Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Upon the vast, sprawling virtual world that is the Internet, there is a blog that has no name. It has no recent updates. The only signs that it was once a live and active website are the decaying entries of old, spiraling-into-unfunny anecdotal memories. But the good anecdotes have long abandoned this place, and now the bad things have crawled in to claim it as their home. Somewhere amidst the dust-covered and cobweb-ridden series of tubes that make up this little bit of nowhere, an evil stirs. An evil sniffles. And an evil begins to cough, hacking rudely until it coughs up something that causes this evil to exclaim, "Oh good God, that's disgusting! Now I'm going to be suffering the aftertaste for the next hour!"

This can only mean one terrible thing. It's...




Yes indeed, when we last left this insipid--er, intrepid (and woefully behind on his blog) adventurer, it was probably still the month of September, the weather was still moderately warm and the odds are pretty good the sun was not making it a habit of having already set by the time I got off work. For better and seriously for worse, there are a multitude of reasons for this, all of which shall get their due credit in what I like to call: the rambling recap of doom!!!onesises!!1!

Flash back to roughly 3 weeks ago (as opposed to just plain flashing the general public, which these days tends to levy a hefty fine and possibly jail time for indecent exposure...even if the picnic table was consenting at the time), where our store was on the edge of moving to its new location. For those of you just joining the story in progress, and for those of you who've probably forgotten the story altogether consider it's been about 3 weeks since an update, our mall is going through changes.

Cha-Cha-Changes.

An old, giant and hard-to-find loading bay & parking area is being taken out and replaced by a new annex that will feature a swanky expanded foodcourt, connecting corridor and about 40 new stores for the mall. This is all good. The mall admittedly could use this. However, in order to create this new spot, a number of currently existing slots in the mall had to be taken out (humanely, of course). The section where our store was located happened to be one of those spots. In fact, our row of about 3-4 stores all ended up playing musical chairs inside the mall, so as to make way for an H&M store and two (as of yet unidentified) sit-down restaurants.

At the start of September, the mall had cleared out a spot for us on the other end of the mall. They informed us we had until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving to move all our stuff out of the old location. (Though opening at the new location was up to our discretion, of course.) I informed our District manager about this deadline. Twice. I informed Head Office through Emails about this deadline. Twice. My District Manager informed Head Office through phone calls and Emails about this deadline. Four to five times.

Two weeks before we had absolutely be out of our old spot, Head Office suddenly got up off its ass and decided to send someone to look at the new location to see what needed to be demolished & replaced. Way to go, Head Office. I applaud your getting on top of things. Sure, you could have had this ball rolling two full weeks ago, but you were so incompetent--I mean, utterly confident in your skills that you instead wasted two weeks.

For those of you who missed the sarcasm, that was sarcasm in the above paragraph. Sadly, sarcasm was all I could really muster at this point; all the rage was sucked right out of me because of how mind-bogglingly busy we were.

Tom the kick-ass maintenance guy worked his own ass off in order to get our store ready for us in time...and believe me, what he had to start with didn't look pretty. The predecessors to this spot tried to make the store resemble a grotto: everything covering the walls & ceiling was either a dull non-reflective metal, or a dark & light-absorbing colour. On the brightest summer afternoon, that place made you feel like it was midnight in winter. And so Tom worked his magic, swearing profusely at Head Office all the way. (It's reasons like this that I love Tom. Oh, the stories of inept upper-management brainfarts he's shared with us....)

Meanwhile, I spent perhaps far too much time in the presence of my District Manager, who pretty much camped out with us those last two weeks we had left at our (old) store. You see, the new location we now have has a few issues. Notably the size. While the store itself is tall, we've lost easily a good 4-6 feet in width and perhaps even more in depth. And our stockroom has been reduced to...well, a pair of shelves.

So yes. Lots o' crap needed to get transferred out of our store and unceremoniously deposited on other poor, unsuspecting stores. (I pity store #631 out in Hamilton somewhere. The amount of boxes we sent them probably made the manager break down into tears, or just break down.) This required me spending my shifts working like a madman to keep everything going, as I was the go-to guy for taking all the piles of "transfer to this store" crap, generating the transfer sheets and then boxing them all up.

My back aches from simply reflecting on the sad truth that we transferred out easily 70 boxes of random, heavy things.

But there was a reprieve, and it came over the Thanksgiving weekend. Through half-miracle, half me threatening to kill and eat anyone who said they couldn't work that Sunday, Mel & I had the Sunday/Monday off. We spent it out of town celebrating our 5th anniversary.

Yep. We've now been officially husband and wife for five years now, and by some miracle I haven't given Mel a reason to kill me yet. I'm just as astounded as you are, since some of the silly-assed stunts I've pulled should have incurred some level of injury, either on my part or courtesy of Mel as punishment for me being so stupid as to try said silly-assed stunts.

We stayed at a great hotel, venturing out sporadically for some shopping excursions. Most of the time we just lounged in our pleasantly spacious suite and watched the Food Network. (Speaking of, the Food Network is, at this moment, probably the only reason we'd ever decide to get cable.) This was partially due to the small and fuzzy puppy brought along for the trip. Having done the Con hotels twice now, Shady's used to hotel rooms. This time she just sulked whenever we left, and refused to leave our side whenever we returned.

The other reason we didn't run around too much was the simple fact that we were so damned tired from working on the store move. I'd been pushing myself with the transfers. And, from those of you who've seen Mel's last LJ entry, Mel had the displeasure of contending with her last days at the "thick as a whale omelette" Stratford store. She didn't really get much of a break after her last day there, since she jumped right into helping us out.

And there was much rejoicing. (Yay.)

We did, however, take full advantage of the room service and complimentary hors d'oeuvre buffet being offered by the hotel. Mmmmm...brie cheese.

Our anniversary trip was fun and relaxing...which means it was that much worse to come back on Tuesday, our final day at the old spot. Our District Manager had already stated we'd be closed Tuesday, and that was good; if she'd wanted us to stay open, I'd have probably been forced to distract her with a move ticket or three. And we only had 4-5 idiots walk up to the obviously closed front door (where it was easy to see we had less than half of anything left inside) and ask us if we were open.

Smegheads....

To our credit, we cleared out the old store by 6pm. We nabbed a number of pictures, both as we dismantled everything and after the space was emptied out. However, we need to get them off Mel's memory card and downloaded onto the computer, so those will be forthcoming. But fear not! Here are some pics to keep you satiated until then!







So where were we? Ah, yes: as of 6pm, the old store was empty. And as of 6pm, the new store looked like it had been rocked by an earthquake. Mel & I stayed for another two hours, helping to clean up the mess enough to make accessible walkways between the bunks. As a result, I missed my local voting polls by 15 friggin' minutes. Dammit. (Mel, not being an official citizen just yet, still cannot vote here. Extra dammit.)

Wednesday rolls around. We manage to drag our tired, sorry asses to the new store...only after parking near the old store and walking first to the old store, only to stare at its empty doors and ask, "Why the hell are we over here?"

Our District Manager wanted us to open as early as possible on Wednesday, which is a great idea provided you don't exist on this plane of reality. The new store still looking like hell was only part of the problem. There were added bonuses too. First off, we needed our phone line transferred from the old place to our new one; otherwise we'd only be able to do cash transactions. And second, the locks needed to be changed on our front doors.

Now for those unaware, our store door is one of those giant, metal folding doors. It resembles a monstrous folding fan in how you push it closed and pull it open. Both ends have locking mechanisms that force metal poles into holes into the ground/ceiling, anchoring it in place. We needed new locks for a couple of valid reasons.

The mall administration openly advised us to change the locks, since the three keys they had been given by the former tenants at their close did not mean that there had always been three keys for that store. There was a good chance (and thusly a high security risk) that someone still had a key that could give someone access to our store. The other reason was more petty, but just as valid. The old trio of keys had the ominous words "DO NOT DUPLICATE" engraved on them. This translates to: if we wanted any more keys, we'd have to go to the manufacturer to get spares. That is problematic, since I have 5 staffers and we all close/open the store on our own at any given time. Were we to keep the three old keys, I've have one, my other full-timer would have one, and the last key would be handed around amongst my 3 part-timers like a Nerf football. (Just without the fun squishiness.)

Anyhoo, about mid-morning, the locksmith comes to change the locks on our front door. He immediately wonders what the hell the previous tenants had been up to, since it was painfully obvious they'd fucked the locks up fantastically. (One lock was missing its rear cylinder, and the other's cylinder was busted completely.) An hour passed and the locksmith proclaimed his job done. He handed us 5 keys, all of which could be copied later if needed. Our DM thanked him and he left.

Now, Mel & I were busy working on other things at the time, so we'd had no contact with the locksmith when he left. Our DM turned to us a short time later and declared that we could now open the store and just do cash transactions. I agreed, but first I wanted to test the doors out and make certain they would lock & unlock properly.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is why you test things out beforehand.

I locked the left side of the door. Everything was fine. I then tried to unlock the left side of the door. They didn't unlock. The key was being turned around inside the cylinder, but it wasn't hitting any of the mechanisms needed to release the locks.

Oops.

I immediately told the DM about this, and we decided to try the right side too. Perhaps it was just one side that was twitchy. As we stood outside the store, the following conversation ensued:


DM: "Um...if this doesn't work, won't Mel be locked inside the store?"

Me: "Oh, she'll be fine. She can just eat my lunch while she's trapped inside."

Mel: [completely oblivious to what's about to happen to her] "Listening to the radio, la la la..."


The left side of the door was locked. And guess what? It didn't unlock! Our locksmith had gone and frigged everything up! Now you have to take into account what else makes this a comedy of errors: by this point, the Bell guy hasn't arrived to change the lines over, so we have no working phone in our store. Plus, our DM's cell phone died the day before, so she can only notify the locksmith either via mall payphone, or by using the mall admin office's phones. (Mall admin graciously let us use theirs.)

But what about Mel, you ask? What was she to do while we'd locked her inside a store that had no emergency exit in back? Oh, she was just fine. And not because I had my much inside with her.

You see, sometimes things just happen to work out in unusual ways. Remember how I'd said that the door locks had been fustigated by the previous tenants. Well, the left side had been damaged to the point that only one of the two poles could be moved. The top part of the door could be locked in place, but it was physically impossible to lock the lower part. Which means, if you pull on the door and are as ridiculously skinny as I am, you can actually slip through the open space and get inside.

So I did.

Fortunately, there was a mechanism that could unlock & split the main doors into two separate sides. This could only be done from the inside, but at least we were able to still give ourselves easy access in and out of the store. Mel hadn't even realized I'd trapped her inside by the time I rescued her. I still got a punch in the shoulder for being so cavalier about it.

An hour later, the locksmith arrived and fixed the doors he'd technically already fixed. This time, we both tested the doors out before he left again. Finally, our DM declared our new store open.

But where oh where was the Bell guy? you know, the guy who was supposed to arrive by 11am that morning? Well, he arrived at about 4pm and proceeded to do all of the following things: spend 2 hours trying to locate our phone line, nearly kill himself falling off a ladder while trying to poke his head through our ceiling tiles, and actually kill the phone & Net connections to two neighboring stores. (Now that's talent!)

For the most part, this brings the whirlwind portion of this bit o' nowhere to a close. The last week and a half has been spent tidying and organizing the store. Unfortunately for me, I pushed myself to the point of total exhaustion and for my efforts got flattened on my ass by a nasty cold. It started out in my throat, then tried to explode my sinuses like something out of a Die Hard movie. I've gone through a bottle and a half of Buckley's Complete Cold Medicine (and rediscovered my gag reflex in the process) in the meantime, and only now does the virus seem to be bending to my will.

Well, there it is.

You've been wondering what life's been like for the last month, and for me, it's been best described as: "AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUU--ooh, anniversary!--UUUUUUGGGGHHH!!!"

But all of that has passed and things should be quieting down. They'd better. If not, I'm afraid I'm going to have to start smashing things. But before we go, I'd like to leave you with Today's Lesson: wearing a Battle Royale shirt can be hazardous to your health, especially if you wander into a store, an employee sees it and they immediately start to wax ecstatic about the series, and attempt to fondle your shirt and spend the next few minutes talking about their BR fanfics and their attempt to write a BR screenplay for North America, at least until they discovered there's already one in the works. Needless to say, I smiled politely and nodded, and slowly backed out of the doorway.

Labels: 5 years of love laughter and no pants, i can has Buckleys, moving store voodoo

posted by Phillip at 8:16 AM