when he spilled...

... the little zipper bag holding about a dozen of those little plastic flosser things for personal hygiene, he wanted me to think there was a problem. Bought at the Just-A-Buck store for: $1! You get maybe four dozen in the original packaging, used for cleaning spaces between teeth. With a little short length of dental floss stretched between ends of a U shaped piece of plastic you hold and proceed to get the corn shreds from the narrow spaces between molars.

The Man Who Lives Here was sitting at the table last night and picked up the little plastic zip bag, accidentally had a small spill, and they all fell out: only about ten or so, as the bag is nearly empty. But he said a bad word, so I looked up to see what was going on. He reported he had 'a crisis'. I said "No, you are wrong about that." He asked what I meant? So I told him dropping a hand full of those little plastic hand-held flossing devices did not qualify as a 'crisis'.

A crisis is when you drop a whole flat of blueberries at work, and all the clear plastic shipping containers fly open. Airborne blueberries everywhere - especially bad if it happens out of the smooth sales floor, where dozens of passers-by are pushing grocery carts and shopping. The berries are so nearly spherical they roll every where. Like dropping a case of marbles on a slick surface. You can envision what a spilled box of marbles will be like - traveling at a high rate of speed with no impediments!

Not so bad back in the prep area, as the floors are all sloped towards drains built in when the building was designed. But out there where customers are pushing their carts, on a mission to get the goods and get gone: a recipe for disaster. You cannot get to the stock room and come back with a broom and dustpan fast enough to prevent people from stepping on, squishing blueberries. Which then become 'Slick as Owl S#*t' on that slippery floor.

Or the crisis could be when there is a fresh fruit BOGO, and it takes every employee in the departmetn to stay ahead of demand for double quantities of sweet, cold cubes of watermelon. We can't cut it fast enough to keep the reach-in coolers filled, with customers being lured in to shop for the Buy-One-Get-One bargains of in season juicy ripe watermelon cubes, packaged, weighed, priced and ready to eat. If you happen to be the unlucky person designated to weigh and price a very heavy tray filled with bowls of ready-to-serve fruit, and inadvertently drop the entire tray someone else has spent thirty minutes preparing: That Is A Crisis.  You might want to clock out and beat a hasty retreat!