I have had some very tight schedules in the past week. Whoa! BTW Sue, It has started to become a habit to wake up at 7 before the alarm clocks! It is truly amazing. Basically, my day runs from 7am to 11pm scheduled but sorta over-runs to 12am usually.
Anyways, not that I’m complaining, but I love the tightness of the schedule - doesn’t give me to to think of ways to skip doing work. I guess it’s a change for the good.
I just got promoted to a Supervisor at Sears. The job is quite demanding and I just hope I can juggle school and work at the same time. Wish me luck!
Work or School?
School made me wanna go work and screw school. Now that I’m working, I kinda wanna not do that either. Kinda confusing right?
I’ve told this story before to some of you… two ladies are checking out some TVs at Sears and I go over to them and you know, they’re both middle aged … look like mother and daughter … and so I put on a smile on my face and grip my Binder in my hand and I say, “HI! Can I help you guys with something?”
At this point, the elder one gives me a mean look and goes, “We’re not guys, we’re ladies.”
(pretty awkward situation huh?)
The Sears attendance policy is the worst piece of ‘legislature’ ever put into hard practice. Basically, one has 12 points to foul and every time one is later than 6 minutes for their shift, they get assessed 2 points. Also, if you miss a day, you get assessed 4 points. So in essence, if you are late once in 2 months, then you would end up getting fired. One of my very dedicated co-workers was let go yesterday. He was the best worker they had there … heck he even vacuumed the carpet voluntarily! This way the turnover that sears will have will be tremendous. I believe that every 3-6 months, there will be a new staff. Especially, if most of the staff is school going.
When people work in retail, they are usually looking for EXTRA money and have so many other things going on that the last thing on their mind is to make sure that they are not more than 6 minutes late otherwise they might get fired. This co-worker of mine actually was on final notice because he had 12 points and any more points would lead to termination. Poor chap had a flat tire the next day and he frantically tried calling in and letting them know of his situation. Next thing you know, they assess him 1 point for that and let him go. All in all, this is the worst policy I have ever seen in effect.
It’s about 5:15 on a Saturday morning and I just woke up. Why? well because I need to be at work by 7am. That’s what my manager did to me when I asked her to take me off the schedule for friday and saturday evenings. Well I figure that it is in my best interest because we have early bird specials on Saturday mornings from 7am to 10am until christmas. So, most of my big customers are supposed to return today. Lets see how many come through!
Incident #1: So I was wrapping up my shift and was ready to leave when the phone rings for the umpteenth time that day. I was like what the heck, one last call and then i’ll be outta here. This lady on the other side apparently bought a disney TV and DVD from us. To give you a little background, Sears sells these mickey mouse shaped and colored TVs and DVDs. Its meant for little kids, I mean the damn TV is all but 13″ big. Presumably, the controls should be very simple since it is little kids who would be operating these controls. The lady explained to me that she had come in twice in the past two days with her TV and DVD player that she bought about 2 days ago because at first she didn’t know how to hook everything up and the second time, she couldn’t get the DVD player to open. Now she says that her problem is that she can’t get the DVD to play and wanted to ask me if there was something special she needed to do or get for that. Now keep in mind, that I have no idea what the controls on the TV or the DVD are because I just saw the TV lying on the shelf a couple of times when I walked by. So I ask her to wait a minute while I go check out the controls on the system and then I’ll be able to guide her. I mean all she’s trying to do is play a DVD, how hard could it be. So here is how the conversation goes,
“Ma’am did you press the play button?”
“Which one is the play button?”
“It should be the one with the triangle on it”
“I can’t find it”
“Ma’am, do you see the face of mickey mouse on the DVD player?”
“ya”
“Press his face”
“Now tell me, DOES THE TV NEED TO BE ON?”
“Yes ma’am!” (it is still very hard to believe her question)
“What about the DVD player?”
“That too ma’am!”
At this point, I decide to ask her all the basic questions
“Ma’am, is the DVD in the player?”
“Yes”
“Did you put the silver side down?”
“The WHAT side?”
“Did you put the SHINY side down … the SHINY side?”
“Hold on, let me check … yes, the shiny side is down.”
After about 10 more minutes, I was able to walk her through the steps to get her DVD playing. But boy, I was thinking to myself the whole damn time, how stupid can you be lady?
Incident #2: I get on the elevator at work to go downstairs for some water. The elevator comes up and there is an asian couple in there already with their daughter. The doors open and I’m waiting for them to come out and they don’t and the doors start closing again so I stick my hand in there and say, “going downstairs?” I don’t get a response so I just hop in since Sears only has 2 floors and I was on the main floor and the only place this elevator could go was the basement. As soon as the doors start closing again, the guy goes, “Excuse me, we wanna go downstairs?” He said that in the form of a question as if he couldn’t figure out how to make the elevator go downstairs. Now somebody please tell me, if the control panel in the elevator has only 2 buttons -