10-03-07 Who Turned out the Lights?

YIKES!   Two hours into the workday, the lights fizzle and blink and then BAM!   NO POWER!    I look around, the entire mall is out.  OK, well, that's actually good, because it means it's not just our store, which would be REALLY bad!    After 20 minutes, I was outside looking around and talked with some folks who had just pulled into the parking lot.  They lived on the other side of town and their power was out, too.  Turns out the ENTIRE CITY OF ABBOTSFORD was without power!  Not only that, but the City of Colby was out, too!     We heard all kinds of things about what was wrong and when the power would be back and wasn't really expecting it to be back on anytime soon.  

Of course, that put me in a panic!  Being Monday, we had a LOT of orders to get out today, and I hadn't gotten anywhere near enough of them done by 11 a.m.!    As the best report we had was that it would be at least 2:30 before the power was back on, I decided to drive home with my laptop and the UPS printer to work on the orders from home.  I could at least input them into the computer (my laptop has a backup of our program) and print the packing slips.  We'd have to drive back to the store to pack everything up and weigh it and then go back home to print the labels and then back to the store to put them on all the packages, but you have to do what you have to do, right?  

A minor detail to insert here -- I had about 50 miles left that I could drive before running out of diesel!  With no power in the two closest towns, I couldn't fill up!       I was going to have Greg drive to Edgar (about 12 miles) to fill up my truck so I could keep going back and forth!   I'll have to be more careful not to get that low on fuel!  

About 7 minutes after getting back home, I got a call from a friend in town -- the power was back!     Pack everything up again and head back into town.  This time, I made sure to stop at the filling station to fill my truck up FIRST!   I wasn't taking a chance that the power being back was just a temporary thing!      

Had to get everything started up again and start all over.  Fortunately, the computer didn't get fried from the power outage (or possible surge), so everything was working fine (note to self:  buy a battery backup for the computer ASAP!).     About 45 minutes after getting going again, a gentleman comes in and says he has a delivery for us.  Oh MY, our cast iron is HERE from Camp Chef!   Oh, crap!  That's JUST what I need today!  You see, we don't have a loading dock at the store or even a doorway large enough to get a pallet into!   That means everything has to be unloaded by HAND and carried into the store!  The driver was able to get the two pallets of cast iron (all 2,198 pounds of it!) with the use of his lift gate and left them outside the back door for us.   Now, I'm looking at the sky and the weather report is not looking good -- rain appears to be coming!  YIKES!         

I called Greg about 8 times before he finally answered his phone (he was in the shower, getting ready to come in), and had him bring a tarp from home to cover the pallets.   Fortunately, it didn't rain!  

When Greg got to the store, I had just finished printing out all the orders.   We were able to get started on all the packing.  He's doing much better on packing them, and is double and triple checking everything!   If he has a question, he asks me now, instead of guessing, so we're working quite well together and not having any more problems, which is a huge relief to both of us!  

When UPS showed up, I was still printing out the labels, but Lee (our UPS driver) started loading up the packages that were done, and Greg and I were able to keep up with getting them printed and the labels on the packages without him having to wait for us.   As Greg said, it was like doing "wind sprints" to get all that work done in such a short amount of time!  

In between all of this, I called both the high school and the elementary school and asked them to have Aaron and Abby get off the school bus at the store so they could help us unload the two pallets of cast iron.  Fortunately, they were both in good moods and didn't mind helping!  

There's lots of work left to do today, but I wanted to at least get an update on today here as it's been a while since I wrote anything.    

I think I'm going to sleep good tonight!    

Godspeed!

Julie

PS, we still don't know what happened with the power, and as usual, the local Wausau TV news stations ignored us (you would think that two entire towns being in a blackout would be newsworthy, but not according to Wausau!).    I'm sure we'll find out when our little local paper comes out on Wednesday!