Holiday weekends suck

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Sometimes your best just isn't good enough. This seems to happen more often on holiday weekends where the holiday is on a Monday than at any other time.

Why you ask? Well, today's truck turned out to be about 300 cartons larger than expected. Still, we had six people scheduled to work the truck instead of our normal five.

Turned out one of them pulled a NCNS so we were left shorthanded and didn't finish the truck. It is very rare we don't finish a truck.

And then on the salesfloor, somebody else did a NCNS. That left us with one person on the salesfloor to do all the carryouts and answer all the call boxes, and it got to be too much for her so we truck people had to help. We couldn't pull anybody out of lawn and garden to help us; management wanted alol the coverage out there they could get. And it wasn't without reason. The weather's finally turned nice and it's been crazy busy out for most of this last week. I did 6 hours out there yesterday watering plants (got the sunburn to prove it!) and everywhere I looked there were people with full carts of flowers and shrubs and fruits and veggies.

But then again this is what always happens whenever holidays come around. People request time off, get pissed when they can't have off because their request was turned down, and either call out or don't show up, leaving a bigger burden for the people stuck working.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

And now the second reason why holiday weekends suck: They're always busier than anticipated.

Especially Memorial Day. After all, it is the unofficial beginning of summer, and it is a nice day today, and we're offering military discounts, so people are being spendy today.

And there was only one person on the floor in hardlines again. Nobody to do carryouts or bring in carts. So that job went to the floor person and myself, as I was trying to get all the furniture counted and pull tags adjusted.

And as luck would have it, I got saddled with a lot of pains in the ass. Like the guy who called in and wanted me to tell him the prices of every single piece of one of our bedroom sets. And the guy who asked me if the twin-sized mattress on the bunk bed display, which is clearly signed as a twin-sized mattress, was a twin-sized mattress. And the couple who had me call a bunch of other stores because they bought our last of a certain clearance dinnerware set but wanted three more. And the other couple who had me schlep a bunch of recliners out to the salesfloor and open their boxes so they could see what color they were (We used to have fabric swatches that came with their signs, but those are long gone--thanks customers! You dirty, filthy, fucking disgusting pigs.). And the manager asked me to bring the forklift back inside and I discovered that some fuckhead broke the shift lever on it, so it will be out of commission for a while.

And...and....ARRRRGGGHHHH DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIECRUSHKILLDESTROY AARDVARK *snap!*

There there Irv, calm blue ocean, think happy thoughts. Birdies! Look at the pretty pretty birdies! Look at I WILL KILL YOU AND EAT YOU AND PULVERIZE YOUR BONES *snap*

This might take a while....

[raw456]

And...and....ARRRRGGGHHHH DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIECRUSHKILLDESTROY AARDVARK *snap!*

Love it!!!!

[bean]

Speaking of busy...

I'm lucky to ring 7k on a Monday. I rang 11,800 today. With a bad hangover, while answering the main store phone. All. day. long. One of our two closing baggers called out as well, so after 6pm the entire store had a SINGLE BAGGER to cover 20 registers.

One of the longest days I've ever had.

One of the calls I picked up was a coworker (we'll call her Betty).

"Hey Bean, it's Betty"
Hey how's it going?
"I don't think I feel like coming in today. Who's the supervisor right now? Can I talk to them?"
In my mind, I'm going "WTF YOU DON'T FEEL LIKE COMING IN?! WTF!!!!!! THAT'S NO FRIGGIN EXCUSE TO CALL OUT!!!"
Instead, my mouth said "Alan is the supervisor, hold on a moment while I transfer you." (while cussing her up and down and side to side in my mind)

We did manage to call in a part time cashier to cover Betty's shift, but even if nobody had called out we were obscenely understaffed. At one point I had a line 6 people deep in my line.

[blas]

Please tell me that those who NCNS'ed will be severely punished?

[bean]

Please tell me that those who NCNS'ed will be severely punished?

In my store you get 2 chances at attendance related writeups - a NCNS is an automatic writeup. So is punching in more than 29 minutes late (it counts as a NCNS). So is calling in less than an hour before the start of your shift.

10 "approved" absences in 12 months is a writeup. So is 3 in 1 month or 5 in 6 months. We're a little strict, but it's retail.

3 writeups for the same thing in 6-12 months is automatic termination. I have 1 NCNS on file, but it's the only writeup I've ever had with this company. (overslept by.. uh.. several hours after staying out way too late.. oops)