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 immediat
ely 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 th
e 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 reop
en 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.
