Florida Recap

So the later part of July/the first of August I made a trip to visit my dear sister Aimee and my adorable nieces Megan and Madie at their home in Florida. The actual traveling part of the trip was pretty ridiculous. I flew standby on the way there, and ended up spending 30 hours in the airport/on airplanes to arrive there. But I eventually made it there, and then I had a blast! I got to go to the beach, and to Disney World, and then we basically just hung out.

Catch Up!

So I haven't posted anything in a few months, and I suppose I should play catch up. So far this summer, I...

redecorated my apartment

watched my little brother graduate


visited some of my favorite people; many of whom aren't photographed

fell down the stairs

made some tasty cakes and celebrated Seth's birthday

and worked on some crafts...

Explosive Days at Work

So…yesterday was a pretty normal day. Nothing to out of the ordinary happened. I woke up, chilled for a little while, got ready for the day, studied for a test, took the test, etc. Pretty boring. Later I made something to eat, and got ready for work. I left my apartment at 5:34 for work. The drive there was fairly normal. Nothing too odd. I got to work, around 5:46 and parked in the south east parking lot. I then took my time getting into the building because I didn’t have to clock-in until 6:00. So, I made sure I took a swig of water, I got out a piece of gum to chew, I made sure I knew where my name badge was, I put my phone on vibrate and put it in my pocket, and I applied some lip gloss before getting out of the car. After I was finally ready, I moseyed on up to the building.

As I was walking there I noticed that the front door was closed. “That’s rather odd,” I thought. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Costco’s front doors closed during business hours. Rather strange. So I continued to walk around the front side of the building to the other doors. Then I saw the police cars, several policemen, and all the managers gathered out front. They waved me forward and informed me that someone had called in a bomb threat. They then told me to go stand with all of the other employees in the parking-lot north of the tire shop. So I walked over there and started talking to people to get the “scoop” on what was going on, and how long ago it had happened.

Apparently the call was made at around 5:30 at which point they obviously had to take it seriously and follow the appropriate protocol. In this case it meant immediately evacuating the building. Managers and supervisors began spreading the word. And soon there was a mass exodus of people, leaving scads of merchandise, and shopping carts strewn along the way. The effects of such an immediate response are often underestimated until afterward. Ovens were left baking, machinery was left active, and countless pounds of food were spoiled.

Anyway, like I said, the police were there, and brought along their bomb-sniffing canine. Convenient, no? I’m not sure how this happened, but somebody had an amazingly bright idea to send in two employees from every department to check out their area and look for anything suspicious. Ok…not too intelligent, but it gets worse. Obviously they didn’t force anyone to do this, but took volunteers. But instead of just sending in two people, and waiting until they got back to send in the next pair, they sent ALL of the pairs in at the same time! Brilliance, I tell you! That way if something actually blows, we’ll lose several employees, not just a couple. This, of course, would result in NO liability issue whatsoever! After all the employees returned unscathed, and reported nothing out of the ordinary, they sent in the mutt. Good idea. We’ll risk our employees’ lives first, and then you can send in your dog. Foolproof plan! The dog spent about 10 minutes in the building sniffing-it-out, and apparently didn’t find a bomb.

But seriously? We trusted our lives to a dog that spent 10 minutes in a warehouse roughly 150, 000 square feet in size. Not to mention the ridiculous heights of that building. Now hypothetically, how could a dog smell explosives in a backpack that was thrown up in an air duct, or on top of the steel? I don’t care how good his little canine nose is, that is not very probable.

Regardless of the dog’s abilities to sniff out a bomb, we went back to work shortly thereafter. At around 6:30 they deemed the place safe, and so we gathered around to hear Gary, our Assistant Store Manager update us on the situation. He told us that we were going to reopen the store in 12 minutes and that we all needed to get in there and put away all of the cold “go-backs” as soon as possible. For those of you who don’t know “go backs” are the items that members leave around the warehouse, or decide they don’t want when they get to the register. So obviously there were TONS of them because everybody left their shopping carts and ran for an exit when they were told to evacuate. Needless to say there was a multitude of frozen and refrigerated items that had to be put away quickly, or had to be logged and thrown out. Well, we got all of the urgent items put away in the allotted time, and then we reopened the store.

Shortly after we reopened a couple of girls approached me and inquired if they could ask me a couple of questions. “Sure,” I replied, thinking the questions were relevant to merchandise. As soon as I agreed, one of the girls pulled out her camera and began questioning me about the bomb threat incident. First of all, that bothered me because she didn’t ask if she could record or film me. And secondly, it’s illegal to take photos, or film in a Costco warehouse because our method of merchandising is a trade secret. Regardless, this girl proceeded to question me, but it soon became evident that she knew far more about the situation than I did. Sketchy, no? I thought so. Anyway, I reported the interview incident to a manager, and was told that the police had already obtained their information because they were outside taking photos after the evacuation.

Anyway, that was basically my day. It was pretty intense and exciting, but I’m glad nothing serious occurred, and nobody was injured. I wonder what’s going to happen at work tonight.

Hilarious Times!

So last night I went with a bunch of friends from work out to eat at Iggy’s. My friend Jessica and I just ordered smoothies because we weren’t really hungry, and didn’t want to stay long because it was late and we had other things to do. So we got and drank our smoothies, got the bill, paid, and left.

She had driven me over to Iggy’s from Costco, and so she dropped me off at my car. However, we got to talking, and chatted for a while in her car. Meanwhile, she had to go to the bathroom really bad! So, we’re in the middle of the Costco parking lot, and she cannot hold it any longer. There’s no way she can run back to Iggy’s or to anywhere else for that matter, without wetting her pants. So, at that point I tell her she should just go in the parking lot because we don’t really have too many options unless she wants warm, wet pants. We get out of the car, unsure where she should go, and decide she can’t go next to the building because there are security cameras, so I grab some tissues from the car, and we run across the parking lot to a “secluded” area that was actually directly beneath a large street lamp, and right next to the road. Jessica is freaking out, and is so nervous, and I just keep telling her she doesn’t really have a choice anymore, so she gets ready to go, and is just about to, when I see a car coming, and tell her to stop. It turns out the girl in the car didn’t even see us as she drove by, but we are laughing hysterically at this point, which is most likely making Jessica’s problem even worse. As the “look-out” I told her everything looked clear, and so she proceeded to do her business.

Jess & I with our smoothies

After that, we ran back to our cars, and realized hers wouldn't start because she hadn’t turned her car lights off while we were chatting. I asked her if she had jumper cables, and she produced a set of very frayed cables. She wasn’t sure at all how to proceed, but I felt like we could figure it out. So we get them out, and after much trouble get both of the hoods of our cars opened. Since we were having so much trouble getting the hoods opened, we called our friend Melinda, to see if there were still people at Iggy’s who could come by and help us. She assured us she was getting her check, and would be right over. Just following our conversation with Mel, we were able to get the hoods opened, and so I decided we might as well just get things started. So I hooked up the jumper cables to her battery, the red or positive end on the reddest part of her battery and the black or negative end to the other part. Then I attached on end of the cables to my battery, and as I attached the other end to my battery the cables and or the battery sparked like crazy! Needless to say, we were both terrified, especially because the neither car was on. We decided we’d better play it safe, and wait for back-up, and a few minutes later Mel, Eric, and Dave appeared to help us. Apparently the black end of the cable was attached to the red part of her battery. In my defense, it was dark, and both of the parts were stained with some protective coat to keep them from corroding. So, everything ended up fine, and the guys were able to get us both on our way.

All-in-all the night was a delicious, hilarious bladder exploding, near death experience!