Best… Shift… Ever

Arriving for my shift at a convenience store one summer evening, I was surprised to find the power was out. It turned out that about half a mile up the road, a dump truck didn’t put its bed down in time, and it took out the power lines!

My coworker’s shift was over, so she left. My manager had “other things to do.” I was told to put up signs and lock the doors, and I would still get paid since I had to be there. I put up printer paper signs of. “CLOSED, NO POWER.” on both doors, and proceeded to get paid to read magazines, hang out, and do nothing for almost the next six hours.

Some customers were understanding; some were not. I would like to say I was polite… but that would be lying. “What part of ‘closed’ do you not understand?” frequently came out of my mouth. With no power to the cameras, I easily got away with living out the retail dream: telling people to go away!

About 15 minutes before my shift ended, around 10:45 pm, the power came back on, and I spent the last part of my shift making sure all the machines and systems came back online.

To this day, telling people to p*** off and go away, and getting paid for it made for the best shift I’ve ever worked.