GETTING MORE TALE #489: I Forgot To Remember To Forget

Here are five short stories about forgetfulness in the old Record Store Days!

1. The Boss Man lived his life via one of those day timer books. Everything was in there – all his contacts, all his notes, where he had to be, when he had to be there, everything. So it was quite difficult for him when he left the book on top of his car and drove off! Needless to say he had to buy a new day timer and start over.

2. In my last year, I totally forgot I was working a morning shift. It was during the Christmas rush, and we had two people opening:  me and one other guy. Since my reputation was that I showed up at least an hour early for an opening shift, my absence was noted before we actually opened. My co-worker Kam called me. “Did you forget you were opening today? You’re usually here by now.” Quickly covering for myself, I answered “Nah I was just doing some banking, I’ll be there really soon.” Saying this as I pulled on my pants trying to get out the door….

3. Ah, daylight savings time. Spring forward, and fall back! One day the Boss Man called me from our store in Waterloo.  Keep in mind, I always got to work early except for that one time!

“Mike, have you heard from [“Bully” – name redacted]?” She’s not here at the store yet.”

I answered him no, but that she’s not usually in that early in the morning anyway, and not to worry. She’d surely be in before opening.

“But she’s late!  I had to open the store!”

But she wasn’t late, and the store wasn’t supposed to be open. The clocks had turned back, but the boss forgot to change his. The boss got there early without realizing it and opened the store early anyway! We had a good laugh over this misunderstanding.

4. They had me running all over the place. I drove all the way to open a store in Oakville, Ontario one morning, only to discover I forgot the key to that store at home. Thankfully the boss man wasn’t far away and within 20 minutes he was there to open the door for me! Crisis averted again!

5. Once, and only once, somebody forgot to lock the door at closing time. I opened the next morning and was shocked to find the door unlocked. Obviously nobody had tried the door during the night or the alarms would have gone off. That was scary! My dad always taught me to lock up the doors when you leave a place. In fact there were times – many times – on my drive home when I couldn’t clearly remember locking the door, so routine had closing become. So I would drive back and check. I never left the door unlocked, but I also never would have been able to sleep at night if I didn’t go back to check!