Grid Gnomes

When the Streams Cross

2012-02-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

You ever wonder what it's like to be caught in the crossfire of a pissing contest? It's not pleasant to say the least. You don't know which way to look, how to act, nor when it's going to end. This is a long-standing conflict that could (and I stress could) end very soon and very badly. In one corner we have the Big Man who is in charge of a store that failed two corporate inspections in a row. If he fails one more, his ass is looking for a new job. In the other corner we have the morning manager who has been given four weeks to improve the delivery truck process or else she too gets to be shown the door.

The result if this bizarre situation is that we the workers get to hear the exchange of blame jibes and gossip about which whom lies most recently responsible for under-bus-thrown antics. In fact, I even opened up and fully confessed that everyone on the morning team was getting a little frustrated by the high level of angst that filled the air with regards to this omnipresent drama. It's one thing to be rattled over the pending visit of corporate agents. It's another thing entirely to feel like there is no end to a constant state of unease. That is not a healthy working environment, and I really doubt that anyone in the upper crust of the Company truly understands this. As far as they're concerned, we're just a bunch of lowly grunts too lazy to carry out their impossible-to-meet conditions.

It should be a fascinating discovery over the next few weeks as these pending deadlines draw near. I wouldn't doubt the arrival of dead pools cropping up. Whoever guesses right is sure to land a win fall of epic proportions.

Year End Rear End

2011-12-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

I'm sure it's tradition for most people this day and age to celebrate Christmas several times to accommodate all family gatherings. I'm no exception. This week I had three separate engagements, two of which took me an hour from home. One fell on the weekend which didn't require any special arrangements. The other one however was the evening before a 3 a.m. I knew this a month ahead of time, so I had the opportunity to weigh my options: cut short my visit with family I scarcely ever see to get to work on time or take the following day off.

Well, I've overextended myself more than a fair amount of times this year so I was finally going to do myself a favor and get some well needed rest. The result of my actions were finally recovering from a chronic backlog of sleep deprivation. Sometimes you don't really know how much you do until you stop doing it. That never proved more true than when I went back to work the next day.

Being the one who usually sorts through the muli-SKU freight packs and puts them in their proper bins, I anticipated that whoever else they picked would do a decent enough job. That ended up not being the case at all. Coming in to work two minutes before the lights kicked on, I saw a dimly lit smattering of metal, cardboard and plastic in the receiving area that could cripple even the bravest and most hearty of folk. After the light came, I saw that not only did the truck freight not get fully worked (as is usual), there was also a surmountable pile of boxes that still hadn't even been touched, much less sorted.

With priorities skewed in their usual sense, I was made to build a grid for Valentine's Day craft stuff rather than help attack the pile of carryover. I cringe to think what progress could possibly be made over the weekend what with minimal staff on the floor and a slew of holiday shoppers hungry to spend their Christmas gift cards on freight that isn't put out. Things won't be improving much in the new year. Hours across the board have been slashed, mine included. And with the amount of stock that has to be replenished from our holiday bombardment, I don't see how anything productive is expected to occur.

Rest Before Recoil

2011-12-25T06:26:00.000-05:00

I heard an interesting comment a couple weeks back regarding the manner in which the Company cleans house with the employees and managers it feels is not fit for the jobs in which they sustain. I gotta say it's kind of Dickensian in how they go about their low key proceedings. It's much like how anyone else is canned any other time of the year. What they would do is get a decent amount of work out of a person on the very day that they are let go. I've seen it happen too often for it to just be a fluke. The last person I saw fired was made to unload a freight trailer before the axe fell.

So now that the pre-Christmas season has finally wrapped, and all the Corporate hordes are now enjoying the spoils of their year-end harvest, there is to be a calm just before the grand exodus of employees who didn't make the cut. I hesitate to imagine what will happen with my own Store considering just how much of a savage beating we've received lackluster management taking us into the season with one less head and a complete lack of supervision on closing procedures.

My final Friday was a test of tolerance for the disdainfully insightful. I had to attempt to put away backlogged freight whilst at the same time putting up with a pair of aisles that saw no recovery efforts at all for the last two weeks. I'll have to check in with my therapist in the new year to find out if maybe I have a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, since I was ruing every moment I had to spend in the paint and adhesives aisle. The amount of disarray was literally paralyzing my efforts to stock the shelves.

So after we come back on Monday, the day after Christmas . . . at 3 a.m. . . . I will probably get an inkling as to just how fiercely the Company is going to pounce on our Store. Who is going to be tossed to the wind? They've gotten us to perform and dance to the best of our abilities. Now let's see how lucky the lesser qualified will be wrapping into the following year.

Limping Across the Finish

2011-12-18T11:34:00.000-05:00

I've had plenty of experience with Christmas holiday seasons at the Store to know that this year in particular is phoned in like never before. Whether it's the lights, the ornaments, the craft supplies or anything in gift wrapping, the Company has basically done the absolute bare minimum. No risks have been taken at all on experimental merchandise. Instead, we're selling a lot more of the basic holiday fare as well as the lion's share of licensed crap . . . all made in China of course.

I can remember in years past where we sold crazy stuff like head-waggle lighted deer, inflatable lawn snow globes, musical light synchronizers, self-wrapping gift boxes, gingerbread nativity sets, slide show photo frames, symphonic Christmas trees, PlayStation 2 video games, and even vintage toy sets like Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys.

This year we've had none of that. And despite my disdain for the quantities in which we have delivered, I'm very surprised to see just how little we have left of everything to sell this holiday season. The floral stems are now condensed to just a couple endcaps, and we still have a week before Christmas. All of our clear glass ornaments, 18-inch wreaths and highly allergenic pinecones are relegated exclusively to sidewalk merchandising.

It doesn't look too good for a Company with proponence for creativity to be so lacking.

Make It Look Pretty

2011-12-03T08:08:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been relishing in the opportunity to steal afternoon naps. It's one of the few things I enjoy about working the early bird shift. Early in equals early out. That's something that really sold me on taking the new assignment. Not having to deal with customers as we're about to close was another huge bullet point for convincing me to make the move. I enjoy working in the store when I have clear instructions and the means to complete my duties.

Every now and again though I'll hear the dreaded phrase that makes me want to kick the floor, and that's "Just make it look pretty." Whenever I hear this it means my amount of work has so many variable, not to exclude however long it's supposed to take. This particular instruction comes about when a display is on its way out, but we still have to keep it somewhat intact and try to force sell other things off it. Another possibility is when two or more displays are converging into one, and I have to make it understandable to a shopper. Then there's the rare but not to be forgotten opportunity where we have an empty endcap than needs to be filled with something (anything) before the district manager comes to visit and throws a hissy about empty real estate in the Store.

At the beginning of a season, the Company distributes a plan. As employees of this all-knowing Corporate machine, we are to follow this plan to the letter and make it better. Everything has a place, and we are to not stray from this in the slightest. But once the display becomes about a week old, all bets are off and it pretty much falls into the hands of improvisation. When holes develop because a non-replenishing product has sold out, it's time to fill it with something similar or relevant.

In a world that resembles anything close to perfection, the manager would give proper instructions on how to do this and stay around to help guide anyone new about innovative ideas to create appealing fixture assemblies. But let's be honest, our system of retail is broken. The manager has 800 things to do and only enough time to have everyone else do 700 of them. More often than not, one of these bodge projects gets thrown at me, and inevitably I'm told to make it look pretty.

The saving grace of all this is that if I'm having a day where I just don't feel the beaming surge of energy I should (which is invariably when I have to work at 5 a.m.) I can cradle the excuse: "Gee, it's taking longer than I had hoped. I should be done before I leave though." And inevitably I get hailed as a hero of he day. And then I go home and take another nap.

Heading to the Slaughter

2011-11-24T05:56:00.000-05:00

The Store is far from prepared to handle what it expects in customers on Black Friday. Between having no daytime floor team, no nighttime clean up crew and and overworked stocking team, I don't see how anything is going to function properly in the next four weeks. One solace I see is that there's no gimmicky door busters planned this year. Perhaps the Company learned from past failure that a fad-based PS2 dance game in a store that primarily sells craft supplies is perhaps a bad idea.

I just know that it's less costly to my personal energy to allow bad decisions to play out rather than try to inform the powers that be they've made critical errors. You can't tell a machine it's wrong, so it's futile to attempt it. A newer discovery I happened upon is that doing nothing speaks louder than any amount of shouting. A crowd of people that refuse to attend something is more noticeable than an angry mob. That's why protests by boycott work better than protests by picket. Picketing will only bring more curiosity whereas outright refusal to participate causes money to go wasted.

And since the Company only speaks the language of currency, it's chiefly in their best interest to give them messages that can be understood. I can't remember the last time I actually used my employee discount to buy something there. My opinion of the Company is so incendiary, that I can't even justify purchasing a simple skein of yarn there. I actively seek out the competition any buy their stuff instead.

Our district manager comes around now and again waving his arms yelling about stuff that we should have done, and we calmly explain that we lack physical, monetary and manual resources to pull off the growing list of petty accomplishments. He usually leaves having accomplished nothing just like all the other Stores under his jurisdiction who are held to this new destiny program. I suppose it's nice to hear we're not alone in this failure. But then that's like saying you're glad your boat isn't the only one sent out into the ocean with a leaky hull. Why die alone when you can do it as a group?

And so the Store is closed for a few hours today so the majority of the people fell for the time and a half bait to work can get some turkey down their necks before opening for five hours. I didn't and never will go for that. I work Black Friday for five hours, and only three of them are subject to customer exposure. Don't expect me to stick around a minute longer than I have to. I don't agree with the philosophy of intentionally turning shoppers into a mobs. I hope nobody dies this year during the shopping craze. I can't believe anything that comes wrapped in plastic or cardboard is worth dying for.

Put It Where No-One Shall See

2011-11-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

Cleverness, creativity and innovation: these are all qualities that are expected of our customers and are definitely not shared among members of the Corporate staff. Today I spent ample time knocking out quick little display resets like endcaps and small sections of aisles. It wasn't too bad starting out when I had to modify a section to pimp out an excess of science kits we were certain to get in bulk on the next delivery truck.

However, I must raise my eyebrows at the idea foisted upon our Store for the new location for Ribbon-by-the-Yard. If you guessed that it's nowhere near the rest of the ribbon, then you win a gold star. Indeed it's not only not by the rest of the ribbon, but it's also almost damn near hidden entirely from customer attention. Anyone who may have still expressed an interest in our mangled assembly of overpriced ribbon tatters will either have to hunt down an elusive daytime Store employee, happen upon it by pure accident or just accept that our competition has their shit gathered far more appropriately.

I'll just say where it is, because guessing would be nigh impossible. It makes the least amount of sense of any reset I've ever had to do, which is truly saying a lot considering all I've seen in the last six years of my life. The Ribbon-by-the-Yard has been moved to a pair of back endcaps, but not just any back endcap. These are flush panels with extra hardware strapped onto them. Previously they were just used for excess clearance (also known as utter unsellable garbage). And now we are going to attempt to sell Ribbon-by-the-Yard on the back endcaps in the floral area by seasonal wreaths, clay pots, glass containers and dried floral bundles.

What? Don't you have these things pop into your head immediately when you think of Ribbon-by-the-Yard? Well, I believe part of the reason for the idiotic placing of such things has something to do with the reality that I work in a transplant Store. Originally the Store that carries the designation number with which I've been affiliated used to be all the way across town in a different strip mall. For whatever reason the location changed to where it now resides. And with great movement comes great ineptitude as well. We have ceiling support pillars in the wrong spots, and there's probably 100 less square feet than we actually need. The resulting drawbacks are the persistent issues of aisle blockage and lack of extra storage space for necessary merchandise stocking.

But considering the rate at which the Company decides new and improved ways to completely confuse the customers, I may need to concern myself more with a better daytime job to fall back on. People won't tolerate stupid forever.

Question Answered: It's No

2011-11-05T07:42:00.000-04:00

Trying to figure out how someone can actually hold down a job designing Store displays with layout plans that are consistently wrong is actually a much preferred activity to trying to remember when we had a functioning assistant manager. It's hard to precisely determine the thought process involved where the district manager is concerned seeing how it basically changes more frequently than the wind.

For months we have been patiently waiting for news on who or how the assistant manager position was going to be filled during the upcoming holiday season—you know, the one where we get our asses kicked nonstop for two straight months. Well, apparently because the Company was ridiculously foolish with its endless sale on framing, it managed to land a gigantic lawsuit for violating federal law, and so rather than punish the people responsible, the penalty trickles down to the Stores. So to make a long story short, we are going into the biggest rush of the year painfully understaffed and without the required of necessary key holders in place to make sure everything gets done right and in a timely manner.

There's not much really left to extrapolate on here. The Company has made a concrete decision to intentionally under employ a Store that ironically enough is the largest in its district with obvious and overwhelming need for all the physical help it can claim favor to. This makes no sense whatsoever. But then I purposely avoided any chance at further promotion because I didn't want to become an asshole, so that may have some play in my lack of understanding business practices.

An Oddity 00007

2011-11-01T22:13:00.000-04:00

I can hardly believe it's been a year since my last Oddity update. Time really flies when your days are rife with uncontrollable drama I guess.

Well I came across something that was just too good to pass up. This one has to do with outside vendors that tag prices on stuff that is sold in our Store. While I admire their taking the initiative since we seriously have no time to do it ourselves, I gotta laugh when what they do counteracts the intent of the product they're trying to sell.

I just don't see how any parent would condone buying their kid an activity packet with Rainbow Dash telling little kids "FU."

A Collective Groan

2011-11-01T21:53:00.000-04:00

I'll not mince words on the matter that times and tribulations have rough at the Store. It would seem that three of our newest employees have scattered to the wind whether by their own volition or as mandated by the ruling of the Company due to failure to meet attendance requirements. And amid other things like rampant last-minute vacations by managers and crew, feeble staffing in the evening, an absence in the assistant manager position, misappropriated duties and a general sense of hopelessness, our Store looks as though it hasn't been cleaned in about a month.

The burden of moving haughty supplies of slow-to-sell Fall merchandise, making room for Christmas displays and trying to meet impossible deadlines in processing freight, just about everyone has just about given up entirely on giving a care about the welfare of the Store's future. Ironic it seems that the very goal the Company had for our store is blowing up faster than Mt. Vesuvius.

I welcome the threatening quality inspector to pay a visit just to see how badly we would fail. I've given up trying to collect things left over in aisles from the night before. It would probably fill six shopping carts with all the crap that's out of place. And right now even the shopping carts are in shorter supply than they once were. Between those that have fallen to careless SUV drivers in the parking lot and cart thieves, our numbers have apparently reduced by 30%. We need every last one for when we sort the multi-pack cases of random crap on Thursdays that we continually delude ourselves into believing will get completely worked through in a single day.

Basically put, the Store looks like Hell. I can't believe people still want to shop there. Comments on my recent posts have revealed some shocking confessions from managers at other Stores that are clearly far more fed up that even me and are throwing in the towel. I personally wish them all the best. In particular the small things are beginning to annoy me and my fellow employees again these days. In fact today being the first day after Halloween and the first song to play over the P.A. was "Winter Wonderland." From all corners of the Store I could hear a groan of dismay from everybody working. The dismal soundtrack was turned off not long afterward.

Truck Poop

2011-10-14T04:27:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted anything in a month, and I'm not particularly sorry about that. When something interesting happens, it garners an update. However, in the time since my last posting, work has been rather mundane to say the least. My mornings have been filled with non-impressive and arbitrary labors for which mention seems a pointless occasion. We've even had an inventory and seasonal tour (on the say day) that didn't even muster a vague interest on the meter of my concern.

Only now two weeks after the onslaught of the RGIS drones have come and gone does any semblance of anxious happenings occur. We just received a new shipment of freight; this one was weighed against our inventory numbers. Apparently the Company doesn't ever believe us when we make our own stock record adjustments. It has to rely on moronic strangers to give them a rash of numbers before we are believed. And so our shipment was double its original size and beset with a multitude of overcompensatory restock, the likes of which I dare say we still don't have the room to put away in its proper place.

Traditionally it takes me about two hours to sort out loose stock when I have help in the back room. I plow through the multi-pack boxes rather quickly. It's quicker still when a large box only has a single item in it. (Apparently cost-effectiveness is a low priority to the Company.) It wasn't the case in this instance though. We had an additional 50-plus cases to dig through and organize by department. Our usual method of sorting by shopping cart was soon abandoned as there was no way in Hell we would have enough carts to fit everything. So we spent the second half of the organizing process taking things out of boxes and putting them into boxes. If ever a job served no meaning, it would be what I had to do then and there. The first half of my day involved taking boxes off a trailer, and the second half involved taking a third of those boxes and making new homes in other boxes for their contents.

I finished up with mere minutes to spare in my shift. I can count on just one hand how many things I put away on the sales floor before it was time for me to go home. I can guarantee that my next work day will involve continued efforts to put away freight. As I understand, our payroll numbers populated before the truck order shipment numbers did. We were working with exactly half the required amount of people needed to get the freight process fully completed.

And then we have people on the schedule that don't even show up for work half the time, commonly it's the same folks over and over again. Fortunately for the Big Man's displeasure in having to make good on his threats, he pardons all attendance infractions, so the same useless employees keep coming back occasionally rather than allowing room for people who genuinely want to make an effort to work in a retail environment four hours before the ass-crack of dawn considers making an appearance.

The more left unsaid about our assistant manager situation, the better I suppose. We've been without one for two or three months now because antics in the district involving swappy-switchy has gotten us all jaded to the point of confusion. We have actually had a stand-in for the last few weeks, the previous assistant manager I had mentioned in this post.

A major bonus to my situation though is that I find myself now working with a number of people who have higher aspirations and are simply using the early morning shift as a means to pay bills and fund ulterior projects. I've even come across a couple musicians whom I would like to involve in my efforts in exchange for bartered video services.

So minor annoyances aside, things aren't going nearly as bad as they could be. Oh sure, the morning manager has openly admitted she'd like to start drinking on account of how ill-prepared she's been trying to juggle the constant influx of new display projects, continuous lack of appropriate fixtures to complete said displays, unsatisfiable demands of the district manager, and lack of support from the rest of the Store's staff.

That Is NOT Katy Perry

2011-09-11T13:22:00.000-04:00

The topic of the Store's musical soundtrack has been oft discussed. I believe I've complained about it on here numerous times before. For us workers, it's something that always seems to be quite welcome when it first changes, but then after a two-week-too-long stay, we're right back to complaining about it again.

I suppose we could be worse off and have the Natural Wonders style nature music back again. A former colleague and I had grown so acclimated to the 20-song rotation that we actually started making up our own titles. I owe her half the credit for these since it was during the evenings outside of customer interference that we happened to coin names like: "Something's Amiss in the Garden," "Looking at All My Life's Achievements Now that I'm 80," "All Male Jungle Orgy," "Inescapable Chinese Restaurant," and of course our personal favorite "Explaining to Timmy that Grandpa's Not Getting Better."

Those same 20 songs played in infinite loop for the first three years that I worked at the Store. The only time we got something new was at the first of December when we would get the elevator variety of Christmas music instead which never seemed to work right and commonly replayed the same track six times in a row.

Thus when we got some actual, real music in the Store, we were quite beside ourselves. It wasn't in us to trust the Company to actually make a smart decision. We first thought that maybe we had passed into a mirror universe where we, the evil minions, were suddenly cast into a much more wholesome and accommodating work environment.

But after two months we had become tired of the rotation and seemingly "stacked deck" feeling to the play list. Having to listen to three Celine Dion songs back to back is something that nobody should be subjected to. Then there was the '90s Latin sensation hour with Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias and Marc Anthony all in a row . . . in the same order . . . every day.

Only recently has the play list mellowed out and had a little more consistency in its tone and flavor. They play a song called "Thank You" by MoZella which I really find uplifting. They also have a couple songs from the second album from She & Him I absolutely love. So for those, I'm actually appreciative.

Unfortunately not everything can be perfect. We've all noticed a rising number of cover tracks to songs that make us tip our chins and squint funny. I'm told from a reliable source that some of these are recordings from the cast of Glee that we're subjected to. Under normal circumstances, I can shrug it off and just dismiss the stupidity as another drop in the bucket from the Company's collection of dumb choices.

It's not so easy for me to forgive however the cover of Katy Perry's "Firework" though. Normally I don't pay attention to Perry's work because I find it slightly repetitive and irritating. But there's a very important message in "Firework" that has a lot of deep personal meaning for me, especially this year with so much hardship survival I've been facing. Therefore it's rather insulting to hear some other voice with weaker intonation and gusto trying to carry the same energy and vibrancy to Perry's original. It's so obnoxious that I can't even focus on work when it comes on.

I know the foul decision will run its course, but for the time it's really a sore spot right now.

Cannibalism

2011-09-08T14:27:00.000-04:00

My disdain for tower baskets not withstanding, I am constantly agitated by the short-fallen supplies of grid pieces that we have on hand at the Store. I think my reluctance to see updates to displays in the main aisle is chiefly attributed to the stigma it carries with past and present frustrations. Everything in the main aisle at one point or another has to move. Everything. You don't just build it and then take it apart again two months later. That would be a reasonable idea. And the display engineers in the Company don't have enough collective common sense to even plan a few weeks ahead.

In a perfect world (a phrase I seem to use a lot when I want to bitch about some retarded thing the Company has done) we would have ample fixtures to piece together the displays that the yum yums up top tell us we need to assemble. However since there's so many cooks in the kitchen, there's usually 12 different voices coming down from high telling us peons what we should be doing to display our merchandise. The end result is we commonly come up short on supplies allowing only 75% completion on these main aisle projects.

Inevitably I embark on a quest to cannibalize things that aren't yet scheduled to be broken down, simply so I can have the necessary pieces to finish something for products either on their way to the Store or already stacked up in the back room (usually allowing only a two-foot-wide path between the the entrance and the break room).

Coming back to tower baskets (Eaurgh!) we never, and I do mean NEVER, have enough. Does this information get shared with the district manager who approves the purchase of store fixtures? If you haven't been paying attention, that would be the act of a well-functioning and responsible Store management team. So obviously the answer is "no." We had to build a new crafting grid using the guts of an old one, and for the most part, all the panel pieces were already there. However, the diagram called for 22 tower baskets: our current supply in the back . . . eight.

The majority of our tower baskets were sequestered near the front entrance to the Store jammed full of the ubiquitous clearance garbage that our customers have for weeks pawed through and passed over in search of something, anything, better. I spent an hour emptying them out, placing all the clearance shrapnel into a dump bin. (And I filled that sucker to the brim!) According to the word of the Company, we're supposed to keep all our clearance neat, organized by theme and well priced . . . Well they can suck it!

To help finish off the craft grid, I started stealing grid hooks from all over the store. Anything that had a clearance tag on it and was empty was as good as snagged. I plucked 23 hooks from four different displays just so I could complete a fixture that would certainly share the same fate eight weeks from now.

I'll cue up my laugh button when we get the diagram for the themed ornaments where they want us to use somewhere on the up end of 200 grid hooks and we have virtually none available in the whole Store that are free to use.

Painting Invisible Rainbows

2011-08-18T00:52:00.002-04:00

The Company is operated at the highest level by suit-wearing apes and slack-jawed, inbred cousin offspring; I'm certain of this. It's the only explanation for why amid the biggest push to transition the Stores from summer to fall would they come out and decide NOW to not only reinvent the craft paint department, but to also make it hopscotch with the general crafting merchandise the next aisle over. And I gotta say, I'm highly entertained!

The Big Man is gone on vacation this week. Therefore it is the duty of the early morning manager to freak the hell out and not be able to accomplish a God damned thing. She's like an explorer on her first safari who brought a map but no compass. I'm also convinced now more than ever that she got her new position because she was otherwise unqualified for anything else in the Store. That being said, I'm not so sure she's the right person for what she needs to accomplish now either.

For instance, I've never seen anyone take longer on a display reset than her. I understand the need to clean up shelving when establishing a new presentation, but there is a point where one has to draw the line that separates aesthetically responsible from anally dysfunctional.

The proof in this matter is where it comes down to transferring from one aisle to the next by means of going section by section swapping out the products as I go. This overhaul has been going on now for three days. In those three days I've managed to completely clear, clean, reset, label and sign three different paint brand displays. And in that time when the morning manager was supposed to be helping me, she has instead completed only two and a half sections of the spray paint reset while the rest of the time running around the Store being completely useless, barking conflicting orders at the other employees and causing nothing but implosive stress for everyone as a whole.

I must also point out that she has even pulled me away from my reset efforts to help build grid fixtures for the resident neanderthal to fill with backlogged seasonal merchandise because she's apparently not qualified enough to train anyone else how to build displays. I would not be surprised that in a week or less there's going to be a mass exodus. Already we have daily call-offs, so the ball of employee dispute is in motion. It will be interesting to see what will happen when the Big Man comes back and sees just how much hasn't been done in his absence.

The physical atmosphere is something else that deserves attention brought to it. While the instructions provided in the paperwork for the paint aisle reset specifically state to clean shelves with degreaser and to then clean the degreaser with window cleaner, we at our store opt to use something a bit more volatile for the sake of saving a step. If you are unfamiliar with a product called Design Master Mess Master 11oz, then you are probably better off than people in our Store. It's a powerful chemical that cuts sticky residue, melts foam, breaks down dust and makes paint bleed. One of the active ingredients in this concoction is ether. And let me just say that after a few hours using this stuff in a confined space, we don't need paint and brushes to start seeing magic rainbows. I make damn certain to wash my hands as hard as I can when work is done. I don't really want to think about what lingering amounts get into my respiratory system despite my best efforts to lock my lips and exhale through my nose whenever I have to spray this stuff. As far as store supply write-off merchandise goes, we probably plow through the Mess Master the most. I've yet to actually see a customer buy a can because we seem to be using it all up before any of the local clientele seem to get the opportunity to lay their hands on one.

One of the few remaining joys I have now is that we have coffee in the break room, which is usually brewed in the morning by yours truly. The day I had to build grid for the thug, I was cruising on 64 ounces of that black magic; I was humming along faster than bumblebee with a sugar rush. Unfortunately, the matter of the coffee perk (hah!) is that I am once again reminded that even though many of my fellow employees are mutual victims of the corporate machine, there are some assholes among them too.

Namely there's the matter of my benevolence last Thursday. I was feeling generous and brought in a large new container of creamer, because the supplies for sweetening had run completely out. I am talking not even a granule of sugar to be found in the whole damn Store. So I opted to bring in a $3 canister of hazelnut creamer as a special treat for everyone, my humble donation. Monday morning comes around, I show up at the unfathomable hour of 3 a.m. to find that the brand new creamer I brought in has vanished without a trace. Seriously?

So I learned my lesson pretty well. Work is a place where I am neither allowed to be vindictive or nice, because either way I'll end up getting nothing in return. So now I bring in just what I'm going to use and to hell with everyone else. It's obvious that I'm meant to be an exclusive entity among the flock, so that's what I will remain until the day comes that I can walk out the front door and never be obligated to come back again.

Tail Chasing

2011-08-08T17:46:00.000-04:00

A funny thing happens when you open up a shift that starts at 5 a.m. Almost nobody wants to work it. So some of the new hires from the truck team started in on it, but then realized just how much waking up at 4 a.m. sucked, and they decided that really wasn't their bowl of grits. In lieu of bringing on the people who said they'd do the morning job of setting new displays, cleaning out old ones and stocking, we instead had to rely on the aid of two cashiers who, bless their hearts, know nothing about moving merchandise on the floor. Then there's also a knuckle-walking oaf on our team as well who needs constant supervision and perpetual reminders.

Because the district manager decided that the annual loss prevention seminar would be hosted—not in a hotel banquet room like any decent company would do but rather—in our mezzanine complete with folding tables and chairs, we have fallen disastrously behind in productivity. The morning manager's obsessive compulsive concerns over everyone taking their breaks is also diminishing my already lacking faith in the Company, so what little pride I had in my work is all but gone. I am basically there to lift objects from point A and move them to point B for five and a half hours.

Anyhow, back to what I was saying . . . our process for getting things ready for the new season have fallen behind, and it's up to basically me, the morning manager and three other people who know nothing of what they're doing to get things caught up. (I'll wait for you to stop laughing.)

The morning manager decided it was up to me to show everyone how to move clearance seasonal merchandise from one aisle into another while keeping it all tidy and organized as well as show the neanderthal how to build 2x4 dump bins. Let me just cut to the chase by saying I spent probably an hour working on this aisle with three pairs of bemused eyeballs just staring at me. The morning manager finally stepped in to help when she realized that I'm not good at juggling training ops and moving stuff in a frantic manner at the same time.

Once the salvageable stock was finally removed from the aisle, I was able to remove the fixtures and then get started on something that has been a sword in my ass for as long as it's been introduced: peg board backer paper. The peg board in the aisles is six feet tall. Therefore the Company sends us sheets that are three and a half feet long. I know right? Makes perfect sense!

So over the course of ANOTHER hour, I had to go down the aisle section by section and remove the paper pins from the peg board with a pair of pliers. There wasn't just the pins from the old paper to remove, but pins underneath from what looked to be at least two other seasons' worth simply forgotten or purposely neglected.

So then finally with the ratty tatty green paper all down, I then had to put new paper up. The diagram instructions made no mention of this. But the morning manager had a feeling we were supposed to put up new stuff anyway. Fine. Whatever. I went into the back to claim some paper, and I began to slowly put most of it up. I say "mostly" because as I got down to the last two sheets, I realized I was only halfway down the aisle. There were only 10 sheets in the box, when I was apparently supposed to have 20.

The morning manager went back and found buried the paper I was supposed to be using. And since the shade of orange was off ever so slightly, I had to take all the paper I had just put up and bring it all back down . . . Neatly! So there went another hour and a half. I'm of course feeling completely unaccomplished by this point. It was nearly time for the Store to open, and I hadn't so much as set a single God damned shelf in this stupid aisle!

The morning manager took over putting up paper once I was halfway finished with the second attempt to get it all up. She wasn't really going much faster than I was. I found myself waiting on her to move out of the way so I could finally set fixtures. Pretty much by the time I was ready to go was when I set the final peg.

I can understand some grids taking a long time. It's understandable because of all the pieces required that are held together by nothing more than questionable zip ties. This should not have taken all day. It was a basic aisle display with one bush rack, a couple open-ended baskets, a few shelves and a few pegs.

The morning manager asked if I could stay any longer to help put up labels, to which I quickly replied a definitive "no" and was gone faster than a rum bucket at a bachelorette party.

Living in the Future

2011-08-01T22:42:00.000-04:00

It has been a full week now since the much-discussed venture into the new methodology of how things are done at the Store. My jury is still out on the whole matter. The upside of things is that I am now reduced to a mere 90 minutes of customer exposure. And I'm quite gracious to note that the morons don't show up til much later in the day. So now I get to assemble displays and process merchandise under the cover of darkness in an environment that is free of radical distraction. The not-so pleasant aspect of the whole thing is that I now have to split up my sleep schedule to make the whole thing work out; I'm not about to go to bed at 8 p.m. so I can wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning.

The first day out of the chute, I was reasonably confident that perhaps the whole concept may actually just work out. I had completed updates on three display sets and made it through half of a fourth. But not a few hours later past my shift did I get a call from the Big Man who was in a bit of a panic. It so happened that an e-mail came down from the Company about a seasonal delivery truck on Tuesday that apparently nobody on the management team happened to see until it was damn near too late.

That Tuesday I helped unload an impromptu 3 a.m. truck and then shortly afterward start building displays for the stuff that nobody was ready to receive. I cleaned out and reset the autumn décor aisle in an hour and moved on to build a grid for the spooky village and Halloween lighting. (I should point out that I was a little taken aback by the realization that my time working in the store outside the influence noise pollution was to be a lot more brief than I had hoped.)

Wednesday entailed further assembly and stocking of autumn and Halloween displays. The basket of updates that I had dropped off the two days prior was beginning to collect dust. I was under the impression that maybe, just maybe, the management was already starting to become unhinged with this new format. Assignments were swiftly ordered and recalled within moments of their implementations. Simply stated, the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.

Truck on Thursday was as it had been for weeks. Hardly a surprise to be had, though the morning manager seems to have a real cross to tote about mutual break times. It's her expressed view that everything is done as a team, including when they take their brakes. I don't know if it's her way to keep track of everybody, but it's hardly beneficial to make people who get up hours before the ass crack of dawn even considers breaking to all stop what their doing just 90 minutes into their shifts. In fact, some employees' bodies simply don't register the proper need for such things. That hasn't stopped her though from laying down the law and threatening write-ups for people who don't adhere. Apparently the submission of a signed doctor's note is the way around reassigning the time for an optional 15-minute break.

Then Friday was a time to return to setting more displays for the stock of seasonal stuff that still wasn't all put away. The pending arrival of Corporate execs the following Tuesday only added to the managerial panic. The morning manager's orders seemed to carry an unspoken "OH MY GOD!" in front. Her dangerous spiral into micromanagement was becoming quickly apparent. And though I've worked, often reluctantly, at the store for six years, she seems to never trust me to do what I'm told. She also freaks out when she can't find me after I complete a task as though I'm deliberately hiding out and avoiding work. (In actuality, I'm usually helping out another employee with something they're doing or cleaning up after one my projects.

So as far as I can tell, I'm going to be OK with things, but I can't really speak for the integrity of everyone else. There's going to be an implosion any day now, and I hope to be there to witness it.

Saboteurs

2011-07-10T06:40:00.000-04:00

I've been on the cross about the foolish antics of the Company for what seems an eternal stretch of time. It's been an unhappy obsession that may be a contributing factor to why I had to go back to therapy. So maligned is my vision of the corporate entity, that I seem only able to seek out positivity by complete removal of physical and mental presence from that Store. So it is with a somewhat gladder heart that I complain about something that I first began this blog for . . . those stupid ass customers!

I've moaned on an on at lengths about the seasonal trends, but I haven't really touched on how the impact of sociophysical implications are affected by conditions of weather, temperature and spatial alignment. There's a strong likeliness of more people falling into the asshole category when the moon is full. I don't know how that has any relation, but that's certainly how it is. Give me a full moon, and I'll point out seven or nine completely disrespectful people who take out all their frustrations on me for little to no reason.

And then this week alone, I've told more people where they can go take a piss than any other question combined. I mean personally if I was out on the town and suddenly that phone call from Mother Nature hit my inbox, sure I'd try to find the closest place to answer and handle all my paperwork. But really? Why are they all happening in the same spot this week? Let it also not go unsaid that as a person who visits sister Stores, I have to say that by comparison, our restrooms deserve a trophy for being THE WORST in the whole Company. There are janky-ass freeway toilet stalls I would feel more comfortable whipping out my unmentionables in than in the back of the Store where pungency is matched equally with decrepitness.

But as annoying as the potty question can become, it still falls more favorable than having to deal with the saboteurs. See, I end up doing a lot of closing shifts. Why? Because I made my availability accessible for all-day work. And nobody seems to want to work closes, so voila! I'm usually a closer now. And usually the first thing that comes to mind when I slide my card into devil clock machine of annoyance is, "Let's get this place cleaned up as fast as possible so I can get the Hell out of here." I'm so not even kidding. What little joy I have over making it to work on time is officially ended as soon as I clock in.

So if you wonder what the saboteurs are, I will be happily explain that. It is the duty of any closer to be assigned a certain footprint in the Store to straighten up and clear off foreign articles. Anyone with tenured experience is usually rewarded with either a larger footprint or a more SKU-intensive series of aisles. They trade me between the two so that I don't get "bored." Oh how my funny bone aches over this one . . .

I tend to have a somewhat rote pattern for cleaning, and (if I'm lucky) I'll have just one cart of items left over from my straightening tour that need to be put back where it truly belongs. I mean, I'm sure that whoever left the wood plaques laying in the bin of feathers or the glue bottles stacked on top of loose sheets of paper that were piled on top of the blank card boxes had every intention of making the right decision, but later failed completely to live up to what we as kids are told by our parents to do . . . and that's to put shit back where it goes if you're not going to use it!

It's usually a blessing and a curse when I get done with the SKU-intensive aisles early. It means I can put stuff away early and not have to feel rushed while I'm trying to figure out which of six different places in the Store a certain brand of pen goes. But it also means that it buys the saboteurs plenty of time to mess stuff up again while I'm away trying to help other employees finish what they are working on. So many times I've felt like I just missed an F1 tornado that touched down in the sticker aisle after I had just 20 minutes prior picked up everything that was laying on the floor and base panels.

There's also the matter of the glitter-filled bouncy balls. We "sell" these things back in the kids' area. I suppose they're there so that by the time customers with children have nearly reached their wit's end dealing with a screaming pile of flesh that they hand the brat one of these glitter-filled bouncy balls to help abate the disdain for spending time in a place that doesn't cater exclusively to a child's interests. But the weirdest thing is I have never actually rang a sale for one of these useless items. I only seem to pick them up from every other aisle in the store and haul them back to where they belong.

And finally there's those who don't look at the Store's open hours as a guideline but rather a challenge. There's something sexually appealing about 8:55 p.m. where everyone and their hobbling foreign mother wants to enter the Store for "just a couple quick things." These people we have to shark for 10 minutes making sure they don't pocket anything and get what they need so we can close down and hit the road. And woe to anyone who thinks it's acceptable to make a return in the last minute that the Store is officially open to the public. It happens every single night, and it is so not cool.

Well, I hope this was a nice little change of pace from my usual snarking. I can't say it was any less angry, but it was at least it was a little refreshing. After all, you can't pick on the same morons forever. You have to give other idiots a chance to get their ribbing.

The Price Is Wrong

2011-07-07T12:58:00.000-04:00

I must make mention of the abundant annoyance regarding the transition that has everyone's attention held rapt. Thus the maintenance of Store integrity falls to the wayside. And because common procedures are the ways that should be in place to keep the look and progress of business intact, the Store is bleeding.

Because I don't work weekends anymore, thankfully, I not present to verify that each sale sign from the week has been removed. There's nothing quite so annoying as customer backtalk when I scan an item and they say they saw a sign up that told them elsewise. And because by policy we must honor the sign, even if it's expired, we end up losing income on sales because a few people working can't think to do their job on the weekend.

Well the problem is doubled this week because not only did a lot of signs from the previous week get missed, but so did a whole slew of them that expired on the 4th of July. So now a gigantic portion of our fine art sales this week went out the door at half the cost because nobody dares pay attention to details. I think our efforts to become modernized are backsliding pretty fast.

The condition of the aisles are in a sorry state too. When it's not the outdated sale signs biting us in the ass, it's the regular displays that have missing tags, stuff put on the wrong pegs and other erroneous placements that lead customers to thing that things cost less than they actually do.

I sometimes want to punch both the people who don't do their job AND the shifty customers that call us on it. So I often find myself having to take a few deep breaths, recenter myself and catch a reminder that I don't give a shit.

Gone to the Head

2011-07-06T09:12:00.000-04:00

In my month's absence from updates, I have kept a low profile to allow whatever transitions imminent to take effect. And despite all the foreboding omens prophesied, I have seen very little in ways of transition that seem to be in any way productive. We have been conducting our working of the 3 a.m. freight deliveries for a couple months. Nothing particularly notable has changed in the way that has gone. I don't think it's revolutionized the ways in which the Store conducts its business with customers other than we employees get more time away from the distractions of people seeking to complete their craft projects.

I predict the parting of the ways in a fairly short time though. As this apparent "destiny conversion" shall take effect, a lot of veteran employees are going to jump ship and let this Company do its own thing. I can't blame them in the least. In some ways, I'm rather jealous of those who have been able to find work elsewhere already. I keep wondering if I'd have better luck if I took the Store off my resume. But with my business in filming weddings about to get pretty busy pretty quickly in the next few months.

My patience lately has really been put to the test. I don't do well watching people make foolish mistakes when I have no alternative but to just let them happen. I aided in the assembly of the new Christmas crafting displays. Anyone walking by seeing what they were just shook their heads and sighed. Long gone are the days when people moan, "Christmas already?" They know the machine can't be stopped once it's set in motion. In a few short years, I'm sure there's going to be a display that runs a duration 365 days to capture every possible nuance of year-end holiday interest.

Setting the display was a difficult matter in itself because the additional fixtures necessary to complete it reside in our mezzanine, which for the time was made unavailable as the Big Man and the district manager were conducting interviews for the current department managers to reapply for new positions that the Company as a whole was making each branch assimilate. The joke was on them though. As the majority of the display was duplicate location facings for stuff that replenishes weekly, I was able to kill about three hours just wandering around the Store grabbing things here and there to fill the empty pegs and shelves that were set. And since I had made no list and had no scanner with me, I was able to waste SO much time walking back and forth.

I don't know the specifics of the interview results, but I'm going to venture an assumption that they went as planned, and that the appropriate changes will be made with very little surprise. One of the department managers boasted to me that the new entitlement would grant her the ability to hire and fire people. I don't know if that was a little rush of power she was now wrangling with, or she was being facetious. I have simply relegated myself to not give a damn.

Then for a while things were calm, that was until an early shift when we were processing a freight delivery. The other department manager seemed to be on a marvelous power trip and thought it necessary to send the whole truck team on break at the same time. A good friend of mine who started up at the Store a few years ago, left to take care of family matters and then came back this past Christmas couldn't see the logic in taking everyone off the floor at the same time. I frankly feel the same way. It's not productive by any means to pull everyone from their post. That's valuable time unhindered by customers that is now lost because of some expectation that "the team works and breaks together" rhetoric is supposed to be in place from this point on. With the district manager barking demands that we at the Store have everything from the truck taken care of by the time the doors open to the public, it doesn't make a lick of sense to have large gaps where NOBODY is working.

Well, my friend and I didn't buy into it. We both kept on working: me because I just don't use most of my 15-minute breaks, her because she has physical demands that restrict when and how she takes her time off. The department manager laying down this new law seemed adamant about defending her weak-as-Hell case, but there's not a physician in the country that would allow a stipulation like that. I stand on the side of personal health taking priority, and I will testify on the behalf of anyone who takes that claim.

So in a nutshell, this big bad change is taking its sweet time coming to fruition. I keep my head sane through practices of disassociation with everything that the Company is and once was, by staying preoccupied with concerns in my other profession where what I do has valid impact on the clients that are served, and by a heavy amount of daydreaming. As much as I disliked the movie Sucker Punch, I can at least identify with the need for cranial escapism. I get a lot more wiggle room around the Big Man too, somewhat in part that I seem to give off this vibe that I could lose my marbles and shoot up the Store at any minute. So if I need time off or to a rescheduled shift, I usually get no argument.

So . . .

2011-06-04T00:59:00.002-04:00

I should know by now that lowness has no limit. I have seen things get bad. I have seen things get very very bad. I have seen things get so bad that it was impossible to see how they could ever become worse. Well guess what. It's worse than worse. Apparently negativity has no superlative value.

I have things I should be doing, but at the present, I'm hit with such a tremendous blast of depression that I need to focalize my emotions and press through. I make no promises about the tone of this posting as to whether it will have its usual witty repartee or it's going to be a knuckle-dragging expulsion of undiluted despondency. I keep drifting away from this even. I have to keep reminding myself to press onward despite my reluctance to focus on anything longer than a couple minutes. Having said that, please excuse what will likely be a very incongruous entry.

What comes from me right now is not merely my misgivings about the Company for which I so reluctantly work, but also factors of my personal life and slowly-growing professional offshoot. Without going too much into the details which may or may not be damaging to the people that they refer to, I will attempt to explain my present condition.

In my other job, my supervisor is undergoing a legal process to change her relationship status from married to single after she discovered the truth of her spouse's infidelity. / Two months ago my best friend of 10 years decided she didn't want to talk to me anymore, and I can't figure out a reason for the sudden change. / Family and friends around me are having woes of some form or another, and I'm unfortunately the kind of person who soaks up emotional energy like a sponge.

And then today was the big meeting at the Store about the changes to the staffing infrastructure that will be taking place inside the building. I can tell that the method of message delivery was greatly rehearsed and calculated to quite a degree to emphasize and deemphasize key aspects that would be taking place. The district manager spoke to the majority of the Store staff himself wearing a sympathetic smile on his face that looked like it was drawn on in Sharpie.

The message that kept being repeated during the two-hour-long presentation was the aspect of accountability in employees and customer service goals. The ethic of the Store is going to be heavily modified in the next couple of months for this transition. Most of my colleagues took the information and processed it as an unfortunate inevitability. Others, like myself, are resolute about finding the quickest way out.

Speaking as my own individual, I have my opinions about the ways in which a company can strive towards a successful future. One that sells products is living in an age of information an electronic commerce. The competition has taken to embrace the Internet for its customers that live away from stores or operate outside normal business hours. It's not that difficult to anticipate that many artists and crafters work on a different time schedule. This is something I asked the district manager, and his response was that the Company tried it once and didn't do a very good job at it, so it stopped.

That is why the Company is going to fail in my opinion. It's not a discount reseller like the companies that buy off all the high-end retailer clearance. This is business that caters to artists, decorators and crafters. The stuff sold within the four walls are replenishable goods. Why the Company can't figure out how to put some qualified personnel behind online vending is a complete mystery to me.

I agree fully in the Company's admission that it has lost touch with the customers. I disagree fully with the Company's solution to get back in touch though.

Artmageddon

2011-05-19T19:54:00.000-04:00

I have never witnessed true aftermath of a natural or man-made disaster, and I really don't ever yearn to experience such a thing. I have to believe however that it would have the psychokinetic sensation to a much greater degree of what I experienced today when I went to work after the onset of the "destiny" transition.

Our truck unloading and freight working process had for a few weeks now been altered so that employees come into the building at 3 a.m. to get the majority of the heavy duty aspects put away before customers even harbor a thought of entering the building. Well today, there was still a great amount of stuff left to push around on account of the somber nature that has taken hold of the Store. The Company may view the change as a means to stay competitive and make more money while everyone actually toeing the line are the true victims of the corporate machine who feel the hard pinch in their benefits and bank accounts.

On any given bad day, it's not uncommon to hear someone in the group mutter, "I gotta find a new place to work; I'm sick of this shit." But today I heard it from four different employees. This is a serious matter. I am witnessing the beginning of the end. I don't know what the Company has in mind for what it hopes to accomplish by stirring the pot this much, but I believe in my heart of hearts that it's going to change the recipe into something unpalatable. And like I said before, a Company that wants to take out all its failure on the base-level employees and still refuse to get into the frontier of e-business is obviously lacking in retail foresight.

I keep reminding myself to be happy not jealous for the employees who have left the Store to pursue bigger and better things. I keep struggling to find my turn at escape, and it just seems so impossibly difficult sometimes. False hopes are the things that really beat me down. It's even worse to have yet another false hope come down right as more bad omens vomit forth from the Company's ideals of hierarchy. Going back to the aspect of everyone I've talked to looking for a way out reminds me of a line in the movie Men in Black: "Why does a rat desert a ship?"

Friends, this boat is sinking, and it's taking down anybody who does jump the hell overboard.

Wishing for Meteors

2011-05-19T00:21:00.000-04:00

I was called in today. I wasn't told what I would be doing; I was merely asked if I could pull off a shift from three to close. It appeared to be of no foreseeable regrets. Work was work. I was only scheduled for one other day this week, so I jumped on the opportunity.

So I got there and I was asked to put away some wood crates. That was simple enough: less than 20 minutes on a ladder and I was done. Then I was called to the front to run register and hold the keys . . . what? I haven't held keys since I was a department manager. What was this all about?

I later learned that the cashier supervisor was in a malcontent disposition about some revelation at the Store and called off work. I was told that effective immediately, new policies were going to be implemented to transition into some new "destiny" program. It's apparently experimental, and only a handful of Stores in the Company are making this switch. I didn't really question it at the time I first found out, because I was frankly swamped to my eyeballs with an unending line of customers.

I'll say this much. I'm thankful that in the five hours I was ringing, I only had to conduct five returns. Most of them were quite simple too. But finally I was able to get a slowdown about a half hour before we closed.

I had heard about the "destiny" program in passing mention, and I really didn't pay much attention to it. Once I had actually asked, I developed a nauseated sensation. A Store in a state south of us was supposed to have this switchover, but they canceled on account of some apparent remodeling campaign. Therefore my Store would get it instead. In a nutshell, it means that the entire lower management hierarchy is getting mulched. Nearly every full-time position is now eliminated and new positions with lesser benefits will be crafted in their stead.

Essentially, had I not had my nervous breakdown that while back and I was still trying to make my department manager gig work for me, I would be shit out of luck as of right now. But now a slew of my colleagues now face that swift annihilation of security. I don't blame anyone for being pissed about this. And what's worse is that this huge horrible realignment of duties is being touted under such an innocent-sounding title. The Company is so deluded that it actually believes in its own benevolence during yet another asinine transition.

If they really wanted to be so damn futuristic, why the hell are they still using the old logo on the register monitors AND refusing to provide purchase options on the Web site? Priorities for this megalomaniacal are more absurd than even the cheesiest of James Bond villains. And this, my friends, is why I wouldn't be saddened in the least if the building was struck by a falling asteroid

Over a Barrel

2011-05-01T13:29:00.001-04:00

Much of the reason I am able to carry on at the store is that I am no longer required to care. As a department manager, I had the weight of 22 aisles resting on my shoulders. I was responsible for their continued upkeep, presentation and proper merchandising. It's hard enough to do something like that on your own with just 40 hours a week, but add to the fact that I also had a store manager, a district manager and a whole corporate drive preventing me from doing the things I knew had to be done in order for the areas in my jurisdiction stayed up to task. That among many other things are why I threw in the towel over management and decided that too many chiefs and not enough indians was no way to keep a sane mind.

A new development has transpired recently at the Store. Our fresh new replacement for the assistant manager that was transferred out is now going to be missing for four to twelve weeks. The reason for this? Who really knows for certain because I got two completely different excuses from the same person. Was it to help a store who's own assistant manager took leave to be with an ailing spouse? Or was it that our new assistant manager had to serve some prison time in another state? (This, people, is why I don't hand out names in these updates.)

Regardless of the why, I am now faced with the what. The fact of the matter is now a hole in the management team that could last up to twelve weeks. With a staff that's in a tremendous level of flux right now considering new positions being filled, the Big Man came up to me and asked if I would heroically take the position of a part-time key holder to close a few days a week. He let me take the decision home with me to think about. The following day I came back with a definitive "no."

He then tried to up the ante and express that even though he and I had hit some rough patches, he would secure my old manager's pay rate for the time that I was filling the position. With that he let me take the decision home once again. But what he didn't anticipate was my understanding that I already knew my pay would go up. And while it's pleasant to have a pay raise, I know well enough that you don't get something in this life for nothing.

In my other job, I secure client contracts for video coverage during their weddings, build a rapport with them to find the best creative method to express their individuality, plan camera coverage logistics, shoot video on very experimental equipment and then edit all their material into a timeless presentation. This kind of work demands a huge portion of my brain space, and I'm fortunate enough to be passionate about serving mankind in this fashion.

So when the Big Man told me that he was over a barrel with the whole assistant manager situation and didn't have the time to train someone else, something clicked in my mind. I've tried countless times to get him to own up to his duties and be responsible. He so often would shirk his shift and take off when it felt right for him. Now that he's in this jam, the only person able to let him off the hook is me. And that's why I politely said "no" again.

A Passing

2011-04-27T22:59:00.000-04:00

The following update is of a rather serious nature. It serves as somewhat of a follow-up to a previous posting titled What? Just What?

I have shown no slack in my preponderance of complaining about the sullen state of the Store's manner of increasing disrepair. Resets on major aisle sets and displays are about two weeks behind. Freight in the back room has accumulated to a near critical state. Basically as someone who has worked there for five and a half years, seeing it reduced to this degree is painful to withstand . . . but not nearly as painful as the news that I have just recently discovered.

An employee who was brought onto the team for the Christmas peak hiring has died. When I last saw him, he and I were talking about hilarious videos on YouTube. A week passed and I was none the wiser about anything. Then late Friday night I was checking up on my Facebook news feed where I noticed this person was tagged in a photo album that began with "R.I.P." Naturally I was confused and almost passed it up. However, there was something about the somberness in the poses that led me to think something very bad had just occurred. So I linked to his wall . . . I have never seen so many posts by so many people in one day. All of them were bereavement messages to his parents and family expressing remorse, condolences, concerns and memories.

I sat aghast for a solid ten minutes in complete disbelief. Scrolling through the tremendous list of postings I finally found out what had happened. The week prior, he was walking down the side of the road with his girlfriend early in the morning walking to a gas station for some snacks when a car swerved off the road and struck him. He was hospitalized and put into a coma in an attempt to prevent swelling in his brain. A few days later he was declared clinically dead and taken off life support.

I've seen low morale in the Store before, but never this low. This guy was a huge boost of excitement to the team. He always brought so much positive energy with him to work. It was very infectious. I had mentioned to other employees that he somehow made work not such as much. He was actually just promoted to the full-time floor employee position too. In the blink of an eye, he was taken away from us forever.

He will be dearly missed.

Worse Places

2011-04-05T00:20:00.001-04:00

My absence from updating is mostly in part to the woeful deficiency in my capacity to function at a normal level. Anyone who has three jobs and claims to also have free time is probably a liar, because I must say I have never been more physically exhausted than I have been this past month. Getting over a mistake with regards to a job is never an easy one, and the road to recovery is arduous. Also there's a matter of pride damage when you choose to take a new route to improve your situation and discover it was a bad decision. What I'm talking about here is the realization that there are actuallyworse places to work than the Store.

About two months ago, my wife told me than an acquaintance of her mother was looking to add a position to her kitchen staff at a cafeteria that operated inside a technical facility of an auto company. The job was washing dishes, plain and simple. The hours would be consistent and limited to the earlier portion of the day. After a bit of mulling, I opted to give it a shot. My level of dissatisfaction with the Store had reached such a sour point I would've done anything to escape it.

Normally I rely on my gut instinct about something to help me determine whether it's any amount of good for me or not. Then there's those times when I see all the signals that I should just get the hell away . . . and I ignore them like a damn fool. My very first day on the job washing dishes I came home soaked from chin to chode and almost too tired to stand. Mind you I was also in the bowels of an infrastructure that I absolutely hated. How I ever imagined I would be able to tolerate working in a place that served food to a clientele that I held nothing but disdain for was quite a failed objective on my part. Suffice it to say, I started looking for a way out from the very first moment I came home.

The second day, I didn't do so bad, and the experience wasn't quite so rough. I erroneously took this to mean I just had a lousy first start and that beyond that, it would be smooth sailing. So it was maybe four or five days that went by when I realized things were starting to get a bit dicey. One of the managers went on personal leave and then just a couple days later opted to quit outright. Into the mix came some upper management guy with a shifty smile and a hunker-down attitude. During the kitchen meeting prior to the lunch period, he announced to the whole group (without consulting my views first) that he would like me to start working on the lunch line. This of course meant that now not only would I not be doing fully the position that I interviewed for, but I would get to look into the smug faces of the employees of the company with whom I had nothing but vile contempt for. This news of course came at the end of the week where I had a whole three days to process the wrongness of what had been prescribed of me.

The following Monday, I sought to straighten out the matter with the person who hired me. I said that I had deep anxiety issues, and that I was not comfortable serving food. I explained that working the line wasn't the reason I agreed to take a position in the kitchen, and I didn't want to do it. She listened to my concerns and said not to worry; the situation, I was told, would be taken care of. The very next day the kitchen management opted to go ahead with the play anyway; I was so angry I was seeing white vapor. Cleanup after lunch period was an episode of unquenchable misery. My entire focus was shattered, and what made matters even worse was while cleaning a kitchen knife with a scrubby pad, I managed to slice open my right thumb.

There is something to be said about things you see happen as they happen and are helpless to do anything about. I watched the scrubby pad slip to the side as the blade came into contact with the skin on my thumb. I watched it push through the fingerprint bit by bit. I still can remember what it felt like as each ridge split. I count myself lucky that it only went as deep as the top layer of the dermis. The cut itself was only a quarter-inch long, so it basically bled for just a couple minutes before the platelets in my system rushed to scene to stop up the flow. But the damage was done, and so the following day when they had me serving my very first time on the lunch line, I was wearing a finger condom that was way too tight whilst I slopped out Indian cuisine. I put in my notice at the end of my shift and allowed them a week and three days to find a replacement.

The message that I didn't want to serve on the line became a bit more tangible at that point. On two separate occasions, members of management tried to get me to change my mind by offering up the option to go back to just dish detail again, but I knew better. When a company lies to me, I'm done with it. A promise is only as good as the ideals of the person who gives it. I watched management change in less than a week into the job. Even if I did remain as just the dishwasher as I had hired in to be, the next time another bright idea came about, it would just be another excuse to rip me away from what I was hired there to do.

By that point I had reluctantly adjusted my availability at the Store. I now opened myself to work anytime on any weekday. I took a special offering by the Big Man to come in on a Saturday too. I had the luxury of not being busy, so I was able to snag a few hours. Strangely enough, he wanted to have a sit down with me in regards to our working relationship. Oh yes. He went there. But by then, my wits had been pushed through the wringer, and whatever was left of them just didn't give a shit about anything. He acknowledged that I had a vast wealth of knowledge about not only many things pertaining to the Store, but the world in general. He pleaded that despite his obvious knowledge that I hated him, that I wouldn't express it in front of the customers.

[To be fair, I don't hate him. If I did, I would've sought out any and all options to push him in front of a bus. But in all honesty, I just wouldn't be disappointed if he happened to be hit by one. That's the main difference.]

My reply to him after the one-sided discussion was that whatever drama transpired two whole years ago between he and I was far removed from the forefront of my mind. I had much bigger concerns at this point, and that his inability to own up to his misgivings was no longer a focus of my mental energy. That seemed to settle things.

A nice little unexpected benefit to returning to shifts that I shunned for a year is I get to now see employees that haven't worked with me in a very long time. Their greetings were extremely cordial. All of them were excited to hear I had graduated from school and was working to develop a video service for a high-end wedding photographer. I was glad to find I was welcomed back into the fold (even though I never really officially left) with open arms.

If I was offered the opportunity to leave for good to pursue something more meaningful would I take it? Hell yes, I would. However, I must say I am a much more scrutinizing judge of what I choose to do with my time in exchange for hard currency.