It Rolls On...

[Reyneth]

At my call center, we PRAY for power outages. But not just a regular power outage, the ones that screw the lines and take out our phones. You see, if the phones stay on, and all the computers go off, you have to pretend nothing is wrong and keep taking calls, writing stuff down. The phones went kablooey once and we hung out for 4 hours. It was AWESOME.

Yup, my workplace is due a nice power outtage. Had one a few months ago but because they changed to a new attendance/work time policy, they would have to pay us for the full workday rather than us needing to take vacation or dock time. So we had to hang out, go to lunch, hang out again while they waited for the power to go back on. Then for the computer systems to be back up, then for our phone system to work - they were literally on their last attempt to fix it (as I found out later) when it came back up otherwise we would have gone home about 3 hours early. We were down for 3-4 at that point. Ugh.

Funny story, it went out the 2nd day I was at this job, thanks to some construction at the intersection of the street (boy, do I miss it, there was one point where there was a 60% chance of losing power on a Thursday. Everyone took the stairs on Thursdays!). Because there were a number of new employees, there was a meeting while they waited to see if it would come back and everyone went around and introduced themselves and how long they've been there. Me.... my name is .... and I've worked here for (looking at watch) 10 hours. Everyone was

[MrsEclipse]

I love it when the power is out at the library. It feels all dark and mystical, ooooh.

[Hellzar]

I wish the power would go out at my hotel for a good stretch of time. That would be nice awful, I would not be able to make reservations, answer the phones, or anything just sit blissfully in the dark.

[Magpie]

I wish the power would go out at my hotel for a good stretch of time. That would be nice awful, I would not be able to make reservations, answer the phones, or anything just sit blissfully in the dark.

What about all the people who were already there, who come to yell at you because you caused a power outage? Or the people coming to check in who get upset with you for making up a stupid story that no one could be expected to believe about the computer requiring electricity so you could check them in? (I think I've read too many stories on here...)

[BookstoreEscapee]

We had the power go out at Store1 one morning, and since the only windows are at the front of the store, we couldn't really do anything anywhere else, as it was too dark (aside from the emergency exit signs which made it kinda spooky in the back of the store. The power was out for a couple hours, so one CW and I spent our time at the cashwrap unloading a huge shipment of Godiva chocolate and making a huge mess with all the styrofoam packaging (he started it, and cleaned it up). Pretty much everyone else was shelving magazines because it was about the only other place you could see well enough to do anything.

Oh, and we took breaks to watch the poor people trying to make a left out of the mall onto the three-lanes-in-each-direction highway with no stoplight (they never even sent a cop to direct traffic). I was fully expecting an accident (thankfully it didn't happen).