Wednesday - 9-16-09 - The RV show begins, what will it bring?

Today is the first day of the RV show in Hershey. They are holding it over at the Giant Center. They've been setting it up for almost a week now, with different RV dealers showing up daily. According to the ads it’s the largest RV show in the US.
Today coming into work traffic was heavier than normal. I didn't really think too much about traffic this morning when I left for work. Luckily I got here on time.
When I got in Harry said he would be over to open my safe, and I knew he would eventually. While I was setting up though one of the workers for the zoo came down to get an Icee. Luckily Harry had perfect timing. He showed up just as I was ringing in the order, so I was able to get change out of the safe, which was a good thing.
I guess the RV show has us a little busier. Right at 10:00 there are people in the zoo, and they looked at my menu. Usually I don't see anyone until closer to 11:00.
The people I work with amaze me. The zoo is open almost year round, basically only closing for some holidays and bad weather. When it’s open you can't drive vehicles into the zoo, unless you get permission and have security escort you to you location. So what does the warehouse do? They deliver my stock at 10:30. What is the problem with this, they drove the truck down to the stand. When he was questioned by security the guy's response was, "I didn't know the zoo was open when the park wasn't." It’s only been this way for about 100 years now, but I guess to him that's something new. So he unloaded my stock and left quickly to get security "off his back."
After I put stock away, and looked at what I had, I saw that whoever worked on Sunday didn't do their jobs right when doing orders. It was a little better than last week, but not much. So I did up the correct orders to give to Harry when I leave.
I don't know if it’s the RV show or not, but today seems like it’s a busier day than usual. By 11:30 I’ve made almost enough to make it worth having me here all day. If that trend keeps up, it will turn out to be a really good day. One thing that always brings customers in is me trying to eat my lunch. I was only about a third of the way through my popcorn chicken salad from Sonic when I got customers. The funny thing is not all the customers were zoo guests. I also got employees. At least with one employee he helps himself. I'll get him anything that requires gloves, but he'll get his own soda, and chips, and things like that. That really helps me out, especially when I want to get back to eating my own lunch.
There was a representative from Dippin' Dots in today, and he was upset. I guess he stopped in at the foods office and said he was here to inspect all the Dippin' Dots stands, and was told to just walk around the park and let them know when he was done. Well he made his way over here to the zoo, and couldn't find my cart, so I told him how to get to it. He came back about 10 minutes later and asked where our storage freezer was, I told him it was in the shed behind the cart. He insisted he didn't see a shed. I don't know how you can miss it, it’s a big blue wooden shed. Well he mumbled something about hating this park, and walked back down. I guess he found it, when he came back up he just walked by me and headed back out of the zoo.
I love some of the things guest come up and say. There was a lady that asked if I could get a hold of one of the zoo people. She said her grandson dropped his cup into the duck area. I asked her where it was, and she said, "down there with the ducks." Well the ducks walk around wild, so that could have been almost anywhere. So I called up to the admissions building and asked them to call one of the naturalists, which they did. Dale came down, and she said the same thing to him. So he walked down the path to look for it. He found it, but I didn't get a chance to ask where it was.
Then she wanted to order food for her and her grandkids. Well, she wanted two kids meals, which some with chips or carrots, and a drink. Well she asked if she could get one small order of fries instead of the two chips. So I figured I could do that, and just ring up a soda refill to make up the difference. But then she asked to get icees to drink instead of the soda. Again, over the summer when we did this we would ring up a refill to make up the difference. So that's what I did for that too. Well when I told her the total she had a fit about the price, but I told her up front that I would have to add some on for the upgrades.
Then I got one of my normal groups in. It’s a group of mentally challenged adults. They are usually I with a chaperone or two, or in this case three. They almost always eat from me, and I know when they do they will spend almost $100. It really helps boost my sales for the day. As often as they are in, and with as much as they usually buy, I wish I would give them a discount, but I'll get in trouble if I do.
I'm not sure what's going on the last few days. Yesterday there were a ton of brown tags walking around the zoo, and now today there are a ton again. Yesterday I don't think I recognized any of them, but today I do recognize some of them. One is Harry, who is now my area brown tag. There were two other ones that I recognized, but I can't figure out what department they work in. I'm thinking the one is merchandise, but I'm not sure. And the other one I think maybe security, but again I'm not sure. I'm guessing they are having meeting about what we are going to do next year, but I don’t know for sure.
Closing didn’t go too bad, and I was able to get out of work really early. That was good because I had to pick dinner up from the pizza shop. When I got there, about 5 minutes early, he wasn’t quite ready with it yet, but he was working on getting it done for us. So that was a good thing. After dinner, and Cathy left for her training, I ran some errands I had to do. After doing them I decided to try to find another GeoCache, and got luck and found one. That’s two that I’m up to now. :) After that it was just watching TV until I went to bed. Ghost Hunters did catch some good evidence on their one investigation…