Dancing in the dark

Electricity Pylon, crossing lines Deutsch: Abspannmast mit sich kreuzenden Freileitungen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Okay, I wasn’t really dancing in the dark…that one was for you, Simone…but I was working in the dark today.  We went in to work early to try to get some work done..and I think I was pretty successful with accomplishing quite a bit before we opened.  Then we just kept working on our projects once we opened.  I finally took lunch.  When I came back, Chris took his lunch.  And what do you suppose happened while he was gone?  Oh no…the lights went out…in the entire store…all of the power went out.  I gathered up some flashlights, then headed outside to see if any of the other stores in the strip were affected (yes, they were…every single one of them).  That’s when Chris came walking up through the parking lot.

He stood outside the doors letting people know that we were closed due to a power outage…we let the people who were already in the store continue shopping, as long as they were going to be able to pay with cash or a check…I tell you, it’s mind-boggling how much you can’t do without electricity…let’s see, of course the registers were down, the RF guns were down (so we had to run back and forth looking up prices when people wanted to check out), the computers were down (duh), oh yeah, and the phones were down.

Chris tried calling the electric company on his cell phone…of course, they track your address through your phone number.  So he gave up and told me to call, not realizing that the phones in the store weren’t working.  I got my cell phone out and called and, after much number punching, got a live person!  She explained that a circuit had locked (huh??  what does that mean?  can’t you get a key and unlock it?) and it should all be fixed by 4 pm (this happened a little before 1 pm).  So once we got all of the customers out of the store and the doors locked, we were trying to get a little work done by flashlight.

One of the girls went out to her car and got a headlamp that she uses to go caving (we have some very interesting people working there…), picked up what she’d been working on, and finished the job.  You go, girl!!

Eventually, the power was restored and we were able to allow customers back into the store.  But it was a good time dancing…err…working in the dark for those few hours~~

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