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Remembered the other thing I was going to gripe about when I posted the booze thing. Some regional overlord blew through a while back and decreed that the grocery/consumables action alley needed to be wider. Problem with that is that area includes the freezers which are set into the floor and can't be moved, which means that instead of shifting things over that way where there's plenty of room, we had to move all of the cosmetics/health and beauty/pharmacy stuff over, making an already somewhat too narrow lane even worse- there are a couple of ceiling support pillar things in the middle of it which make things even more cramped. It looks awful too- those shelves have been where they are for years, so you can see where they were on the floor and it's a goddamn mess. Years worth of buildup from waxing and dirt from under where the edges of the shelves were and the spots where the shelving units actually rested on the floor. I'm not sure if its even possible to get that poo poo cleaned up without completely replacing patches of flooring. Oh, and when they tried to move one of the shampoo shelves, they couldn't because while one side of it was hundreds and hundreds of pounds of shampoo, the other was just boxes of hair dye so not only was the thing on its own so heavy that it started to bow in the middle when they lifted it, it also threatened to tip straight over because one side was so much lighter than the other. So third shift had to unload the whole drat thing so they could move it.
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Jan 22, 2013 10:21
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:51 |
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I love it when upper management makes design decisions which have a negative impact at floor level. Clearly a lot of these people either never worked entry-level retail or they've forgotten what it was like, because poo poo like moving shelves to enlarge aisles is not limited to your store. At ours recently (and apparently all of the company's stores) they rearranged the self check-out cashier station. Our self-check machines are arranged in a neat square like so: [<-- exit this way] [-|_|.......|_|- ] [Cashier Station] |B <-Checkout Lanes->D| | <- Checkout Lanes -> | | <- Checkout Lanes -> | | <- Checkout Lanes -> | |A <-Checkout Lanes->C| [Main store aisle] The cashier station has a desk with a monitor for the self-check machines for manual overrides and such, and another regular register for overflow management. It also means that at 6am when we open and there's only one cashier, they can watch the machines as well as providing register service to people who desire it. Until last month the self-check monitor and the register both faced the exit, so you could stand behind the desk, look out over the self-check area, and ring people up on the left side and deal with minor problems on the right side all the same time. This made it easier to juggle customers during busy times and you could also quietly watch for potential theft and ticket-switching by keeping an eye on both the customer and the monitor readout. There's also a floor mat at the register. Unfortunately it's policy to stand out in the front (between A and C). Lingering behind the desk when there isn't an immediate customer-related need to be there is frowned upon no matter how badly your feet/legs/back ache from standing on bare concrete or how much you suspect that the jerk at self-check A put a $200 price tag on a $400 drill. And I guess corporate finally decided that cashiers were leaning on the desk too much, "hiding" behind the desk ("Hello I am standing here in a bright orange apron, definitely hiding!"), or generally using the monitor orientation ("gotta watch this dude check out!") to avoid standing in the aisle. (Duh. The aisle is solid concrete and not conducive to keeping an eye on the machines. Great initial design there, guys!) So in a fit of "management knows best" they flipped the self-check monitor: [ v Monitor |_|- ] [-|=| Register^] |B <-Checkout Lanes-> D| (etc) (they also had to change the display so that it lined up with the new arrangement, so the monitor display was criss-crossed for a week before it was physically turned around, yay confusion). This means that to see what scanned or fix a problem you have to turn your back on the machines and any customers approaching. They didn't turn the register around though! Now if you've got 4 people using the machines and two in line to check out at the register, and people are having self-check problems (I swear they bring the dumbest poo poo through those machines), you can't just lean over and fix it while handling your line. You have to apologize to the people at the self-check while you finish with the customer in line, then apologize to the line while you leave the register and walk around the desk, load the screen, fix the problem, send control back to the customer, and walk back around the desk again. And then you have to hope that none of those self-check customers switched tickets because now we can't monitor the self-check readout while behind the register. But they're always on our backs about shrink and checkout times... I need to get away from the registers. I'm so much happier when I'm working on the floor.
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Jan 22, 2013 23:36
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Well, apparently as some sort of last hurrah, the interim manager did a completely unwarranted and dickheadish thing after I left yesterday. He caught one of the local bums stealing a pack of D batteries, and instead of making him pay and/or kicking him out, he took him up to the front of the store, got everyone's attention, and said something that amounted to "look at this pathetic bum gently caress stealing from a dollar store". 
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Jan 27, 2013 19:47
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It was nothing nearly on that level, but I had a pretty awkward moment with one of the managers the other day. I was complaining about having trouble finding an affordable gym in town that was close to my house. She was complaining too, because apparently she doesn't want to work out in her apartment building's gym because it's always full of black people who stare at her. She then loudly said something about how she "didn't want a bunch of 'jigaboos' staring at her while she works out." Keep in mind she has a tendency to say EVERYTHING, (no matter how inappropriate) in a loud voice you can hear halfway across the store. And there were customers in the shoe department a few feet away. It was a really disappointing moment for me because she's really the only person in the store that I'm friends with and then she whips out this weird racist poo poo. She also just broke up with her long time boyfriend and now complains constantly about creepy guys hitting on her. Everyday it's some iteration of "These guys are so creepy, I can't figure out why won't they leave me alone?" Then I get on Facebook to find she's publicly posting every detail of her single life and still hasn't unfriended any of these weirdos.
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Jan 27, 2013 21:33
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Someone came in to work today with the flu and was there for a few hours before being sent home. Now I'm kinda paranoid that I somehow got it. On a non-paranoid note, I wish people with specific demands on bagging wouldn't go through express. You hold up the line because it takes twice as long, if not longer, to bag your stupid things because you need them paper in plastic. God. gently caress paper.
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Jan 29, 2013 07:51
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Finally gave my notice today. A few weeks and I'll be done with this poo poo.
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Jan 29, 2013 10:46
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Having seen a documentary just last night on how easily viruses are spread around from surface to surface, if you ever touched your eyes nose or mouth you probably have the flu. Fun fun. Now if only employers were a bit less arsey about people phoning in sick, perhaps it wouldn't happen in the first place!
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Jan 29, 2013 10:51
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If you let people stay home when sick, somebody might call in sick just to skip work. So, the only solution to this problem is to cut hours to anybody who was allegedly sick.
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Jan 29, 2013 13:02
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The General posted:If you let people stay home when sick, somebody might call in sick just to skip work. So, the only solution to this problem is to cut hours to anybody who was allegedly sick. Yeah, thanks to that "must work at all costs" attitude we had a cold sweep through the entire store employee by employee. And then I brought it home and spread it to the whole family despite my best efforts to wash my hands before touching things like doorknobs.  Really my store is pretty lax about attendance. We basically just have to let the manager know we're not coming in (preferably ASAP) and that's pretty much the end of it. But still people came in sick even when they were told specifically never to do that.  They were also surprisingly cool about it when I told them I was quitting.
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Jan 29, 2013 21:58
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Apparently punishing anyone who dares think about a day off totally means people will work harder! ... and not spread the plague around to everyone. Totally.
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Jan 29, 2013 22:12
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It may not even be risk of punishment, so much as trying to get by. If your eight-bucks-an-hour job is your only source of income, missing a day of work could be pretty significant. It could mean "later on, you don't get to eat for a couple days" or something equally dire. The fact that the US has non-existent health-care, and a non-existent social safety net, means that skipping a couple days of work because you're feeling a little cough-y could lead to a LOT of nasty consequences in short order.
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Jan 29, 2013 23:22
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Of course this is compounded by the fact that your illness might turn into something more serious from not giving yourself time/rest to recover and then you're basically screwed.
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Jan 29, 2013 23:45
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Welp, moved about 40 miles from my place of work after being told that my transfer would go through in about "2 to 3 days". Three weeks later, I'm being told that I can't be transferred due to attendance issues, which is mainly due to a no-call-no-show (for a day that I wasn't even scheduled for), and a day where I couldn't get out of my driveway due to sleet. There's this little white-hot ball of hate just sitting in my diaphragm now.
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Jan 30, 2013 08:21
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What we need is some sort of verifiable home diagnosis that you can email in to prove that yes you're sick and not just lazy / hungover / whatever. Then maybe they would actually let people stay away when they have the plague. The problem with doctor's sicknotes is you usually have to book a doctor a couple of days in advance, by which time it might have passed, plus it's a drain on resources to go in for a bit of manflu when the doctors could be seeing people with serious illnesses instead.
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Jan 30, 2013 11:14
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The idea of asking an adult to bring in a note from the doctor to prove they are really sick is just so bizarre to me. Will they accept a note from your mother instead?
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Jan 30, 2013 15:36
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Dr_Amazing posted:The idea of asking an adult to bring in a note from the doctor to prove they are really sick is just so bizarre to me. Will they accept a note from your mother instead? I've worked with people who really need this level of discipline. Most don't at this point, but some people are just ridiculously irresponsible. That being said, they usually weed themselves out and get fired anyway.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:40
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This isn't work related but I had to change my school schedule so I could have a few days to work and they wanted a note from work saying that I needed my schedule changed. I hate the college system.
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Jan 30, 2013 15:52
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It's the same anywhere, I work corporate but I've heard HR getting on the hourly employees' asses about needing doctor's notes if they call out sick. I've adopted the method of coming in visibly ill and being sent home/asking to go home early because I feel like I'm dying upon my arrival at work, to remove any doubt that I'm just trying to blow off work. It's lovely, but if they try to yell at me later for taking time off I can be like "yo, you saw me, did you want to catch that disease?" and they don't have much of an argument against that. Although from this thread some of your bosses would make you work anyway if you bothered to show up.
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Jan 31, 2013 04:24
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Dr_Amazing posted:The idea of asking an adult to bring in a note from the doctor to prove they are really sick is just so bizarre to me. Will they accept a note from your mother instead? My employer also accepts statutory declarations. Getting a JP to sign a declaration is cheaper and often more convenient than getting in to see a doctor. We also only need a medical certificate if we are absent for more than a single day (or if the sickness is suspicious, like taking Friday off when Monday is a public holiday.) Looking at the situation in America, it seems odd to me that you would need to prove you are sick when most of you don't get paid sick leave - why would you be sacrificing a day's pay if you weren't actually sick? Here in Australia, on the other hand where the law requires employers to provide a minimum of 8 days paid sick leave a year, statistics show that a majority of people take a few fake sick days a year, since they are still getting paid. Personally I never would since you never know when you might really need them, so I have about 150 hours saved up.
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Jan 31, 2013 05:47
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The Lord Bude posted:Looking at the situation in America, it seems odd to me that you would need to prove you are sick when most of you don't get paid sick leave - why would you be sacrificing a day's pay if you weren't actually sick? Here in Australia, on the other hand where the law requires employers to provide a minimum of 8 days paid sick leave a year, statistics show that a majority of people take a few fake sick days a year, since they are still getting paid. Personally I never would since you never know when you might really need them, so I have about 150 hours saved up. Because retail employees are shiftless ne'erdowells. Honestly? I have no idea. My guess would be that since a lot of retail is done by part time high schoolers, it somehow came out of that. Sankis fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 05:57
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The Lord Bude posted:My employer also accepts statutory declarations. Getting a JP to sign a declaration is cheaper and often more convenient than getting in to see a doctor. We also only need a medical certificate if we are absent for more than a single day (or if the sickness is suspicious, like taking Friday off when Monday is a public holiday.) It's probably for the same reason that I have to have my bag and coat searched by a manager every single time I leave the store: because companies assume we're all liars/thieves that are constantly trying to weasel out of work. I realize people DO fake sick days, but I think it comes from a more general sense of distrust in employees. It's also possible that they're trying to deter people simply because it can be a real pain in the rear end for management if someone calls off at the last minute. They end up having to scramble and find some poor bastard who will come in to cover the shift (which I imagine is no easy task when most of your employees hate their loving jobs.)
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Jan 31, 2013 06:16
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Sankis posted:Because retail employees are shiftless ne'erdowells. This is probably true though. Honestly I don't trust anyone I work with to not lie through their teeth if they want off to go to a party or some poo poo.
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Jan 31, 2013 07:25
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NaturalLow posted:It's also possible that they're trying to deter people simply because it can be a real pain in the rear end for management if someone calls off at the last minute. They end up having to scramble and find some poor bastard who will come in to cover the shift (which I imagine is no easy task when most of your employees hate their loving jobs.) I'm positive lots of people would stop hating their jobs if they got 8 paid sick days, and the ability to be sick without getting hosed. And in turn not dread taking another day as a favour.
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Jan 31, 2013 12:04
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The General posted:I'm positive lots of people would stop hating their jobs if they got 8 paid sick days, and the ability to be sick without getting hosed. And in turn not dread taking another day as a favour. Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get at. If morale were higher, corporate probably wouldn't have to worry as much about people faking sick or whatever because they would actually want to be there (or at least wouldn't hate it as much). Retail employees know their employers don't trust them and view them as expendable, which breeds a lot of resentment and causes a lot of them to not give a poo poo about doing the bare minimum/ditching work/maybe even stuff like theft in some instances. I'm not proud of it, but I know there's been many times at my job where I just half-assed things that needed to be done because I felt like the store didn't give a poo poo about me, so why should I give a poo poo about them? Especially after they pulled poo poo like cutting my hours just to avoid giving me health insurance (right after I had spent over $500 out of pocket on a medical procedure).
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Jan 31, 2013 18:55
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:I had a grocery manager at an IGA I worked for who was loving around with a pallet jack, trying to show how difficult it is to hurt yourself as the pilot because he thought safety was dumb. He stuck his foot beneath the raised pallet, which had a couple layers of bottled water on it, to show that you have to go out of your way to get injured, and then he randomly squeezed the handle and dropped it on his foot. There's nothing better than management suffering ironic injuries.
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Jan 31, 2013 19:01
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NaturalLow posted:Yeah, that's kind of what I was trying to get at. If morale were higher, corporate probably wouldn't have to worry as much about people faking sick or whatever because they would actually want to be there (or at least wouldn't hate it as much). Retail employees know their employers don't trust them and view them as expendable, which breeds a lot of resentment and causes a lot of them to not give a poo poo about doing the bare minimum/ditching work/maybe even stuff like theft in some instances. This is happening at one of my jobs right now, actually. We have at least two people call in sick a day and loads of people are quitting left and right. Not to mention that they hardly have anyone to cover these shifts because most people are attending school whenever the people calling off are scheduled to come in. Management also doesn't necessarily dissuade you from calling off if you're legitimately sick, but when I called in sick on Tuesday (because I have the flu right now), they pestered me with "Are you sure you're really sick? Are you sure you can't come in today?", and I'm sure they do this with everyone else who calls in because by this point it's inevitable that someone will call in, sick or not. But yeah, management needs to get their poo poo in gear and worry more about keeping people around and less on who's legitimately sick.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:08
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I had to call in sick a few weeks before christmas, and my manager straight up told me he didn't believe I was really sick, and it seemed like I was just trying to get out of working at 4:30 in the morning. It took me telling him that I didn't want to puke all over the store before he told me I would have to bring in a note, and hung up on me. My favorite part was that he was straight up lying about how often I call out sick, saying it was the fourth time, when it was actually only the second. Infuriatingly, he frequently leaves early because he doesn't feel very well, which means whatever poor superviser is working that day has to pull a double shift to cover for him.
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Jan 31, 2013 21:30
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Maybe you should have called right before you puked and treated him to some graphic vomiting sounds? (Who am I kidding? He'd probably just say you made yourself vomit to get out of work)
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Jan 31, 2013 22:21
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NaturalLow posted:Maybe you should have called right before you puked and treated him to some graphic vomiting sounds? I was kind of hoping I'd start puking again, but no such luck. On the plus side, I just found out that he was audited by the company, because he has a habit of doing work alone in the store while no one else is around, and someone finally tipped corporate off about it, since nobody is allowed in the store alone.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:30
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ChiaPetOutletStore posted:I was kind of hoping I'd start puking again, but no such luck. On the plus side, I just found out that he was audited by the company, because he has a habit of doing work alone in the store while no one else is around, and someone finally tipped corporate off about it, since nobody is allowed in the store alone. Your boss sounds like a real jerk. I'm glad he finally got audited for that though because he shouldn't be breaking those rules just because he's the manager or whatever other crackpot reason he formed in his head. Next time you should totally treat him to the vomiting sounds, though. 
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Jan 31, 2013 22:38
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Comrade Black posted:Your boss sounds like a real jerk. I'm glad he finally got audited for that though because he shouldn't be breaking those rules just because he's the manager or whatever other crackpot reason he formed in his head. Yeah, he's somewhere between a complete tool, and dumb as a post. He's got a real babyface too, so it's tough to get mad, because he always just seems lost. We have 13 employees, and we're all miserable for completely different reasons, that are all directly his fault. I think we're all going to jump ship at once though, which should be fun.
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Feb 1, 2013 00:06
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ChiaPetOutletStore posted:We have 13 employees, and we're all miserable for completely different reasons, that are all directly his fault. I think we're all going to jump ship at once though, which should be fun. Where I'm working we have closer to 50, but every week I go in I find someone else who was working there before I was had quit. I'm starting to wonder if my team has decided to jump ship and I just don't know about it because I'm always working my other job.
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Feb 1, 2013 00:47
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edit: This was awkwardly written without much of a point. Nevermind!
Sankis fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 01:09
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Met the new manager on Wednesday. Name's Neomi, tallish, blonde. Handshake is less impressive than Richard Simmons's overall appearance, probably one of the weakest I've ever felt. I did my normal handshake and I felt like I was going to crush her hand. Tonight is my first night closing with her, even if another manager is going to be there. I have a feeling heads are going to butt, especially over the drive item. I simply refuse to sell a "cookie" harder than the cement it was made with, hard enough to literally hurt if I hit my hand with it.
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Feb 1, 2013 22:02
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Since I'm leaving in a few weeks, I've pretty much given up on asking for phone numbers/e-mails altogether, unless a manager is within earshot to give me poo poo about it. And honestly the job has gotten much more tolerable just by cutting that step out of the check-out process. Also is anyone else getting poo poo about the new credit surcharge thing that's starting up soon? I've had at least two customers today bitching at me about that already. I also had one lady who seemed like she was on something/mildly sedated and kept asking me if I could just change the price of a $16 dollar sherpa throw to $10 so she could buy it. And then she acted dumbfounded both by our prices (not by how high/low they were, just the numbers in general) and then the debit card reader, which she stared at like it was alien until I walked her through the complicated process of "type your PIN, push the big YES button." I mean drat even the Amish people who come into the store know how to use that thing with no problem. 
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Feb 1, 2013 22:17
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Corporate decided that we didn't need two assistant managers today, so they made the store manager lay off one. I wish corporate would send the person who decided this, themselves, to fire these poor people. At least then you could smack the person responsible in the face. Kmart apparently likes to get rid of people the first day of the first quarter. This happened last year too when they fired 3 department leads, one who had been there for 16 years. Thankfully my last day was Wednesday, so I didn't have to deal with the anger and sadness that comes with these things. I think it's time for Kmart to just go and die.
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Feb 1, 2013 22:35
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If I didn't keep hearing tidbits about K-mart every so often I'd have assumed they died in the mid-late 90s. They always seemed like a tackier walmart. Maybe that was just the ones near me that I barely remember because they shut down 10+ years ago.
Sankis fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Feb 2, 2013 |
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Feb 2, 2013 01:32
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I worked for K-Mart briefly (less than a year) and I hated it. Nobody there gave a poo poo about their job or the company so often the phones went unanswered, the customers got pawned off and pawned off and nothing ever got cleaned. ------------------ Apparently I'm the most tech-savvy person at my current job, and that's not really saying much at all. I'd been off for the past 4 days (yay post christmas hours) and went in today really dreading my shift. I go over to my usual spot in the Electronics department and after a while I get bored and head over to the Tablet displays. Some rear end in a top hat customer has put a password on our Samsung Galaxy tablet. While I'm poking around trying to see if I can reset it, my Co-worker comes by and is like "Oh did you fix it? no? Well everyone's been trying for the past couple days and nobody can figure it out" I'm thinking "really? a couple days and nobody thought to google it?" After a few minutes I finally figure out you have to hold the power button and the volume down button together to make the menu come up and I factory reset the thing. After it rebooted and I went through all the startup settings like language and time zone it was up and running fine. I mentioned it to that co-worker when they came by again and they seemed stunned that I had fixed it in less than an hour when others had been trying (I guess just guessing random passwords) for days. He spread the word that "Buggiezor fixed that tablet! She must be like a hacker or something!" and everyone was equally impressed. I was definitely the hero of the night. Because I reset a tablet. Yeah, that's the mental aptitude of the average Retail employe apparently.  Of course you goons in this thread are much smarter than average 
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Feb 2, 2013 04:43
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D34THROW posted:I simply refuse to sell a "cookie" harder than the cement it was made with, hard enough to literally hurt if I hit my hand with it. I did this while in sales on the phones. We were told to push a lovely set-top box, so I started listing the negative points in a positive voice. "And the best thing is, it's only £25 more expensive than a comparable brand on the high street!". Management were not pleased (until I started being the top seller of the boxes because people were listening to my voice and not my words)
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Feb 2, 2013 10:21
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 11:51 |
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People really really don't realise probably the biggest difference between a 'computer person' and an ordinary person, is how to use Google.
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Feb 2, 2013 10:21
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