Desert View - Day 73 - (Shutdown day 3) - What the....

5:56 am - Monday - January 22nd - Grand Canyon - 5º F (feels like -2º F), humidity 71%, wind - CALM......forecast high for today is 37º F with partly cloudy skies.....BP 125/77.

We slept in til after 8 am thinking we did not have to go to work, but about 10 am there was a knock on the door.  It was our assistant manager there to advise that the meeting we had the prior morning in which we were told, in no uncertain terms, that our store would remain closed for the duration of the government shutdown was a complete misrepresentation of the actual facts.  The manager, apparently, had completely misreported the information from the compay meeting he attended on Friday.  How it is possible to completely misunderstand what was being said in a meeting held expressly for the purpose of discussing the government shutdown and its ramifications for the Grand Canyon operations I have no idea.  As it turns out our store should have been OPEN, not CLOSED on Saturday......the government shutdown was having NO effect on operations at the Grand Canyon......it was business as usual.....the gates were not closed, the roads were plowed, and everything was like a normal weekend.....all NPS employees were working......nothing, not one single thing, we were told was correct.  At any rate the assistant manager (in no way at fault for what had happened) was there to tell me I needed to report for work at my earliest convenience as some of our employees (lucky them) had left Desert View immediately after the completely unnecessary, bogus Saturday morning meeting to go visit family, etc.  To say I was a little out of sorts about this news is an understatement.  To be fair, I was scheduled to work on Sunday before the government shutdown happened at 12:30 pm.  After getting myself together I walked through the snow over to work arriving just before 11 am to a store devoid of customers.

If I was the manager and I had made such an amazing, bonehead goof I would have let everyone still at Desert View know that I had given them incorrect information, to be prepared to work Monday, and then had all the managers and supervisors run the two stores on a very unbusy Sunday, but our manager was no where to be found, or heard from.  I'm sure he must be a little embarrassed....I'm sure I would have been. What would you have done in such a situation?

Okay, enough of my rant......from the time the store officially opened at 10 am (2 hours late) until the store closed at 5 pm the total cash sales were $179.56.....the Deli was not even that busy.  As an attempt to apologize for the debacle, and us having to work Sunday our assistant manager, Wayne, bought us all a meal......I ordered the French Dip and took it home for dinner.

One clarification is in order.....it is possible that our manager was not the one who goofed up....it may have been someone above him, but we don't know, because our manager has not been heard from.  I do know that the Marketplace store, also run by Delaware North, was open, so they apparently weren't given bogus information.

That was my Sunday, and in a few minutes I will be trundling off to work for the 'open' shift on a day when I thought I would be on my way to Prescott, AZ for an overnight trip....sigh....thanks for stopping by!

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Desert View - Day 72 (Shutdown day 2) - Snow day.....

8:28 am - Sunday - January 21st - Grand Canyon - 18º F (feels like 8º), humidity 71%, wind 7 mph out of the west by northwest......mostly clear skies with a forecast high of 33º F.  Very cold last night, but our water did not freeze!

We were awakened Saturday morning about 7:30 am by a knock on our door....it was our assistant manager, Wayne, advising we had a meeting to discuss the government shutdown at the General Store at 8 am.....uuggghhh.......not the way I wish to awake.  Thirty minutes later we were getting in the car to drive over to the store as it began to snow in earnest.   By the time we finished our ever so brief meeting (frankly everything we were told could have been sent in a simple two sentence text, but you know how the corporate world loves face to face meetings) the snow was already sticking.   Essentially we were advised that our store would be closed for the duration of the government shutdown (the Marketplace over at the South Rim Village will remain open).    Of course, there will be no snow plowing as the NPS folk handle that.  This is supposed to be a 'soft shutdown' according to everything I have read, which means that while there will be no NPS (National Park Service) employees on duty, the gates will remain open and the public will be allowed to enter for free to site see, and even hike.....we'll see....I hope so.

As we drove home we talked about what we might do during our forced 'vacation'......our daughter was already scheduled to arrived Tuesday evening to spend three days with us.  She is staying in a hotel over in Tusayan, so we hope the gates will remain open allowing us to drive just the 25 miles over to Tusayan instead of the 135 one way miles (south to Flagstaff, and up to Tusayan).  Either way we will be able to spend time with her.  On Monday we plan to drive down to Prescott, AZ to shop at the Costco, Trader Joe's and Verizon store, spend the night, and then return to the Grand Canyon on Tuesday.

The snow came down until about 2 pm when suddenly the clouds parted revealing the sun.  It remained sunny all afternoon, but the snow returned sometime between 6 and 7 pm and continued to almost 10 pm.  I think we got a little over 2 inches total from both storms......

.....my cigar ashtray is about 2.5 inches deep and it is almost full, therefore my 2+ inches guess....

......due to the inclement nature of the weather outdoors we opted to remain inside all day.  I spent about 12 hours binge watching 'Breaking Bad'.....TLE read and watched 'Breaking Bad' off and on, but by 9 pm she was only watching 'Breaking Bad'.....

 The sun made an appearance during our 'snow day'

 The melting snow formed icicles on our kitchen window

Our 'tiki god' wind chimes are feeling a little out of sorts in the snow

......we were in bed sometime after 1 am Sunday morning.....yeah, I know, what a decadent TV watching day we had!  It was a perfect 'snow day'....

Thanks for stopping by!

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Desert View - Day 71 - The big shutdown.....

8:38 am - Saturday - January 20th - Grand Canyon - 33º F, humdity 78%, wind 11 mph out of the southwest.....it is snowing right now.....started about 8 am mountain time and is supposed to continue on and off all day.  Forecast is for 1-3 inches of snow accumulation and a high of 34º F, so we are close the the high for the day right now at 8:48 am mountain time.

The big topic of conversation around Desert View all day Friday was 'will the government shutdown?', and what will be the ramifications of that.  I had the 'open' shift and that was the first thing our assistant manager, Wayne, talked about when I walked through the rear door at 7:25 am.  What would the shutdown look like?  Will the store stay open, or will it close?  Will the gate just a few feet west of the Desert View entrance be closed, or will it be left open?  If the gate is shut we can't get to the main village, or the Marketplace, but we would be able to exit the park at the east gate which is about 1/4 mile from our location,  and drive into Cameron, or Flagstaff for supplies.  Frankly, our hope was for a shutdown that included our store as it is time for a short vacation.  

As is almost always the case my 'open' shift flew by and there was TLE bringing her cash drawer out at 12 pm.  Our internet connection was being erratic and I was not able to process credit cards, so I was glad I was off, and it was going to be TLE's problem.  She later reported that the internet was very slow all day, however she deposited over $350 in cash....I deposited $87, because I was doing all cash.  I didn't have my first customer until 10:30 am.  Had my credit card processor been working I might not have taken in any cash.

TLE needed some more cough syrup (Delsium, which we don't carry at Desert View), so I drove over to the Marketplace right after I got off work to pick up that and some bread and grapes.  My friend Art Young was working and so we spent about 30 minutes chatting and catching up on each other's lives.  It's easy for Art to keep up with me as he reads my blog.....😊  It's always good to see and talk with Art! 

I was back home before 2:30 and spent the rest of the afternoon reading....the wind was quite blustery, and it was very cold outside, so being inside was definitely my preference.  I read and napped until it was time to drive back over to pick up TLE at 5 pm......she was out the back door by 5:20 pm and we were on our way home.

We watched a few recorded programs and then tuned into Fox News at 10 pm (midnight Washington D.C. time) to see if the government was shutting down....the answer was 'YES'.  Around 2 am in the morning we got a text from our manager, Dakota, that we had a meeting at the store at 8 am Saturday morning to discuss the ramifications of the SHUTDOWN.  

9:13 am - Saturday - We just returned from the store meeting, and we (the General Store) are also shutdown until further notice, so now we have to decide what we are going to do......more on that tomorrow (Sunday) morning.  Our daughter, Meredith, is coming to visit us Tuesday, and was planning on staying at a hotel in Tusayan, which is just outside the west gate.  If the government shuts the gates she will have a long drive (about 150 miles) around to come and see us instead of the 25 miles between Desert View and Tusayan.

Thanks for stopping by!

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