I have never pledge in a sorority, though I know that many fraternities and sororities put their pledges through a 'Hell Week'. This weekend at work seemed to me the epitome of 'Hell Weekend' at Jimmy Johns. It was one thing after another, everything that could have possibly gone wrong went terribly wrong!
Friday night: One pivotal event happened this night that started the mayhem of the weekend. Our managers and PIC's (Person in Charge) are the only people allowed to slice, however, they have a major problem with turning the slicer OFF. Many times in a day/night I will see the slicer blade spinning round and round, while no one is at it. My OCD kicks in and I have to turn it off. It's bad on the machine to keep it running and I can only imagine the horror stories we would have if someone was to slip on something and fall into it. Friday night, my manger stepped outside to smoke a cigarette and left the slicer running. Much like usual, I turned it off and kept cleaning. When my manager returned the machine would not start. We fumbled around with it a few times trying everything we could to get it to start: flip the fuse box, reset the machine, change the dial, unplug it, replug it in, change the outlet. Nothing was working! The store manager even came in, despite her screaming child. By this time it was around 11 p.m. and there was nothing we could do to fix it until the morning. Shortly before we close the Illinois girls soccer team came in to order sandwiches, all 30 of them! It had been a crazy night for sales already but the $210 tab pushed us well over our $800 projected night. When we closed at midnight we had done over $1,500 in sales.
Saturday: I returned to work after a few restless hours of sleep to find that our slicer had not been fixed. The Hobart repair man was supposed to come soon. In the mean time, we were down to one pack of cheese, and one pack of beef. We had no other options but to call another store, at this point we were desperate. My manager called a store on National, they had cheese luckily! While he was on the phone I reminded him that we needed beef, and so did his brother. He left, and returned with only cheese. While he was gone the store got slammed with people. Twenty English soccer players, our usual Saturday crowd, a Tennis team, and even more younger soccer kids and their parents. We were busy making sandwiches but no one had stopped to check bread. It's a daunting task but it is something that has to be maintained for a sandwich shop to do business. If we run out of bread we lose customers, it's that simple. During the day on Saturday we managed to run out of French white bread 3 times, we ran out of beef, and once, we ran out of bread completely: French white bread and 7-grain wheat bread. Add to that: our slicer was still broken and the credit card machine we used for deliveries had also gone out, one employee was a 'no call, no show', and the new employee we had put on register for the rush was not putting tickets up for us to see. Some people waited 30 minutes for sandwiches because we didn't have their ticket, they couldn't remember what they had ordered, and we were out of bread. By the end of the shift, despite all the problems we had still managed to do another $1,500 in sales. Thankfully, when I returned later that night for the end of my split shift it had calmed down significantly. It was a steady night, but nothing too major went down.
Sunday: I went in to work Sunday with one goal on my mind: "Don't run out of ANYTHING today!" I even told the PIC that was her goal for the day! We did not achieve this goal. Some would argue that I jinxed us, I beg to differ. We only ran out of bread once, and quickly got bread from another store. I made a run to get more straws, and cups from a CVS pharmacy right down the road; and another quick trip to exchange $50 for 50 $1 bills. The day was extremely busy, with the English soccer team and the tennis team returning for a second day. Our after church rush was overload, but the crew kept up.
All in all, it was one of the worst weekends to be a Jimmy John's employee! Our store did an incredible amount of business, for whatever reason may be. However, I am extremely glad that I will not be there next weekend to deal with anymore problems that may come up!
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