I don’t talk about work much because the place I’m employed by gets pissy when its employees say they work there. I’ll just refer to them as Game Retailer for this next bit.

So it’s been a busy day, nothing but a sprint for the finish line since the moment I punched in. Lots of people combined with getting ready for inventory means that there’s never a dull moment. Mini-rushes, sidework, and dealing with the second controller on the 360 interactive quitting (for a total of zero working controllers now), combined with one final press of people at quarter of closing, manage to put me way behind schedule. No big deal, I’m not complaining. If I wanted a boring job I’d be doing something else.

I bus to work, by the way. The mall closes at 9PM, the last bus is 10:10. That hour and ten minutes is plenty of time for anything. Usually.

So, we’re behind schedule but nothing the part-timer and I can’t handle. He’s new, but can clean the floor well enough while I take care of paperwork. He gets done at his scheduled time of 9:30 (plus a few minutes, oh well) and I soldier on. Quarter to ten arrives and I’m basically done. With 25 minutes to go before the last bus, it’s time to sit down for the first time in what feels like forever. Aaaahhhh… *happy sigh*

Small tangent- Neil Gaiman is writing The Eternals, and I’m surprising myself by actually enjoying it. At the very least it made for a nice read after a stressful day.

10:00PM and all is well. Time to amble to the bus stop, or maybe walk across the parking lot to the grocery store for some last-minute supplies? But… what’s that white stuff on the floor? Why didn’t Part-Timer get that while vacuuming? Wait, water’s dripping? Oh crap.

The “white stuff” is chunks of ceiling tile that gave way when water from the leaking air-conditioning unit got too much for it to absorb. There’s a steady drip coming down all over the wall of games, because it couldn’t happen in the middle of the store where all I’d have to do is put down a bucket. Thankfully it’s just on empty PS2 cases, but there’s an awful lot of them to take care of.

Ok, I’ve got ten minutes to deal with this. So- call store manager, pull product from the wall, arrange on floor to dry, place buckets, realize the wire shelving the water is dripping through is making it splash all over the place, pull all product from the offending shelves, pull shelves off wall, place buckets (actually emptied trash-cans because it’s all I can find) underneath, done. Or not, because there’s an overhead bin stuffed full of live copies of Kingdom Hearts II overstock. If the water collapses the celing tile in the night, everything there is coming with it. Crap, I don’t have time for this!

Using a step-stool in a non-OSHA-approved way (because it’s faster than fishing out the giant ladder), standing on the bar designed to prevent you from falling off the top step to your doom three feet below, I pull down the entire display, balancing precariously all the while. Stupid? Sure, but fast too. One more check to see if I missed anything and this time, I’m well and truly done. Yay!

Until I get out to the bus stop and realized I forgot to turn off the air conditioning. Leaving it on means it will drip all night, with consequences I just don’t want to think about that late in the day. Thankfully, the driver was an undertanding soul and I actually had almost a minute to spare anyway. One last sprint back to the store and that’s taken care of. Finally, finally, I get to the bus, sit down, and not worry about it any more. Godzilla can come stomping through and there’s nothing I can do about it now.

The store manager opened this morning and knew about the problem. Even so, I’d hate to see his face when he discovers what that section of the store looked like. Games spread all over the floor to dry out, piles of games that didn’t need drying but were in the way of shelf removal beside them, wire shelves on top of dump bins, two mid-sized trash cans acting as buckets under a drip that, hopefully, didn’t collapse any ceiling tiles in the night, and a dismantled Kingdom Hearts II display. It’s amazing how, in just ten minutes, you can turn an orderly store into a disaster area.

I’m due at work in about two hours, as I type this. Should be an interesting day.