Yay! Happiness! The simple joys of retail.

[Gabrielle Proctor]

So, for a while we had a pretty good UPS guy. He was always on time, had organized his boxes perfectly, and was generally a nice guy. We even gave him a cute nickname, "Cheeks", because he once bent down and showed us half his ass. We didn't tell him about this nickname, ofcourse, but it was all edearment anyway.

A while ago, they switched his route and put us with the hell woman. She was never here when she was supposed to be(she would show up an hour before closing with a TON of stuff), and her boxes were never organized so she often stopped by 3 times during the day. On top of all of that, she treated the packages like crap! We had to send about 5 different products back to the manufacturer because the packaging was destroyed. She NEVER used the nice little hand truck, no, she had to huff and puff her way into the store while carrying 50-100lb boxes. she was just plain inefficient.

Today, Cheeks came back. My heart lept into my throat I was SO FREAKIN' HAPPY! So happy, that I exclaimed, "Cheeks!!!!!!!!" in a very high pitched voice(not on purpose) and then glomped him. It made my day...although I hope he didn't notice that I accidently called him his secret nickname. He probably did...

[sms001]

Today, Cheeks came back. and then glomped him. :

I hear ya! It's almost sad that just having someone around that's DECENT at their job is a highlight, but I've been there too. It's especially nice when their effectiveness impacts yours.

uh. What's "glomping?" (Or don't I want to know? )

[RetailWorkhorse]

uh. What's "glomping?" (Or don't I want to know? )

Tackle-attack style hug.

[JustADude]

Tackle-attack style hug.

Don't forget the variant for big people, the feet-off-the-ground bearhug.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Something similar happened to me recently.

Our Ops Manager (I'll call her D) and I always got along, after the first year. That first year, the GM was just this ... I dunno. Something about him just rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that I NEVER saw him smile. I'd hear him laugh, turn to look, and NO SMILE. Anyway, because of his presence, D and I just seemed kinda ... not quite connecting. Then the GM gets released and we get a new one, who's much more laid back, and actually has a spine when confronted with SCs.

D and I got along great after that. I was ALWAYS able to get a smile out of her, even when she'd been having a bad day. Most common way of doing it came about after one day, after closing, she decides we've done enough extra work (seriously, there was way more than we should have had to do) and she comes over the PA and says "Roll out! Roll out!" to the tune of the Ludacris song. Everyone thought it was hilarious to hear her do it.

So from that day on, if I saw her leaving, I'd go "Roll out! Roll out!" like she did, and do this little dance move thing. Ditto if I was leaving and saw her as I passed. And it always got a smile and a laugh out of her. Maybe 'cuz it's this big, goofy white guy proving he can't dance. I dunno.

Well, several months ago, she fell down with an illness of some kind, and took an extended leave. And things at the store started going downhill FAST. Scheduling problems CONSTANTLY. Sucky coworkers not having D around to curtail their egos and attitudes. All this and more.

Then I hear that D had recovered from her illness, but she'd transferred to another store in the chain. And I was a sad puppy.

A few weeks ago, after yet another personnel manager turnover (we seem to get a new personnel manager every six months), two of the managers are upstairs working hard on fixing the scheduling for the upcoming week, and I go up to give them a time-off request so I could take a personal day.

I go up there, and I burst out in a big grin. "D'S BACK!" I exclaim jubilantly. She grins as she sees me, and then says, "I'm only here for a few days."

"Awww... break my heart, why don'cha?"

And she bursts out laughing. So I still had that touch.