#824: “I’m Outta Here!”

GETTING MORE TALE #824:  “I’m Outta Here!”

A sequel to Part 287:  Closing Time

Name one person who doesn’t love closing down for the day.  Work completed, clock ticks 9:00 pm, and the doors are locked.  Time to go eat some dinner and unwind.  At the Record Store, we got paid until 9:15 pm, the approximate amount of time it would take to cash out and close.  Sometimes we could do it in 10 minutes, sometimes far longer.  It was always considered a victory if you could completely close out in 10 minutes, and get paid for 15.  Small triumphs.

My favourite location to close was the original mall store at Stanley Park.  It was probably my favourite for closing because I was working alone.  Closing a store by yourself gives you a greater sense of responsibility.  Plus you could listen to whatever (metal) you wanted.

Listen, I don’t care where you work, everybody wants to go home and get refueled.  It’s a basic right.  Once you stop getting paid, you’re a free human being again.

There was one occasion at the mall I’ll never forget.  I was closing up normally and had just returned from the bank to drop off the night deposit.  I shut down the lights, packed up my stuff and locked the door.  As I was heading to the parking lot to meet my dad who was picking me up, I spied a group of three or four kids down the hall heading to the store, arms loaded with CDs to sell.  Just loaded — the group must have had 100 discs altogether.  I stealthily sneaked out of the mall via a seldom-used side entrance, hopefully unseen.

Close call!  The last thing I wanted was to have my dinner delayed by a group of kids needing last minute (booze) money after closing time.

This kind of thing still bugs me.  When I’m out shopping I’m very conscious of closing time.  I’m not going to get some sales rep to perform handstands just before closing, and definitely not after!  Some kids don’t know any better, but they should.  Didn’t they have their own part time jobs that they didn’t like to stay late for?  Did they get paid extra if they had to stay late?  We didn’t.

I was glad to say “I’m outta here!” at closing time even if there were still people wanting to come in.  Maybe we could have made more money if we did stay open, but none of it would be coming my way.

 

15 comments

  2. I do miss the satisfaction of closing down a store and then not taking work home with you. I wish we could do that today. Sadly, now that I am working from home, it seems like work never ends. I am starting to miss my commute where I had 50 minutes of me and my music time. Great post Mike.

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    1. Hey thanks John. Sorry I haven’t been around much lately. Although I haven’t been taking work home with me, my head hasn’t been in good shape the last couple weeks. So I apologize, I have not been reading/commenting.

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        1. We’re in this for the long haul so there will be more. I did 2 hours 40 minutes last night, almost completely non-stop. HMO stopped by and then some really weird shit happened with my phone. First I got a prank call, then something kept calling me and Uncle Meat together and conferencing us. It was so weird man. But also, good for discussion!

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        3. Oh we also played a game called Guess that Beverage. Every 20 or 30 minutes, Jen would bring me a drink and not tell me what was in the glass. The worst was what I thought was going to be a glass of milk — nope it was pure cream.

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