A Fresh Coat

I spent the bulk of the day cleaning. In the next few days, another manager or group of managers from other stores will judge our store on its cleanliness. This is always a tough time for the team because we clean and clean and clean; yet it almost never makes a difference, because we can only be as clean as our customers and the age of the store allow us.

So, as I said in the beginning I spent most of my time cleaning. The first thing I do in the morning is clean the bathrooms. I think I've mentioned that this is usually my favorite time at work, because it allows me to have a few quiet moments before associates and managers start laying down demands. I make that sound worse than it is. After I clean the bathrooms, it is nearly time to open and my second task is to wipe down all the carts.

This is not a task I do daily, come to think of it; I don't think I've ever actually done it before. I know I've attempted to dry carts for customers, but I never cleaned them. So I take out the Sani-Spritz Spray II, spritz the carts and start wiping them down. Not the most glamorous of jobs, but it did keep me busy. One of the tools I like to use when cleaning are latex gloves. This was the crux of the experience, because every time a customer was ready to pay, I had to take off the gloves and ring the customer through. After helping the customers, I put on a fresh new pair of gloves. I got both tired and good at putting on latex gloves. Sadly, it's always been a slight dream to be able to put on gloves as seamlessly as they do in medical drams like ER, and even The X-Files as I have seen Scully do a thousand times before.

After I returned from break, I was instructed to do my favorite task of all time, paint. That's right ladies and gentlemen, the painting wasn't done yet. This time I had to paint the doors. Immediately I began to panic like last time. I don't think I did a good job last time, and this time I let my general manager know it. She didn't seem to mind, but I could see my blatant lack of experience shine through. Those poor doors went through a lot.

I had three doors to paint. The first door took the longest because it was absolutely filthy. The second door was easier and more interesting. Let me tell you about the second door. There was tape all over it; some of the tape was fresh while other pieces were painted over. I used a scraper to take off most of the tape. Afterwards, I grabbed a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to try to get the goop that was left behind. The thing about the Magic Eraser is it will take paint off walls, but what happened next was a complete surprise.

I washed the door with the magic eraser and got most of the sticky goop off. I realized I still had some pieces of tape on the door, so I grabbed the scraper and went to scrape of the tape. I put the scraper to the door and pushed up and down came a long strip of paint. I kept scraping up and more of the paint came off the door. Soon I had most of the paint on the floor in these long strips. It was the most satisfying moment of the day.

All the while two managers were trying to scrape off this horrible green paint off the third door with little success. I won't go into the details, but suffice to say, it was like watching Laurel and Hardy scrape paint. After I finished the second door, I moved onto the last one. This one needed the most work of all and I just didn't have the time to fix it. One of the managers said he would work on sanding down the divots so I could get it painted tomorrow. I can't wait.