Got up today ready to start my work in the grocery. As I sit here tonight writing this I can only say one thing. "Man am I tired!!!!". I worked in grocery before, but I worked split shifts. Split shifts allows an 8 hour day to be broken up by a 2.5 hour break in the middle. Because we have so few workers here everyone is on an 8 plus hour shift. I walked 18,000 steps today. Lifting and toting goods all over the store. I am beat. I have talked to Ron, my manager, about getting a split shift and he said he would think about it. The big reason he may want me working a split shift is that when the store is open the place is packed. Being so crowded we cannot get items on the shelves very easily. When the store closes at 6PM then we can get goods on the shelves and areas cleaned up. So I suggested I work a split shift where part works from 5PM to 9PM getting items on the shelf and ready for the next day. He said he would think about it and I said it would really help my aging legs to have a break in the day rather than 8 hours straight on my feet. I am not a young man anymore. :)
As for the day, well I found out that because of the times we are very very short handed. Because of that we are required to not only do the normal grocery work, but we have to handle custodial work and fountain work. I was told it will not be getting better soon, as we will be having a few people leaving in the future and they wont be replaced. I am hoping that Delaware North decides to close certain parts of the store down when that happens, but that is yet to be seen. I don't have much to learn in the way of my job here, but there are a few new wrinkles. The first observation is we have too many different varieties of beer to sell. I cannot keep track of them all. I think we sell 24 varieties of specialized beer. Can't we just stick with PBR, Bud, and Miller? That would make my life a lot easier in the grocery refrigerator for sure. Also many items we normally stock are out of stock from the supplier. I don't know why they are out of stock, but it is a pretty large percentage. Things like fruit juices, turkey wraps, sweetened tea, Gatorade, certain chips, etc... There are quite a few empty slots on our shelves for items that may never even come this year. Our ice sales have stopped as we cannot get the ice distributor to stock it. Also they machine they gave us barely keeps the ice from freezing. The last few bags in the machine are mostly water. We don't sell any Coke products this year. It is all Pepsi, but they can't supply all our needs because there is a driver shortage it seems. So as you can see things are going to be interesting at the store for sure.
During all this the tourists keep coming. Some wearing masks and most are not. Today Delware North mandated that all employees wear masks while at work. This does not make for a pleasant time. My glasses keep fogging up and I cannot see the items I need to stock.
On a good note, it rained today and it was needed. Maybe the rain will wash away the smoke that has been hanging over this area for quite some time. The tourists did not like it at all, but the store made a killing selling ponchos and umbrellas.
Tomorrow Delaware North will be testing their workers here for COVID. So at 8:30AM I will get tested. I think they are using rapid results testing, so we should hear back fairly quickly on how we did.
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