Weird dude

It has been almost a month since my last post, and that was hardly a real post. However, I as I sit at my desk at work at 3:21 in the morning, I find myself with an abundance of time on my hands. We have been remodeling the store for the past three weeks, so my assistant manager and I have had a lot of early mornings and long days since. The crew has been working 6:30-6:30 for three weeks straight! What dedication! And the store looks phenomenal. They will have about a half day tomorrow and then the store will be ours again! I did finally have a day off last Friday, so at least DeWayne (my assistant) and I both had a day off in the last few weeks.

That brings me to tonight. Since today was the last full day of work for the construction crew, they scheduled a cleaning crew to come out and strip, seal and wax the floors and then dust everything and just do general cleaning from the remodel. However, the "crew" turned out to be one guy. He got here a little before 6, which is when we close. We got everything moved off the floor onto a carpeted are so that the floors could be finished. He started working on them about 6:30 and here we are almost 9 hours later still plugging away. The "crew" had estimated that they would finish around 1 or 2, however, when the "crew" turns out to be singular rather than plural, we are now looking about 6 a.m. Guess I will be here to open the store in the morning!

Something about this guy is just a little weird. And when I say a little I really mean a lot! When he got here I introduced myself and told him I was the store manager and that I would be here through the night until he finished. He told me his name and I immediately deleted it from my brain. Of course, 10 minutes later I needed to ask him a question, so I had to ask him his name again. This is when it got weird. I said. "I'm sorry, can you tell me your name one more time?" And he replied, "It can be whatever you want it to be." Excuse me? I shot the construction foreman a "what-the-f kind of answer was that?" look. He chimed in quickly and said, "Timmy. His name is Timmy." Riddle me this readers? What's creepier, his response to my question or going by Timmy at the age of 40? Of course, the foreman could have been pulling my leg when he said Timmy. I have been calling him that all night and he has not corrected me. Either that is his name or he enjoys being likened to Lassie's boy master.

Then things got a little weirder. The building we are in closes at 10:30 and is locked down tight. I was in my office and Timmy was on the floor doing his thing. The night manager, who is a student, knocked on the door to let they guy know that the building was closing. Timmy told him that he had to leave the side doors open so that he could bring his equipment in and out. Next thing I know my phone is ringing and the asst director for auxillary services is calling me telling me that they cannot leave the side doors open because people have wandered in after hours before. Of course, this is the first I am hearing any of this. I walked out to the floor to find Timmy having what can only be described as a temper tantrum. I suggested he pull up to the back loading dock, which I have key to, and we can unload his other equipment there. His response? "So you think you can unload a 3,000 lb machine up onto your loading dock from my van?" Uh, no, I never claimed to Hulk out after 10 p.m., but surely their is another solution to this situation. I was still on the phone with the asst director and she is giving me other options. Meanwhile, Timmy "pissy pants" was talking over me and saying there were no other options than to leave the doors open. We resolved to bring all the necessary equipment in through the side doors and then call campus police to let him out that way when it was needed, presumably around 3. "What's that Lassie? An alternate solution? Good girl!" At the rate we are going now, the building will reopen before he is finished, so Timmy threw a tantrum for no reason! I did tell him he needed to chill out and that if he had something to say to staff that does not work for me, but instead NSU, that he needed to go through me first. This did not sit well with Timmy. "I have never encountered this many problems on a job!" Must be his first night. Sounds like somebody needs to change their dirty pee pants!

Once Timmy had a second coat of wax on the floor he decided he wanted to be buds again. I was moving furniture in our cash office and I head him say something, so I popped my head out. He began rambling on about waxing floors and shines and other things I did not care about. I zoned out and nodded, but I was not listening. He stopped talking for a while, so I thought it was my turn to say something. "Is this water or oil based wax?" I got as far as "This is water based. You wouldn't want to.......," before I zoned out again. He was snacking on some trail mix that I told him he could take from the floor if he got hungry. Timmy needs to keep up his strength! He asked me if I wanted some and I said, "Thanks, but no thanks. I'm allergic to nuts." He gave me a sad look and said, "Well that stinks! I had some peanuts out in the car that I was snacking on on the way here." I'm not sure why that story had to be told, but I rolled with it.

I am not sure where this story will go from here, but I am quite sure it is not over. We are about to round 4 a.m. and only the tile has been finished. He has not started on the Toli (fake wood looking tile) which takes a different kind of wax. I could probably tell you what kind of wax if I had been listening to him several hours ago, but that was the part of the conversation that sounded like any adult on Charlie Brown.