Snapping photos of workers to get them in trouble

[HawaiianShirts]

I had just wrapped up one assignment, and right before I started on the other one, I leaned back in my chair for just a second. Naturally, that exact second was when the manager just happened to walk by.

Me, too. I worked hotel housekeeping in a national park one summer. To reduce my completion time in each room, instead of walking around the beds as I put the blankets back on, I would do an action movie style roll across them. It was kind of a jump, tumble across the bed, and leap up off the other side.

One time, my team lead happened to walk by and peek in at the exact moment that I was coming up off the roll. To her, it looked like I was just standing up. Naturally, she accused me of lying down and taking a nap on the clock and then nervously jumping up when I heard her coming. I had to demonstrate my moves to try to get her to believe otherwise. To this day, I'm not sure she believed me.

That is the reason I absolutely hate the phrase, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean."

One manager said that to me when I worked for Major Electronics Retailer. I had come in early that day and spent almost two hours doing general cleaning in my department, fixing what the closers did wrong the night before, correcting a few displays, and resetting a computer monitor planogram.

I didn't like that manager anyway, so I responded by glaring at him and saying, "Show me something in this department that needs to be cleaned." I didn't see him again for about an hour.

(What I really wanted to do was tell him that he has time to clean, too, because I often saw him checking personal email on work computers, but I figured that might be pushing things a little too far.

Turn it around on them. Take pictures of the picture-takers. Publicly shame them.

I'd rather turn it around the other way: Start taking pictures of the employees obviously doing a good job and post that where their corporate suits and/or upper management can see. Wouldn't it be nice if we could counteract public shaming with public praising? I know it wouldn't be as popular on FB and such, just because there'd be little for people to get riled up about. It could do some good, though, right?

Might not hurt to ask the person for permission first, but I don't think I'd complain if someone asked to snap a photo of me working so they could post a positive comment online.

[Argabarga]

I go the other way.

When I notice someone "clandestinely" taking pictures of me (i.e. sticking out like a sore thumb, but, thinking they're being clever) I start posting :P Like, Napoleon hand-in-the-coat posing.

Totally ruins whatever they had planned because it was obviously taken in jest so any "look what your employee did!" will be met with "heh, that's kinda funny"

[protege]

Only problem was, it wasn't a customer saying this, it was one of the managers.

Bastard. But, I'm not surprised. Management, especially retail management, seems to have a bug up their ass when it comes to any down time.

For example, when I was at Hechinger, my job was to help customers load up their vehicles. Well that, and make sure the carts and debris were kept off the front sidewalk.

One afternoon, probably towards the last month I worked there, we had the entire sidewalk clear, and some of us were standing around waiting on a load of lumber and other crap to come through the register. We're talking multiple carts of 2x4s, plywood, bricks, boxes, plants, and who knows what else.

As the stuff starts rolling towards the exit doors, Felix (the assistant store manager...and a real douche) comes out of the outside yard, and screams at us to "get to work." Naturally, we pointed at the stuff about to come outside. Felix got upset, and pulled ALL of us inside to take care of some of his pet projects. Things like re-bagging broken bags of concrete, sweeping the outside yard, and other bullshit.

Anyone want to guess what went down? As we're taking care of his "to-do" list, the customer(s) went outside, found nobody around to help them...and then went back inside to bitch After getting chewed out a second time, and only making $4.25 an hour, I decided that I didn't give a fuck. I was leaving for college soon, and would be leaving anyway. Little did I know I'd be getting fired after turning in my 2-week notice, but that's another story.

As for Felix, he got what was coming. Seems a couple bags of concrete mix "mysteriously" broke in the back of his new Jeep For those of you who have never been subjected to that sort of thing, concrete is a pain in the ass to clean up. On a hard floor, it's not so bad--just sweep it up. Inside a cloth and carpeted interior? Not so much. Sure, you might get most of it out, but you'll never see all of it gone. Plus, the dust and smell will still be there.

From what I understood, getting most of the mix out required several hours of vacuuming...and the Jeep's red seats STILL looked pink

For the record, that incident happened on my day off. And yes, the guy involved did get fired, but only after ripping Felix a new one on the sales floor