Power Outage

Sunday was quite an eventful day at work, or I suppose you could look at it as extremely uneventful if you would like. Here's what the crazy work day brought:

I got to work a little before 9am to open, as I do every Sunday morning. We opened at 10. Very shortly after we opened it started pouring rain and followed with hail. Soon, the power went out.
I've been working at the restaurant for nearly 6 years, and there has only been one time I was there where the power went off and didn't immediately come back on. Sunday was the second time. I told a coworker not to worry, the emergency lights would come on, but not surprisingly, some of them didn't.

We already had a few tables, and to bring dirty dishes back to the kitchen we had to use a flashlight. The soda machines, ice machines, grill, or heating lamps on the buffet no longer worked; the back-up battery kept the computers going. However, it wasn't long before we could not log back in to the computer.

Our manager is new, and while he is trying really hard and doing well, this is not something he was prepared for. He called another manager for help, but her family had been through a tragedy and she couldn't come right away. Meanwhile, probably 10 employees are just sitting around waiting for instructions.

After over an hour, I decided to leave. I dumped all of the tea and coffee I had just made (thinking we wouldn't reopen that day) and told everyone I was leaving. After all, I only make $3.33 an hour! Another co-worker had just had her baby the evening before, so another girl and I decided to drop in and see the new arrival.

As soon as we stepped out of the hospital I got a call saying the electricity was back on and I needed to come back to work. Dang! I was ready to go home.

I went back to work and we were still just sitting around. All of the buffet food had to be thrown away and re prepared, so we were to reopen at 2. Since I get off at 4 I didn't really see staying for just 2 hours. People were pulling into the parking lot, a lot, only to see that we weren't open. Too bad, I could have really used the cash since I only work 2 days a week. Again, I decided just to go home and call it a day. Maybe I'll do better next week...

O well. Mother Nature: you win!