Fake Service Dog, and dangled bait

[dalesys]

..."animal as fashion accessory" trend never caught on around here. And that's a good thing.

...back home we didn't shave 'em up into little balls, dye 'em lavender and put rhinestone collars on 'em. If there was a rhinestone collar around the house, it went on Mommy...

The Dillards, explaining why they don't sing "Old Blue" like Joany Baez.

[mechanic1908]

I have 2 dogs that are service animals. Here's my male gsd looking for squirrels.
And both of them guarding my guitar.
I never take them into stores though, except for that one time Angel let herself out of my car and came looking for me in Wally World lol.
In regards to the carrot dangle thing: I've never seen a better way to encourage employees to drag out their job than that! Why on earth would any supervisor screw you into doing the lazy/slowest other employees job's?
Wow!

[Captain Trips]

But since federal law supersedes state law and there is no federal requirement for service animals to be certified/licensed, the state's regulation is technically violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Actually, it does specify that some states may have in place more restrictive requirements, "check with your state authorities," so this is covered.

[Captain Trips]

We don't allow pets in our hotel, but of course we allow service animals. So people are always claiming their dogs are service animals when clearly they are not, but we aren't allowed to question them on it.

But you may ask what specific task the dog has been trained for. It must be trained for specific tasks/actions. (e.g. let's you know when your blood sugar is running low.) If it's "just general emotional support" then it isn't covered by the ADA as a service animal.

[Bob The Random Boy Wonder]

At the huddle the LOD gave the normal "work hard, lets get finished early" speech. Also said something about when we're finished to call him and he'd walk the area and "Talk about letting you leave."
...
Every time the closing LOD does that, dangling a hint of a reward that they have no intention on ever following through on(and the LOD today was notorious for it) simply as bait to get people to work harder, my respect for them dwindles and dwindles.(This particular one doesn't have a lot left)

As soon as I read this, I knew I had to respond. This is my entire tenure at the Retail Plantation summed up in a few sentences. If I had $1 for every time I dealt with this exact situation, I'd have enough money to go back and buy the whole store.

Here's how I always dealt with this:

Tell the manager in question that you'll go help with the other department's work only if said manager agrees to chip in and do as much work as everyone else until the work is done. If they hem and haw over such a simple request, kindly point out that they should now have some inkling about how you feel when you were asked to stay later to do work that wasn't your own after doing your own job for 8 hours.

I was asked so many times by managers that weren't mine to go do work that other departments slacked on so they could leave early, and this little conversation worked every time. It was successful because all the managers knew that not a one of them could argue the point without completely invalidating the speeches they made in the department meetings. After all, if they didn't want to do what they were asking us to do, why should we?

Sulhythal, if you haven't tried this, give it a shot. As long as you remain calm and state your case well, it might work.

[Sulhythal]

Tell the manager in question that you'll go help with the other department's work only if said manager agrees to chip in and do as much work as everyone else until the work is done. If they hem and haw over such a simple request, kindly point out that they should now have some inkling about how you feel when you were asked to stay later to do work that wasn't your own after doing your own job for 8 hours.


Sulhythal, if you haven't tried this, give it a shot. As long as you remain calm and state your case well, it might work.

It might be an idea, at least with certain managers. Some of them DO work along with us when we(or another department) is behind, others....well. I'm sure what they'll say is that they're dealing with "Important closing tasks" such as writing and sending reports. Which is possible, up to a point. Unfortunately we're not usually there late enough to invalidate that as a response, usually. especially when we don't know WHAT those tasks are, exactly. Plus, as the closing manager/supervisor(honestly I never have figured out which of those two words denotes higher rank...) they're the ones that give permission to clock out.

Once, a few months after I started there, I was told by HR that I HAD to clock out by a certain time, or else I'd go into overtime(which was bad if it hadn't been approved beforehand) So I did, and then ran into the LOD for that night(who I hadn't seen at all that day to tell them what HR had said) and told him I was clocked out. "You shouldn't have done that, you didn't have permission to clock out." was his exact words. Thankfully, he's one that is not around anymore, he left for a position at a different store in the same chain.

And some of them have a friendship with the Almighty God of The Store(Store owner/manager/whatevertheycallit) to a point where it seems as though they do nothing at all but sit at their desks, take hour and a half breaks, and two hour lunches while the other manager stuck with them for the night does all the work.

[PepperElf]

...back home we didn't shave 'em up into little balls, dye 'em lavender and put rhinestone collars on 'em. If there was a rhinestone collar around the house, it went on Mommy...

off topic but i got to see TWO dyed dogs at the park in the last few days. although neither of them were purse-dogs. One was GSD-sized and the other was a husky mix i think.

The first had a wide dot on his forehead where his mom had started doodling on him with a pink marker. The second had a bushy fox-like tail with the tip dyed pink.

heh.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Managers who like to throw their weight around like that are never pleasant to deal with.

BB, the Sucky Overnight Manager at the wholesale club, could get like that sometimes. He didn't like that, on the weekends when I worked Back Door LP in the early morning, I was usually sitting around "doing nothing." He tried to put me to work helping them stock, but the day shift managers (specifically the Ops Manager and my LP Manager) put the kibosh on that real quickly. I did eventually get more to do back there, but it clearly rankled him that I was getting paid to "sit around doing nothing."

Not that it didn't stop him, one day, from trying to flex his managerial muscle when I was dismissed from BDLP to go up front to start FDLP for the day. MC, one of the other managers, said I could go, and BB flagged me down as I was going into the office to collect the FDLP equipment.

BB: "Who said you could leave the back door?"
J2K: "MC. He's back there."
BB: "But is he the back door LP guy?"
J2K: "MC said I could come up."
BB: (confrontational) "But is he the back door LP guy?"
J2K: "...I don't have to deal with this." (walk away)
BB: "HEY!"

I got away with that because BB has no authority over day shift employees, plus the Ops Manager and MC could both back me up on it, not to mention two other day shift employees had seen the confrontation and also backed me up on it.

BB ended up getting fired when he threatened to kick the ass of one of the night crew, right in front of his wife (who also worked at the store).

[raudf]

The first had a wide dot on his forehead where his mom had started doodling on him with a pink marker. The second had a bushy fox-like tail with the tip dyed pink.

I had a dog that wound up with a pretty blue one due to wagging right into the paint tray as I was working. It was poster paint, soooo theoretically it should have washed off. Washed what I could off and she still looked like she tail-whipped the smurf village. Made a mess on the floor too.

And the cat had blue paws from deciding to walk across the paint while I was dealing with the dog!

[workerbee222]

And this is why I feel the ADA needs to police themselves and provide proof that service animals are certified; no certification, not a service animal and out it goes. Too many self-centered people are lying about their "pwecious snookums" being a service dog. What happens if it attacks someone in your store? I see the victim suing you as well as the owner, especially as the store has deeper pockets...

A co-worker was looking for an apartment with her roommate. They were being picky because they wanted to eventually get a dog. Annoying colleague announced that her sister had a service dog, and all one had to do was to get a note from their doctor (and, I guess, buy one of those blue vests). "And," she proudly went on, "it's
illegal to question anyone about their need for a dog or what the dog does, so no one can say anything!"

Nice co-worker muttered under her breath that she didn't want to start her relationship with a new landlord by lying to him.