Work was strange today. At one point we needed three people doing returns because the line was suddenly, randomly, that long. Then I wound up with no real assigned register or job, so I wandered around the front end restocking displays. I got to see lots of things I don't normally notice because I'm too busy.

There were customers quietly trying to decide if they could get away with one large dehumidifier, or if they needed to spend the extra money to get two small. Customers comparing labels on the different mold control products to try to figure out which one would save their hardwood floors. Coworkers lost in thought in a quiet pause between customers, mentally mapping out the steps they had to take to gut and rebuild their own homes.

People are still buying flashlights. They're still buying batteries in bulk - and I wish you could see just how much people's eyes light up when someone wheels a pallet of D batteries up to the front, after a week of us being out. Cleaning supplies are flying off the shelves. I kind of wish the gloves and proper safety masks were too, because I don't like thinking about people breathing in all that mold and paint dust and who-knows-what-else when tearing up carpet and ripping out drywall. But I can't force people to buy them. Best I could do was to stick some in the empty spots in the cleaning display.

So...three really hopeful signs from yesterday. First, we were able to keep generators in stock all day for the first time in two weeks. That means that most areas have power back. Second, today was the last day of gas rationing in NJ so I guess the refineries are back up and running. Third, I heard on the radio that they're working to get utilities turned on at Fort Monmouth - there's long-term temporary housing for up to 600 families there, and they could start moving people in by the end of the week.

Customer purchases have definitely been shifting from survival to cleanup. Mold control in particular has been in high demand. On one hand, it's quite amusing to have to demonstrate a mop with a twist-to-wring mechanism to a woman who declared said mop to be newfangled and complicated. On the other, I met a couple trying to save the hardwood floors of the house they've lived in for over twenty years, and a man looking for supplies to pull up all the carpeting on the ground floor.

I saw the woman I wrote about last week, the one who was so overwhelmed she started crying. Her eyes were so, so sad. I hope she's okay.

I heard a story on the radio that made me nearly cry.  There's a 10-year-old boy who has a football signed by the Giants players Nicks and Cruz.  Most adults around here would pay through their nose to have that ball.  And this kid is selling it, so he can give the money to his neighbors so they can fix their houses.  A 10-year-old kid!  Part of me is hoping this somehow makes its way to the players and the kid gets another ball.

Finally...I saw a picture of the aftermath today that I hadn't seen before.  It was a photograph from Hoboken showing floodwaters surrounding a fire station.  And THEN it finally really started to hit me.  My area is in fairly good shape.  But that fire station...I used to walk past it.  And I saw it out the window a lot going to different sports meets.  I KNOW how far away from the water that building is.  And it was flooded.  A couple feet deep.  It just doesn't hit you until it's something you're used to.

Athena's hitting us hard. We've already got more snow at 10PM than was predicted for the whole night. I've heard reports from several customers that some of the towns have re-lost power. We had a nice blue ball of light and about thirty seconds of darkness before the generators kicked in at work, then power came back and flickered on and off for a while before stabilizing. On the plus side, the wind isn't as strong as predicted - so no blizzard, just wet, heavy snow.

I kept having to run out to the parking lot, in the snow, to grab more carts to put at refunds.  I kept giving my dry ones to customers.  Whatever I can do to make it easier on everyone, y'know?  The rug at that entrance was soaked by the end of the night, especially after the power flickers killed the heaters and I didn't have the giant door heater to put the carts in front of.  (Rosa had better not have anything to say about puddles at returns in the morning.  She's lucky Caroline and I went outside and got carts at all.)  The power also killed the automatic doors.  We had some panicky people when they found the door wouldn't open and they really needed snow shovels and firewood.

Oh, and when the snow plows finally showed up, one of them broke down a couple hours later.  The poor guy couldn't lift the plow blade, but when he borrowed a wrench and managed to get the broken part free, it was a specialty part we don't carry.  AND we had just closed.  I left him with a manager to see if they could jury-rig something that could get the blade lifted so he could get back to somewhere he could get it repaired.  I hope they found something.

I met a guy who drove from Wisconsin to volunteer. He wasn't any happier than we were to have to deal with all the slushy snow. It's cool to see so many people from all over the country coming to help.

We weren't really ready for the snow, though. No salt on the roads, plows slow to get into action. I couldn't really see the lines on the roads driving home and had to rely on tire tracks to stay in my lane. And something must be wrong with the 35/36 intersection, because there were cones forcing us to take the u-turn away from it. Luckily the back way home was traveled enough that I could drive it and the lights were working.

So the election has come and gone, and now people have something to talk about other than NJ and Sandy.  One cousin went so far as to add "Screwed (obama) or Obama won again" to Wikipedia.  That finally made me snap and nearly bite his head off - I was typing up a response that said he should come to NJ so I could show him what "screwed" really meant.  How I could take him to visit my in-laws so he could see the huge pile of sand and splintered wood that used to be the Spring Lake boardwalk.  How he could come to work with me and see the endless stream of hopeless people that don't have the first clue where to even start cleaning up, and just want to know if we have firewood so they can survive the cold coming in the next week.

I guess it's finally getting to me...

No work today.  That's a good thing.  I could really use the break.

Voting today.  Not many people, but then I intentionally went at a time that I knew would be slow.  It was nice to see that people were able to get there, but there were some really impressively-sized trees down on the roadside on the way there.  One was probably two feet in diameter, but it was pretty obvious why it had fallen.  The entire center at the break point was hollow.

Today was a little more promising than the past few days.  We got firewood and duraflame logs in, just in time as the temperatures dip into the 30s at night.  We're able to keep flashlights in stock and have C and D batteries - though we finally ran out of AAs.  We're seeing different brands than we're used to on some things, but that doesn't matter.  What matters is that the supplies got here.

What people are buying is subtly changing, too. I'm starting to see water heaters, power washers, dehumidfiers instead of flashlights, chainsaws, gas cans.  More cleaning/replacing/rebuiding is starting to happen instead of just plain survival.  Customers are clearly exhausted, but there's fewer completely shell-shocked people.

But now we're starting to see customers getting angry and making threats.  I had one this morning who thought it was the funniest thing in the world to say he was going to break a crowbar over my head, and laughed even louder when the only thing I could manage to say in reply was "Please don't."  If I hadn't already finished the transaction, I'd've voided it and refused to ring him up for that.  Another pair were trying to return chainsaws to buy heavier-duty ones...when the ones they were returning had been used enough to scratch the brand name off the blade.  They got angry when it took a while for anyone to respond, furious when the guy who came up told them no way, no returns on heavily-used equipment.  They tried to quote the sign at returns that basically said "Not satisfied?  Return it!"  I was SO tempted to point at the small-print sign next to them with the highlighted "We reserve the right to refuse any return", but all I did was say "If he says no, I can't do it".  They looked like they wanted to do something, and sat there steaming for a minute before grabbing the chainsaws and walking out.

One of the girls at the service desk has taken to carrying a heavy-duty utility knife (which several associates use anyways because the company-issued safety knives are crap, so she can get away with it) because she's been threatened there, too.  Once I heard that, I thought about it and moved the mallet we have for closing paint cans to right under the counter where it's easy to grab.  A deadblow mallet might not do as much damage, but it'll still hurt.  A heavy utility knife might not be a bad idea...

I guess I should really repeat that I only had two customers out of a four-hour shift that were nasty.  But in all the years I've been working customer service and retail, that's only the third or fourth time I've been threatened with actual injury like that.