cust.: Can you help me? My daughter threw her shoes up there. (he points up at the racks) Can you get them down?
Me, realizing I'm in way over my head: Hmm... we can try... where did she throw them exactly?
Cust.: I'm not sure... (looks at his daughter) Where did they go?
Daughter: ...Somewhere over there? (points generically)
Me: Well, we'll be pulling the pallets down in a little bit... we can see if they turn up.
So I clock in and start helping unload our freight from the back room. The customer and his girls continue to stand there and stare at the rafters for a good half hour while the forklift driver gets on and closes off the aisle so he can do his job without having to worry about running someone over. He has to physically shoo them off the aisle so they don't continue to stand there and get run over while he does his job.
After a good hour of standing there watching us work, and multiple assurances from myself and my coworkers that we are aware of his cordwainical crisis, he finally gathers that maybe this is going to take awhile and trusts us when we say we'll put the shoes in the lost and found when we find them, and heads up front to pay for the $25 worth of stuff he had in his cart.
In due time, we eventually finished lowering and downstacking the pallets. Lo and behold, the shoes were nowhere to be found, and they didn't appear to be anywhere on the steel itself. The only possibility remaining is that the girl somehow managed to toss her shoes with such precision that they went over the pallets and fell into the couple-of-inches gap between the back end of the steel and the back side of the shelving on the next aisle over - in which case, they're gone - ain't nothin' comin' back from down there, and if it did, you wouldn't want it.
I guess I can't really call the customer himself sucky - he was just stuck in the middle as much as I was. But all the same, this really ought to be a teachable experience - don't let your kids throw their shoes around in public.
This anecdote occurs as I was on my way to the time clock to sign in for my graveyard shift last night, shortly before the forklift driver is set to clock in and start lowering the boards. My path to the time clock brought me past the steel aisle, where I was approached by a 30s-ish gentleman accompanied by his two daughters. One of them (who was by no means a toddler - she looked to be somewhere in the vicinity of 8-10) was in her socks only. The customer and I have the following exchange;
Cust.: Excuse me, sir?
Me: (I'm not on the clock yet and I'm not really obligated to pay attention, but I'm a nice guy so I do so anyway assuming he's probably just trying to find the boneless olives or something) Can I help you?
Cust.: Can you help me? My daughter threw her shoes up there. (he points up at the racks) Can you get them down?
Me, realizing I'm in way over my head: Hmm... we can try... where did she throw them exactly?
Cust.: I'm not sure... (looks at his daughter) Where did they go?
Daughter: ...Somewhere over there? (points generically)
Me: Well, we'll be pulling the pallets down in a little bit... we can see if they turn up.
So I clock in and start helping unload our freight from the back room. The customer and his girls continue to stand there and stare at the rafters for a good half hour while the forklift driver gets on and closes off the aisle so he can do his job without having to worry about running someone over. He has to physically shoo them off the aisle so they don't continue to stand there and get run over while he does his job.
After a good hour of standing there watching us work, and multiple assurances from myself and my coworkers that we are aware of his cordwainical crisis, he finally gathers that maybe this is going to take awhile and trusts us when we say we'll put the shoes in the lost and found when we find them, and heads up front to pay for the $25 worth of stuff he had in his cart.
In due time, we eventually finished lowering and downstacking the pallets. Lo and behold, the shoes were nowhere to be found, and they didn't appear to be anywhere on the steel itself. The only possibility remaining is that the girl somehow managed to toss her shoes with such precision that they went over the pallets and fell into the couple-of-inches gap between the back end of the steel and the back side of the shelving on the next aisle over - in which case, they're gone - ain't nothin' comin' back from down there, and if it did, you wouldn't want it.
I guess I can't really call the customer himself sucky - he was just stuck in the middle as much as I was. But all the same, this really ought to be a teachable experience - don't let your kids throw their shoes around in public.
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