When I went to work last night, much to my surprise, I came in to see fixed windows and a brand new door where once there was plyboard!  Yes, folks, my place of employment has been fixed at last.   It only took nearly two months. 

Now, me, I was counting the days (54) until it got fixed.  Looking up and staring into blank wooden panels just isn't motivating for a fellow to do his work.  But even more so, a guy can get really tired of answering the same question over and over again. 

Every night, invariably I got asked "So, what happen to the windows?"

At first I would be forthright and honest, because maybe, just maybe, given the span of the destruction, they might not figure out that a car ran into the building.  (Most of them had already guessed that, but felt the need to ask anyway.)   A few  thought that the owners might be renovating, which, sure, also works and my patience will allow.  But no, I gave them the straight dope.  "Someone ran into the building with their car."

Which got followed by  "Oh my god!  Where they drunk?"

"No, sir, just old." 

"Ohhh... Like how old?"

"88."

"And were you here for that?  I can imagine something like that being a big surprise during the middle of the night."

"No, sir.   I arrived later.  This happened during the middle of the day.  About 2:30."

"...oh."


Now, I got tired of that same exchange pretty quickly.  And yeah, it happened pretty much time and time again verbatim.    Sometimes they'd change it up and ask about what kind of car it was.  ("Buick? "   "No, sir, a Honda Accord!")  So I just started outright lying to valued customers!  Here are some of the better ones.

"Oh, you know, just another Starbucks Drive By."

"Governor Arnold came back, forgot his wallet in the car, said 'I'll be back!" and the next thing I know, he comes driving through the wall all Terminator Style!" 

"Cow Stampede."

"I sneezed.   REALLY HARD."
 

"Somebody didn't like my service."

"Somebody kept asking too many questions."

"Man, you should have seen the fistfight in here!"

And that one led to a whole production I came up with.

They'd ask, "So, what happened to the windows?"

And I'd reply, "Well, sir, I had whup somebody's ass. "  *Fistsmack.*

I'd receive incredulous shock.  "No way..!"  D=

"Oh man!   You would not believe what happened.   These two dudes come in and start making a ruckus, y'know?  I asked them to leave, but they're punks and just start talking shit at me.   Then they started stealing my tip money!  Well, you know me, I stood all I could stand and I couldn't stand no more.   I am up on top of that counter and leaping at this one guy with a flying elbow drop and put his punk ass bitch on the ground.   His friend just stares at me like he's stupid, mouth all hanging open, but he's still standing so I start laying. down. the. law. with Thunder and Lightning."   *Pantomime throwing punches.*


"Oh my god!"  They sometimes responded.  When they did this, I knew I really had them.

"With iron and dynamite in my fists, I got that other guy knocked down and I started beating him ugly.  His friend had got smart enough, however, to get up off the floor and jump onto my back.   I get up and try to spin him off of me, but her was holding on pretty good, so all I could do was start pounding him into the glass there, so I did.   I banged him up against the wall a few times and it started breaking, so I had to go over to the next part and beat his head against that.   He's finally slackening his grip, enough so that I can flip myself around and face him, and now that I've got a hold of him, I throw him through the window! "

"Dear lord..."  I must be one hell of a storyteller, because some of them still didn't get that it was a tall tale that I was spinning for them.  That just means you have to go even further!

"But I wasn't through with him yet!   Kicking his buddy that I beat ugly in the head to make him stupid, too, just to make sure he would stay down, you understand..."

"Sure, sure."

"I turn and jump through the window after the guy with another flying elbow drop!"   It was at the mention of the second flying elbow drop that it clicked for most people.    "Now he's bleeding and begging, and my fists are a mess of bruises and cuts, but I'm pissed.  I'm just not done with the bastard, so I  throw him back in!  That's what happened to that window there.  Oh, that other one was from the garbage can we knocked over."

Finally, most cry bullshit, and I relent.   "But it was a hell of a story, wasn't it?"  And they'd agree and I'd finally get on to making their coffee.

There were other, less elaborate lies of Stephen, but they've been forgotten.   And so that concludes the story of the Car VS. Glass saga.


Post Script:  Some people feel it's necessary for me to point out that it's my birthday.   Thank you.   But I'm sick and have been for the past week or so, so I'm going to finally drag myself to a clinic to make sure it's nothing serious.
 

I've been quite ill for the past three days.   Since I only had a temperature the first day, and the symptoms are mostly physical, I've still been torturing myself by going to work.   It's still the same old thing.  No one's there to replace me if I need the time off, so I still need to be working.  

But more important than my well being is that it is my eldest sister Katie's birthday today.   I should give her a call right now before going to work.

Okie Dokie.  

So I get to the store last night and they're just getting finished boarding up the crashed in section.   Being that the store is temporarily closed, I get the low down from one of bosses, Steve, that's on site.   (My bosses are a pair of brothers that are business partners.)   He tells me that since Dave (the other brother) handled this last time, it was his turn to take care of business.   (I'll get to last time in a bit.)

Anyway, as it is explained to me, at about 2:30 in the afternoon, a little old lady was driving into the parking lot and got confused about which pedal was which.   Meaning that instead of taking her foot off of the gas and hitting the brake, she took her foot off the gas and hit the gas again.    So she comes into the parking lot and instead of breaking, she speeds up... and drives right into the building entrance way!

That's pretty much all she wrote.   No one was severely injured, though I'm told by the guy working at the time, John, that the one customer that was in the store got pinned to the counter by the garbage can that was on the other side of the wall the car crashed through.  Much profanity was expressed. 

Thing get taken cared of.  All food in the front end of the store is now suspect, so all of it gets thrown away, and a couple of handyman type construction workers that the boss knows get called in and start clearing up the mess and boarding up the ruined sections, John helps as he has nothing else to do now but help clean up.  All in all three sections of glass with each section being about the size of double doors in any store you care to walk into.   I get there just when they're about getting finished.

And yes, this has happened before.   In my memory, about a year or so ago -Boss Steve says two years, but it doesn't seem that long ago- a similar accident happened at another one of their stores.   This would be the incident which Boss Dave took care of last time.    In this case, another little old lady (there seems to be a trend here) was leaving.   She was parked in front of the store and steps on the gas... crashing right into the front of the store!   I'm told in that case, she thought she was in reverse, not drive.  

In both cases, we still had people driving up and asking if the establishment was still open.    We told them that we'll be open in the morning.   The other time they were open again after a couple of hours!  Hey, it's business as usual.

I just got a call.

Someone apparently drove a car through the doors at one of the stores.   I'm working there tonight, so I'll find out more when I get there, but... da~amn!    Looks like I'm going to have an interesting time tonight.


And this isn't even the first time this has happened.

Today is the first day off I've had in a long while.   Since Christmas, in fact.   Not knowing what else to do, I guess I'll take a shower and go into work anyway because I have to make sure that my associate doesn't screw up too badly.   It's not work, really, but unofficial, unpaid supervising.

Ah, the things I do on my day off.

In the days to come, I'll probably post more about my job as I don't really have anything else to talk about.  Or I do, but I don't want to put it down here.  I might anyway.  Who knows?

Today at work I burned myself.

It hurted.

It was recommended to me that I get a livejournal to keep track of all the other people with livejournals.   So I followed my good friends wise and sagely advice and did so.