Winter Storms: How Rite Aid Kept Their Stores Open

Due to Friday’s ice storms, My Handyman maintained phone coverage over the weekend (answering service provides year round 7×24 hr coverage).

We weren’t surprised when phones starting ringing Saturday, but the nature of Rite Aid’s request was surprising. We needed to move generators and keep them full of fuel, to power Rite Aid stores that were without power.

You might guess it was a crazy weekend and you’re right. Here’s a little of what happened:

• Initial request to move generators: from Portsmouth to Kingston, from Lee to Raymond …
• Phone calls to our team to find people not already committed to storm repairs.
• Called to get job specifics, i.e. where were we going … and learned that Kingston & Raymond now had power, but needed get a generator from Farmington, NH to Tewksbury, MA.
• Drove paperwork to technian’s house (no power) and started calling store managers to give them estimated arrival times when woaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
• Farmington store manager explained the generator was on a trailer, needed a hitch and after numerous calls recognized we couln’t move the generator but found someone else to do it.
• Then we were on to refueling generators in Stratham, North Hampton, and 6 more towns in Massachusetts so I recruited another franchise owner to handle MA towns.

Technician w/Store Manager

Refueling the Generator