System Failure

It was one of those days, yesterday, that I automatically expected to not go good.
Why?
Because we had important people coming into the store to visit.
Which means, yah, stress. Stress everywhere as the managers go totally crazy trying to get the store looking presentable, worrying about being fired, being hard on you for not getting tasks done quicker, etc.
I was expecting this. To be stressed.
So I was remarkably unstressed.
Until my coworker came in saying that she needed to leave an hour and a half earlier than she'd told me she had to leave earlier in the week....which was right as the store opened.
Not good. Because that would leave me BY MYSELF for the entire time that the High and Mighty visitors were going to be in the store. Which would make it even more difficult to get opening tasks done on time, before the store opened, because since I would be by myself, and I wouldn't know for sure if I could take breaks while the Higher Uppers were there, it meant I would need to take my lunch super duper extra early. :S Yikes.
Stress.
Stress.
And then my coworker told me she'd been wrong and I'd been right on the times.
*sigh of relief*
Stress went down a notch as she stayed an hour and a half later than what she'd told me when she came in. Which allowed us to get mostly everything done.
Everything but scrubbing the fish tanks, which I ended up having to do....which took me forever to do because I've managed to not have to do scrubbing (due to my arm issues) since basically January....
-I only used my right arm, the injured left arm remained nice and dry.-

In any case.
With one thing and another and customers taking forever, and our in store phones being toddlers and turning off and dying every ten seconds....
I didn't find the opportunity to finally take a second break until an hour before my shift was off.
Which, in reality, I could have just said "bag this" and gone straight through to the end. (I did take lunch at 10am, and had been on my feet for like 4 hours after that point.) I took a chance at seeing one of my associates coming in who was due to be on register, but I asked and got him to cover me for a short 15 minute break. Just to give me a chance to put my feet up.....

And that's when disaster struck.
Maybe it was meant to be that I was supposed to be on break at this time.
As who knows what would have happened, if I'd ended up in the back area behind our fish tanks....
Maybe I would have decided to do some dishes after finishing with my bug shipment test, maybe I would have been back there checking on something.
Who knows, maybe I would have just been out on the floor....

But in any case.
About halfway through my break.
I heard the call for my department to come up to the register.
My coworker would have to get it. Since I was on break.
Two minutes later, coworker was called by name to the register.
Again, didn't think much of it. Probably an impatient customer.

Five minutes later, I came out onto the floor,
To discover disaster had struck.

I hadn't heard anything in the breakroom.
But apparently, my manager on the register heard this *pop* and the sound of running water.
He'd assumed that my coworker had turned on the water in the back.
And didn't think much of it.....beyond that it was abnormally loud...
Until someone...maybe him? Saw water flowing out from under our tanks.
The back was flooding!!
Uhoh!!
Majorly flooding!

I, clueless, came into the back, hearing multiple manager voices back there. -Oh, seeing the huge puddle of spilled water spreading halfway down one of our aisles in my dept. first.
Being rather confused. Because I knew the water hadn't been turned on when I'd gone on break. And how in the world could my coworker manage to flood the department in 15 minutes?! That had to be a record!

But no.
What happened was that one of our UV Sterilizers. (things that you know...sterilize the water so that algae shouldn't grow...if I understand that right....)
Had split.
-It's a blue plasticity verticle tube. There are like 12 of them for our system.
But it had a nice big long crack in it.
Apparently it had been spraying water like crazy! I mean, random things six feet away from the tubes had been soaked/filled with water. (lucky me, I'd happened to seal up the food stuff nearby so none of that got ruined. yay!) That's how hard it was spraying. I could only imagine......
And the managers were all back there, using our scrubbing machine to suck up most of the water, trying to figure out if they could by pass the system  -as we had to turn off the entire water system to stop the flooding from the back.
Which....is bad.
Since the water system gives fresh flowing water to our fish.....
I mean, they can go a few hours without the water for sure.
A while back when we couldn't stop our old system from leaking like crazy we had to turn it off at night and the fish were fine....but this...kinda seemed more of an emergency....If we couldn't have the water on at all without a huge mess.
I mean....in retrospect I suppose we could have taken some tape or something and patched the hole that way (probably wouldn't have lasted long. lol)
But the managers were trying to get our fix-it company to come and get the system fixed ASAP -though we were told it could be up to a day before they could.
:S Yikes.

And this all happened at the end of my shift!
So I had to leave work yesterday without knowing what had happened! Gah!
But. A slight silver lining....as if things had gone according to plan, I would have not been at work for the next four days....so wouldn't have known what happened.....
But a coworker called out today, and since I was short on hours (as I hadn't asked for today off, but they'd given me today off.) and the asked me if I would cover her shift....I came in today to do so.
Which meant I got to see if the system was fixed or not!

The answer?
Basically a person came in and gave us a patch job. A band aid. A temporary fix until they could get parts ordered, or something I suppose.
Which involved cutting the cracked tube in half (so only the top portion remained.) and putting a seal over the bottom portion to keep water from flowing up.

All fixed!!
Kinda....
Somewhere in there....our electrical part of our system was disconnected.
Which means.....we can't turn off the fish system now by pressing a button. :S
Not a big deal....
We usually turn off the system to feed the fish easier (so the food doesn't just get swept immediately into the back.) But we can still feed the fish with the system off.
No...the main concern without being able to turn the system off is that we can't unplug any plugged nozzles bringing fresh water into the tanks, not without getting soak and potentially flooding the department. :S

Sooo hopefully when they come back with the 'real fix' they'll fix the electrical panel as well so we can turn off the system again. :)
Who knows when that will be....but hopefully soon. :)

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi