Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. I hate your guts, and if you had a body I would kill you and fart on your grave because you aren't even worth a turd.
I'm not fully sure if I'm talking about corporate, the job, the day, or store level management. Probably the latter.
Okay, so I wake up today feeling kinda good. By the time I jump in the shower, however, the day has started downhill. It seems that my manager called to remind me I've got to go take my drug test today and, oh, by the way, they need me to come in a 2:00 instead of the scheduled 4:00. Fuck. You. I've got too much shit I need to do, I'm coming in at four whether you like it or not. Okay, fair enough, I didn't say that as I was in the shower at the time. But I did go in at four. First stop once I was out of my shower was to work to pick up the paper work for the test. I get it and find it's been issued for...yesterday. Which means I have to do it today or I'm fired. Thanks for telling me, guys!
Okay, no problem. As I said, I've got until four and by now it was only barely touching 1:00. My dad and I then go out to eat at our traditional Friday sit-down lunch/breakfast at The Hungry Frog diner. When we leave, it's just a little after 2:00. I'm grumpy that the fucking beautiful day on which I'd intended on "doing a little living" has now been consumed by the life-and-soul-devouring entity known as "My Job". And I'm not even getting paid for this time out of my day that I have to go take their test. I go in and am met by a very surely receptionist. I try to make nice and with a big old grin I tell her; "Hi, I'm here to piss in a cup." She doesn't grin but points me to the water cooler and tells me it'll be a few minutes. I go have a drink and wait. Maybe six or seven minutes pass when the door opens and the current donor (i.e. Extortee) leaves. I give her a smile and nod, which she returns, and I think it's the last smile that place will see for the rest of the day. The woman giving the test is even more surely than the receptionist, doesn't even attempt to disguise the fact that she's either a right bitch or on the rag (if you're female and offended, well...too bad). Not smile, not even so much as a "hi." Okay, fine. I take the test and leave and am happy as hell to get out of there. By the time I'm out, big surprise, it's past 3:00. So, we take the long way back to work. I go inside, clock in, and go to put my stuff up.
As I'm pulling on my dumbass name tag, my manager calls me into the office and asks me to sign a write up. What the fuck?! I ask her why I'm getting written up and she tells me it's because I was $4 dollars and some-odd cents short on the 1st. Strictly speaking, write-ups are supposed to be given on the same day as the offense listed. Fine, whatever. I'm long past giving a sad shit about write ups but as I'm leaning over the counter looking at it, I have to stop myself THREE TIMES from taking that pen and writing "Fuck You" where it says "Employee Signature" and I am not even joking. Eventually I put the pen on the paper and make a line-full of marks that looks absolutely nothing like a name, much less a signature. I couldn't stop myself, however, from tacking on "F.U." to the very end, but it came out looking more like "€. U." Feh, it'll be easy enough for my manager to paste over with some white out.
Keep in mind, I haven't even gotten to my register yet.
Okay, so I'm not happy, but like I said, I'm past giving a shit about write ups. I go to my register and the new guy, R, has taken off and K has his register open. I count up my till and we get the day started. B, the current second key, is still around but is off the clock and about to go home. I get my $100 dollar starting bank and start ringing up customers. After the first customer, I realize something that puts me in an even worse mood than I'm already in; still no fucking bags. We've got a shitload of discarded bags stuffed under the counters, a few tiny bags, and no jumbos. I find out from K that A (the store manager) doesn't want us to use any more jumbos until the discarded bags have been used up. Okay, now I'm really not happy, but I can deal with it...not well, but I can. So, I scan with one hand because I'm holding open a sack with another.
I get a few customers out and then comes a guy with a tax exempt card. Not a problem, I've done this loads of times before. I punch his info into the computer and then it comes up that his exempt status has been denied. When that happens, it's probably because they have to refile with corporate to have their status returned for the stores and it gives them an 800 number on a receipt to call. Usually the customers are understanding and don't mind, likely because they've had to go through this also. Not this guy, he starts getting confrontational with me, as though I could jerk-off on the keyboard and return his status and he was pissed that I didn't have my dong out for him. B is behind me on the phone to A when this is going on and so she explains to this jerk what has happened and why and I could see on this guy's face that the only thing going through his head is "I might have to pay taxes." Finally, when it sinks in that he's gonna have to call that fucking number, he wants to do it right then and there. And he wants us (i.e. me) to do it for him. Okay, sure. I pick up the phone but it doesn't have a dial tone. So, I leave my register and jerk-ass and I go to the back phone. I call the number, and guess what? I get stuck on hold. So now I have musack in one ear and jerk-ass bitching in the other. Keep in mind, nowhere in my job description does it say I have to do this for him, I'm just being a nice, helpful employee. Finally, after too long has passed, I call up B to switch off with me because, damn it, I have to run my register.
I get up there, greet the next person in line and am checking out what they have to ring up when lo-and-behold, here comes jerk-ass down the isle. He grabs the cart full of his stuff and makes a break for the doors. B runs up, grabs the cart from him and hollers for him not to come back in the store again. We take down his car's plates and model number. He didn't get away with anything, but what was he expecting? That we'd just stand there and watch him unload his cart into his car?
Later on in the day it's clear that K is in a bad mood but we don't get a chance to talk about it. When I can tell he's in a bad mood, you know it's a really bad mood. K is very professional and always checks his 'tude at the door. But as I said, we don't get a chance to talk about it because he has to recover the store and make it look all nice and pretty. So, okay, I don't call him to the front for much of anything the whole day. But eventually we got so busy, and I'm going so damn slow because I have to treasure hunt for usable bags and scan and sack one handed, that the line starts stretching out to the end of the fucking store. I found out later that A had gotten no less than three calls, complaints, because of the long lines. Well fuck me sideways, let me have some fucking bags and I can go faster.
Finally, the end of the day comes and Shit Bag comes through my line, but he's actually in a good mood, likely because he struck me as being drunk. Regardless, I'm in a fucked mood. A fucking, fucked mood. I want to go home. But K tells me that A called and told us to stay until 11:00 "or as long as you need" to get the store recovered, swept, and mopped. And when they say "mopped" they don't just mean run soapy water over it. On the first of the month, they had a crew come in and rearrange the store. Part of this involved moving the shelves, some about six inches one way or the other while other shelves got moved a whole foot. And this is after they've been sitting in those spots for years and years and...well, since the store opened. And the places they were in are fucking nasty. They've got gunk and stuff caked onto the floor and K and I have to get it cleaned up or "we'll get written up." Neither he nor I have any clue how to get neigh on a decade's worth of buildup off, so the best we can do is dump bleach straight onto the nasty parts and let it soak in while we go and recover. Yes, I know the old rule of "one cap full to a gallon of water" but we couldn't dick around and this was some seriously tough gunk.
Now, you can probably see what's coming.
If we left the doors open, we'd be fired. So we couldn't vent the store. At all. So the fumes kept building up. And building. For two hours did we let the chlorine bleach soak on that caked on crap. While we're recovering, K tells me, among many interesting things during our mutual vent fest (which swiftly became a bitch fest), that he is deathly allergic to bleach. By the time we get half of the store recovered, his voice is breaking up and his fingers are turning purple. My eyes feel like they're growing fuzz and my head is spinning between the throbs. For a half hour, I start working on the caked on gunk and guess what? It's not fucking coming up, I scrub with the mop, then K comes and he tries some, then I switch off, and we even went and got a putty knife to try and get some of the tougher stuff up. We got it as well as we could and go to clock out. By now, it's 1:00am.
Now, joy of joys, the computer tells us we're not clocked in. It didn't take long for either of us to figure out that it must have clocked us out automatically at midnight. He clocks in and when he figures out what happened he clocks back off and tosses his receipt in the trash. I clock in and clock out and he asks me why I'm putting my receipt in my pocket when it just shows that I've been clocked in for 00:00 hours. I tell him; "I want proof that I was physically in this store at 1:00am." I could actually see the realization dawn on his face and he asks me to grab his receipt for him. So now we have proof of that extra time we've both worked in case someone tries to screw us out of that hour. I sit here and it is now after 4:00am, and I'm still smelling bleach and I still have a headache from the fumes.
And all this for $7.25 an hour.
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