work...

the plan for today was to de-flea the carpets, as we de-flead the cats yesterday and want to make sure the little pests all die this time. the plan depended on my being accessible to clear floors, vacuum, powder said floors with flea killer, close up that room so cats don't eat flea killer, then vacuum up the flea killer an hour later, move on to the next room, etc. etc.
well, that might have happened, had my "day off" not become an 11-hour furniture warehouse rearranging shift. for some reason we never hear about these massive furniture moves until the day before. i "got" to prepare some excess furniture to be backhauled to corporate warehouses. of course, seeing as how the excess furniture was, in fact, excess, it had been pushed to the most inaccessible places, in order to leave room in accessible areas for furniture we might need to sell to someone. So at about 5 this morning i rolled about six pallets of "to keep" furniture across our hydraulic lift and down a ramp into the alley in back of the store, which gave me room to work in the warehouse without trickling onto the sales floor. then a truck showed up with doubles of some of the furniture i was supposed to get rid of, and i had to re-vamp my plans. after the truck was mostly dealt with, for some reason i was in the office instead of directing my crew, and they tried to be proactive and find something constructive to do until i came back...
it has often been noted that underneath our hydraulic lift there is a mass of trash, pieces of broken furniture, cigarette butts, etc. i am of the opinion that, unless it prevents the lift from working, out of sight, out of mind, and why waste the time... but some of my enterprising crew members decided to shovel it out. so they raised the lift up as high as it could go, at which point a fluid line began spraying hydraulic fluid in many directions, and the lift refused to move, either up or down.
i am guessing that the line had been chewed open by the dead rat we found near it (i got to scoop out the rat, since nobody else wanted to, and i couldn't just leave a rat in there once all the trash was gone).
the lift being stuck left the way clear for my crew to clean underneath, but my six pallets of "to keep" furniture were now stuck on the other side. so we placed an sos service call, and hoped that, seeing as how it was only about 10am, we would be rescued before i had to leave at 2...
so i continued to "play" with the "to go" furniture in the warehouse. well, by noon we had two of the needed 7 pallets ready to go, and the mandate was to have them all done by 2, and my crew had all gone home except for one new girl (she was surprisingly helpful). i did manage to have the pallets all ready by about 2:30, but no repair people had come to repair the dock, so i couldn't pull in the pallets from outside, and i couldn't just leave pallets of furniture sitting in an alley... mostly because my new boss hasn't been introduced to our power-lifter (named "big joe") nor has my co-supervisor (the other lynda). so, they are able to roll pallets around, but not stack them on each other. of course, i have a teeny-tiny warehouse, which necessitates the stacking of pallets for them to all fit... so i stayed to rearrange the pallets and make them all forty thousand feet tall so that they can be rolled into the warehouse without stacking, as soon as the lift is fixed. i also got to rearrange the warehouse again to make enough floor space for all the forty thousand foot tall pallets. i finished up about 4pm, and was informed that i looked like charlie brown's friend pigpen.
so no, i did not de-flea my carpets today, and i plan to cross-train my fellow supervisors in the warehouse very soon.