Recovering From Near Disaster

I went to work at the Farmer's Market this weekend. It is the Saturday before Thanksgiving mind you, which means that we have orders up to our eyeballs and an abundance of fresh chill-packed turkeys surrounding us on what was already a chilly day. Brrrrr!!!

As the story goes, we were be-bopping along at quite a busied pace when the line began to grow longer and longer and right at about the time the line reached half way to the door... the lights went out. The Market is a concrete block building and the only windows are in the 2 doors at the far end. The emergency lighting came on, but it wasn't much light. Luckily it was daylight by now, about 7am, and so as part of the immediate safety precautions, the vendors opened all the doors as wide as possible. It was still dark, but we could see to move amongst ourselves.

We hoped that it would come right back on, but much to our dismay it did not. Conversing with someone on the outside revealed that the electric company was working up the street and the entire block was without power. Customers began to stir and become restless. "What are we going to do?!" they complained. We had no scales to weigh anything. UGH! I quickly instructed one of our workers to swiftly clean the change box to minimum change and make it neat. No need to have cash laying around loosely in such a situation. The boss... she was a little stressed I'd say. Near panic, shouting orders to us, and rather curt with the customers too. Finally after a few minutes, a plan was devised. We shall guestimate. That's the best we could do. Fryers would be $4.40 each, turkey's prices estimated by the average for it's size. They were marked 10-12 or 18-20 etc. Capons would be a flat $25. Ducks were $15. Ground beef was sold for $2.50/bag. Any chuck... 8 Bucks! I'd say that it was pretty average overall. Customers were fine with it, but I will say I was amazed at some of the silly comments of the day: "How much does that weigh?" "Do you take Master Card?" Ummm... I don't know and cash or check please!

Wow what a crazy day! The electric came back on at 11AM... right about the time we are usually finished working. We were glad to be able to meet the needs of our customers despite the odd situation and duly glad to not have to take a loss at a weeks wages for the farmers. Whew!!! We recovered from a near disaster! (Cold, but fine.)