Yesterday at work it was very busy. For some reason our head office decided that they needed to re-categorize the Self-Help and Health sections in the large format stores. Which means, that suddenly nothing is where it's supposed to be anymore.
Can anyone explain to me why half the diet books are now in the Self-Help section (renamed Wellbeing) and the other half are still in the Health section? No? I didn't think so.
Anyway, yesterday was the day to finally change all the crap around. We're doing our bi-annual count of the store, so it was decided that yesterday my boss and I would focus our energies on those two sections and get everything sorted out. No big deal, in fact, I was sort of enjoying it. I like it when you're finished and everything looks neat and tidy. Yes, perhaps that's sort of nerdy, but whatever, I work in a bookstore, do you expect me to be anything else?
So, as I counted what used to be the self help section I moved all the books into place where they were going to live, it was really the easiest way to do it, and it took almost no time at all to complete. I went over to the computer to enter in my numbers to make sure I wasn't missing anything and as I was part way through entering them, the power went out. This was at 4:10pm.
They'd been having problems with the cooling tower that day and the maintenance staff were running around resetting all the air conditioners in the stores, so immediately we were concerned that perhaps something had happened to one of them and that they'd been electrocuted and that the mall power went out because of that. Without a radio, we didn't know that the problem was a little more widespread than that.
Immediately everyone in the mall shooed their customers out and closed their doors. We had one girl that wanted to browse (in the dark) so we didn't shut our doors we just blocked them off with all of our roll out carts that sit out in the mall. And of coruse we followed her around to make sure she wasn't shoplifting. At any rate, we eventually decided to close the doors and have a meeting we'd been putting off.
We had our meeting and then there was an announcement that the mall would close at 5pm. I'd heard rumours about the power being out from Chicago to the other side of Toronto, but I really wasn't sure I believed that. Till I got home and my mom arrived later and told me that it was in fact NYC, Detroit, and most of Southern Ontario (CNN please note that while we may like to think we're all that's important in Canada, there actually is quite a bit more to the country than our little Golden Horseshoe).
It took me 45 minutes to get home last night. Of course, there were no traffic lights, and I guess they'd deployed as many police as they could to intersections, but still, there were quite a few that had nobody directing them. The two that surprised me the most were the ones closest to my mall which have the exits from the QEW Niagara, you'd think that they'd want to make sure there were no accidents there. Thankfully I live in the country so I was quickly able to get away from the traffic, I'd say half an hour of my 45 minute trip home was spent on a 3km stretch of the road the mall sits on.
I made dinner on the bbq and we ate it by candlelight. And by the time we were finished, the power was back on. It was about 8:30 when it came up. So we didn't do too badly. I hear there are many, many people that still have no power, so I guess I should feel extremely fortunate.
I tried to call a friend that lives in NYC last night, but my cell wouldn't work. I tried to call this morning but couldn't get through due to increased activity. And when I finally realized that the cable wasn't out, it was just the Canadian TV stations that aren't working, I saw on CNN this morning that they've not got power back yet at all. So, yes, I'm definitely lucky that ours came back so quickly.
But you know what makes me angry? People are calling for essential services only. And yet the mall that I work at is open and I have to go into work. You know what? The mall is not an essential service. If there are people who don't have power to their homes, then the mall should bloody well stay closed till all those people have their power back.
Posted by Michelle at August 15, 2003 06:43 PM