Bitch about work thread.

Altron

Well-Known Member
Well, Friday night, I started typing this wonderful rant on my job, only to be thwarted by the electricity people.

I did manage to save it, but not to post it. For the most part, this is the first chance I've gotten to spend time not at work since Wednsday, so here goes:

My boss doesn't have a sick sense of humor.

We have this thing called the Daily Mix, where they give you a 'pep talk' e-mail for the day. It has stories from the day before, a joke or trivia, and then things to work on today, along with who will be the floor manager at what times.

So, since the people yesterday didn't send the guy an e-mail about stories for that day, he didn't have a daily mix out this morning. Since I was around yesterday, I got to pretty much write it. I wanted to put in that "poker face" joke, the one with the $500, and he was kinda pissed off. He said that it has to be something workplace appropriate and kinda stupid. A lot of times they do trivia and say to e-mail them. Today's trivia was, I kid you not, "Who can tell me the meaning of 'condiscending' and use it in a sentance", to which I was like "First, there's only one "I" in it, and second, everyone knows what it means, hell, it pretty much defines the relationship between me and the technology manager. Put my joke back in."

And to my combined horror and surprise, plenty of people didn't know what it meant.

Of course, I am a bit concerned about the daily mix making my a little vain. Since I was pretty much in charge of dictating it, I was supposed to think of two "customer service heros" for the day. One of my coworkers stayed an hour late to help out because really shitty scheduling (nobody called out, they just -didn't- schedule anyone for like an hour and a half in the warehouse, so one of the CS people needed to do warehouse, so one of the merch people needed to do CS), so she got in. I was gonna do the guy who spent the day wiring up a TV display, but apparantly that's part of his job responsibility, and they wanted going above and beyond. So I was like "Well, I stayed a bit late to help warehouse clean up so they could polish the floors, is that alright?" and it was, although, since I didn't physically write it, it came out all wrong. I wanted it to say something like "____ and ___ in warehouse with _____ from merch worked hard to clear out the back of the warehouse for the floors to get polished" but it ended up being "_____ from merch worked hard to clear out the back of the warehouse". I mean, I did work hard, and it wasn't my job. But I didn't do nearly as much work as the two guys whose job it was. They spent like 3-4 hours each, I spent like one hour, just to finish up because they were tired.

I did manage to get my favorite line of bullshit in there, "opening avenues of communication to enrich the customer journey". That's what I love about dry sarcasm, it slips through "work-appropriate" screening very well. Instead of bitching, I just take the bullshit jargon that the managers tell us, reword it, and toss it right back.

And of course, my name is on the bottom, right after "today's daily mix brought to you by"

I really hope it doesn't sound too narcissistic, especially considering that I'm a customer service hero again for tomarrow's daily mix, although this time, I actually deserved it, because I worked my balls off.

The reason I wanted to get in the first one was that one of my coworkers who typically bitches a lot about working and always wants to go home early got in the daily mix not once, but twice, this week.

First time, he decided to re-print tags for all the games, and sort them out. He started on it, and went home. While he was working on it, I helped him with about half, and once he left, I finished it.

Second time, he came in on his day off to cover Madden 07 release, and worked on the register.

Now, I offered to come in that day and help, and was told that we would have enough people.

Covering the register? One of my coworkers and I cover the register on a daily basis. On average, I spend about an hour a day on it, covering for breaks, or reducing the line, and occasionally spending the entire day on it, covering for people who called out. Same one who stayed an hour late on the register yesterday to cover people. Never got in the daily mix for that. Of course, my favorite is the classic bait and switch, where they tell me to come on for five minutes so that they can go to the bathroom, then never return.

I gotta remember to take that issue up with management. Merch is understaffed. We don't mind covering the register if neccessary, but we are NOT a permanent replacement. If someone's taking an hour long break, fine, we can cover it. If someone's going home at five and the store closes at ten, completely un-fucking-acceptable.

Just because we don't have big ticket sales doesn't mean that we don't need fuckin' sales people. For a solid hour today, the department was not staffed at all, because I had to go on register and for all but about 4 hours in the morning, where it was me and a coworker, I was the only person in the department for a 12 hour day.
CSA 1 "Hey, can you hop in register?"
Me "I can get on for a minute or two if you need to go to the bathroom, but I'm the only person in Merch, and I need to cover the floor."
CSA 1 "Ok, it will be real quick"
-1 hour later-
Me "Where did CSA 1 go?"
CSA 2 "Oh, he went home awhile ago"
Me "Can you get someone else up here so I can cover the floor?"
CSA 2 "Yeah, we'll send someone up in like ten minutes"
I kid you not, that actually happened today.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
The fucking schedule.

It's really not that fucking hard, stupid bitch vampire ops manager.

You see, there are employees. Five of them.
Then there are shifts that need to be worked. 10-2, 10-5, 5-10, and 5-10 on every weekday. usually 10-6, 10-6, 2-10, and 2-10 or something like that, every weekend. You take the five people. Put them in the shifts. Not that fucking hard.

So, as usual, the place is a complete fucking mess. The fact is, we NEED to hire people, and we NEED to hire them RIGHT NOW. Not in November. Not in a week. TODAY. Right now we've got four people who can work full time, and one part time. In a week, we will have two full time, and three part time. The department needs about 200 hours of staffing a week. WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING PEOPLE.

On the plus side, I'm pretty fucking happy about my job security right now. I have TWICE as many hours as the next person, which puts me at about a third of our department, in terms of hours. On Friday, I pretty much ran my third of the store solo, which got me on the good side of the entire management team. They know that I like to mess around and have fun, but they know that I can pretty much operate a third of the store on my own for an entire day, and a busy friday at that.

Actually, I find that I work best while understaffed and overpressured. If there's a lot of my coworkers around, and a light workload, I get bored. In case you missed it, I am a very talkative person. With 2-3 coworkers, I hang out with them or fuck around doing other stuff. If I am solo, I really have nothing to do except work, so I work.

So, pretty much, I've shown them that I can handle whatever they can throw at me. It's shifted from me trying to make them happy to them trying to make me happy. I've tried to be more discreet while not working, and I've taken a few initives that paid off.

I do my job well, but I also try to make it known that I can do other stuff well also. I can assist in ANY department if things get hot. Right now, in terms of seniority, I'm one of the newer people, but as we get new hires, I'm probably going to have to train them, and I am going to request Senior Product Specialist status again, which will give me a nice name badge, a $1.50 raise, and some new responsibilities.

And, people there are fucking stupid. Mostly the ops manager though.

Got a minor annoyance. One of our guys is on our schedule, but works only in TVs. He's a really great TV sales person, and TVs are understaffed too. I can work my ass off and handle PST. He can work his ass off, but not be able to handle TVs, because it takes more time per customer. He has been basically working his ass off in TVs, tons of extra hours, and I have been working my ass off in PST to cover for him.

But the retarded ops manager kept him on the PST schedule, so she would schedule two people to work, except one works only TVs. It was two weeks before he finally got moved to the right schedule.

And I have the dubious honor of starting school, drastically cutting back my hours, while we lose people very quickly and don't have time to replace them. I'm already working almost every weeknight and open-close every weekend, while picking up weekday shifts to cover for people. Starting in a week, that won't be happening, along with another one of the glorius five members of PST. Another one has kids in school and also only works weeknights and weekends. Another only works tuesdays and thursdays. One works anytime.

So, basically, we're looking at three people who can work weekends. The department NEEDs three people at all times during the weekends. We also need to provide 2 people M, W, F, and one person Tu, Th. Then there's the Tu, Th only guy for the second Tu/Th night shift, and ONE person for 9-5, every weekday.

It's an absolute fucking disaster. We're all pulling overtime just to keep the department at minimum staffing, and we're talking about TRIPLING our staffing over the next 5 months.

Even if we do hire shitloads of people, they will still need training, and we'll have like a 2:1 ratio of newbies to experienced people. I've done it before, and working with a new hire is more difficult than working alone, because they're constantly asking questions.

The ops manager needs to pull her head out of her ass and start catering to the illustrious five. She NEEDS every single one of us, and she needs us to be happy and motivated.

That's why I am asking for a raise and a promotion on Monday.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
So, to add in some fun to the mix, THREE of our customer service people are quitting in the span of a week. Now, we already didn't have enough fucking people. A third of their fucking department and half of ours just quit in the space of two weeks. It's a mess.
 

Spirit

Kissy Goddess
I flat out loved my job. But ya, managers can really have their heads up their asses, I know that for sure.
 

Nixy

Elimi-nistrator
Staff member
Past few days, it's been much closer to half.

Dude, you don't even wanna hear about some of the summer jobs I had...the long and the short of it is parttime/summer jobs often suck ass. Some people are lucky enough to find decent ones (I had an OK one for a few summers only because the company wasn't as busy as they expected thus I wasn't very busy) but the majority of them suck shit, it works as motivation for people to continue school ,get a good education and get a good job. I took a vacation day last week but ended up working more than enough hours the rest of the week that my time sheet for 4 days has more hours than I should be working in 5, thing is I LOVE my job, the time flies and I don't even mind the long hours. That's the kind of thing school gets ya, a career you enjoy. So, Be Cool Stay in School :D
 

rrfield

New Member
Yeah, working in an electronics store has to be cake compared to some. I flipped burgers for 6 years (including 3rd shifts) and had a job in the entertainment industry for 3 years (ticket booth at the $2 movie theater).

Do you have to scrub grill vents with anywhere from .1 to .5 inches of collected grease? Clean deep friers, scrub toilets, for $6/hr. I would have loved a job in consumer electronics, but at the time my town only had a 2nd rate Circuit City and a Radio Shack where all the employees had the same last name for some reason.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
So, this old guy was yelling at me and another coworker because a certain phone we had was discontinued, yet Radioshack still carried it.

LIKE IT'S OUR FUCKING FAULT THAT THE CORPORATE FACTORY IS NO LONGER PURCHASING THEM FROM MOTOROLA. THERE ARE FUCKING 619 STORES, EACH WITH CLOSE TO 100 FUCKING PEOPLE, NOT COUNTING ALL SORTS OF CORPORATE SHIT, AND YOU FUCKERS THINK THAT TWO PART TIME $9/HOUR SALES PEOPLE IN NEW JERSEY MAKE THE FUCKING PURCHASING DECISIONS!?!?!?!?!?!

And then we had this cretin come in:

Coworker: "Hey, how are you doing? Do you need help looking for anything?"
A friendly, courteous greeting
Frosty the Ice Bitch: "I want to see your keyboards."
As usual, rude and pushy, right at the start.
Coworker: "We only carry one, and it's right here ma'am."
Demand was quickly and efficently met
Frosty the Ice Bitch: "When I went to your website, there were six. I only see one."
You didn't bother to read the big notice that says "ONLY AVAILABLE ONLINE" right below five of them, did you?
Coworker: "Well, ma'am, we don't have everything on the website in the store. This is the only one available in our store, but we can special order you the ones from the website."
Explains the situation and offers alternatives
Frosty the Ice Bitch: "Well, how am I supposed to see how they sound if I can't see them, huh? I want to see the other ones!"
WELL READ THE FUCKING WEBSITE NEXT TIME, OR CALL TO SEE IF WE HAVE IT, YOU STUPID CUNT
Coworker: "I'm sorry, but we don't have them."
I absolutely HATE having to apologize for something that isn't my fault. I don't have any fucking control of inventory. If we don't have something, it's not my fault. I don't have anything to be sorry about.
Frosty the Ice Bitch: "Well, in that case, I'm going to go to Best Buy. I'm sure that they have all of them."
The usual empty threat to go over to our competitors. Earth to dumbass, we don't give a shit. We don't make any more or less money if you shop at ccity or if you shop at bbuy. At this point, I couldn't help but interject as much dry sarcasm as possible
Me: "Well, I hope you have a great time over there, they are truly an amazing store dedicated to enriching your experience."
She just gave me a furious look and stormed away.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
And then there are the people WHO JUST DON'T GET THE FUCKING MESSAGE.

They want this movie. I spend five minutes combing through our inventory computer, making absolutely sure that we do not, in fact, carry it. Then they expect me to look for it. I'm like "I am 100% sure that we do not have it." and they're like "Well help us look for it then."

And then there was this one bitch...

I was walking, and this neanderthal screams "YO" at me. "YO, I need you to find something for me."

First of all, I have a name, It isn't "YO". You won't give me the simple courtesy of coming up to me and asking politely, yet you expect me to bend over backwards to find shit for you? It's in alpha-fucking-betical order. Even a dumbass like you should know the alphabet.

So she's looking for this one movie. It's EXACTLY where it's supposed to be, and there's like five of them. They're way on the bottom row, like an inch off the ground. I get on one knee, pick it up, show the cover to her,
me: "Is this it?"
her: "yes"
So I put it back where it was, stand up, and tell her "Well, it's right there, on the bottom shelf"
I get a warm, toasty feeling inside when I think about it.

So, one of our two main cash registers broke. We have two up in the front, and three over at customer service. The line is long, but customer service didn't have any customers over there, so we can ring up sales over there to cut down the line real quick. There's also another cash register about 20 feet away, in one of the aisles, that also works for cutting down the line.

So I go to the next person in line, and tell him that I can ring him up at the other register. He YELLS at me for offering to help him. I kid you not. "I don't want you to ring me up at that register, I want you to ring me up at the front register."
Me: "Well, the other front register is broken, but I can help you over at the other register."
to which I get "That's bullshit, where's your manager?"
So I pick up the phone, call the manager, and say "Hey, Andy, can you come up to the register?"
and he's like "Sorry, not right now, I'm busy with somebody."
Me: "The manager is busy right now. He'll come up when he gets the chance."
Of course, with the various paging, phone calls, intercom, etc, that took two minutes, where I'm just standing there trying to call the manager and getting yelled at while people wait in line. Luckily, a lot of them got the message, and walked over to Customer Service.
I offered to help him, but he refused. I tried to be nice and help out the guy on register, and I get bitched at by some neanderthal. So I just ignored him and walked away.
 

Altron

Well-Known Member
Loose enough customers & you'll make a bunch less.

We send over the asshole customers, the ones that you lose time and money on. It's been a constant competation for many years, it would take A LOT to swing it one way or the other. If ccity went under, I would just get a job at bestbuy. I'm only in the business for less than another year, then it's off to college.
 

tonksy

New Member
Welcome to retail. This is a great example as to why you should scratch and scrape to be advanced so you can be in management or in an office and away from the unwashed masses...or go to college and get a degree that enables you to sing the old "Take this job and shove it" song.
Or you can be like me and work retail from the privacy of my own home so those morons can't hear me when I voice my opinion of their questions and comments :D
 

Inkara1

Well-Known Member
Yeah... I used to have to get yelled at by customers for stuff that wasn't my fault... now I get yelled at and accused of bias by moms whose kids weren't in the paper... or if I miss something, I always hear, "well, Chris Cauley was always there." That grinds on me more than anything else. I'm not Chris Cauley (he used to have my job, then left, then the guy that replaced him was a washout, and I was next). I can't be at events that no one tells me about. I like to do non-work stuff occasionally.
 
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