How about one other story from my time working in a dysfunctional flea market?
Authentic animal tales:
https://www.askamanager.org/2024/08/lets-discuss-animals-at-work.html#comment-4815994
The Haunted Spoons:
https://www.askamanager.org/2024/08/open-thread-august-9-2024.html#comment-4817527
The Mysterious Crates
A part of my job as underpaid flea market clerk was to assist filter out sale remainders and convey every part again to the shop. The proprietor was inclined to purchasing what was leftover from property gross sales and stock closeouts, often sight unseen whereas in a white powder-induced manic temper. That always led to conditions like an surprising truckload of synthetic Easter floral preparations that we didn’t even make a dent in promoting all the time I labored there.
Clearing out bizarre buildings and homes acquired to be fairly routine and I didn’t pay a lot consideration to my environment after I was despatched to a rambling Victorian-ish manor on the sting of city to scrub out what I assumed was yet one more spherical of ugly furnishings and middling dishware from the top of an property sale. So I used to be shocked after I walked in to search out every part was in massive wood crates. Which…was not best. Half the crates had been so big, we may solely match two within the truck at a time. Additionally, we needed to dismantle the door and a part of the wall to get them out, which led to so many unanswered questions on their logistical pondering. Repacking the contents was not an choice, in accordance with the individual in cost. It ought to have been an indication after they’d favor we demolish a part of the wall vs opening thriller crates.
After many, many journeys over three (!) days, we lastly acquired the crates eliminated and loaded into the flea market. Thank goodness the proprietor thought to put in a loading dock within the again. The same old process is we transfer stock inside and as soon as we get the go-ahead, we then disassemble or reassemble stuff or no matter, worth every part, and set as a lot as we are able to on the ground and shove the remainder into the storage room (a.okay.a. the previous bowling alley’s restaurant and bar).
However this time, the proprietor acquired distracted by one thing shiny and didn’t give us the go-ahead. So the crates sat within the loading dock space, spilling out into the merchandise space, for 2 weeks, taunting us with their mysteries. We began a betting pool on what was inside and finally began telling elaborate tales a few widowed duchess fleeing Interpol after being caught in a bootleg affair with a black marketeer.
In the future, I used to be pricing some bins of books that appeared within the workplace after I heard the supervisor yell “That’s it! I’ve had it!” Then she marched out of the again workplace with a big pry bar and began ripping the highest off one of many smaller crates. The opposite clerk and I grabbed the closest implements we may discover and began opening our personal crates.
Upon opening the crates, we every discovered what seemed like one other tough wood crate. And inside these crates had been what seemed like soiled rags. We poked on the rags however couldn’t determine what it was speculated to be. We moved on to extra crates, solely to search out the identical factor. Barely unnerved and a tad dissatisfied, we determined to deal with one of many massive crates collectively.
The primary crate we opened collectively contained, you guessed it, one other tough wood crate. However there was one thing a bit odd about this one although none of us may determine why. We opened the lid to the inside crate to discover a ghastly cranium staring again at us.
The opposite clerk shrieked, I yelped, and we each jumped again in alarm. The supervisor, nevertheless, yelled “NOT AGAIN DAMMIT!” and stomped off to her workplace. The opposite clerk fled to her automobile within the car parking zone for an early lunch, whereas I made a hasty exit of the loading dock and went to take heed to the supervisor as she referred to as up the proprietor and scolded him for what appeared like an eternity.
The opposite clerk got here again and I used to be about to go take my lunch when the proprietor confirmed up and he and the supervisor pulled the remainder of us to the loading dock the place we had been directed to open the tops of all of the crates however not the inside crates. After about an hour, we had pried open all of the crates and a sample started to emerge. The inside crates weren’t all tough wooden. Some had been sanded clean, some had been brightly polished, some had been ornately embellished. And all of them, massive and small alike, had been rectangular.
Sure, they had been coffins. All of them. USED coffins.
The supervisor referred to as the sheriff’s division, who got here and opened a sampling of coffins, discovering occupants in most of them. The flea market was shut down for the remainder of the week because the crates had been slowly hauled off someplace.
We later discovered that the rambling Victorian-ish manor was once a funeral residence that had its personal cemetery again within the late 1800s. In some unspecified time in the future, the cemetery was eliminated and the our bodies had been speculated to be relocated to a brand new cemetery however the funeral residence went bankrupt earlier than that might occur. The information had gotten misplaced when the courthouse had burned down so nobody knew it was there. The home handed by means of so many homeowners that the stack o’ coffins had been by no means handled. The stays had been finally disbursed to no matter households, cemeteries, and crematoriums they may belong to, although most went unclaimed as identification information had been lengthy gone.
I believe what actually floored me in all of this wasn’t that the proprietor unknowingly bought a bulk lot of lifeless our bodies, it’s that, in accordance with the supervisor, this wasn’t the primary time it occurred.