From: Goober
So, at my current job, I started (so many years ago) in a store that had been there a long time, and has since moved twice. The building was *old*, and not in the best of shape. And the management company was, shall we say, less than concerned. The roof didn't leak, but the floor did.
They put in curb bumpers in the parking lot (those concrete things that let you know when to stop when you're parking because your tires run into them), for absolutely no reason except somebody thought they looked more fashionable than fixing the termite damage. They put one directly in front of the outlet for one of the roof drains. That's when we found out the floor leaked - when water started bubbling up from the floor behind the cash registers. It was amazing nobody was electrocuted.
More fun, though, were the rodents. We had mice and rats, and a lot of both. We had to keep the bird seed inside Tupperware totes, or it wouldn't last the night. The mice *loved* bird seed. The rats, however, were far fonder of the chocolate (because they get high on it). And jalapeno peanuts. We could not keep jalapeno peanuts safe. We had no idea how they were even getting to them. They (the peanuts, not the rats) were on a spinner rack in the main aisle, and we surrounded the entire area with rat traps, to the point where *we* couldn't get to the rack, every night. And every morning, all the jalapeno peanuts were just empty packages.
The mice weren't so bad, though we'd see them scampering along the tops of the gondolas all day long. They were, at least, quiet. But the rats were something else. I recall standing in the main aisle one day, talking to a customer, and a rat the size of a chihuahua comes running out of an aisle - not more than two feet from us - half blind in the daylight, and runs into the display in the middle of the aisle. Gets up, shakes itself off, and runs off down the aisle on the other side. This was such a routine occurance that I didn't even pause in explaing whatever I was explaining to the customer, until I saw the look on his face. Then I had to keep from laughing.
We did put down traps, all over the place. That didn't always work out so well, either. We mostly used glue traps, rather than the spring loaded ones. I don't know why, other than perhaps they were less likely to result in a workman's comp claim after an employee broke a finger (and the big spring loaded rat traps *can*), or maybe they were cheaper or something. Problem is, they don't *kill* the rat, they only trap it in place. Which terrifies the little monster, and it proceeds to thrash around until it dies of exhaustion or heart failure. If it gets caught early in the evening, it's usually dead before we show up in the morning. But there was one morning where one had obviously just gotten itself stuck, to a trap that was next to some sheet metal box upstairs, and was still thrashing around desperately trying to escape.
So our housewares manager comes in to open, and as soon as she opens the door, she can hear the *loud* 'SQEEEE!!!" THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 'SQEEEE!!!" THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! 'SQEEEE!!!" THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! It lasted until someone else showed up for her to make go kill it with a shovel.
Sharon was a dragon lady in many ways (though a very nice one if you did your job), but killing rats wasn't in the job description.
The only department that wasn't completely overrun with rodents was plumbing. It only had one rat, which was the size of not-so-small dog. Must have been over a foot long without the tail. We named him Willard, and he had plumbing all to himself. I'm pretty sure any other rats or mice that went back there were dinner. Interestingly, two doors down was a grocery store. I got to talking to one of the guys there one day about rodents, and described Willard, and he assured me we only got the ones too small and weak to survive in the grocery store. I stopped buying lunch there after that.
The management company didn't care. Which was just as well. If they'd cared, they probably would have upped the rent to cover the additional tenants.
The one thing they got right was the security guard. I don't recall his name, but I can still picture him in my head. He was in his late 40s or early 50s, grey haired, a little fat, and walked like he had a bad leg or something. But he was a *fantasic* security guard, him and the .45 he had on his hip.
He had a manner about him that told you, very clearly, "If you give me shit, I'm not going to chase you down, and I'm not going to get into a fist fight with you, I'm just going to shoot you." I haven't met too many people who could be more menacing, or who could turn it on and off so readily.
He told me that there was one time, in his 20+ years as a security guard, where he *thought* about drawing his weapon, but that was apparently enough to convince whatever young punk he was dealing with to cooperate.
--Goober