"It could only happen on an Andy Beard close!"?
# 07 June 2006 01:07
Well, so I'm not superstitious or anything, and I'm sure I can't even speel it, but some of you may remember me saying a week or so ago about 06/06/06, where me and Ad, the Store Manager were sitting in the office and he said "I wonder who's shift is on 06/06/06. I bet that's gonna be fun. It's prolly mine." and I said "No, it'll be mine cos that's just my luck." And it turned out that it was his open and my close. SOOOO, the story begins...
I get to work at about quarter to 2, cos we had a managers meeting at 2pm. I already knew I was one crew member down, so I got there early so I could do my floor plan to make sure I was alright for crew anyways. And I was, it looked like. So we go for the meeting and learn about all sorts of wonderful promotions that are going to be a major pain in the arse in summer, then near the end of the meeting Ad goes, "oh by the way Danny is sick". I'm like "OMG" but decide I'll sort it out laters, cos monday night was fairly quiet anyways.
And then Mike (Supervisory type person above the Store Manager) goes "Oh, I need you to detail clean the RollerGrill toniught too, cos it looks a bit crappy." So I like basically say I will, although without much enthusiasm.
So the shift starts off... Most of my people don't start til 5, and I manage to call one person in extra to help out til 11. We were getting pretty busy, but we were coping alright. The real fun stuff all happens later...
About 9pm we usually skim all the tills and take them all back down to the £50 float that it started off at, basically cos if you're gonna get robbed it'll be late at night usually, cos there are less people about. But anyways, I don't do that, cos by this time everyone is running around like headless chickens. cos by this time we have had a couple people go home cos their shift was over (and they had stopped over anyways).
I blagged Josh to stay til 12, he should have gone at 10. So... about quarter past 10 I go to the "corral" (it's basically a shed in the yard, lol. Silly name, yeah) to count the toys, and I hear this load crashing sound from the kitchen. And think "There goes the dive (washing up) all over the floor." And pay no mind, it happens more often than is funny; it's just a pain cos you have to wash it all again.
But then I hear Brett calling me a few times. So I head back inside to see what happened...
The UHC is a big heated holding cabinet where we hold cooked chicken products that haven't been assembled into burgers or boxed into sets of nuggets or whatever. It sits on top of a trolly-like thing and is about 5ft 9in tall altogether, and 3ft square. It had fallen over. A wheel had snapped off when someone tried to move it over so they could sweep under it.
Not only had it fallen over and a wheel fell off; but it had hit the chicken-side dressing table and the weight of it had caused a wheel to snap off that, too.
Not only had the UHC lost a wheel, fallen over, and broken the chicken-side dressing table, but the chicken-side dressing table is where we put things after we have washed, before they get put away properly. So the aforementioned clean stuff was now all over the floor, scattered around the collapsed UHC and everything that was on the shelf underneath the UHC itself.
So yeah, walk into the kitchen to be confronted by Josh going "it was an accident!"
Brett had a face like "OMFG!?" and Mitch had apparently just been running around in circles, with a similar expression of "OMFG!"
So we set about getting the UHC back upright, it had unplugged itself when it fell, so I said to just leave it off. There was a rack for pairs of tongs to hang on which was now as flat as something quite flat, and a couple of the tongs were bust anyways. We straightened that all out though.
Meanwhile the chicken-side table was looking decidedly precarious, so I unplugged the RollerGrill which sits on top of it (the RollerGrill is kinda like one of those George Foreman thingies) and moved it somewhere safer. Unfortunatly this meant there was nowhere to plug it in, and it would cool down too much for me to clean it. Never mind, eh?
After that disaster we manage to make it to 11pm so I can close. YAY!
Unfortunatly nobody knew how to do the shake machine or coffee machine so I had to start them off before doing my managers stuff. I ended up doing the inventory after midnight, lol. We got out at about quarter to two. Which is quite a late one, really.
It's not the best close either, but I only had myself, one experienced crew member, and one newbie on the close.
Oh I missed something, I had been debating with myself whether to call Ad, and let him know about hte UHC, seeing as he might wonder why everything was wonky when he got in in the morning, as he is on the open again. And he said--and this is the REAL freaky part--that Mike was bringing in two new wheels for the UHC in the morning anyway.
We knew it was wonky, I had noticed it on a close with the infamous Charlie about a year ago or more, and she had once said, "You can just gaurantee that if it ever falls over it'll be on our shift", Charlie had left though, so she missed it, and I was here to see it. craziness.
So yeah. Nice shift. It was one of those things where you just HAVE to laugh, cos there is nothing else you can do really. :P
Hopefully it won't decide to fall over in the night or anything. Fingers crossed...
'til next time!
x
© Andrew Beard, 1997—2008.