Submitted March 14, 2004, 3:42 PM
Where were you during the 2003 blackout in the Northeastern U.S. and Canada? (please include city and state)
Tell your story:
I live in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. I was working at Arby's in Twinsburg that night. I was leaving for work when the first reports of power loss were coming in and thought maybe I'd get to go home early. Boy was I wrong. Twinsburg was one of the furthest north places with power all night. Needless to say, everyone in the Greater Cleveland area was looking for somewhere to eat and we were one of the first places they came to. I was running the drive thru and there were about 6 people total working. That's not near enough to handle the potential sales. On weeknights we close at 10, but we were open until past midnight and when we closed, people were still coming. Thursday is when the next week's schedule is posted so several employees called looking for their schedule and got an invitation for extra hours. We ran out of almost everything within a couple hours. All the portions for the next day were gone. We had to keep the prep slicer going all night to keep up. Drive thru was backed up on to the main road and the lobby was packed. Each order took about 20 minutes to fill because we couldn't keep up with sandwiches or fries; there was nobody to keep an eye on either. By the time we closed the place was a disaster. Bags and portion trays and garbage were everywhere, both in the dining room and in the back. I had come in to close as a favor that day, so I told my manager when we closed that I'll clean up my area, but that's it. She wasn't happy about it but she let is slide because I had performed well through the night of hell.
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If you remember the blackouts of 1965 and/or 1977, how did your experience compare?
I wasn't born yet for either one, but as far as I know neither one affected Cleveland.
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Name
In addition to saving your story to the archive, may we post it to the web? (yes/no)
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