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.

Today...today was a short shift, but absolutely heartbreaking. I was at returns, and I got a woman returning some tile mats. I asked the standard "anything damanged or defective?" and her soft, sad reply was "No. I bought them for my kitchen that is no longer there."

A little later I had a woman who just wanted to charge her phone while the people she was with were looking at flashlights. She started talking, and I nearly cried. She'd been out of the country, so no one was home to prepare her house, and had only just gotten back. Her entire first floor flooded and will have to be gutted because of mold. She didn't know how she was going to get to work because public transit still isn't running this far south. There was so much to do that she had no idea where to even start, and started crying just thinking about it. All I could do was get her a seat so she could rest and get herself together, look up the numbers for FEMA and the Red Cross so she could start applying for aid and get some help getting food and shelter, and wish her luck.

I had the energy to work longer, and offered to, but I'm glad I was told I could go home.  It's easier than I thought it would be to stay calm and understanding, but it makes me really feel for these people if they're saying that some random employee at a returns counter is the nicest and most helpful person they've met in the past week.

I don't know where to start. The people who took cardboard boxes because we were out of firestarters? The couple trying to estimate how big a tarp they needed to cover what's left of their roof? The guy who put his generator 3' above the floor, only for it to flood 4'? The couple who hadn't yet paid off the new flooring in their basement, and now needed new flooring all over again? The many, many people who were desperate enough for firewood to buy 2x4s because they knew they weren't going to find bundled wood? The people who bought battery-powered Christmas lights just to have some light in their home?  The woman who stumbled from exhaustion when she showed up at 6 AM when the store opened to get supplies, and almost cried when I pointed her at the free coffee?  (Her grateful "this is the first coffee I've had in four days" nearly made ME cry.) The middle school kid who managed to snag the last gas can for his uncle, and spent the entire time he was in the store looking like he was paranoid someone would take it from him?

And this isn't even the area that was hit hardest. Most of the damage is south, where the eye hit, or north, where the rivers flooded. It's hard to think of how much worse things have to be there when it's aready bad here. As one of my coworkers said this morning, "People don't understand.  This isn't destruction.  It's just GONE."   And it's kind of weird to realize that the best way to help is just to go to work, to have the ideas and knowledge to help them get back in control and back on their feet.

Hi, I'm somebody random.

You don't know me.  You've never met me.  I have no illusions that the wide world out there cares about my little world and its problems.

I'm an Army brat, wandered around the country, went to high school in the Deep South but ended up coming to a rest in NJ.  I'm 30, never graduated college despite three attempts - mechanical engineering, chemistry, music.  I'm married, have two cats, no kids yet.  I'm quite a geek but apparently I don't have true geek cred.

But why start a blog now?  Because, last Monday night, the world turned upside down on the Jersey shore.  Beaches advanced hundreds of feet inland.  New channels were cut through the barrier islands.  Entire neighborhoods are gone.  Not destroyed. Gone.

My little world is fine.  No damage, had power back in under 48 hours, etc.

But at work I see every range of the spectrum.  Just seeing SO MANY people wandering in and out with hopeless "need it, can't find it" looks on their faces takes a lot out of you.  So I'm writing this blog - for me, as an outlet for helplessness and stress, for them, because I feel like people should know.