This may the most emotional and truthful post I have ever posted. I am going to do my best to write it within the guidelines I have been given and I will definitely skirt around topics to work for my agenda and mine alone. But after being in retail for almost half my life, I feel that I need to once again get my feelings about the industry off my chest. It will be nice release of anger.
Now, what I am about to say is nothing new. Anyone who had a summer job in a supermarket or retail store knows how much it sucks. That is nothing new. So, even if I bash my current job into the dirt will I really be revealing anything that people don't already know. The catch to this post is the fact that social media is prevalent in society today and wasn't when I took my first retail job almost 10 years ago.
I could also go into the debate over social media and perspective employers again, but plenty of people have beaten me to that. Being a journalist and having to learn about the first amendment and how I am protected by it makes me wonder how much we are being spied on and anything we say on our personal time is being used against us.
Take it back to 2001. That was the year I took my first retail job. Back then, the internet wasn't as popular as it was today. Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter didn't really exist or were in their infancy. The best way one blew off steam about a crappy job was go to a small knit group of friends or family and bitch about how much their job sucked, why, and how much they wish they could quit. Sound familiar? That's because that how people talk about their jobs now on Facebook and Twitter. Only, instead of being in a private setting, they are sharing it with everyone on their profile. So, if you are friends with someone who is management, a snitch, or your friend is friends with management, whatever you are saying can be transferred back to them. Privacy outside of work doesn't exist in this day of smartphones and social media.
Why do you continue to do it though? The fact of the matter is that future employers and current employers are using social media sites as a means to either hinder someone from being hired or find a reason to cut payroll. If you think that the only reason you got fired or your hours got cut was because of you, then you are gravely mistaken. This is one reason I enjoyed working at Wal-Mart for so long. As much as they are a huge company that has a lot of negative reviews backing them, they still have enough money to say "fuck it, I know we might go over payroll this week, but there is no coverage in this area, so I will schedule over anyway." Smaller companies who don't have the budget to do just don't care.
That leads me into my current employer who I am going to go Voldemort on. It will be the company-that-must-not-be-named or else I might get in trouble again. Needless to say, I am just sick of these two facts: I am making minimum wage and my store does not know how to schedule properly. You wonder why your numbers are horrible? It isn't because I refuse to help people, because in all honestly do. The reason your numbers suck so much on a daily basis is because we have no cashiers to ring people out when we get long lines, no one to cover each department so someone like myself is running from each department to make sure that everyone is being helped. Only, when I get there, I find that the customer has left because no one was there to help them. You know how many times I watched a customer leave the store angry because they weren't helped? More times than I can count on my hands and feet. Oh, and your numbers are based on surveys we hand out to customers with receipts, so I highly doubt that the five people I don't stop in a 4 hour shift (which I will get to later) is really going to drop that number significantly.
Scheduling is the most important aspect of any retail job. You need to schedule enough people in the store on any given day to make sure that you account for all departments, call-outs, and any other aspects that you can't account for. But instead, I am expected on any given night to run three departments on the floor, all their put backs, clean and make it look respectable while helping fulfill customer orders, needs, and questions. Plus, I have to run the back room, which is a joke some days. I am only one person, yet most days I am expected to make sure that all orders are brought up to people's cars in a timely fashion, which is sometimes two-four pieces of large furniture pieces that I can't do by myself, but there is no other people in the store to call for help. Meanwhile, 75% of the people who call themselves management tend to hide on the computers or office claiming to be helping customers with issues or doing management work, knowing full well that the store is trashed, we are short staffed, and what they could be doing could wait until the end of the night during a lull. Even better is that those same people are receiving outside calls from their significant others about probably something that could wait until they got home, but still take the call to avoid working. Then the double standard of being yelled at for doing the same thing is kinda laughable.
That's high school drama for you though. When you find that if you aren't on a list of a managers favorites, you are going to find yourself on the short end of the stick. You will get in trouble more than those who are favored. You thought nepotism doesn't exist anymore? Wasn't there a guy in Illinois who was holding a senate seat for someone once Obama was elected? Granted, that's high scale, but still it exists. CM Punk said it best when he ranted about his employer: if you kiss enough ass in any company, you will find yourself more ahead than those who speak their mind and tell the truth. If I wanted my nose to be brown, I would paint it brown to avoid the smell.
Am I going to piss a lot of people off with this post? You betcha. But that's the wonders of being stubborn and not caring. When you work a minimum wage job and are expected to perform miracles, there is just no incentive to do it. If I was asked to work one department and get that one department squared away for the night, I would gladly bust my ass to make sure that one department was taken care of. But when I am asked to make sure that four are taken care of, you don't pay me enough to do that. Maybe if you were paying me $15/hr, I will gladly take my toothbrush to the toilets on top of squaring away my four departments. I would even do it with a smile on my face and talking to every customer that is more than touching distance away from me.
Read this: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." This amendment guarantees that I am always an opinion on anything that I want to say. It guarantees that if I wanted to tell my employers to fuck off, I have every right to do so. I don't care what your policies say, because I have a brain, I have an opinion, and you may not like what I have to say, but I only speak of what I see. I was making $11/hr at Wal-mart and I walked into work every day happy to know that I had a job and I wasn't expected to do much more than what I was being paid to do. Granted, there were days I was told to unload trucks, but given that I was paid to run a department and not unload trucks, I think you can understand my stance.
Lastly, try and fire me over what I just said, because a shit storm will rain if you do. I will print that first amendment out so fast, that it will make your head spin. Like I said on Facebook, where this whole mess started, "If you tell me to be silent, I will just open my mouth louder."
Because if I am not going to stay what 90% of the employees at my job are thinking, who will?
Edit: As I sat talking to someone, I was reminded of something. When working, I am told to greet people I see. Which is fine, because part of my job is to greet people and make sure they are assisted in their needs. The thing that starts to get annoying is the fact that most customers are now greeted at least five times while they are in the store and by the fifth time, they will tend to get annoyed by it. This is why I made my comment on Facebook the other night. The fact of the matter is this: when I head to the back room, which is my main department of the store, I tend to meet people in the back of the store. Thus, they were greeted by at least one person up front (sometimes a greeter, which is another topic I could spew hatred over for a whole post in itself), one person in the front department, one person in the side department, and possibly another employee heading up front. So why then would I greet the person again, when they know what color an employee wears and if asked I will admit that I work there. Yes, I don't wear my name tag any given day, because my job out back usually requires lifting heavy and awkward things that make my tag get caught. Why choke myself?
This is why I only greet people within touching distance or look confused. It makes sense, because those who get closer to you will more than likely need help. Since I have worked in retail so long, I know when someone looks confused and needs help. Maybe retail management should take a step back and realize that sometimes their employees are more times smarter than they are. Which is why they don't become management, otherwise the circle would be broken.
No comments:
Post a Comment