A good’s night sleep is essential.
Needless to say, sleep for employees was not really something that Reason’s was
considering when it came to designing a store that was open 24-hours. We are lucky that the store was already
ramping up for the summer time. This means we were heavily stocked up on beach
chairs with a folding section for both your head and legs. We were also stocked
up on air mattress for use in pools and in the lakes. When you blow these up,
they serve fairly well as a bed.
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| Sleeping Areas: All on top of department coolers |
We have been using rolls of paper
towels wrapped up Tootsie Roll style with dish towels as pillows. Again, it is
not our best options but it is the best thing we have come up with. Using
needle and thread from the HBC sections, Judy Savage and Becca Cason took to
sewing large beach towels stuffed with things like coats from the meat
department to serve as blankets. I guess
if bums can use newspapers for covers, we can use meat coats and towels for
now. It is starting to get into the heat of the summer so everyone is making
do. Right now, it is more about being covered than being warm so they don’t
have to be perfect but they are doing for now. When it starts to get colder,
this system will suck but we should have better linens by that time.
Kim also came up with this great idea
that she came around to everyone with. She broke out a collection of medical
tape and cotton balls from the pharmacy section to serve as ear protection to
help you sleep. That seems safe and it helps muffle the moans and groans of the
zombies staggering around outside. Because these things just moan and growl all
day and night. They are like that dog that is right outside your window that
yips and yaps all night and there is nothing you can do about it. That does
help out with the sleeping arrangements.
So, we are adapting well for sleeping
but I will tell you this, though. If we do start venturing outside, bedding is
tops on the priority list. In fact, there is this isolated bed and breakfast
place a few miles from here called Southern Elms that probably have great
mattresses (because it is one of those high dollar outfits) and all kinds of
linens.
A few back and forth trips with a
flatbed pickup would do wonders for all of us.
Now, the location of our sleeping
arrangements is fairly unique and I also think smart on our part. The coolers
for all of the departments (produce, meat, dairy, and frozen) all have a height
of approximately 12 feet. You would have to be a serious athlete to be able to
jump and grab the lip of any of these coolers or freezers. The space above
these coolers is often used for storage and there is between five to six feet
between the top of the cooler and the metal support beams for the roof. You
have to be careful walking around when you are on top of the coolers or you can
smack your forehead. It is difficult to get up and down off the top of the
coolers without a ladder. For a zombie, it would be impossible.
So with living space above the coolers
for produce, meat, dairy and both ice cream freezers, there is plenty of sleeping
space that allows us all to spread out and have a little bit of privacy. We do
this on the off-hand chance that zoms do manage to breech the defenses and make
their way into the store while we are sleeping. We cannot imagine any scenario
where these things could make it up on top of a freezer.
People have kind of claimed their
spots for sleeping. You can see on the attached map where the sleeping area is
and it basically equals out to four sleeping zones, which equals out to five
people per area. You can see the size of the coolers so there is plenty of
space for everyone. It sucks having to climb down the ladders in the middle of
the night if you have to go to the bathroom but it is the price you pay. Kanen
confesses that he has a large mouth Gatorade bottle on hand so he doesn’t have
to climb down off the cooler. I am not that desperate (or lazy) but we made
sure he labeled that bad boy clearly with Sharpie pens… Kids these days.
