Science time!

By Copernicus's ghost, who says we don't use science everyday? Or rather, we see science every day. This gives you an example of how much cardboard we use in a day's time or so. Currently my store is producing a bale of cardboard a day.

Now what happens when these torrential rains and said cardboard bale meet?

Sprong!

Expansion happens. The bales are bound with four wires of 12 gauge aluminum. The baler spits these out onto a pallet and we stack them in the back of the building where they are put on a flatbed headed for a recycle plant or something to that effect.

This happens every so often, especially after a rain storm and guess who has to re-band it? In all honesty today was a group effort. Rene and Sammi get all the credit for cleaning up that shit storm.

Oi Chihuahua, Madre a Dios, and a bunch of other stuff.

My partner Ronni and I were frantically receiving stuff behind this picture. I'm sure the paint department had some choice words for me as five pallets were broken down and available for stocking in the last hour of our shift. Not all the cardboard was soaked through, so we didn't have water leaking out as our baler compressed new bales. Well, not that much.

It could have been worse. Oh wait, it was! Why I didn't grab the picture of this, I will never know. A five gallon bucket of roofing tar fell off of a contractors truck in the parking lot. A whole case of absorbent was used to keep this stuff from spreading and making a bigger mess. We cordoned off the section of parking lot with some aisle blockers. I'm not holding my breath it stopped anybody. These are the same people who barrel (read: more than 20 mph.) on past our forklift and a truck of cement as we're unloading it. Typically there are inches to spare, I shit you not. Next time I'll take a picture, I promise. We put a bright yellow chain with a sign up across the access way, but they broke through that with little trouble. We placed whole pallets of sand and cement down. That discourages most people, but Lowe's shoppers aren't most people. A few drivers think, 'Hey, obstacle course!'

I wish that was the punch line.

One guy actually had the cajones to get out of his car (while on his phone, no less.) and demanded that I move those pallets blocking his path.

Folks, there is a perfectly good asphalt road not twenty feet from where we are unloading and it goes to the same parking lot you are trying to get to. Bonus point: my forklift won't have to play chicken with your Saturn SUV. A tiny part of me wants to see that happen. My concern for the safety of the forklift driver would be the utmost importance. My money is on the forklift and 18 wheeler carving up the SUV trying to sneak around the back of the building.

In a related note: they are bringing back that Eighties series Macgyver, this time on CBS. Let me see if I can get the link in here.