Tweet
Today at my work I was assigned to clean out the kiddy tubes in the restaurant.
43 minutes to go. It's dead today and the tubes are quiet as a church. I get some sanitizer in my eye and come down to rinse it out. Boss tells me to go on break - this catches me completely off-guard because I'm only working four hours and leave in less than one (we only do one 30 minute break per shift here, no idea how we get away with that). While I'm busy lolwatting, I forget all about the bottle of sanitizer and the towel that are still sitting up there.
30 minutes later, I come back. Now there's a customer in the kiddy room. I start to go up into the tubes, then come back to ask a coworker to still come get me when my shift ends (I have no watch, and there are obviously no clocks up there). A customer stops me and asks to see a manager. I ask what for, and he evades the question and refuses to tell me, which I immediately figure is bad news, though I still don't suspect the sanitizer. As I don't have a choice, I take him to the counter and, as there are two managers working in pretty much the same space, lean around the corner and say that a customer wants to see "one of you". Of course, it couldn't be dirty tables or something else minor, his kids found (but fortunately didn't try to mess with) the sanitizer. Also of course, one of the managers is the obnoxious power tripper who directly inspired "Thou Shalt Not" in the management personality types thread, who immediately takes charge of the situation and chews me out. Snitchy McTattlerat apologizes that he "didn't mean to get me in trouble". Huh. TSN then tells me that if I'm off at [T], I can just go get the cleaning supplies out of there and go home, since by that point it's [T-10] anyway. I figure that's the end of it, get the stuff, and go to confirm she really wanted me to clock out.
Big mistake.
"Waitwait," she says, "I have to talk to you in the office." We go to the office and she rattles off the spiel I'm sure you can predict: that was stupid, someone's kid could've died, I'm gonna have to write you up.
Now I admit. I was stupid. I got carried away with the fact that there was no one there at the time, and got caught completely flat-footed when given a break at such a strange time. However... if Mr. McTattlerat had told me what his problem was instead of insisting on a manager, I could have informed him (and it would have been true) that his problem was less than two minutes from no longer being a problem, and thus managerial involvement and a writeup could have been avoided. I half suspect that when he said he didn't mean to get me in trouble, he meant that he didn't know I was the one who made the mistake, not necessarily that he didn't want to get anyone in trouble.
tl;dr I made a stupid mistake, got written up, and gave my managerial nemesis another reason to think I'm an idiot, but the latter two wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the troll customer who just haaaad to tell a manager.
43 minutes to go. It's dead today and the tubes are quiet as a church. I get some sanitizer in my eye and come down to rinse it out. Boss tells me to go on break - this catches me completely off-guard because I'm only working four hours and leave in less than one (we only do one 30 minute break per shift here, no idea how we get away with that). While I'm busy lolwatting, I forget all about the bottle of sanitizer and the towel that are still sitting up there.
30 minutes later, I come back. Now there's a customer in the kiddy room. I start to go up into the tubes, then come back to ask a coworker to still come get me when my shift ends (I have no watch, and there are obviously no clocks up there). A customer stops me and asks to see a manager. I ask what for, and he evades the question and refuses to tell me, which I immediately figure is bad news, though I still don't suspect the sanitizer. As I don't have a choice, I take him to the counter and, as there are two managers working in pretty much the same space, lean around the corner and say that a customer wants to see "one of you". Of course, it couldn't be dirty tables or something else minor, his kids found (but fortunately didn't try to mess with) the sanitizer. Also of course, one of the managers is the obnoxious power tripper who directly inspired "Thou Shalt Not" in the management personality types thread, who immediately takes charge of the situation and chews me out. Snitchy McTattlerat apologizes that he "didn't mean to get me in trouble". Huh. TSN then tells me that if I'm off at [T], I can just go get the cleaning supplies out of there and go home, since by that point it's [T-10] anyway. I figure that's the end of it, get the stuff, and go to confirm she really wanted me to clock out.
Big mistake.
"Waitwait," she says, "I have to talk to you in the office." We go to the office and she rattles off the spiel I'm sure you can predict: that was stupid, someone's kid could've died, I'm gonna have to write you up.
Now I admit. I was stupid. I got carried away with the fact that there was no one there at the time, and got caught completely flat-footed when given a break at such a strange time. However... if Mr. McTattlerat had told me what his problem was instead of insisting on a manager, I could have informed him (and it would have been true) that his problem was less than two minutes from no longer being a problem, and thus managerial involvement and a writeup could have been avoided. I half suspect that when he said he didn't mean to get me in trouble, he meant that he didn't know I was the one who made the mistake, not necessarily that he didn't want to get anyone in trouble.
tl;dr I made a stupid mistake, got written up, and gave my managerial nemesis another reason to think I'm an idiot, but the latter two wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the troll customer who just haaaad to tell a manager.
Comment