The Numbnut chronicles

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Time for yet another bitch session on one of the most lazy, shiftless, stupid wastes of a human being to be employed at my store--our carryout guy, who I will start referring to as "Numbnuts" from now on.

Today, however, I was doing carryouts and Numbnuts was just supposed to do pulls. We are running our biggest two-day sale of the season today, with lots of doorbusters, some of them being furniture items, and being as I expected lots of carryouts today I asked Numbnuts to pitch in and give me a hand if a bunch of carryout calls were to come in at once. He said "Sure, okay, no problem."

Later, I got two calls for carryouts one right after the other. They both turned out to have multiple items. I took them both and just put the items on one flatbed. Then another carryout call came over once--twice--three times without being answered. Then the manager on duty paged for me to answer the third call in kind of a peeved tone of voice, so I had no choice.

As a result, I had to drag two heavy carts of furniture up to the front, pulling one and pushing the other and not moving too fast so that the cart I was pulling wouldn't slam into my achilles. Along the way, I saw Numbnuts down one of the aisles, chatting up a female coworker (Numbnuts is normally slow and stupid, but when he has a female asking him for help he suddenly becomes Mr. Helpful for some reason). I yelled for him to help me, and only then did he cut short his conversation and help me.

That wasn't all from Numbnuts today. I'll start a second post to keep this one from getting too long

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I went to lunch and told Numbnuts he would have to listen for carryouts and actually answer and do them this time, because I'd be on break. I had just gotten up the breakroom with my food when the call box in seasonal went off. Shortly after that, Numbnuts paged me.

Me: Yeah, what is it
NN: There's a customer who needs assistance by the patio furniture.
Me: Wonderful. Go assist them. I told you I'm on lunch.
NN: Oops, I forgot.
Me (thinking): Like hell you did.

A few minutes later, Numbnuts pages me again, and I answer again.
NN: Yeah, where's location 1801? A customer needs an item from there.
Me: Between 1800 and 1802.
NN: I don't know where that is.
Me: Sigh. You've been here a month already and you work 4 or 5 days a week, you should know where the locations in the backroom are.
NN: I don't! Can't you come down and show me?
Me: I am on lunch right now! I am off the clock! Go look some more and if you still can't find the customer's item I'll send somebody else back there to help you (hang up)

A minute later, guess what? Numbnuts pages me again! He still can't find the location. So I sent another guy back to the backroom to help him, and he found the item and took it out. After I got back from break, he said to me "I can't believe he couldn't find that. I found it right away and I don't even work back there!"

Would history judge he harshly if I were to one day strangle Numbnuts until his head pops off like a champaign cork?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So today Numbnuts came in at 10:30 and went straight to work filling paper and detergent, which seems to be the only thing he likes to do. The morning supervisor asked him to unload and backstock furniture off the truck instead. Paper and detergent can wait a while if need be, but the trailer always needs to be emptied ASAP.

Numbnuts responded thusly: "That's too much to do." And went right back to paper and detergent.

Supervisor told the manager on duty about it, and I hope he has some choice words for Numbnuts should he call him up later and complain "I have nothing to do!" like he likes to do. :pissed:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Is he really that stupid or does he want you to do his work for him?



Requoting this for truth. Apparently Numbnuts has a new trick he likes to pull. I call it "the speak n' sneak". Here's how it works:


Numbnuts answers a call for a carryout, usually after at least 2 rings. When I started out years ago, we were supposed to be answering carryout calls within 20 seconds, and yes we were timed and our response times logged.
Numbnuts retrieves furniture item, usually after a long and exhaustive search, places item on cart and starts bringing it to the front.
If Numbnuts happens to encounter a co-worker along the long and arduous journey to the front registers, he will ask him/her for help. Even if the item he is carrying out is a smaller bookcase or a couple barstools.
Because co-worker has been trained to help other co-workers if they need it, and because he/she doesn't want to say no and appear to be a dick, co-worker agrees to help Numbnuts with the carryout
Numbnuts steps away to let coworker push the cart, and follows in his usual sloth-like gait. Then he sneaks down an aisle undetected
Co-worker does not realize Numbnuts has bailed until he/she is at the front doors with the merchandise, and ends up doing Numbnuts' carryout for him.


I am convinced the only reason he is still employed with us is because management doesn't think our days are surreal enough as it is.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So at about 12:30 today I was doing my normal big important first shift things when I noticed a small puddle in the detergent aisle. One of the bottles of Tide on the bottom shelf had cracked and was slowly leaking its contents onto the floor.


I had two options for dealing with this:

Call up Numbnuts and ask him to clean up the spill because I was busy
Clean up the puddle myself

I chose the first option because I am trying to give Numbnuts as many options as possible with which to hang himself, and because cleaning up spills is his freakin' job anyway when the cleaning people aren't around. So I called Numbnuts up, told him about the spill and asked him to throw a little kitty litter on it, sweep it up and empty out the leaking bottle and bring it to the service desk. He told me he'd get right on it.

I then spent about 10 minutes helping a customer who had lots of questions about an air conditioner. When I was done I returned to the detergent aisle to find the puddle growing larger, with no Numbnuts in sight. I went to the backroom to find Numbnuts wandering around, mentioning he could no find the kitty litter we use for spills.

:wtf: We keep the kitty litter for spills next to one of the shelves of furniture in the backroom! He passes it every day! There are two big sterilite totes full of it plus some more broken bags! Call me cynical but I think my request went in one ear and out the other, as they always tend to do with him. I showed him the kitty litter and went to do other things.

At 1:30, when I was leaving, I passed the detergent aisle again and the puddle was still getting bigger. It was starting to get where people walk when they go down the aisle. A few aisles down, I noticed Numbnuts chatting up a female coworker.

Me: (thinking "Get off your dead ass and clean up that damn spill before I pistol-whip you to death with your own scanner!") Hey Numbnuts, would you mind cleaning up that detergent spill before somebody slips and falls on it? Thanks.
Numbnuts: Oops, I'm sorry. I just forgot.

Forgot my ass. :pissed: :salmon: :flame: :chipper:

The only problem with reporting him for that is the manager would probably then say to me "Then why didn't YOU clean it up?"

It is technically Numbnuts' job to clean up spills but management will probably figure if it wouldn't take too long, I should clean it up anyway because I was there and something like that shouldn't be made to wait.

And really, I wasn't that busy. I only helped the customer with the air conditioner because a call box went off and I happened to be close to it. But obviously I shouldn't have to babysit Numbnuts and make sure he does what I ask him to.

We've been reporting the other stuff he does to management, and never seem to get anything more than an "I'll talk to him." So I do fear if he makes it out of his probationary period, we're stuck with him for the duration.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Another Numbnuts tale o' incredible incompetence and assholery!

I heard this from a co-worker who was right there when this happened. Numbnuts was covering seasonal for a certain co-worker he seems to have a fondness for, when a cashier paged for seasonal about 5 or 6 times before Numbnuts finally answered.

Numbnuts asked the cashier if he had a carryout for him. The cashier said he just needed a price check.

Numbnuts responded thusly: "Oh. My job is to get carryouts. So I'm going to have to cut you off now." And then the little twatmonkey hung up the phone.

The cashier had to page two more times before he finally got his price check. The co-worker says he chewed Numbnuts' ass but didn't tell a manager.

Seriously, Winnebago Toboggan Flamethrower? If you are covering a department for somebody, part of your job is to answer any pages that department may get!

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay, 1500-piece truck today, and we were short a person, so I spent today filling and backstocking like a madman.

Around 11:30 a call came in for a carryout and Numbnuts answered it. I guess it was a small bookcase. He put it on a cart and was taking it out the backroom doors when another carryout call came over. Instead of answering the call, he paged for me to do it.

I called him right back and told him I was supposed to concentrate on the truck, and couldn't he just put the two carryout items on the same cart? I do it all the time and customers don't mind waiting a few extra minutes while I help somebody else with their merchandise. He kept trying to weasel out of it but I stood my ground and he did the carryout.

However, instead of answering the second call, he just did his first carryout, then answered the second call, went all the way back to the backroom, and then got the item and brought it up. It was a small office chair; he definitely could've put it on the cart with the bookcase and at least not kept the customer waiting.

Now before anybody asks why I didn't help Numbnuts out, I can and do help with carryouts if I am not stocking a truck. However, if we have a truck to fill, the truck gets priority and we are supposed to keep working on it and let the floor people handle the carryouts. We will assist customers if they ask us for help, but otherwise we are supposed to do nothing but the truck.

As I was leaving, the cashiers were trying to hunt down Numbnuts again, because he had answered a carryout call 15 minutes before, but the customer still didn't have their merchandise and was getting peeved because they were shopping on their lunch break. I last saw him putting away detergent. Way to prioritize there.

And lastly and sadly, Numbnuts got his review and raise yesterday, so we are stuck with him. :cry:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We've hit upon a plan to try and render Numbnuts redundant and thus fireable: carryout races!

The way it works is, myself and two other guys will go running for the phone when a carryout page comes over the PA, even though it is not our job to do carryouts. We figure satisfy the customer and get it done because Numbnuts usually takes 2 or 3 pages before he answers and then 5 to 10 minutes to find the actual item and bring it up.

We'll keep track of how many carryouts each person gets and the person with the most gets some crappy little prize like a candy bar or my idea, the "Golden Two-Wheeler"--the crappy red two-wheeler in the backroom with two flat tires spray-painted gold.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay, this one wasn't so much sucky as funny.

As I mentioned on another thread, we had been running a special sale on 70-sheet notebooks for ten cents each. They have been sold out since last weekend and we hope to get more in this week. We have plastered both the regular school and office section and the seasonal back to school area indicating the notebooks are out and rainchecks are available at the service desk.

So today Numbnuts paged me while trying to help a customer and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Hello?
Numbnuts: (calling from the phone right next to where the notebooks used to be and where all the signs are) Yeah, where are the notebooks we have for ten cents each?

I just hung up on him. I figured it would be impolite to just break out laughing at him.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Today is July 31, 2007. And this is the (almost) daily Numbnuts Report.

Today, we had another 1600-piece truck to fill. Numbnuts was moving at his usual glacial pace today. He was in the midst of doing one carryout when another was paged over the PA.

Guess what he did instead of answering that call? He started paging us stockers one by one to answer it! Imagine the cashier paging Numbnuts for a carryout, alternating with Numbnuts paging one of us to do it instead.

Because we were concentrating on the truck as we are supposed to, to the exclusion of almost everything else, we didn't answer him. When he got around to paging me, I paged him back and the conversation went like this:

Me: Why aren't you answering that carryout call? It's been repeated four or five times already!
N: I have another one to do. You'll have to get that one.
Me: No, I will NOT have to get that one. When I am on truck I have been told by my supervisor not to do carryouts unless it's an emergency, and you not figuring out it is possible to load up two items for different customers isn't an emergency. Just throw the items on the same cart and the people will wait if they see you are helping somebody else with some merchandise.
N: But I...
Me: *click

BTW, this means we can only have our carryout races on non-truck days. Normally I would help out with carryouts but when we have a truck to fill the truck takes priority.

Bonus fucktardery:

It was getting close to the end of our shift and we took a pallet of pet food off the truck that the unloaders didn't get around to unloading last night. Stock supervisor asked Numbnuts to fill and backstock the stuff on the pallet, because we had other things to do and Numbnuts was just wandering around aimlessly like he always does.

He told her "okay" and then walked off without touching anything on that pallet. Guess who got stuck filling and backstocking that pallet? As usual you get two guesses and the first one doesn't count.

While my coworker and I were backstocking (causing us to have to stay late and get overtime), Numbnuts wandered on past and I said loud enough for him to hear "(Name of stock supervisor) told Numbnuts to do this, but since he's such a lazy piece of shit we have to do it." EIther Numbnuts didn't hear or let that pass without comment.

This has been the (almost) daily Numbnuts Report. Further bulletins as events warrant.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Problem: You are putting away detergent from last night's truck when you notice one of the bottles is leaking.

How you deal with it if you are a normal co-worker:

Put the leaking bottle in a repack tote so it doesn't soak through the cardboard box
Take it to the maintenance room and dump it out
Give empty bottle to service desk
Return to the backroom and deal with the other bottles, and clean them up if they have been leaked on


How you deal with it if you are Numbnuts:

Put the entire box of detergent on a cart
Push the cart up to the maintenance room at the opposite end of the store from the backroom. Move as fast as a terminally depressed glacier and leave behind you a trail of detergent in Hansel and Gretel fashion
Dump out the leaking bottle and push cart to the service desk, leaving it right in front of the register so customers cannot check out, do returns or conduct other service desk business
Notice that other bottles in the box have been leaked on. Mosey on to the maintenance room for a rag.
Return with a roll of toilet paper because you missed the plastic bag full of rags. Wipe down the detergent bottles until the service desk clerk gets exasperated and goes to the maintenance room herself to get you a rag.
Notice puddle of detergent forming on the floor only when service desk clerk points it out to you. Wipe at it with your rag, or your toilet paper, until service desk clerk becomes even more perturbed and hollers at you to get a mop already. (keep in mind you are still tying up the line at the service desk with your cart of leaking detergent)
Mop up puddle and ooze your way back to the backroom. Fail to notice trail of detergent you left earlier.
Ignore repeated pages for you to clean up your detergent trail until somebody else answers the page, finds out it was supposed to be for you, and then pages you and tears you a new one ordering you to clean up your damn mess already.
Finally clean up the spilled detergent on the floor, ignoring several pages for carryouts while doing so, and forcing other people to answer them.


Watching Numbnuts "working" is like watching somebody try to masturbate and play Jenga at the same time; hilarious for you and fail for the other guy.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I'm getting sick of the name "Numbnuts". I have about a dozen different nicknames for him, none of them repeatable. So I will start calling him Carry-Out Boy From Hades, or CBFH (thank you technical angel for obvious inspiration :))

So yesterday CBFH went on break without letting anybody know, resulting in a bunch of missed carryout calls, annoyed customers and aggravated co-workers. But that wasn't the worst thing.

Yesterday one of my jobs was to clean off the condenser coils on our ice cream, pizza, dairy and beverage coolers. The toughest part is removing the protective colvers; the screws are pretty small and thus easy to lose. I only got 3 of the 6 coolers cleaned before I had to go on lunch and then start unloading the truck. I told my manager how far I got and she told me to have CBFH pick up where I left off.

So I showed him how to take out the screws and remove the vent covers, how to use the vacuum cleaner to remove the stubborn dust bunnies on the condenser coils, and where to find an extension cord to plug in the vacuum. And then I went to lunch and did the truck and forgot about that.

Until the end of the night when I left a note for my manager letting her know what we got done that night. Along with my note was a note from CBFH reading "I couldn't figure out how to clean off the coils. I'll need help tomorrow if you want me to still do it."

/mushroom cloud

What the fucking fuck? I walked him through all the steps, and he still can't figure it out how to do it? Oh wait, this is CBFH we're talking about. He doesn't do anything but wander around staring at his scanner like it's an epic miniseries.

I've had quite a few bad co-workers, but he is clearly the suckiest suck who ever sucked.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Actually, here's the solution we've been discussing:

Get a really big box, seal CBFH in it with lots of strapping tape and maybe even plastic straps, then put the box on the empty trailer at the dock and ship CBFH to the DC.

We might cut holes in the box for CBFH to breathe. :devil:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Suppose you are assigned to pulling merchandise as it's selling throughout the day:

NORMAL METHOD:
Get shopping cart or flatbed cart, take it to whatever section you're pulling. If you are pulling upstairs bring carts upstairs with forklift or ask somebody else to drive the forklift for you. Pull each item as it's requested and place in or on your cart. Repeat until all merchandise for that section has been pulled, or until all pulls in all departments have been completed. Fill merchandise on salesfloor.

CBFH METHOD:
Pull first item on your pull. Take each piece to the salesfloor. Walk around aimlessly "filling" the merchandise. Return to backroom. Pull the next item. Take those pieces to the salesfloor and "fill" them. Repeat until all merchandise has been pulled, or more commonly, when your shift ends. Or stick around after your shift has ended; after all you're pissed your hours have been cut and this way you can make up for it.

If pulling upstairs, sneak over to most out-of-the-way staircase each time, so that people working in the backroom do not see you and bitch; even if this means dragging your 12 sterilite totes over to the stairs in apparel backstock on the opposite side of the backroom.

And we wonder why he can only get like 5-10 or fewer items pulled per hour...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Situation: You have been assigned to water the plants on display racks outside the store.

NORMAL METHOD:
Crank out hose to reach the plants that are farthest away from the faucet. Soak each plant thoroughly at the roots. Work your way toward the faucet.
Estimated time needed to complete this task: an hour, maybe a a little more.

CBFH METHOD:
DO not crank out hose. Instead, take plants off the display racks, place them on a flatbed cart, and push it over to the hose. Water plants. Push cart back to the rack and put all the plants back. Repeat until all plants have been watered.
Estimated time needed to complete the task: almost 4 hours. This resulted in me doing his carryouts and bringing in carts for the first two hours of my shift, until he finished.

Yeah, I let the manager know he was wasting time out there. Her response: "I know, I know..."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So today I recieved some tragic news...CBFH is going to be forklift trained. Nice to see him screw up so badly with whatever tasks he's assigned and be a total lazy slug and be given more responsibilities and privileges. Once this happens I'm getting the hell out of the backroom when and if he hops on the forklift, lest I become an actor in a new Stapplerfahrer Klaus sequel.

Oh, and today CBFH was assigned to prepare a displayer of bakeware. All he had to do was take the pans and cookie sheets out of their boxes and put them on the special display rack we were sent. This task required no fewer than three calls to the manager to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do. I'm thinking "What is going on here? We don't need a Spanish Inquisition to figure out what to do here!"


BWAAAAAAAMP! http://www.addis-welt.de/smilie/smilie/schild/inq.gif

:D

So that's my CBFH story for today. Not much of one but I had to work in the Monty Python somewhere. And now, it's the comfy chair for me.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

This should give you an idea of how frustrated we are with CBFH.

A week or so ago, our supervisor gave him another talking-to, telling him "You need to start being accountable for what you're assigned to do, because if you aren't people will not like you."

I told her "We're well past that point."

How true. Today on break supervisor said, very matter-of-factly, "I just want to run that kid over with my car." Much LULZ ensued.

Then, as we were coming back down from break, she turned to me and said "Can't you just punch him in the face or something?"

I said "Sure, but I don't know if I want to deal with the consequences."

Yeah, I know this is wrong, but we're seriously at the end of our rope with him.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The only explanation I can come up with for keeping him is management is afraid they won't have anybody for carryouts if they fire him. School starts on Tuesday, so they'd be down to CBFH and two or three other guys who are used more frequently in other areas to do carryouts during the day.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

http://www.parrottimes.com/forums/images/smilies/bump.gif, because today CBFH (aka Numbnuts, aka The Ludicrously Tragic Result of a Horribly Misaimed Jerk-off) was responsible for me getting hurt. Not seriously, mind you, but hurt nonetheless.

So I was doing big important truck-stocking things today when one of the managers paged CBFH over to the furniture department. He didn't answer, so she repeated her page, and then CBFH had the undescended testicles to page me over to furniture instead. I paged him back and told him in no uncertain terms that manager was paging for him, and I was busy doing other things so if he knew what was best for him he'd toddle his ass over to furniture like he was asked to.

But just then manager paged me over to furniture instead, leaving me to :banghead: and tell CBFH "just fucking forget it." (See, it's much easier for the managers to ask me to do something instead of having CBFH do it. It must be nice to just pocket-veto any job you don't feel like doing)

I went over to furniture and received my assignment: Take all the furniture items out of a crate on the salesfloor,stack them on the floor, take the crate to the backroom and dismantle it. (We had received crate displayers of small furniture items such as computer desks, TV stands and CD towers for BTS, and one of the crates was falling apart.) This was so that there wouldn't be any risk of some 90-year-old with a scorching case of osteoporosis being buried under an avalanche of computer desks.

Anyhow, in emptying the carte as I was asked, I managed to cut myself on either a loose nail or a board, so I had to run to the bathroom to wash it off and then to the service desk to get a band-aid.

And what was that fucktrombone CBFH doing that was so important? Wandering around "putting returns away." I called up the manager and told her she might like to know that CBFH wasn't doing anything important and just paged me to do his bidding because he didn't feel like doing it.

Her response: "Oh, I thought he was on a carryout or something. I will let (store manager) know and I will have a talk with him." An empty threat if I ever heard one, because all her supposed talking-to's have had no change on CBFH's lack of work ethic.

I swear one of these days I'm going to go on a Frank Grimes-esque rampage. ("I'm peeing on the seat! Gimme a raise!")

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

A theory I have is management is afraid they will not be able to replace him if they do cut him loose. Not easy to find somebody available to work during the day for slightly more than minimum wage and maybe no benefits. There are a few other people who could conceivably pick up his hours, me being one of them, but they're usually needed in other areas.

So instead management is cutting his hours and putting him on more night shifts when it isn't so busy.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Okay! Another sucky from "Captain Jackass," as one of my co-workers has taken to calling him. I sincerely regret I didn't come up with that myself.

Today CBFH was oozing around, trying to build a piece of furniture he was assigned to build. A call for a carryout came over the PA.

It was repeated about a minute and a half later.

And again two minutes later.

And again a couple minutes or so after that, before another employee got fed up and answered the call. She got the item and was taking it out for the customer when she ran into CBFH.

CBFH said "Oh, you got that?"

Employee said "Yes, because you weren't answering. But now that I have you here would you please take this out for me?"

CBFH replied "Umm...no. I'm going to go take a break now." And off he went.

The item requested on that particular carryout? A papasan chair cushion. Basically a round, big, but very lightweight pillow.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

What, you thought Numbnuts (aka CBFH, or Carryout Boy From Hades) actually was starting to straighten up and fly right? :D

:spew:

Today CBFH was scheduled to start at 10:30. 10:30 was when he first entered the building today. He punched in, the went to the vending machines for a soda and a candy bar and sat down in the break room to eat them.

I was on lunch at this time so I went and got his manager on the sly. She walked in to find him sitting at a table noshing away. She told him he'd just used up one of his 15-minute breaks and ordered him to get downstairs to work. While this was going on the floor people were getting slammed with one carryout after another.

BONUS FUNNY:

CBFH is now actively being made an example of. We've started our seasonal hiring and last night one of the salesfloor people was training one of the n00bs. She had him accompany her on a carryout, just so he'd now how to do it.

I was at the service desk dropping off broken items from the truck to get processed, and on the way back in she stopped by the desk and told the n00b "Now when you do carryouts, make sure you answer the phone quickly, get the item quickly, and get the correct item. Don't be like CBFH and let the page go over 5 times before you answer, and don't poke around when looking for the item."

Service desk lady chimed in, telling of all the perturbed customers who come stomping back in demanding to know where their item is, because CBFH is moving as fast as frozen molasses.

I added "Yeah, do what she says, because if you don't it won't be so much that people won't like you. It will be more like your co-workers will want to murder you." :devil:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Here's an update. Not a very juicy one though.

Yesterday CBFH was supposed to be doing merchandise pulls when he didn't have carryouts to do, and he told everybody he was doing them.

Then he left at 7, and at 9:15 pm, 45 minutes before close, somebody noticed about 65 skus needing to be pulled. Yeah, he really got a lot accomplished :rolleyes: So everybody working on the salesfloor got pulled off the floor to help pull.

I don't know if they got them all done. If they didn't get them all out of the system by close, it would go on a report that goes up to corporate, and we in turn would get a nastygram about the importance of pulling merchandise in a timely manner.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yesterday was Senior Day and thus hellishly busy. CBFH was scheduled to do carryouts and carts all day.

I don't think he bothered to pick up one shopping cart all day. That job instead fell to me, a half-hour before close. All the corrals were full of carts, carts were loose in the parking lot, carts were sitting on the sidewalks in front of the stores in the strip mall. I even had to walk across the entire lot to retrieve a couple carts by the Chinese restaurant there.

And I had to do this is 1 degree weather (Fahrenheit mind you), by myself until I called the manager and demanded she find somebody to help me. So that took me away from my task list, was which longer than usual because we're expecting corporate visitors again today.

Why the manager (Ice Princess) couldn't give this task to the floor people is beyond me. All I saw them doing was talking and "putting away returns" by pushing the full carts into the backroom and putting "fill" signs on them, like they were pulls needing to be worked.

Oh, and speaking of pulls, that is one thing CBFH did today. Except he left all the stuff in shopping carts in the backroom. So on top of the end-of-day autopulls we had 8 shopping carts and a flatbed full of random crap he pulled and didn't fill.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

This one evidently happened when I was still on third shift....

A customer purchased a display of a pre-lit artificial Christmas tree, because we had no more of that tree in a box and weren't going to get anymore. CBFH (or Numbnuts) was called upon to lad it up for the customer.

I don't know if the customer said something to CBFH or what, but he decided he didn't like the customer and he then decided to wreck their tree by yanking one of the bulbs out.

This was a tree where all the bulbs stay lit even if one burns out or is taken out. SO he was wondering why the tree was staying lit, and when he asked the seasonal specialist why he admitted what he had done to it.

I asked the seasonal specialist if she reported it. She did--but to the wrong manager.

CBFH seems to have tied his own noose, but for some reason we can't get the chair kicked out from under him.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Most every day I work with CBFH, I go home wanting to kill him. Today I wanted to make his demise even more painful and slow.

CBFH started work at 10:30. I left at 1:30. In that time I did 4 carryouts. CBFH did none.

But the cherry on today's turd sundae came just as I was putting away my scanner to go home. The lady at the service desk flagged me down and asked me to help a lady.

Me: Where's CBFH? Why isn't he answering?
SDL: I don't know, but I'll have to ask you for help. It's kind of urgent.

It turned out another lady, who must be the caretaker for a wheelchair-bound man, needed help tipping the man's wheelchair back onto all 4 wheels because somehow the guy tipped it over onto its back.

So I crawled into her dank, smelly van loaded with shopping bags and two overzealous dogs. It turned the guy in the wheelchair was:


about 400 pounds
reeking of cigarette smoke, BO, and stale pee and poo
cursing like a sailor.


So instead of going home like I was supposed to, I got to spend 10 minutes pulling and pushing and tugging on this stinky guy in the wheelchair, unsuccessfully trying to right the wheelchair so he could be put on the ramp and lowered to the ground. And all the while he was cursing out his caretaker ("That's what happens when you jump on the fucking gas like that!") and myself ("I thought you said you brought a guy out here! He can't even pull the fucking wheelchair onto the floor! Pull God dammit!")

Finally, we gave up. Caretaker had me go inside and tell the service desk to call 911 and I booked it the hell out of there before I acted on my urge to attach CBFH to the wall via a jagged board from a pallet jammed through his skull. :devil:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Situation: It's a slow period during the evening, you have no carryouts to do at the moment and the managers haven't given you a specific list of things to do.

Keeping busy the normal way: Find something to do. There are always returns to be put away, pulls to download, pull and fill, and there's always recovery to do.

Keeping busy the CBFH way: Wander over to toys and traipse around playing with all the toys, particularly the noisy toys and the whoopie cushions. When somebody asks what you are doing, say you are covering somebody's break. When you get tired of making racket in toys, go to the backroom and start poking holes in the plastic bags the big rolled-up rugs are shipped in. All the while ignore calls that are directed to you

Granted, most of the night people aren't particularly gregarious, but they rarely make no secret of the fact they're goofing off.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

All management seems willing to do with CBFH is cut his hours and hope he quits on his own accord.

Next week I have three shifts doing his job, totaling 24 hours. He has two shifts totaling 9 hours.

Norm Feuti in his book Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook coined a term that describes CBFH to a tee: Animosity Generator. He is so outwardly rude, lazy, socially inept and generally unhelpful that every customer who deals with him comes away soured on retail employees as a group and thinks all retail employees are like him.

Animosity generators (or AGs) are also, for some strange reason, immune to disciplinary action or termination.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yes. today was a very eventful day.

I was working 10:30 to 7 doing carryouts, carts, spills and messes and odd jobs. AKA CBFH's job. He wasn't working today but he came in on his day off to do some shopping and chat up one of the female coworkers he has his eye on.

Oh, I forgot to mention that CBFH seems to be hitting on all the female employees who are about his age. They tell him off as nicely as he can and he goes on to the next one.

Today he offered to buy the latest apple of his eye (I'll call her "K") a Webkinz toy, but she told him she didn't want one. When CBFH ran in to me working he decided to have a chat with me.

CBFH: Hi Irv
Me: Hey CBFH. Shopping?
CBFH: Yeah. I offered to buy K a Webkinz but I guess she doesn't like them.
Me: Well don't let that stop you! You can buy one for yourself! They're cute and cuddly and you can pretend it's the friend you never had!
CBFH: Ha ha, very funny Irv!
Me: It's called the comedy of truth. All the greats use it.

I zinged him twice and he didn't even figure the second one out! I love me when I'm evil.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And now, a very special, musical episode of "The Numbnuts/CBFH chronicles"....

"Teardoprs on my scan gun"--sung to the tune of "Teardrops on my guitar" by Taylor Swift, who is evidently some emo-spewing country music chick. She is pretty hot though....

for this one CBFH will go back to being named "Numbnuts"

Numbnuts looks at me, I scowl so he can see
That I want to hang him from the nearest beam
I watch his slacker ass, waltz through the backroom aisles
Ten carryouts are paged, just in a little while

He doesn't answer them, cashiers repeat themselves
TVs aren't taken to the customers by little elves
He says "I'm on my break, I thought I told you that"
I guess I gotta do them all in just three minutes flat

He's the reason for the teardrops on my scan gun
He leaves at night and leaves us all a lot of work undone
He's the one they never should have kept on, wonder why they do....

Numbnuts walks by me, I wish he couldn't breathe
And there he goes, so lazily
The kind of lazy I wish management would let me be
He'd better do his pulls, and make sure they're all filled
And mop up that detergent that some shopper just saw spilled

He's the reason for the teardrops on my scan gun
I need a firecracker to light underneath his bum
It's not fair, I work like a dog, I think he oughta too....

Swimsuit Edition, clutched in his fingers tight
"Put down that magazine and maybe do some work tonight!"

He's the reason for the teardrops on my scan gun
Won't bring in buggies 'cause it isn't his idea of fun
He's got nothing to do, but he's got all day to get it done
He's the space, taken up, and it's more than enough
Wish there was a pit he could fall into

Numbnuts looks at me, I scowl so he can see....

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

He had only one shift this week, and his name was crossed out on the schedule with somebody else's name penciled in.

He called in sick on his one shift last week.

I have seen him in street clothes going up to the managers' offices a couple times though. Could this mean CBFH is leaving? I hope it does but I am not holding my breath.

Stay tuned....

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

No real news, except lamentably it looks like his hours will start to increase now, because I will be needed to stock trucks more often now. (we just had somebody retire, and somebody else will be hanging it up this fall if not sooner).

Oh well, maybe more chances to him to hang himself.

He never was trained on the forklift.

He was, however, trained to empty the bailer. The one and only time he made a bale though, two of the wires snapped and the guy wouldn't take the bale because it wasn't safe to transport, so we had to haul it back into the backroom, cut apart the remaining wires, throw the cardboard back in the bailer and re-do the bale.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Uh oh, it appears I misspoke in my last post. Numbnuts/CBFH actually emptied the baler twice. The second time he forgot to put the hook on the ram to eject the bale.

Result: We had to go grab the forklift and try to jam the forks into the tightly-compacted cardboard, then set the bale on a pallet and then try to get the forks out of the bale. This resulted in the bale being half on the pallet and half out.

Then, when we tried to get the bale outside, it fell off the pallet. Repeat the process.

Sad thing is I called it. I mentioned to a co-worker while Numbnuts was working on the bale "Bet he forgets something, like ejecting it."

Numbnuts is no longer allowed anywhere near the baler, unless we toss him in it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Chaos, confusion, murder. Just another normal, busy day at work. We had a big truck to do and Numbnuts was on carryouts and being his usual slothlike self.

Every time he was paged for carryouts today, the cashiers had to call him at least twice. He was so slow I had a guy come up to me while I was filling aspirins demanding to know where his gas grill was, because he'd been waiting for about 15 minutes. I told him Numbnuts was getting it (Probably a lie).

Five minutes later...oh fuck, Numbnuts is paging me. What does the little fucksauage want this time?....

Me: Yeah?
NN: Can you do a carryout for me?
Me: No. I have to work on the truck. You know I can't help you when I'm working truck.
NN: But I got this guy who's waiting for a gas grill and he's getting kinda mad. What am I supposed to tell him?
Me: Why don't you tell him he doesn't have it yet because you're trying to get me to do your job for you instead of sacking up and doing your own carryouts?

*click

As he walked by with the grill, he gave me the stink eye. I told him "What, you think you got all day here? I thought the guy was waiting."

I tell you, that kid pisses me off sometimes every day.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We have a big reset going on in housewares this week, with just about everything in the department being moved to different aisles and having new planograms.

Numbnuts worked 12 to 8 yesterday. When we finished up at 1:30 we asked him to do the following whenever he wasn't doing carryouts:


Backstock the merchandise from the re-worked aisles that didn't fit in the new planograms (this amounted to about a flatbed and a half, so not a huge amount, plus most of it was bigger boxed appliances)
Take down some roaster ovens, ice cream makers and crock pots that were still on a high rise and backstock those, so we could set those aisle today.


Came in today to find the backstock still sitting on the flatbed carts in the backroom, and stuff still on the highrises. It took me all of about half an hour to get this all put away, but it's still something I shouldn't have to do.

Yeah, this was reported to management as well. There is no way Numbnuts was so bogged down in carryouts he couldn't find any time to do that in the six and a half hours since we asked him to do it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

for Numbnuts has officially been inflicted upon us for one year. :cry:

Today, at the team huddle, he was presented with his certificate for his one-year service anniversary, and a firm hearty handshake from the store manager while everybody else gave him a round of applause.

Everybody else but me, that is. Instead I observed a moment of silence.

I figured if I clapped I'd start laughing or crying and that would be most impolite.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Wherein Numbnuts Almost Becomes Posterized (Or At Least The Starring Role In A Training Video)

Apparently, yesterday Numbnuts had to retrieve an item from a top shelf in backstock for a carryout. Instead of getting a step stool, or even a ladder, like a normal person would, he decided to stand on a flatbed cart to reach the item on the top shelf.

A manager happened to walk by and caught Numbnuts in the act.

Manager: Numbnuts, you know you're not supposed to stand on that cart like that, right? You could fall and get hurt.
Numbnuts:Uhhh, yeah. Huh huh.

And then he continued to diddle around with items on the top shelf, still standing on the cart.

Does it make a bad person to secretly wish the cart suddenly moved and Numbnuts fell off? And that this would happen in front of a security camera so we can watch the tape over and over again?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Some days, I just wanna smack Numbnuts. And by "some days", I mean "every day he's working."

We came in to work today to find the truck crew left us a huge mess. Pallets of bulk and furniture sitting around needing to be put away, pallets of paper products and laundry detergent needing to be put away, pallets of big bags of pet food needing to be put away. I sincerely hope somebody called in sick or didn't show up because the truck was small enough they have no excuse otherwise.

We decided we would have Numbnuts do furniture when he came in. We mentioned this to the closing manager (who, incidentally, is the manager Numbnuts directly reports to), and she said in a joking manner "Yeah, he can get that done...in about a month. Ha ha!" Mind you this is pretty much her response every time we tell her about the things Numbnuts either has or has not done--to laugh it off.

He came in and we told him to get started on furniture. He started on paper and detergent instead. In the 2 hours and 45 minutes between Numbnuts coming in and me leaving for the day, he manager to finish half a pallet of paper.

And then--I stopped in the little boys room and heard somebody flush one of the toilets. It glugged a bit and then I heard water dripping on the floor. The guy in the stall came out, saw me, and said "Somebody must've plugged it up." After finishing up my little boys room activities, I stopped at the service desk and mentioned the blocked-up toilet, and they called Numbnuts to come clean it up.

Stopped in the bathroom just before I left for the day, and the toilet was still overflowing onto the floor. Water was coming close to seeping under the door. So I stopped at the service desk and let them know about it again.

And it wasn't as if there were many carryouts today. They only came in fast and furious during a half hour stretch--when Numbnuts was getting his yearly review and raise. http://www.iheartpaws.com/forums/images/smilies/2141.gif Of course, in true Numbnuts fashion, he didn't tell anybody he was gone so the floor people ended up running their asses off with big, multiple-item carryouts.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Oh, here's one, doesn't directly involve Numbnuts though:

Had a lady come up to me today asking for a desktop-sized punching bag. Supposedly she had a friend who got one, and they said it came from one of our stores. It wasn't anything I remember us ever carrying.

I sincerely regret Numbnuts was not working today; otherwise I'd call him out to the salesfloor and let the customer relieve her stress on him.http://www.v-rodforums.com/forums/images/smilies/teu26.gif

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Got recruited to unload the tree and shrub truck for lawn and garden today. Took the full racks of plants off the trailer with the forklift, and then loaded on empty racks we had lolligagging behind the store.

When I was finished with this, I drove the forklift back inside, and found my path obstructed by Numbnuts, who was standing around staring at his scanner again.

I waited for it to dawn on Numbnuts that there was somebody in a motorized vehicle larger than himself needing to get down the aisle and he needed to move. No such luck. After about a minute of Numbnuts still standing in my way staring at his scanner, I laid on the horn.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP

First time I've ever seen him jump and move quickly! :roll: Alas I did not notice any fresh stains in the butt region of his pants.

He got all pissy with me "You didn't have to do that!"
Me: Ummm, I kinda felt I had too. Did you not hear me coming behind you? The forklift does make noise, ya know.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I really don't want to type this....

I seriously don't....But I have to share this tragic news:

Numbnuts is now officially forklift trained.

:cry::cry::cry:

I told you this was bad.

The dumb fuck tried picking up a cart full of stuff and it never occurred to him to tip the forks back. Everything went sliding off the cart onto the ground.

So if I end up in a coma with a steel beam and shards of fluorescent light bulbs in my head or with a starring role in a new Stapplerfahrer Klaus film, you know why.

Management gave him written test, which you can pretty much copy chapter and verse out of the training book. Our supervisor was the one brave enough to have him hop on the forklift and drive it.

She told me he did okay. :headscratch:

Regardless, he never should have survived long enough to be able to be forklift trained.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

An epic rant is forthcoming. There will be much profanity. Those with weak constitutions should go check out LOLcats or something










last chance to bail......don't say I didn't warn you.....














Numbnuts is, among other things, the tragic result of a miserably-misaimed handjob. If I had a kid like him, I'd spend my days beating my head against a wall. That is whenever I wasn't wondering if he really was my child ("We used to have a mailman who'd always put our mail in the birdbath. You don't suppose he....nahhh, couldn't be. Or could it?")

Numbnuts started his shift at 8:30 this morning. He was told to get to work filling and backstocking paper and detergent (Lots of it came in on the truck last night). We stock people ended up doing 85% of it, because as usual he spent his day fucking around and ignoring his carryout calls. One call went over 5 fucking times without an answer, and I had the service desk people asking me where he was when I was trying to return my printer. Then finally he showed up to answer the call.

And again--a few hours later. Somebody from the floor called him for a carryout and had to repeat themselves 4 times before he answered. The entire time he was just wandering around like a jackass, right in view of the person trying to get a hold of him.

Then finally, we told him to backstock a pallet of furniture that didn't get done last night. Our supervisor ended up tearing him a new one--she's not somebody you want to make mad. We busted out fucking asses on this truck, that's the least he could've done.

Did he finish all the furniture? Fuck no! In the meantime I was backstocking shopping carts full of new school supplies--a shit job if there ever was one (Backstocking little boxes of pens by having to open them up and scan the pens inside because the UPC on the box doesn't scan correctly is what I envision hell to be like). It took me two hours to finish. In that time, Numbnuts put away 4 pieces of furniture. Half the pallet was still sitting there. He had one carryout in that time. So I got to finish my day by shlepping heavy goddamn pieces of furniture around the backroom while Numbnuts continued to do fuck-all.

On Monday, we are going to be talking to the store manager about Numbnuts. He will no doubt just tell Numbnuts' manager to keep an eye on him, and she'll laugh it off like she laughs off every complaint about Numbnuts. Real nice. Laugh at the people who are the only ones who get any fucking shit done around here. I like that. :pissed::rant:

Once again I see hard work and dedication to your job are not rewarded, and laziness pays off now and forever.

So in summation...does anybody know a good place to dump a body? :devil:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Well, this morning we discussed Numbnuts' shenanigans over the weekend to our manager, who kept saying "I can't stand him either", and "Something has to be done about him" in that hushed tone of voice that says "I'm as serious as a heart attack." We specifically chose her because we know she'll listen to us and act on our concerns.

She indicated she will let Numbnuts' manager and the store manager know of our concerns, which as I mentioned before will not do much good. Store manager is about as hands-off as a manager can be, which is good at times but the downside is that he doesn't want to be bothered with complaints about co-workers. And Numbnuts' manager is doing her best to cover for him for some reason.

But anyhow, I promised you pwnage, so here it is:

Numbnuts came in for his shift at 10:30. At about 11:30 a cashier paged for a carryout twice before paging a floor employee to do the carryout. Evidently Numbnuts called up this cashier and told her "I can't get this carryout, call Floor Employee to do it instead."

Then our manager paged for Numbnuts. I positioned myself near the phone she was at, to eavesdrop on her conversation with him:

"Hey, where are you right now? Oh, you have another carryout? I didn't hear it paged. Okay then, bye bye."

I went back to HBA to fill some merchandise I pulled and found Numbnuts at the magazine rack, reading some video game magazine.

Me: What the hell are you doing?
NN: http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h276/DianneOnly/blink.gif Reading this magazine.
Me: I heard Manager talking to you, and you told her you were doing a carryout, which evidently was why Floor Employee was asked to do the last one. And here you are just slacking off again. Unless you want me to tell my supervisor(same one who screamed at him Saturday) and Manager what you were really doing, you'll go to the backroom, tell Floor Employee to go back to what she was doing before she was called to do YOUR carryout, and do that carryout yourself.
NN: Alright, I'm going!

Guess what? I ratted him out anyway! My manager paged him up to her office, and when he came back down he was moving faster and answering his calls on the first page, so she obviously said something to him.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I told my supervisor we should all go complain to store manager and Numbnuts' manager, because even though our manager can easily do that, our frustrations just get lost in the translation.

Basically, the issue seems to be the managers who want to get rid of Numbnuts do not have the authority to do so. And the managers who do don't want to pull the trigger.

I really think the only way Numbnuts gets fired is if he starts stealing, slaps a customer, or starts sexually harassing people so they go to corporate HR.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

As I mentioned someplace else, Numbnuts was asked to help out and fill and backstock school supplies from the truck yesterday. He didn't do it. The carts were sitting in the backroom waiting for me to attend to.

Then sometime yesterday he was asked to clean out the breakroom refrigerator. Basically one of those bitch jobs we give him to make him go away for a while. Of course he had to ignore his carryout calls while failing to do any cleaning, and finally a manager came up to tell him he still had to do his carryouts.

Numbnuts' response: "Have the cashiers call me at (extension for breakroom phone). I can't hear them up here."

Can't or don't want to? I can hear the PA just fine up there.

Then he was asked to carry up the big boxes of paper for the copier that came in on Thursday's truck. Didn't do that either, so guess who got to turn his legs to jelly and his muscles to pain lugging 9 big boxes of copier paper up the stairs?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I mentioned my adventures with yesterday's truck on another thread.

I got permission to have Numbnuts work on all the detergent, paper and bulk that the unload crew left for us. The manager on duty also assured me she'd keep an eye on him to make sure he did what I asked him to. So when he came in (late, as is common with him), I paged him and gave him his tasks:

"Okay Numbnuts, when you're not doing carryouts today, I need you to backstock all the detergent, paper and furniture that is in the back room from the truck. We are not going to get to it today, so it's really really important you get it done. I don't want to see you wandering around aimlessly today. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, whatever." And he started to fill paper products from the truck and had that almost done when we left.

Get ready for the shock of this lifetime, or any other lifetime: He didn't finish it.

In fact, after the paper, he didn't touch a thing back there. Not. A. Single. Mother. F:censored:-ing. Thing.

The detergent was still sitting on pallets. So was the furniture. A pallet of bagged pet food was still back there, untouched, still in its shrink wrap.

So what obviously happened was, after we left Numbnuts went back to slacking off and as usual management lost track of him. I refuse to believe he was slammed with carryouts yesterday. And even if it was a little busy, I've been assigned to carryouts on even busier days, and yet I still managed to answer my calls after the first page, keep up with all the carryouts and still get some pulls or other work done in between.

It's a good thing that manager wasn't on today, because I think I would've gone off on her. Stupid twat doesn't do anything except BS with the people in softlines and sit up in her office diddling on her computer or stuffing her face.

Numbnuts isn't working today; somebody else is assigned to carryouts, so he'll be stuck with all the bulk, and whatever he doesn't finish I'll have to do tomorrow.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yesterday, while filling stuff after finishing cleaning the backroom from Thursday's truck, I noticed an empty juice cup sitting on an endstand, obviously left there by some piggish person who thinks the world is his/her trashcan.

So I paged Numbnuts, told him where the cup was, and asked him to go toss it. "Sure, okay."

Why did I ask him to do it instead of doing it myself, you ask? Because it's his damn job. One of the responsibilities of his job is to walk the main aisles every hour or so and clean up any trash left there. (we used to have to check off our tasks hourly in a log kept up by the cash registers).

Came in this morning and the cup was still standing, unmolested, on the shelf.

Then later today, when Numbnuts came in, he was assigned to weed the islands out in the parking lot. Here's a rough diagram of how these islands are situated in the parking lot (I have them numbered left to right as you're looking out the front door):

1 3
2

(of course there is quite a bit more space between the islands than my crude diagram shows)


Numbnuts started out on island 2. He spent the first two hours of his shift on that island alone. Meanwhile the two of us on the floor are running our butts off with carryouts and we didn't even know Numbnuts was outside because nobody told us.

Then he took a 15-minute break at 12:30. When he got off of break he moved on to island 1.

You may be wondering why it takes him two hours to pull weeds out of one flowerbed. It may be because he had his trashbag full of pulled weeds on island 3 and was pulling out weeds from island 1 and then walking them over to the trashbag.

It will not surprise me to learn he was outside his entire shift, or had to be dragged back in by a manager because the people on the floor were too busy with carryouts.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Thanks to Numbnuts' general dipshitery and lack of ambition when doing merchandise pulls, we now have a new aggravation to deal with:

Starting today, all the carryout people have to fill out a log indicating when they downloaded pulls (it's supposed to be every hour), how many SKUs they had, whether or not they filled everything, and any other random comments they may have.

Yeah. Like this will light the proverbial fire under his ass. Knowing Numbnuts he'll probably lie and say he downloaded 50 SKUs every hour for 8 hours when he only downloaded 7 at the beginning of his shift and didn't even finish pulling all of them.

Le sigh.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Today Numbnuts was his usual useless self. He got assigned to water plants outside, which he again did by taking a flatbed cart outside, putting a few plants on it, pushing it over to the hose, watering, and then pushing the plants back to the display racks and putting them back. So he blew about the first hour and a half of his shift on a job that should've taken him 15-20 minutes to accomplish. (I know--I watered those same plants Wednesday.)

Later, our supervisor paged Numbnuts to figure out where he was and if he had any plans to do the 68 pull requests in the scanner:

Sup: Where are you right now?
NN: I'm at the service desk. I just got back in from outside.
Sup: Well get back here and start on your pulls then.

Supervisor hung up the phone. Just then Numbnuts came through the door.

Sup: Gee, it sure didn't take you long to get back here from the service desk, didn't it? (The service desk is on the opposite end of the store from this door). Where were you really?
NN: I told you, at the service desk.
Sup: You obviously weren't. Now quit lying and tell me where you were.
NN: At (phone by household chemicals, a couple steps from the door).
Sup: Well, I better not catch you lying to me like that anymore. Now where's your sheet? You're supposed to be keeping track of all the pulls you download and pull.
NN: In my cart over there. (walks away and pushes cart with him)

He left it down one of the backroom aisles while he disappeared again. I looked inside and he didn't have his sheet in there like he said. And he didn't get any of the 68 pulls in the scanner done when I left an hour later.

I think for the remainder of that time, he really was at the service desk, chatting up one of the girls behind it. Seems Numbnuts has a thing for bookish-looking blondes.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I am told that sometime last week, when I wasn't at work, Numbnuts got assigned to weed the flowerbed islands again and went missing for 6 hours.

Seriously. Nobody could find him inside the store or outside. He either went and hid somewhere or he's some kind of a ninja if he can slip away undetected and be gone for so long. So of course everybody else got stuck with his carryouts.

Instead of doing his work, he'll wander throughout the store like it's a maze. He'll go to the backroom, go up the stairs, walk to another stairwell, go down, go back out to the floor, bob and weave through the aisles. return to the backroom, wander around back there, go back up the stairs and back down again, back out to the floor, etc.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I do know the manager on duty was looking for him.

We do report Numbnuts' shenanigans as they come, but the manager he reports to, and the only manager who can fire him, won't do so, preferring instead to laugh off his monkeyshines.

"Oh, he pulled 3 SKUs in 3 hours. Ha ha."
"He does all his carryouts--he takes all day to do them, but he does them. Ha ha."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Seriously, it is. Also very funny. Wanna know what it is?




Well, do you?












Okay. Get this--Numbnuts apparently is going to join the National Guard. At least this is what he's started telling people.

I'm scared. Hold me.

I mean. he's a 98-pound twig of a man who would be doing long marches with big heavy packs on his back, who doesn't take orders and do what he's told, and just a general waste of a human life.

And he's going to be given guns to use! ("Duhhh, which end of the gun do you point at the guy you want to shoot?")

Well, if nothing else, his cohorts in basic training will be able to beat a little sense and discipline into him when he screws up, something that's kind of frowned on for us to do.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Evidently, he is serious about this military thing. He asked if the truck unload supervisor was working yesterday (he wasn't), so he could ask him about what the military was like.

He also claims if he makes it into the military, he isn't coming back to the store. :muya:

I may have a new nickname for him,l created last night: Major Malfunction.

Oh, here's some LULZ--yesterday Numbnuts was assigned to help us unload truck and while he was "helping" us one of the other guys started taking the DC labels off of boxes and sticking them to the back of Numbnuts's shirt. He managed to get about 5 labels on his back without him knowing, and he walked around with those labels stuck to his back most of the night until we finally told him they were there. :lol:

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

It is now early September, and that means time to set up Christmas things!

To prepare the seasonal department for all the Christmas chotchkies we will begin setting up this week, all the school supplies that aren't going on clearance were taken out of there, brought to School and Office and filled up there, and then the excess was sent upstairs for backstock.

This amounted to two heaping flatbeds and a shopping cart full of stuff. Numbnuts was assigned to backstock this stuff Friday and told to keep at it until he finished.

He hardly even touched it. He must've been super busy with carryouts--and by "carryouts" I mean "wandering around with his shopping cart doing nothing." As a result all that crap was still sitting upstairs Saturday morning leaving us hardly any space to put our housewares backstock.

When Numbnuts came in on Sunday he was again told to backstock the school supplies and keep at it until finished. He got halfway through the shopping cart before choosing to wander again.

So guess who got stuck backstocking all that shit after he finished his furniture audit this morning? :wave:

Also, Numbnuts is still with us, a couple weeks after telling me he'd go off for basic training "in a couple weeks."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Last night I asked him when he was going in for basic. He told me "I dunno."

So yeah. he's totally blowing smoke up our asses.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Gotta http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/bump.gif this one yet again.

On today's Truck From Hades (1713 cartons, almost all of it hardlines, and lots of piddly little boxes of HBA, housewares and Christmas ornaments :hairpull:), we got in some cases of holiday print Viva paper towels. They come in special holiday wrappers too I guess.

The SKU for the holiday Viva towel is different than the normal Viva towels we have year-round, and as such CANNOT go in the same space as the normal Viva Towel. This is because fairly soon, probably at or before the beginning of next month, the holiday Viva towels are going to be on an SSP (special planogram for endcaps) along with holiday boxes of Kleenex that come in special boxes that look like Christmas ornaments. This may be all we get for those particular paper towels, so if they sell out too early half an endcap will go empty and the suits won't like that.

Anyway, when Numbnuts came in, we told him to take the holiday Viva towels straight to backstock. What does he do instead? Fills them on the shelf.

So we had to take them back down and backstock them our damn selves.

Fuck, the only time in a long time Numbnuts has felt like doing stuff around the store, and he does something he isn't even supposed to.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Wherein Numbnuts, that little assface, again makes a ton of work for me:

When Numbnuts came in today, we asked him to stack the empty repack totes on pallets, and shrink-wrap them, so they could go outside because the trailer had to be sent back empty.

The DC has specific rules for how they want the repack totes to be sent back:

Stacks can be no higher than 15 totes high.
Totes must be stacked on a pallet
The pallet of totes must be shrink-wrapped.


If any of these are not done, the DC sends us a snippy memo informing us of any "issues." Real cute how the DC gets to bitch at us about how we send stuff back, but we really have no means to complain when the DC workers do stupid shit like stack a bunch of furniture on top of boxes of liquid laundry detergent, or a pallet of bottled water on top of a pallet of paper towels. :rolleyes: But anyway....

Numbnuts stacked the totes about as shittily as possible--he made 4 stacks, so that each stack was hanging half on the pallet and half off. And he barely ran the shrink wrap around the totes.

On the dock, there is what I affectionately have called "the Nutcracker"--a huge-ass crack that has developed over the years between the asphalt and the pavement. When you drive the forklift over it, you bounce--violently.

So I had the pallet of totes on the forks, and I was backing up, and I bounced right over the nutcracker and--you don't need a very vivid imagination to figure out what happened next, but here it is anyway: Empty plastic repack totes scattered all over the receiving docks.

And Yours Truly got to restack them as best he could onto two pallets, and re-wrap them. I yelled back inside for my coworkers to find Numbnuts and haul him outside to help me, but they couldn't track him down.

And once again I had to resort to mentally drawing and quartering Numbnuts. :(

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I found out something new about Numbnuts today: He stinks.

I only figured this off because somebody tipped me off about it. Everywhere he goes he leaves this stale, stagnant, vaguely ass sweat-ish odor that just hangs in the air and clings to everything he comes in contact with.

Like the forklift, for example. I hopped on it after Numbnuts finished using it to send some stuff upstairs, and his stink had been ground into the seat.

I'm thinking of telling him that in the military they make you take showers, just in case that turns out to be a deal-breaker for him.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Funny how you never notice those kinds of things until someone points it out.

I know. I wander in and out of various odors every shift at work and never think to connect them with certain people who may be around.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Numbnuts came in at 10:30 this morning and was told to get a scanner and help put away paper products and clean up the backroom.

He spent half an hour looking for a scanner. And by "looking for a scanner" I mean "hanging out in electronics talking to the blond girl working back there who he has the hots for."

I really pity that poor girl. Either she's critically hard-up for male attention or she can't smell the Eau de Fail coming off him in sheets.

Meanwhile, he was being paged for carryouts and ignoring them, so the salesfloor people had to drop everything and do them.

Also, in the hour-and-a-half in between him coming in and us stock monkeys going on our last break, he was paged to bring in carts from the parking lot 5 times.

Five. Frasking. Times. And he didn't respond to any of them. I brought back some empty carts we had been using for the truck, and the corral was totally empty and there was a micro-stampede of sorts for the carts I brought back.

On break, I asked nobody in particular "Can't we just put a bag over his head and beat the crap out of him, like a pinata?" My supervisor, who was sitting across from me, said "Don't say funny stuff like that when I have hot coffee in my mouth." :lol:

As for the paper he was supposed to put away? He took one pallet of Bounty towels and pushed it over by paper backstock, but didn't put it away properly or locate it. He left a pallet of Kleenex sitting right in one of the aisles--big no-no, store manager gets antsy if we have even one pallet on the floor after 9:00 or so.

Bonus:

Last night I was helping unload today's truck. We all saw Numbnuts pull an artificial Christmas tree, put it on his cart....and then push it to the other end of the backroom, instead of taking it TWO STEPS OUT THE DOOR to the Christmas tree display to fill.

When Numbnuts returned to the backroom, we asked him "Why did you go take that Christmas tree all the way to the end of the backroom like that?"

"I had to pull some other stuff."

"Like what?"

"Well...uh....I had...paper, and apparels (yes, he did actually say 'apparels') and toys."

So once again, rather than making things easy and being efficient, he chose the most inefficient, time-consuming way to do things. http://img383.imageshack.us/img383/18/iftherewasanemoticonbyaugestqx6.gif

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Yesterday Numbnuts came in at 7 and was assigned to pull and fill the autopulls in the system from the night before (only 35 SKUs thanks to yet another snowstorm keeping people away).

It took him about an hour and 15 minutes to do that. It would take me 30 minutes, if that, to get everything pulled and filled.

Next he was supposed to take out the pallet of sporting goods freight from the truck and fill it. 15 minutes to lunch I went in the backroom and saw the pallet still sitting there, looking like nothing on it had been touched at all. I called up my supervisor.

Me: Wasn't Numbnuts supposed to fill sporting goods? It's still in the backroom and it looks like it wasn't even gone through.
Supervisor: Well, he told me he finished it. He told me it was nothing.

Well, he did get one thing right: It was nothing...for him. Me and my co-worker had 15 minutes to get it all out so we could get to lunch on time.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

It's not so much patience as knowing my employer and the law won't look favorably on me if I'm caught bashing Numbnuts' head in with a crowbar while singing "Stuck In The Middle With You" or something.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

So it would seem yesterday Numbnuts was responsible for doing pulls, and in typical Numbnuts fashion he did not do them.

It's not as if he had a ton of carryouts yesterday either, from what I heard, although we did beat salesplan for the day.

Nobody noticed he hadn't done the pulls until one of the night managers went into the scanner at about 8:00, when it's dead and there's few people working, and noticed over 200 SKUs in there needing to be pulled, and she pulled all the floor people into the backroom to pull them just to get them out of the system.

We came in this morning to find 3 domestics bins, 2 flatbeds, and 3 shopping carts full of pulled merchandise from last night, which we had to fill in addition to the over 250 SKUs in autopull this morning.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Today Numbnuts was on carryouts but couldn't obtain a scanner when he came in. So he came by me and my partner in toys to have one of us type the SKU into our scanner.

As luck would have it, the scanner decided to slow down right there, so my eyes were watering from Numbnuts' stench and I was wondering when was the last time he washed his work clothes, from all the stains in them.

Finally the information he needed came up, and then Numbnuts and his odor vanished.

Later on, I couldn't help but notice that Numbnuts kept downloading pulls for electronics over and over again. I suspect that this was so that he could talk to the blond girl working back there he has the hots for.

Later on, my partner and I were walking past the electronics counter as Numbnuts was shuffling off. However, I swear it was not I who said, to nobody in particular but loud enough for the blond girl to hear, "Numbnuts sure could use a shower and he definitely needs to wash those stinky clothes of his."

This also did not cause the blond girl to start giggling.

My supervisor also did not spit out her apple muffin in a rule #1 violation when I retold the story to the rest of my co-workers on the stock crew.

http://ganjataz.com/smileys/01-whistle/whistle-gt-green2.gif

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We've had hamburgers catered the past two days. They came in a big roaster oven swimming in a greasy, fart-inducing gravy.

Along with the hamburgers there were chips and dip, veggies and dip, pickles, cole slaw and a couple kinds of noodle salad.

So today I got to witness Numbnuts, while on his 15-minute break, load up a plate with of food and eat it. Did he take it to a table and sit down to eat? Hell no? He ate while standing up OVER THE TABLE OF FOOD.

And he chewed with his mouth open, like a frigging cow. And he was talking and probably spewing spit-drenched particles of food all over the food we would be eating.

He said he was on his ninth and tenth burgers in the past two days. He must've had eight alone yesterday. What a pig.

Meh, I guess hamburgers are better than those big bags of candy, beef jerky, chips and Gatorade he totes up to the breakroom for his breaks every day.

So in addition to being a lazy slug, filthy stinky pig and just generally the tragic result of a broken condom, he's a disgusting slob when eating. Hubba hubba. I guess this won't really come as a shock to most of you.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Numbnuts is quitting.

That is all. Party down as appropriate.

http://img99.exs.cx/img99/8577/yupi3ti.gifhttp://img99.exs.cx/img99/8577/yupi3ti.gif:drink::muya:

Yeah, it is of course possible that Numbnuts will wash out of the military or I'll end up with a replacement who makes him look competent and/or charming.

But for now I http://img99.exs.cx/img99/8577/yupi3ti.gif The end is nigh!

AFAIK, he's going into the Air Force. I've seen him wearing an Air Force cap. So I guess he'd be shoved out the bomb bay of a jet sans parachute.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

There was an incident not too long ago that might have contributed to Numbnuts deciding to leave.

Earlier this month we re-numbered most of backstock. In apparel, somebody made an error and labeled two different sections with the same number. So when the scanner tells you there's an item in that location, that means you don't know if it's in one section or the other.

As a result, there was an issue with phantom locations in apparel backstock (meaning the scanner says there's an item in a certain spot, but the person looking for it can't find it, and thus deletes the location on their scanner). The apparel manager became certain Numbnuts was to blame for this, so she cornered him in the backroom and gave him a colossal ass-ripping.

Only after that did we locate the error and renumber one of the sections. Apparel manager did apologize to Numbnuts, but he evidently was very shaken up, close to tears and wanting to go home early I guess.

Then the next day he handed in his two-weeks.

If this were anybody else, it would be tragic, but because of all the grief and extra work he put me through in the almost 2 years he's been at the store, not to mention his BO, I say karma's a bitch.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The Famous Numbnuts has been gone for almost 6 months already, but tales of his incompetence and sloth and nincompoopery continue to trickle forth.

I am told this happened last summer, one of the times he was assigned to pull weeds out of the "beautification" islands the city made us install in our parking lot at our expense. I don't yet know if this was the time he went missing for six hours, or if this was the time he was sent back out there to finish the job.

Anyway, he sought out my supervisor and told her "I sprayed some weed killer on those weeds and I don't know why they aren't dead." Sup asked him what he sprayed on the weeds and he produced...a can of ant and roach killer.

:doh:

So yeah, that's the reason for the bump. Don't worry, Numbnuts has not yet been laughed out of Air Force Basic (as far as I know) and come crawling back. If that happens, I'll stick my head in an oven.