Monday, July 02, 2007

My Last Week


Today was the first day of my last week of work. Wednesday is my last day. Yes, my independence day is Independence Day. ;)

We had a bit of an adventure. I actually didn't serve any customers today. I would have been greatful for this in weeks past, but as all of my customers are morning regulars and I only have one more morning this week, I was quite sad to think that I may not see any customer if Wednesday happens to be their off day.

I don't know why I always get the pleasure of these early morning adventures...

We arrived to a burnt out door...oh, wait, that was January. Everything seemed fine when we arrived. We went to clock in but it seemed that the newish barista may have punched in the wrong code to the office door and locked us out. Ok, I will clock us in for the appropriate time. We go upstairs to do some opening duties. I am concerned that I may not get all of my duties done downstairs in time to open at the right time (these customers start beating down the door if we do not open at 6:50). I do down later to try again. Nope. Later. Nope. I was sure it had been the right amount of time for the lock to time out. I tried for 20 minutes to no avail. Everthing is in the office. We cannot open without getting in there. Everything including phone numbers.

We get our jackets back on and head on up to the nearest Starbucks. I used to work with the ASM on shift so we have a bit of a banter. Then he laughs at me when I can finally tell him that we are locked out of the office. So I call my manager and write down some other phone numbers.

Back at our store I try the door again just to see. No access. So I call maintainance and have a bit of a laugh with the guy because I was suprised at the cheery greeting he gave me (I had to ask him if I had the right number). I tell him my problem, tell him we can't open, and he says he will have a locksmith call me to see if he can talk me through an override for the code. While we wait, we clean.

My manager shows up. We clean...and we clean. Despite the sign on the door the customers still jiggle it, wondering why it does not open. Some beg us to just make us a drink anyways and they will give us 10 quid (tempting...I might have made out pretty big today if my boss wasnt' there!). We clean. They can't figure out why we can't open if we are all there in plain view.

After 2 1/2 hours we wonder what is up with the locksmith. A call like this would go on an emergency call, which requires a response within 2 hours. My manager calls maintainance. They say, "Oh, you aren't trading??" Uh, we said earlier that we could not open. "Oh, well we will have to send someone from Glasgow. It should be 2-3 hours." WHAH!!!! If they would have responded when we first called they could have been here by now! Ok, so we clean some more.

Our 11:00 barista comes in and we decide we should have lunch soon. At 11:30 my boss says I can go home. YAY!

So I will find out tomorrow when we were finally able to open. Unfortunately there was probably so much food that had to be thrown out because we would not have been able to sell it all without the morning rush.

I wonder if I will have any more adventures this week...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow, I bet you had a lot of unhappy regulars. But it's nice that you didn't have to wait on customers that day.
Mom

Anonymous said...

I thought about you several times yesterday- making your last drinks for your customers. I hope it was a good day for you. And I hope your last few days there are great. Still praying for you guys and your transition.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry to see you leaving the UK. I did enjoy being your secret buddy last year. Please do stay in touch with all of us at American Expats.
I wish you and yours the very best.