Slice

Well, I seem to have survived my first week in my new managerial position. Kind of got thrown to the wolves a bit, but all the people I work with know a lot more about the closing shift than I do, and they're pretty much fantastic, so it wasn't all that difficult. Still not overly thrilled with the new timing of it all. I've found myself staying up later, but also enjoying the ability to roll over and fall back to sleep maybe a little too much. Rather defeats the purpose of the 7:30 alarm when I don't manage to pull myself out of bed until 8, or 8:30, or, um 9:30 as it was by the end of the week. Slowly those few precious writing hours become a thing of the past and I'm back to the procrastinating fool I've so sadly become.
But with all things, once I get the hang of it this new schedule will also become routine. Especially seeing as how I'm working closing pretty much the whole month. Oh the joy.
Things were rolling pretty well by last night. I'd made it through a week, and had managed to get basically everything completed that I was supposed to do. I was in the midst of throwing out the trash when, suddenly, SLICE! And we're not just talking a little scrape. We're talking a chunk of flesh literally hanging off my finger followed by a lovely gushing of blood. It didn't hurt all that much, but that might mean it's because it was really deep/clean. Hmmm...
Anyhow, I quickly relocked and started the trash compactor. Did you know it's a crime to run a trash compactor if you're under the age of 18. Federal. Seriously. I can understand safety first and all, but a crime? Wee bit silly, don't you think. Reminds me of how a customer said she was old enough to still remember when she was free in America...Do we maybe underestimate the ability of people to generally make wise decisions most of the time and not need laws to tell them how to live life? Just an idea.
That really rumbled into an aside awfully quickly. I've been thinking of writing a piece on Stream of Consciousness recently. Might be fun. Anyhow, back to the story at hand, or more appropriately, the story of my hand. I rushed to get a bandage as the blood really started to spurt out. I continued on to the bathroom, and a colleague kindly opened the door for me. The blood was really flowing freely by then and I rinsed it off as much as I could stand. If I let it be it didn't hurt to much, but even the most minimal water pressure was excruciating.
I tried to staunch the bleeding and dry myself up a bit with some toilet paper - no paper towels in our restroom. It helped a bit, but the blood just kept coming so I wrapped the bandage on. By the time I got out of the restroom to the fitting room (the hall is about fifteen/twenty feet long) blood was already oozing out of the bandage. Not so good.
I added a second, then a third. Pretty picture, eh? Of course then I was called up to a register. I helped a couple people, and by then those bandages were getting filled up. In all I ended up with five plasters wrapped tightly around my right index finger. Even now, under the puffy wrappings, the blood is visible, but it the last one was pretty tight so it helped to slow it down. I can honestly say I've never soaked through even one bandage before. It was quite disturbing.
And get this. We had our safety lunch today. Celebrating almost 600 days accident free. I couldn't very well end the winning streak. Basically, as long as I don't have to go to the doctor we're still good to go. It's been more than 24 hours now, but I'm still not quite brave enough to cut off all the layers and see what's going on inside. I'll give it a little more time and maybe then...
On that note, I'm thinking of making the bloody finger cookies I read about in Rachel Ray for our staff Halloween dessert potluck on the 31st. I imagine I can have a pretty decent picture to go by.