Friday, October 12, 2018

going in to work...

... at six a.m. this morning. Not all that unusual, but probably painfully early for some who enjoy that feeling of warm, cozy bed with no employment staring them in the face. Often the work scheduling guy has me coming in at five a.m., which means I have to get up at 4:00 to be relatively civil by the time I clock in an hour later. But today it was from six until twelve: not a bad day, when finished by noon and the rest of the day to do as I please.

Most of the renovations are not readily visible, behind-the-scenes work customers and many employees would likely not notice. Some is cosmetic like a coat of paint on all the walls, which corporate requires periodically to make the store appear clean, fresh and inviting. I think all the cooling equipment in the store has been replaced: reach in freezers on the prepared frozen food aisle, from A-to-Z, breakfast items to desserts have upgrades, to be more energy efficient, and with motion sensor lighting. Dairy products all are in cases with glass fronts, instead of open to preserve cooling and keep temperature more stable, energy saving as well. Much of produce area, ready-to-eat salads and bottled juices are in coolers with glass doors to reduce cost of cooling.

A pretty expensive undertaking when you consider the cost of all the replacement equipment. I asked one of the overnight guys what happens to the things they have taken out: he sort of waffled on the answer, so I am not convinced it is recycled. I'd hoped to hear about donations to some worthy cause like Habitat for Humanity 'ReStore' where it would be sold and reused.

This morning, when I got to work the guys who have been in the building overnight for weeks and weeks were still there. There were three of them working on replacing an emergency exit door in the back corner of the produce department. In a place where we could occasionally pass by and see what was going on. That big metal door disappeared several days ago, and was temporarily replaced with plywood filling in the opening. I am surprised there was not a lake there on the floor, where the ill-fitting replacement had been with all the downpour during stormy weather. Or maybe there was, and they cleaned it up before I arrived on the scene.

When I asked what was going on, seeing them working on a door of a different color (the one that had been there had recently been painted brown, and this new one was gray) I was told the old one opened the wrong way. Apparently it was not possible to just move the hinges. It had a panic bar, was alarmed, with a sign, so obviously only to be used when the store had to be evacuated. I know they thought I was both nuts-o and ignorant when I suggested/wondered 'could you just turn it up-side-down?'

The funny part is that it was still pitch dark outside. And the guys were trying to figure out how to install all the hardware: panic bar, locking mechanism, alarm components. Which they failed to do before hanging the door on the hinges. It would have been so easy to put all the parts together on the metal door before installation where it was on the floor of the brightly lit store and they could see what they were doing. But the three guys hung the door, then stood out there in the dark fumbling around. Feeling for screw holes, dropping parts, bumping around in the pitch dark before daylight, mumbling, using phones for flashlights in an effort to get their task completed before the store opened at 7:00.

When I realized they were putting so much effort into a task that would have been so simple if attempted in the bright indoor lighting of the  store, I reported to a coworker it looked like a scene from the Three Stooges. They finally got it all together, even though the door is the wrong color now. The one that opened the wrong way had just been painted brown a week ago, so I suppose the people who wield paintbrushes and rollers will be coming back around soon in the wee hours to change the color again.

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