That's A Lotto Bitchin'

What’s worse than making a mistake and getting bitched at?

Getting bitched at for something that you have NO CONTROL OVER.

I got into work at 2 on that particular Tuesday. Boss’ wife was there, and while April still had her truck in the parking lot, I saw no sign of her. I step behind the counter, sign in, then turn towards the registers to chat with boss’ wife, as there were no customers in the store at that time. That’s when I saw it...

Our state lottery machine staring back at us with a blue screen full of error messages.

“What’s this?” I ask, thinking it’s something being resolved.

Boss’ wife doesn’t know. The machine was like that when she got in. Neither of us have any idea how to fix it. And so the barrage begins.

Our lotto machine has two basic functions that most people want from it: selling tickets for the random number games (state lotto, megamillions, stuff like that) and validating winning tickets (both scratch-offs and the ones the machine prints out). It could do neither of these things. The only lotto-related business we could do was selling scratch-off tickets. We could not sell other tickets, we could not validate anything, and we could not tell you what the winning numbers for ANY previous times were.

The night goes on. People come in wanting print out tickets. People want to validate winners, or check their tickets. It goes on. And on. And on.

At one point, a man came in to validate a winning ticket that I sold him.

Me: Sorry, sir. Our machine is currently broken, and cannot validate any tickets.

Grump: Well you should have told me that before you sold me the damn thing!

Me, Boss’ Wife, Jane: ....O_o; was... was he joking, or just a douche?

Another customer came in to play his weekly lottery game, and upon finding out that our machine was broken, stormed out in a huff. And another man nearly broke the machine MORE, demanding that we take it apart and clean it. The issue was that the comm link was down (which I TOLD him), not that there was dust in it. When I refused to take the machine apart, he REACHED OVER THE COUNTER AND DID IT HIMSELF. I mean, what the hell?

If customers were polite about it, I would tell them that our nearby competitor had a working lottery machine. But if they were douchebags, I just let them leave in a huff.

The good news is that the lottery sent a tech out that night, and he got the machine up and running again... an hour before close. But at least it works again.

Also when I was closing my drawer, I looked at the few validations we HAD done, and discovered that the last one was given at 9AM. I’m honestly surprised that the state let their precious lottery machine be out of order for (at most) 11 hours.

On Sundays

So on this particular Sunday, I got stuck with the morning shift because the woman that usually opens (Jane) was on vacation. I have no issue covering for Jane when she’s on vacation, especially since I knew she was really excited to go on this trip. Since I haven’t been trained to open yet, my boss opened the store at seven and had me come in at eight and take over. Though I’m not much of a morning person, one of the perks of the job is that we can get free coffee while we’re working, and most of our Sunday morning customers are regulars who get their coffee and their newspaper and are really nice.

It was raining heavily, and cold all morning, so of course things were slow. Boss left at around 9 to go visit a friend of his in the hospital, and asked me to call my co-worker (Rick) who was supposed to come in at 11 and tell him not to come in until noon. Fair enough, I had no problem working alone, and our butcher was there to watch the store if I needed a break, or help out with register if it got suddenly crowded (though for my own reasons I can’t stand the meat man, and didn’t plan to ask him anything unless I absolutely HAD to).

While the store was empty I made myself a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, at like 9:30, and was eating it and watching someone on the gas pump to make sure they didn’t drive off. Boss’ sister (who runs the diner that, while located in the same building, is a completely different business from the gas station I work at) comes in to get a few supplies. She notices me standing there eating and looking out the window, and goes “Wow, the top of this cooler sure is dusty. You should clean it.” She does things like this ALL THE TIME if she thinks we’re slacking. First off, she doesn’t sign our paychecks. She has no authority over us at all. Second, I was there ALONE, and while I wasn’t actively ringing out a customer at that moment, I was still doing something related to my job. Apparently to her it didn’t look like it, because I was standing there. Also, good god, I was EATING MY BREAKFAST. Heaven for-fucking-fend that a retail slave be allowed to take a few moments to have a meal, so that she doesn’t collapse partway through her eight-hour shift, huh? Everyone that works at the diner tends to be miserable with their job because this woman is their boss.

Anyways, at 10 I call Rick and tell him not to come in until noon, because it’s slow. He agrees and says he’ll see me then. I get back to work.

So boss gets back around 11:45, and meat man (who had been just sitting around for quite a while) bolts out of there. Rick gets in at noon. Things are still slow, so boss brings Rick around and shows him how to front shelves and such. It’s really just busywork, because there was no need to have two people doing register on a day like that. Rick gets done being shown what to do, comes back behind register, takes a seat on the milk crates we have there, and shrugs.

Of course, this pisses me off, because the boss showed him how to front shelves because he wanted him to DO it. Our boss is wonderful and nice, and very easy-going. He’s a family friend for us, and I know that me having this job is a favor from him to me. As such, I work extra hard, only ask for time off if I really need it, and never complain about being tired ever after long hours. If I take a break, it’s usually short, and I’m glad to cut it off if something is needed of me. When things are slow while I’m working, I go look for busywork—stocking the soda or milk cooler, cleaning things, stuff like that. So, to see my co-worker blatantly disregard something that he was TOLD to do just really got on my nerves.

So, since it’s slow, I tell Rick to give me a shout if he needs me, and go stock up the soda cooler. After that was full, I went to see if there was anything else that needed to be done, and noticed a customer looking through our (small) selection of eggs quite intently. He asked me if there were any white eggs in the back, as opposed to the brown eggs we had out. I scurried into the cooler to check, found the eggs in question, and brought them up. At the same time, I noticed that our milk cooler was pretty well empty, because I’d been unable to stock it all morning.

Once again, I tell Rick to give me a shout if he needs me, don my jacket and gloves, and head into the milk cooler. I restock milk, eggs, juice, just about everything in there, and also help my boss to clean it out and organize it a bit. The entire time that boss and I are working in the cooler (about 20-30 minutes), the doors on the store side open maybe three times, fairly well spaced apart. I figure it’s still as slow as ever, and don’t even think to step out and check to see if Rick has a line. I also figure that if they needed someone else on register, boss would tell me.

I’m sure you can imagine my surprise when I step out of the cooler and see a mob of people in front of our two registers, waiting to be rung up. I rip off my gloves as quickly as I can, tossing them onto the back counter and hurrying up... Only then noticing that boss’ wife is on the second register, ringing people. Apparently she got in just as the rush started, and jumped right on register to help Rick, so there was no need to get me from the cooler. And since most people weren’t getting things from that cooler, I didn’t notice the increased traffic.

Rick and boss’ wife finish the line, while I stand between them, bagging and getting lottery tickets down, trying to disperse the crowd as quickly as possible.

And of course, after that mob we had maybe 15 people come in the store for the last two hours of my shift.

Just a glimpse into a particular Sunday of my retail life.

Slightly crazy, slightly sweet.

The convenience store I work at is located near a river, and as a result we tend to get a lot of people coming down to go fishing—many of them from the city.

On this particular rainy, cold Saturday, I was cleaning up around the front of the store while my boss was in the back restocking one of our freezers that had been emptied out for repairs earlier in the day. Abruptly, a man comes in, looking around and seeming genuinely over-excited. He spots me behind the counter and just about dives at me.

Man: Do y’all have a bucket?

Me: ...A bucket?

Sort of an unusual request, even though we do have a somewhat eclectic stock. Well, the man and I go to find my boss and see if we have a bucket we can give him, and along the way he explains why he’s so excited. He’d been fishing all morning, and was the only person to have caught anything so far. Unfortunately, he’d only brought a plastic bag with him, and was worried that the fish would either die or rip the bag open with his spines, before he could get it home.

Boss of course says we don’t have a bucket, or a Styrofoam cooler, or anything of the sort this time of year (early October). We were standing near the pet products, and the man noticed a large, plastic jug of cat litter. Again, he turns to me.

Man: Do you have a cat?

Me: Well... yeah. I do.

Man: If I buy this cat litter, can I pour it into a bag and give it to you for your kitten, and then use the container?

Now, this was not some cheapy no-name brand of cat litter, and it was not a small container. This man was willing to just hang me five dollars worth of cat litter, so that he could keep his fish alive (he planned to use the small fish to catch a bigger fish, too). I had to politely decline, and then the boss came up with a solution.

Boss: What about a cardboard box, lined with a trash bag?

Man: That’d work!

I go back to the front to get the man one of our trash bags, while the boss goes out back to grab a decently sized cardboard box. While we’re alone up front, the man digs out his wallet.

Me: You really don’t have to pay us for this...

Man: Well, do you have, like, a tip jar or something? I feel like I owe you something.

Me: ...It’s really fine...

He insists, so finally I find one of our “quarters for a cure” stands and say that he can donate a dollar there. So we put in the quarters and then boss comes back with the box and I hand over the trash bag and the man takes off to tend to his fish.

Slightly insane? Probably.

Sort of sweet? Yeah.

Entertaining? Definitely!

Wherever you are, kind sir, I hope the fish are plentiful.

Meet The Players

If all the world's a stage, then I suppose we should meet the players on that stage. And the writer, hm?

I'm the Caffeine Chica. I may get myself a shorter nickname at some point in the future, we'll see what happens. I like video games, Stephen King, and caffeine (duh). In fact, some say I'm addicted to that last one, but I live with enablers, so it's all good.

For the most part this blog will consist of anecdotes from my everyday life. Some of them might even be funny.

The People I Live With: Sometimes called my parents. I'm not some angsty teenager, so I'll refrain from bitching about them endlessly. Mostly because they're generally decent folk, but also because that's not interesting to read about. They're both nice, and while they may come up in stories, I don't think they'll feature too heavily. But hey, we'll see what happens.

Other People: Mainly my co-workers at the gas station I currently work at. A lot of my stories will be about them, and while there may be some bitching, I'll try to keep it from just being a lot of me whining. Here's a short rundown of co-workers.

Boss - He's my boss. He's awesome and I like working for him, though he can be a bit scatterbrained at times.
Boss' Wife - The wife of the boss, who is in charge of keeping track of our (surprisingly big) inventory at the store. She's also a nice person, and I generally get along with her.
April - She's the woman that works the weekday morning shift. An older lady, and not very personable. I normally take over for her in afternoons.
Meat man - Our resident butcher. He's an ass and I dislike him, so expect to see nearly everything about him mocked.
Jane - One of my fellow evening/weekend shift employees. She's older than the rest of the evening/weekend crew, but generally friendly and easy to get along with. She has past drama with Emily.
Emily - A girl about my age, also on evening/weekend crew. I hate working with her only because I can never find a subject to talk with her about, so the hours seem to drag on and on.
Rick - Our weekend guy, a high school student involved in sports. He's the newest employee, though he does well at the job. He's friends with former employee Cole.
Cole - A former employee who quit after going to college and finding another job closer to school. Still comes in on weekends and hangs out, though.
Drake - Another former employee, who was fired. His firing is a story in and of itself, however, that will be told in due time. No one really likes Drake.

There are of course other people to talk about (such as the manager of the diner in the same building), but they'll come with time.

And damn if this doesn't seem like I'm writing a play. Ah well.