By Heather
This is how I started my day. I had goals that I was determined to accomplish today. I was going to clean the front end as much as humanly possible because cashier olympics is quickly approaching. Got to work on time, got everything staged, paperwork done, lunches scheduled, and back up cashiers selected.
So now its time to get cleaning. I cleaned as much as I could without taking my eyes off my register. We had a district supervisor in the store today so I didn't want to go to far or appear away from my register if and when he came by. So I swept, dusted, and cleaned off my registers. I also made notes of what needed to be done before olympics.
So now that I got the two registers ready for painting I started putting painters tape around where I needed to touch up the black. YES! YES! Everything is going so well!
By now I am beaming with accomplishment. Not half as much as I wanted to get done yet. But! I was off to a great start. I was so so happy. So 8am rolls around and I am eagerly awaiting my first and only 8 o'clock person for today. My opener for garden.
The minutes roll by and it is now fifteen after eight. I am now officially concerned but I'm sure he is just stuck in traffic. There has been perpetual road construction for the passed two months. So I look up his number just to verify where he is.
The longer the phone rings with more concerned I get till someone answers. I tell the woman who I am and why I'm calling. She tells me that he called off the night before.
........
Mind you we are so thin on coverage that one call off completely screwed the day. I had to redue the lunch schedule three times just because nothing went according to schedule due to no one having a sense of urgency. It shouldn't take a half an hour for one person to walk to garden to take over and for that person to walk back to the middle. Therefore I must come in tomorrow on my day off and power house the entire front end as much as humanly possible for the five hours I'll be there. On top of that when I asked management for help I was blatantly ignored because the ditrict supervisor was there. So I was essentually alone today.
To think all of this could of been avoided if the closing manager on duty last night would have wrote a not to let me know that my garden casher was not coming in. I could have spent part of those two and a half hours finding someone to come in and fill those hours, but no, no, not for the front end. God forbid information actually travels to where it needs to go in this establishment.
By Heather
Number One:
Making your bad credit my fault.
Alright, let me make this very clear. I'm not so much of a jerk that I personally am denying your card. There are two reasons why your card is denied. One, you are late on your payment. Two, you are maxed out. That's it, there is no magical button that I push to ruin your day. Also, I have no idea why your credit card is denied. The register tells me nothing, just that it is denied so before you make an idiot of yourself screaming at me for something that is your fault for not keeping track of, think of what you're doing. Please stop making an ass of yourself in front of a line of customers just wanting to ring out their stuff.
Number Two:
Assuming I'm Stupid Because I Work Retail.
Retail is not hard. Once you know the routine its pretty simple. Even an incredibly busy day with incredibly thin coverage is easy to figure out simply because you do what you have to to keep the store running and no matter what there is always a way to do that. Even if you have to pick up other department's slack which is most often the case when you yourself are spread wafer thin. That being said not everyone has the patients to take utter and complete bullshit that customers throw at you on the daily basis.
I had this one customer come in two hours before close and spend an hour in Millwork getting a shit ton of moulding. Now he was one of those people from the ritzy part of town with his son, guy didn't even get the lumber cart himself. He had the Millwork associates do everything for him which is fine, its what they are there for. This should have been put on a special order but it wasn't. So by the time he got up to my register I had to measure and type in each individual piece which is company policy and it took at least twenty minutes to get it all in there. So when I gave the man his total his eyes widened and said that didn't match up with what he had worked out. So I went through the entire order adding it all up. Millwork had accidentally given him 80 feet more than what he needed. I told this man this and he said that it was all there exactly what he needed. He accused me of over charging him which was impossible because he saw me measure all of it, plug it in the register and put it on the opposite side of the cart that way I didn't do anything twice. He argued with me for a while, I told him that even if I was doing what he suggested it would be pointless because I wouldn't even be getting the access cash, the store would and I don't love the store that much. So finally I was about to call Millwork to get it sorted when he looked at his son, pointed at me and said "See this? This is why you need to go to college!" I froze, put the phone down and looked at him. I had had it. "Excuse me sir...I have a college degree." I cleared out the entire order and pointed outside. "You can leave now." He threatened to go to the manager, I told him that I would call her right over but at that point he had had it and left.
I don't care who you are, you don't treat people like that.
Number Three:
Call Offs
Not just call offs, employees that call off over and over again. I had a cashier that called off almost every Saturday. He's running out of family members to either kill off or have medical problems. Other than that I have cashiers walking out for their fifteen minute break and not coming back. Come on people, be responsible adults and come to work, do your job, and go home. Its not that hard. If you can't do that then there are hundreds of others out there that can.
