All Hail the Big-Wigs!

What is it with companies freaking out anytime the higher ups, (Big-Wigs, Upper Management, The Bosses Boss, *insert your choice here*) are scheduled to arrive at a store? All this week S&S has been on tenterhooks,ummm... on edge, just because we're "having company".

The store has been going into hyper-drive just to prepare for their arrival. As it is the competition up the street from my store (*cough cough* Shaws *cough cough*), is closing. Bad for them,(no explanation needed), and well, both good(extra business), and bad(extra work for shlubs like myself), for S&S.

Now, that's all fine and dandy. As I was saying before I interrupted myself as I am wont to do, we've been preparing for them. The store has been thoroughly scrubbed down in every way imaginable. Places were cleaned that haven't seen the light of day in God only knows how long. Places were washed, scrubbed, accosted by cleaning tools, and gone over again. The people with OCD went down and fixed the high traffic aisles, facing all the boxes. The conference room was decorated in what looks like the spawn of Hallmark and Cupid in gaudy pinks, reds in whites. Hearts, balloons, flowers and the like.(Though Eileen did a wonderful job at it. [Don't even get me started on a holiday that is to commemorate a man that was beaten with clubs, stoned, and then behead. If you don't believe me, look it up.]) The carpets were vacuumed, and washed. The windows cleaned. The sidewalks swept. All in all, I believe the store is set to go.

Now, here's where the kicker to the whole situation is. In all my time of working for the company, I'd say about 80% of the time when company is "coming to the store", they don't show up. Yes, that's right, you did read that correctly. So, here's what I'm wondering, are we doing the cleaning just to appease the management at store level? It's like it's some kind of cruel joke and the peons are the punchline? You'd think that after having working there so long, that I'd finally get the joke and be able to laugh.... Yet, there is the occasions in which the big wigs and company actually do show up. However,they are rarely seen around the store, they are a mysterious group of individuals indeed.