I was away from work for a week, visiting family in Tennessee and attending the wedding.

On the day I returned to work, I walked around and assessed anything and everything that went down while I was away; I also assessed anything and everything that would need my expertise in cleaning up the messes made by my peers and my associates while I was away.

One thing that stuck out to me was the “Out of Order” sign taped to the cooler behind one of the registers. When asked what had happened, my fellow supervisor shrugged her shoulders and said, “It just… stopped working, some time last week.”

Giving everyone with whom I work the benefit of the doubt, I left it at that.

Until today…

While going through a mental checklist of all of the resolutions I’d performed since returning to work Tuesday, I voiced a couple of them to the same supervisor, who had opened the store for the day. As I talked about the problems that had been solved, she interjected with, “Now, see what you can do about the broken cooler.”

I was, once again, reminded of the story I’d been given, in regard to said “broken cooler”, and something about it didn’t jive with me. So, like anyone with sense would do, I asked, “Now, did anyone check if the thing was simply unplugged?”

Ten minutes later, I happened to be walking up to the front when I passed the cooler; a lit-up, motor-running, not-broken cooler.

I found out that the associate, who had been standing there when I asked about it, took it upon himself to look into the query… and found that it had been unplugged. Whether or not it had been unplugged the entire time, I have not the slightest clue; however, the amount of self-defense that one of the other associates put forth - an associate who had fervently claimed knowledge toward the cooler’s brokenness - told me, in bright, flashing, obnoxious lights, “Yep, definitely the entire time!”

… and they had waited a week for me to come through and figure it out.