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!

 


In doing a favour for a friend and fellow store manager, I suddenly found myself slingshot back in time to about 4 years ago. I spent this past Wednesday covering a shift at the Fairview Mall location, ending up in the very store I first started with. (No province-wide blackouts in the middle of this shift, though.) There was a slight sense of novelty in being back in a mall I’ve barely set foot in for years; give me a week there and I’m sure it would have quickly worn off. I speak from 2 malls’ worth of experience.

It’s quite the strange sensation to take stock of what has and has not changed within the store and the mall itself since I left. The mall’s undergone a substantial facelift, sporting a fancy foodcourt and many new namebrand stores. On the downside, it does have an even more pretentious feel than ever before, a feat I would have never though possible some four or five years prior. The store, however, has seen more behind-the-scenes changes, making me thoroughly jealous. Lots of new shelving units litter their stockroom, giving them a lot of organizational room that we’d never had when I had been a full-timer there.

Hell, my store’s current must-walk-sideways-to-get-anywhere-in-it stockroom has no organizational space…mostly because it has no space, period. Is it wrong of me to admit to shelving envy? Should I start overcompensating by bringing in larger, longer shelves? Should I start buying those Swedish Shelving Enhancer pumps I’ve seen in my Email spam folder?

As for working in Fairview, there’s also an inherent strangeness in being in someone else’s store. They have their way of doing things, and despite being a manager with near limitless power, you have absolutely no idea of whether or not you can touch anything lest you accidentally disrupt the delicate balance of order the other manager has created. It’s kind of like being in a museum.

That’s not to say Conestoga doesn’t have its own quirks. Consider the very surreal encounter I experienced last week:

I’ve mentioned this before, but our mall is currently undergoing renovation and expansion. There’s construction all over the place, especially in what used to be an epic loading bay in behind our store’s current location. They’re building a new corridor and food court, and a part of this expansion piece is a new and very long service corridor that includes a new, indoor location for our cardboard and garbage compactors.

Which brings us to last week. By now the compactors had been operational in their new chamber for just shy of a month. Almost all of the mall employees knew where to find them, and how to get there amidst the new maze of service tunnels. I was hauling a large box filled with collapsed cardboard from the day’s stock, idly humming to myself.

I got to the set of metal, double doors of the compactor room, set my boxes down to open the doors. It was then that the universe decided I was far too carefree and dropped me into a Resident Evil game.

The first indication that something was amiss was the plastic dropsheet hanging over all four walls, even covering the doors from the inside. I paused in the doorway, a perplexed look on my face. But then the man in the white biohazard suit cheerfully stomped up to the doors and assuaged all my fears. At least I assume it was a man; he sounded like a man, but it was so hard to tell through that giant gasmask he wore.

He demanded to know what I was doing, and when I stammered and pointed to the cardboard, he stated, “I’ll do that for you” and then stole my cardboard. The last thing I saw as the doors swung shut was another person in a white biosuit spraying something onto the walls.

Naturally, I turned away, and with a sincere smile on my face, decided that I’d always let someone else go into the compactor room first whenever possible from that point on, just in case the horrible mutant cockroaches were feeling a bit peckish that afternoon.

To this day, I have no idea what they were doing in there. They could have been just washing down the walls, or adding some sort of chemical sealant to the room. Or it could be something to do with the aforementioned mutant cockroaches.

Don’t laugh about the cockroaches: the mall expansion now includes a very large underground corridor and a series of connected rooms. I’ve watched enough ResEvil games being played to know a secret lab when I see one. All we need now is the Umbrella logo, and we’ve got ourselves a zombie outbreak!

Which does bring up the question of what’s more preferable: a zombie outbreak or a swine flu pandemic? Certainly, the zombie outbreak will be more interesting, and it’s quite easy to rectify that problem with a few well-placed headshots, but at least a swine flu pandemic doesn’t have the potential to end society as we know it.

I shall ruminate on this while Mel plays Lego Indy in the background....


Today’s Lesson: contrary to what the name of the band would have you believe, the newly emerging group Cobra Starship is not in fact a GIJoe cover band. Which strikes me as odd, since with the upcoming movie this would be the perfect time to have a GIJoe cover band. Their first album would also have to be entitled, “And Knowing Is…”

Labels: strange manager in a strange mall, The Umbrella Recycling Program

posted by Phillip at 6:58 PM