Managing to scare the crap out of me

I arrive at work at 9:50 A.M., ten minutes before my schedule says I am supposed to be there. It had originally said 11:00 A.M., but I received a call from the second shifter (on his cell phone, after work) telling me my boss had changed it late in the evening so that she could write me up the next day for being late. At home, I have written down what time she did it, because she was dumb enough to do it on camera. In the meantime, she doesn't expect me to be there yet.

I walk in, take a moment to purchase something to drink (which I always do because at the register, I'm talking almost nonstop with greetings, how-can-I-help-you, and the like) and then head into the backroom to clock in. My boss, having forgotten that she changed the schedule, yells at me for being early. I tell her that the schedule says 10:00 A.M., or rather 1D:00 A.M. after she changed it last night. She insists that I changed it, and I'm not supposed to be in yet. Two other employees are in the room, so she can't really go back on what she's saying. I point out that the spot where the schedule hangs is on camera, so corporate will be able to see who touched it and who did not. She glares at me.

I ask if she wants me to go home (just down the street) for an hour and return at 11:00. She says no, and actually says it's so I can't write to my rep at the labor board about the discussion. I point out that since it happened right when I walked in the door, I'm going to remember what time it was. I can just write to him when I get home.

She has me clock in at 9:59, and tells me that since I'm here for an extra hour, I can get some of the grunt work done. She sends me to clean the restrooms, with the admonition to knock first.

I grab the cleaning equipment and head that way. I walk directly from the office, out around the cash registers, and back to the restrooms. Our store is small, so the office and the restrooms share a wall and some plumbing. There is a big sink against that wall in the office. In the restrooms, the toilets are against that wall.

I decide to do the ladies' first because someone is in the men's. I prop the door open and work in the tiny room. I never let the door shut while I'm working in there because the chemical smell gets to me. The ladies' room is never too bad. The worst we usually see is someone not wrapping a sanitary napkin, but I've gotten good at using the end of the broom to scoop that into the trash without touching it. There is nothing like that in here this time.

As I'm finishing the ladies', I hear the occupant of the men's getting paper towels to dry his hands. The dispenser is really loud when you're on the other side of the wall from it - sounds like someone's trying to bang their way through. I bring the equipment out of the ladies' and wait in the hallway. The guy comes out, shuts the door, and walks out past me. Out of habit, I knock anyway. Of course, there is no answer.

I open the door to the men's room, but instead of the sink, toilet, and paper dispensers that should be there, there is a stone stairway going down into a dark hole. Smells of waste and musty dampness waft up from below. I feel a sense of trepidation. I don't want to go down there. I'm looking for a light switch in the doorway, but it's gone. I ask my co-worker for a flashlight, but she ignores me and makes light conversation with a customer instead. Everyone is giving me sideways glances, like some kind of a prank has been pulled and they're waiting for my reaction.


I decide to start down the stairs. As soon as I set foot on the first step, there is a loud roar.

 

I can't tell what it is. It goes right through me and down the hall to my left, then disappears in the sunlight from the windows. I jump back to get away from it. Everyone is looking at me now. Another co-worker tells me, "You shoulda knocked!" 

I reply, "I DID knock. That wasn't some guy in the restroom. Come and look at this!" I point into the cavernous stairwell, only to realize it's gone. There is no stone. There are no steps, no dark cavern below. There's just an ordinary restroom, with all of the expected facilities. It's a horrible mess. The last user has left waste on the floor, the seat, the back of the toilet, and the wall beside it. There is wet toilet paper everywhere, and something gooey-looking all over the sink and mirror. My coworker ignores me. 

I prop the door and grab a bucket of hot water and some paper. I put up a sign that says the men's is temporarily out of order. Thank goodness there's a drain in the middle of the floor!

I start using the bucket to rinse down the wall and the toilet, using the mop to keep the water flowing down that drain. I continue in this manner until the debris is gone, then glove up and scrub the offending areas, including the sink and mirror. I try to do this without looking at the reflection, because I still have a weird feeling about this room. I mean, I really have the heebie-jeebies. I know if I look, I'll see something bad, or something bad will happen.

Once I'm satisfied that the place is clean, I spray the whole room down with sanitizer, then pour some sanitizer-water down that drain to follow the waste and keep it from smelling. Finished, I turn to leave the room, only to see a hand move my doorstop. The door closes. I hear the light switch click, and suddenly there is no light.

I am not claustrophobic, but in the darkness in this room that has changed, I am terrified. Certain that there is something in here with me, I stumble toward the door. Instead of finding it, I hit something low with my foot, trip, and fall onto a set of stone steps going up. 

Oh, my God... I'm at the bottom of the stairs! I shriek and start climbing. I can hear something breathing behind me. Warm, dank air blows across the back of my head, and there is a horrible, low growling noise. Far away somewhere, I can hear someone yelling that the power is out, and the registers aren't working. Somehow, I know that it's happening because of the evil thing that is chasing me.

I scramble toward the top of the stairs, hoping that the exit is there. I can hear something moving behind me, and then there is that roar again. I feel something sharp hit my shoulder and slice down my back. At the same time, I see the door. It looks like always, a bland colored, enamel covered door with a metal handle. I grab the handle, turn it, and shove my way through. As soon as I am out, the lights come on and the restroom goes back to normal. Someone shouts that the registers are working again.

I walk through the store toward the back room. No one seems to have heard me scream, or at least no one is paying any attention to me now. They're all trying to rush through checkout and get on their way. In the back room, I start to put the equipment away, but am interrupted by my boss yelling at me. She's accusing me of having deliberately walked in on her, and says she's going to complain to corporate. 

I point out that since she was in the backroom when I headed for the restrooms, there was no way for her to go past me without my knowing, and, since she had just sent me in there, it was dishonest of her to say I walked in on her. She wasn't in there, and if she'd gone in there, she'd done so knowing she'd just told me to go in there. Not only that, but I'd knocked, and no one had answered. I remind her that the back room is on camera, the part of the store she'd have had to walk through is on camera, and the hallway is on camera. She tells me that the camera to the hallway has been taken out. 

She shows me a door in the wall between the restrooms, and tells me it goes to the men's. Momentarily ignoring the senselessness of that, I repeat that even if she went through that door, it still amounts to deliberately setting things up so I would walk in on her, and it would still be on camera. Also, jumping out at me like that was rude and unnecessary. I tell her that I should be the one complaining to corporate, because putting me in that position is a form of sexual harassment. As I turn to walk away from her, I hear the same growl I heard in the transformed restroom. I turn back, and she says, "You might want to check the back of your shirt. It's a bit torn."

I go to the ladies and turn my back to the mirror. I turn my head as far as I can to see four huge slices in my shirt. Beneath them, I can see that my back is bleeding. As I am looking, I can see that monster coming up beside me in the mirror. I turn to face it, but there's nothing. I hear banging in the men's room again, and the door to the ladies' starts to swing shut. I jump toward it.

I wake without finding out if I get out of the restroom.

After waking up, I laid in bed for several minutes wondering what the heck that dream was for. My boss hasn't been too grouchy the last few days since the district manager talked to her and then ordered me to stop documenting the harassment. I suspect that he ordered her to tone down the abuse. She did give me all of the heavy work yesterday, something she's been doing a lot since I reported the store to OSHA, but she hasn't changed my schedule without notice since that day.

Also, I'm really not that bothered by cleaning up messes in the men's room, and sadly, the mess in the dream wasn't some bizarre nightmare image. It's actually quite common for there to be a mess that bad after one of our male customers has been in there. Only the dungeon-like setting was abnormal. I have no idea where that came from. With the way I feel about work, I'd think I would be more likely to associate it with the back room, where the boss spends most of her time.

The claws are easier to explain. My back is still sore this morning from the heavy work my boss had me do yesterday. There really is no ergonomic way to lift full, heavy bags of trash out of 39 gallon cans. The few other female employees who sometimes (rarely) do the trash get help with this, but I do not. According to my boss, it's because I'm stronger than the other girls. When I point out the danger of injury, she "reminds" me that to apply for the job I had to say I could lift 70 pounds. I then have to remind her that when I applied, the app only said 50 pounds, and that the suction in the trash cans acts like more weight than the trash actually has. 

Since I'm not allowed to lay the can on its side (she calls that beating up the can) so that the bag will settle and air can get in around it, it feels like I'm pulling 100 pounds of dead weight out of that can. She has all ready told me that if I get injured "doing the trash" she's going to put in the paperwork that I've refused assistance with it, even though in reality I've been asking for assistance and she's refusing my requests. I feel like she's deliberately trying to injure my back so I'll have to file another Worker's comp claim, and she can say it's a habit or something. Either that, or she is using "crap duty" to retaliate against me for defending myself against the discrimination I've been facing on the job. I know she is not trying to get rid of me, because she is aware that I cannot just quit. In this economy, there is no place else to go.
I've concluded that the harassment is more of an attempt to dominate and control than to repel.

Yesterday, she did set me up like in the dream, but not with the restroom. She told me to work in the cooler, knowing that doing so required a jacket, then she yelled at me for taking the time to put one on before going in there because she wanted privacy in the back room for a phone call to corporate. I pointed out that I was in there because of her order, and that everyone wears a jacket in the cooler. She got mad and stormed out of the room.

I guess the stress is really just getting to me. This has to be one of the strangest work nightmares I've had yet. I guess now I'm dreaming that my boss is the boogie man.