In my younger days, I worked for a while at Walmart. Yeah, Good ole Wally World.
Well one day, we had a shortage of floor associates and I was sent to work in the dressing rooms answering phones, to give that associate a break. The garden shop called and asked that I please send a manager . I relayed the message. Minutes ticked by. No manager responded. They called again and “a little more emphatically “asked me again, to send a manager. I called out on the walkie-talkies. The garden shop called again. This time, the clerk was pretty agitated. “Tell them it is a LIFE OR DEATH MATTER!”
I tried to discreetly relay this message, but still no response! The garden shop called again and said “Tell the manager that there’s a DEAD MAN in the paper recycle dumpster!” So, me ,with 5 minutes training on procedure, spoke very confidently into the walkie-talkie, “We need a manager to the garden shop RIGHT NOW, there’s a dead body in the dumpster!!”
All of a sudden, there was this “whoosh” of air, as everyone within earshot of a walkie-talkie must have heard me. Everyone in the whole store took off for the garden shop, including me. If it had been a ship, it would have capsized!
We all spilled out onto the sidewalk, as two of Wally Worlds finest manager trainees went over to the bin and gingerly threw up the lid and RAN! The lid slammed back down with a great big bang. This caused the crowd to jump in the air!
All of a sudden, the lid started rising and out came the face of an old man.He crawled out and started cussing and raising up a storm. Accusing us all of interrupting his “beauty rest”. He claimed to be Sam Walton’s nephew and we were all going to be looking for new jobs!
A big sigh of relief went through the crowd and we all meandered back to our jobs, laughing about it all. We were just glad he wasn’t dead.
Later, when I was in a discussion with the head manager, he explained to me the codes and how they were to be called. I explained that I knew there were codes for lost children, tornadoes, fires, and other emergencies, but I had yet to see one that covered dead bodies in the dumpster!
State: GA
