After a couple of weeks off the air, The Nest’s Weekend Threesome is back in 2022! Here’s three things from our week that will make your new year just a bit odder…
Just when I think I’ve really seen it all in nearly a quarter of a century working Mecca’s night shift, I’m reminded that life is even stranger than one of my SCT stories…
I stock the home goods area at work, and for whatever reason suitcases are a part of that department. I’m talking those vertical kind of suitcases you can drag behind you at the airport since apparently suitcases don’t look like what I remember from family trips in the 80’s…
Or like what I traveled with about a decade ago…
Anyway, that aisle is way down from the rest of the stuff where I work, so when I come across one in that night’s freight, I gotta walk it all the way down there to put up. So Monday night I take one down there, and the spot on the shelf it goes in had a different suitcase in it, so I pull it out to take down where it belongs, only to find another different suitcase there. I yank it off the shelf and find a pair of white tennis shoes behind it. Pulling the suitcase next to it revealed a pair of blue jeans… and now I’m getting pissed because I think I’ve found a stash of unwanted merchandise dumped by a customer.
Like maybe this rude lady…
But as I started to reach down to grab them, I came to a startling realization. Those jeans and shoes weren’t just lying there….. they were being WORN!
A bit unnerved, I yanked the suitcase three down from the jeans to find the head of some creepy guy laying behind the suitcases either asleep, passed out or possibly dead! The light didn’t wake him, and my voice barely roused his head before he closed his eyes again.
Crazy drunk stockers!
Having yet to encounter somebody who decided to turn one of our counters into his bed, I went to try to get one of my managers over to deal with the situation, but since the store was in the process of closing for the night, that proved to be impossible. I finally got one of our maintenance guys to come over, and I yanked out all of the suitcases while we both informed the guy that he had to leave because we were closing. He didn’t seem to have any clue how he came to be sleeping behind the suitcases…. and honestly, I’m not sure how he got behind there and set everything back up so normally… especially since there’s only about a 12 inch gap between the suitcases and the back of the counter.
What’s really creepy is that had I not found him (and I almost tacked that night onto my post-Christmas vacation as well), he would have likely slept there all night! It would have been impossible to see him without removing one of the suitcases he was behind… and it’s quite possible given the short staff we had that night that nobody would have been working over there had I been at home…
The least he could have done is crawl behind the paper towels like everyone else does…
Pepsi apparently didn’t recover from the holiday party rush very well, as they were largely out of stock all last weekend. Meaning that if I wanted soda for my days off, I either had to get a two liter bottle (Which never tastes fresh after it’s first opened), or buy the battery acid…
Cats and dogs, living together…
I make fun of Coke because I come from one of those rare Pepsi strongholds (Part of why it’s so often out of stock), but the fact is that I’ll still drink it. I pretty much have to since most restaurants have their beverage contract with Coke rather than Pepsi. I’m also not afraid to mix the two together, like I did Wednesday when I got down to my last bottle of Pepsi and the only way to fill my cup was to throw in a bottle of Coke as well…
Now that’s a mixed drink!
It seems to gross a lot of people out, but honestly, the taste difference to me is minimal. Especially out of a fountain, where to me Pepsi and Coke taste practically identical…
Despite the Gregorian calendar being an invention of man, nature sure seems to have a pretty strong sense of when the month is going to change. It’s uncanny how many times the first of a month (or very close) will bring a drastic change in the weather from the previous month. And so we got one last mild day on New Years Eve in what was a pretty warm December only to tumble right into winter as soon as the year changed.
I made sure to take advantage and get a walk in on NYE afternoon, and that took me by this house again…
I was really hoping their twice re-purposed Halloween decoration would carry over into the Valentines Day and Easter seasons as well…. but alas, they had completely removed Big Boney and all of his friends. Come on, I think a skeleton Cupid would have been cute…
See!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
My my….what a surprise to have found a PERSON napping on top of those usually flimsy shelves in most stores. Makes you wonder how often he or someone else) has done that in the past and nobody noticed. LOL We are going from the 60s to snow overnight here….we don’t call it “global warming” here – we call it “global weirdness”. Too bad the skeleton is gone….he would have made a great cupid – and Easter bunny……oh well – perhaps one day you’ll find a skeleton behind the paper towel section and you can put it in your front yard and dress it up any way you want to!!!!!
Pam
Well, this was the base shelf…. though those can be pretty flimsy as well (As someone who, er, occasionally thwarts safety policy and tries to stand on them to reach the riser). He wouldn’t have fallen far, but given his obvious state of intoxication/stonedness…. he probably wouldn’t have noticed if he’d fallen from the ceiling!
The first thing I did last night when I went back to work was check and make sure nobody was back there again!
How strange to find a person sleeping on the shelves.
We had snow here yesterday, too, which was a surprise!
Happy New Year! 🙂
There was only a few white areas on the pavement that could have been ice or snow when I got off work yesterday… but we sure got the cold!
My goodness! 😲😮😐 Was the fellow drunk? From the newspaper ‘blanket’ he was using, I’d presume he was homeless… My gosh! Now that took some nerve, because he’d have had to pull the suitcases out to get back there (unless he had an accomplice). In a turn of events which underscores your idea about the weather changing with the year – it’s been sunny here for two days now – not warm, not in the slightest, it’s FRIGID outside, but deceptively looks mild. Mother Nature needs another hormone inject I guess?
I don’t know what the guy’s deal was since he was either three sheets to the wind or four tokes to the bong. He was on a smartphone talking to someone not long after we roused him… and yes, to put the suitcases back that orderly probably required help. I’d have loved to see the video from the security cams, but I doubt anyone even looked at it.
Yikes, a person sleeping behind the suitcases! He may have been there for several nights. I don’t think suitcases are big sellers after the Christmas rush and especially not this year with all the travel cancellations. Too bad about Boney M. A spring outfit change would have been interesting!
He definitely wasn’t there the two nights before that. I’d definitely like to know how he got back there and manage to put all the suitcases back on the shelf orderly enough that it didn’t look out of place… especially with only about a ten inch gap for him lay in.
It’s tragic that someone used the shelf as a respite in a world that has too many people parking their tushes for a snooze-it almost sounds a bit like “Where the Heart Is” rewrite. It’s almost as tragic as combining Coke & Pepsi in the same beverage. As an aside, the Costcos here switched to Pepsi as their drink of choice after years of being Team Coke. Happy year of the Tiger (2022).
Those decorations are awesome! Made me smile.
I loved watching the skeleton change with each season. A year round all-holiday skeleton would have been cool…
That guy must have had a hell of a celebration, probably originally to welcome 2021.
At least the guy behind the suitcases was still alive, You’d have been there all night if he’d been dead… um, I mean, it would have been a terrible tragedy if he’d been dead…