Yay. Radios.

[Cyanocobalamin]

We started using 2way radios at my store on Monday. Supposedly it is to improve employee communication, etc. It's great in that I've only heard about -six- PA pages over the past few days, the radio is much handier! And of course everybody has one and everyone can hear what is being said, including my lovely SM. The downside is now she gets to micromanage even more, if that is possible.
R: Fellow stock clerk
S: Tech salesman

Me: I need help getting a laser printer down, it's too heavy for me.
R: OK I got that, Cyan.
SM: Make sure to get as much attached as possible!
Me: I'll find the toner.
S: Just get the black, since it runs out faster than the colors.

While I ring up the printer for the customer, S plugs the 'protection kit' which is essentially the extended warranty with some goodies included like a USB cable, some cable ties, paper samples, etc. The customer politely declines both the protection kit and an extra toner, and goes on his way.
A little while later:
SM: Cyan, did you get anything attached to the printer?
Me: Unfortunately he didn't take the toner, and he also turned down the kit.
SM: OK nice try.

Curses to HP for supplying fullsize toners in their machines and curses to my SM for telling us what we already know like we're idiots.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

We used to have two way radios at my store; now we don't use them anymore.

They got trashed beyond belief. The bottuns to turn them on and adjust the volume fell off all the radios. You had to use a tweezers to turn them on and off.

Plus half of them had bad batteries that didn't like to charge up the way they should have.

they also had an amusing habit of picking up other conversations. I guess sometimes a person wouldn't know that the radio wasn't on the right channel, and wouldn't know how to set it back to the right channel. So they'd just walk around, wondering why nobody could hear them talking over the radio and why they were hearing what was going on at the Burger King down the street.

[repsac]

We had them for a short time at Lowe's. In the end, they scrapped them after a head cashier took something of an offense at them. This is part of that story.(only part since I don't know it all.)

The radios had been picked up for the loaders, lumber cashiers, and head cashier.

It was supposed to work like this (actual conversation from BEFORE the HC at issue.)

Me (at lumber): Hey, Jamie, you there?
J: Yeah, whatcha got?
Me: Customer needs loaded down in lumber.
J: I'm out back, gimme a min and I'll be right to them.

This was done loud enough for the customers to hear. Worked wonders for the irritated customer who couldn't get help. It all worked great until D (the Head Cashier) came to us.

D had a problem. She was the type of manager who felt they had to re affirm again and again that she was in charge. However, to make things worse there was a cashier that I hated. This cashier, was something of a "chief" in her mind. This lady felt that being older, made her someone to respect. (We all know this not to be true.)

SO, enter me. The Poor returns Cashier sent to Lumber. Naturally, I took a radio with me. Not long after, I get sent to pull in carts. I took the radio with me and said quote "D, If you need me, I'm on the radio. Channel...12. Billy's there too." She never looked at me, just rolled her eyes and tromped off radio in hand.

I'm outside about ten minutes (big lot) when I hear a very nasal voice. It's that Cashier I hate.

Cashier: Hel-lo? Is sumone thar?
Me: Uh...yeah?
Cashier: Hel-looooo?
Me: (almost screaming) YEAH! What?
Cashier: Where are you?
Me: Parkinglot.
Billy: Uh...lumber, outside.
Cashier: Wellllllllllll, D wants Repsac to come in and load....
Billy: Uh, he kinda can't. He's down on the other end of the store.
Me: Yeah, Bill's closer, let him get it.
Cashier: (with a really annoying twang) "But D wants Reps."
Billy: (Testilly) I'll get it.

After a few more minutes, I come back inside. Billy's doing the loading. D, the head cashier comes up to me and snatches the radio off my belt. Nearly pulling my belt along with it. "GIVE ME THAT!" she snaps and heads inside.


we never used the radios after that, even though the manager kept telling us to. I even talked with the DM about it, and they'd started a policy that the outlying (lumber, lawn and garden) registers keep a radio handy. That way, if they need a loader, you don't hear them paging back and forth over the PA, or calling the head cashier. Our store, so long as D was working, never did that.

I can only wonder why she acted like she did. I know for a fact she openly hated me, but that didn't change the fact that this wasn't my policy. Further, it didn't change that management kept saying to use it, but she refused.

Since leaving there, I've often thought about why she acted like that. My opinion follows:

I can't help but think that D, remembering I had once been her Head Cashier (stepped down due to hours conflict) felt somewhat threatened by me. Management still listened to my opinons and so on, but they didn't hers.

[powerboy]

We had those at Walmart. I had the standard kind, that everyone else had. Then my buddy, the head cart guy, outside, had the kind that CSM's, Managers would use. Now, I got in trouble everytime I would use it. And the Manager one, got taken away from us, because according to them, we abused them. What happened was, we didn't answer it once, and that was because we were helping a customer, with a carry out desk, which needed both of us, to lift. Then would get after us, when ever we wouldn't come to help with a carry out.

[Cyanocobalamin]

The rule is that if you wouldn't say it over the PA, don't say it over the radio....no swearing, non-business talk, or unprofessional behavior... P my SM now butts in over who gets to go to breaks and lunch. Normally the non-management employees negotiate amongst themselves, particularly ones that come in at the same time.

I think the radios are here to stay. We each got issued earpieces and it's our responsibility to take care of them, yet we aren't allowed to keep them in our lockers, they just have a label with our name. R (AM) got a bit miffed at me for losing the ziplock bag we were also issued. It's possible that I accidently threw it away, but don't ziplock bags come like 50 or 100 to a box? Surely a replacement baggie can be found....

[ladodger34]

The rule is that if you wouldn't say it over the PA, don't say it over the radio....no swearing, non-business talk, or unprofessional behavior...

That's a very good policy. When I worked for the city, it was even more strict. All the city departments (except police and fire) were on the same frequency. At any time, someone with a bit of weight to throw around could hear what was happening on the radio.

In addition to professional "talk", we were also advised to make sure our conversations were as short as possible.

[powerboy]

Oh one thing I forgot to mention, was when I was at OfficeMax, we had radios, and the earpeice. And ofcourse, the managers and supervisors, would plae games and say jokes on them. And ofcourse some people, would not listen to anyone.

[BlaqueKatt]

at my job we loathe the "walkies" mainly because they are used by WFM(work force management) to turn our tier one runners into the aux gestapo-meaning we take a high volume of calls and to prevent "call stacking"(taking several calls in a row without having time to note the account with the call details-bad because it only takes a couple minutes to forget what the customer called about) we go into "after call" a little bit before the call is actually over. WFM hates this-every few minutes you hear a walkie-"workforce to companyx"-and then a list of names or cube numbers and the amount of time in aftercall. ok I can see if its excessive but come on sometimes we need a drink, or a few seconds to compose ourselves before taking the next call. The runner is then supposed to come to everyone that was just listed and let us know we're in aftercall-yeah I'm typing notes, which I find it impossible to do when I'm either talking to a customer or listening to them-give me a minute before you come over and tell me to get back on the phones-I'm not totally done with the last call for pete's sake.

BlaqueKatt-who is starting to believe that picking up her waterbottle automaticly routes a call to her phone.........note to self-do not attempt to greet the customer until you have finished swallowing......<sigh>

[ArenaBoy]

Radios are convenient at my job because we're often far apart but we get our dose of entertainment every now and then. Most of our entertainment comes from one of our supervisors, an ex-Navy person. One night, we had a special promotion involving a car company and we would park customers who drove a certain car in a specific lot. He got so excited for it that he was skipping a bit. The entire night we were just hanging around people who had radios just to hear him go off about stuff.

[Knightmare]

We use them at my store. When I was a loader, we'd crack jokes on them, make up stupid stuff, you know, juvenile stuff. It was because there were only 2 loaders and we were stressed out. We HAD to do stupid stuff like that to take the edge off.

I'm surprised they still use them. We have about 12 of them, and none of them ever worked properly or held a charge for very long. I remember lots of tape holding them together.

And props to IPF for his avatar. I love Turd Ferguson!

[Rahmota]

When I worked security was the only time I had to deal with radios. And since we had to stay professional as on some of the jobs we could talk to the police and sheriff getting funny on the radio was a major no no.

That being said some interesting stuff did happen involving the radios.

Once I was working a high school football game and a kid tried to rip the radio off my belt. I was walking the halls of the building doing a restroom check when this kid comes up from the other direction grabs the radio and takes off. Well this was a motorola brick hanging off my nylon utility belt on the left side right by the PR by a double loop of nylon and its own plastic clip (These thigns where not cheap and I was not going to have one come out of my paycheck if anythign happened) with the shoulder mike cord runningup the small of my back to the right shoulder.

I felt the yank as the radio does not leave the belt and the kid is knocked a bit off balance by the radio not coming with him like he was expecting coupled with my continuing to walk forward. So I wound up spinning around grabbing him by the arm and asking him what was going on and he goes "I just wanted to look at it."

Just wanted to look at a motorola radio hanging off the guy in a uniform's belt? I managed to not loose my cool with him and just told him dont ever do that again or next time he was going to be looking at a lot more police equipment than he wanted to ever see and let him go.

Another time one of the other officers at the airport started to make his normal check in and belched/coughed/sneezed right in the middle of it. (I'm still not exactly sure what the sound was but it was not what was supposed to come out.) It took him a few to get back and check in all secure.

[ForestDragon]

I occasionally used a walkie-talkie at work and can say I hated the gawddamned things. Mostly because I never got a moment to myself - I do want to be able to have lunch once in awhile; can't moving that table wait for half an hour? Nooooo - teacher wants it out nownownownowNOW! Bite me.

I also hated it because the antenna jabbed me in the ribs when I walked and it was one more damned thing to keep track of. Gord forbid you lose it. The most annoying thing was the only place I could hang it on my person was the waistband of my jeans; the stupid thing would inevitably come loose and fall in the toilet when I went to the restroom.

[thegiraffe]

Curses to HP for supplying fullsize toners in their machines

I LOVE that HP supplies a full-size toner in their machines!! I've had my laser for almost 4 years now, and I've only bought one toner cartridge for it. Being in school, I would have gone through probably 12-16 inkjet cartridges in tha time period. Sooooo much cheaper.

[Broomjockey]

I LOVE that HP supplies a full-size toner in their machines!! I've had my laser for almost 4 years now, and I've only bought one toner cartridge for it. Being in school, I would have gone through probably 12-16 inkjet cartridges in tha time period. Sooooo much cheaper.

Aargh. I hate how much junk I have to print for school. Especially the teachers who want printouts of the things I used for research.

But on topic. At the Safewalk volunteer thing I do after class, we get professional radios. I mean the big things that broadcast for 15 blocks, and use the same frequencies as emergency services. So if we goof around on there, we can get in big trouble. $1000 fine for swearing is about the least of it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Good thing: Having your own printer.

Bad thing: Everybody in your building knowing you have your own printer.

My last year at college, my room basically turned into a Kinko's, because people knew I had a printer and didn't feel like hoofing it over to the computer labs.