Let’s focus on the store itself, a bit.

It’s an old building, built in the 1960s, during a period when the country was illegally occupied, so things like ‘safety‘ and ‘keeping public informed of bad things happening‘ was not done. Like, asked my family of various disasters that happened during those years, they only heard of two of the 10 mentioned. So, fun.

The building has gone through changes over the decades, obviously, like window changes, electrical stuff, flooring, etc. So it is not as it was back then.

Now, back when the store I work in started renting space, they only had regular POS lanes, there’s even an old fire exit map that shows the old layout. By the time I started there, they were down to 4 registers and 7 SCOs after a renovation.

And three years after I started, they had another renovation.

The shop that was a jewellery store got absorbed into our floor plan. Possibly because that store was never visited by customers, like I never remember people going there, it was always a ghost town, save for one worker inside of it. Aside from the pillars and outside walls, everything inside can get changed like it's the Sims, it seems, so we expanded.

Register 4 has been removed and things have been moved around, we had construction workers come in during the night, so we did not close during the renovation and a guard was on night shift with a manager to make sure things are going along smoothly.

I do not even want to imagine how much asbestos is inside this 1960s built building, but there was always a white powder every morning after the work and I HIGHLY doubt the directors assurance that it was just dust.

It's weird, to have it changed. And things were moved around quite a bit, like canned foods were moved to be by the registers, then they were moved behind the veggie/fruits isle, nobody could find ice cream, meat corner and bakery corner got absorbed into the Gourmet and Warm Foods side.

One of the floor workers even got lost. TWICE. On the same day.

The kitchen for store staff also got renovated. Very weird not to have the trashcan where it always was. The amount of times folks just threw stuff away on reflex before they get used to the new spot was kinda amusing - as long as you were not the janitor.

We also now have a coffee machine that has cups and all, along with syrups, sugars, teas, cocoa, freshly squeezed orange and pomegranate juice and a faucet with a special nozzle for people to get free water from right by the registers.

The cleaning for the coffee machine is on the Self Check-Out Admins. So, we had to figure out the fine balance of setting up the machine to wash and keep an eye on the unscrupulous clients, because they will misbehave if nobody is there to nanny them.

Plus, when the pomegranate juice machine would seize and not work. We have to unblock it with a special wrench and forcefully spin it, which is very painful on the fingers. But even more painful was when a colleague “tried to help“ by pushing the lever to squeeze the juice, which made the gears move and slam the wrench into my fingers and go flying, while I screamed out curses from the pain. Like, you don’t start the meat grinder if someone’s hand is inside of it, why pressing the lever when I am forcing it to spin backwards is fine?

A new walk in freezer is set up, so we can just go in there and collect the needed fruits from the palettes designated for the juice machines when they are running low. Everything else is in cabinets under the machines.

It's a mess, but it gives me an excuse if I can't deal with people - either misbehaving shoppers or annoying coworkers - at the moment and need a breather.

There are two bottle sizes - small and big, each has their own price, because of the juice, with pomegranate being more expensive, because it is considered an exotic fruit in the system. But people don’t bother checking the bottles, they just grab one and get mad that their little bottle of orange juice costs more than the big orange juice - because they grabbed the pomegranate one! Nobody reads the labels, I don’t know why, it is red on black and white! Visible doesn’t begin to cover it! There is no reason to not turn your head a little bit to the left to get the orange juice bottles when you want orange juice!

On separate occasions, people thought the bottles were for the deposit machine. Like, I watched a guy with two bags full of empty juice bottles try to walk out of the store, only to be caught by the Gourmet Dept worker and was made to return the bottles, because 1) you can’t just take them with you, they are for the juice and 2) they have no separate barcode to sell them which. Another time a guy did try to buy them, but seeing as they are sold by the price of the juice, I pointed it out and he was shocked the bottles were not for 10 euro cents. I don’t get why it’s so hard to get such simple facts.

We have a bunch of pakomats - package machines, where the various delivery companies deliver orders for the customers to pick up. One of them was a source for laughs and frustration. Every building has an address, right? Let’s say this is Clown Street 11. But when people failed to open a specific machine - either the code didn’t work or there wasn’t a door with that number, people would often start yelling at - supermarket workers - about that. What was the problem that persists till this day? They got the address wrong. They are standing in Clown Street 11, while the box was waiting in Clown Street 13! And so many people would be surprised that there is a difference between 11 and 13, it is insane, how did you pass math?! And then the company removed that pakomat and now only 13 has it. And people still walk around the building, trying to find that pakomat, only to come to us, the supermarket workers, to complain about “you guys“ hiding the pakomat!

It’s worse than when there are problems with the ATM, people automatically come to the cashiers and start ranting how “your ATM is not working!“ and when we say it’s not our ATM, because we are not the bank in question, one guy just yelled that we are next to it, so it must be ours and our responsibility. When I pointed out that the ATM is closer to the bakery and by that logic he needs to talk with them about it, he just walked away angrily. So frustrating.

What was funny was when a part of the wall was fixed because it had some damage - from what I don’t know - only for the water guys to come in, dig up a path to a water pipe, packing the rock and dirt by the repaired wall, so it got damaged again. And had to be fixed, again! I don’t think it was the water guys the last time, but who knows. They always appear days after fresh asphalt was poured. Why is that? Why can nobody talk and let the roads be pretty for a bit?

The building also had some tiles on the floor changed, but seemingly in random places, at least to me. They were old, some were cracked, but they had completely new ones put there, instead of something close to the originals, which I don’t get, it’s kinda glaring when you see it.

They also don’t replace ceiling tiles, they just…shuffle them around, is best to describe it, I swear the cracks move across the ceiling, they can’t do that by themselves!

I hope not, at least. Then again, who knows, the building could be UBER HAUNTED, nobody just connected the dots. Maybe it’s more Casper then Fazbear, huh?

Alright, this parts done! Stay tuned for Part 14!