Bad timing.

I feel kind of bad. See, through my own poor management of my time yesterday, I wasn't able to zone all of Pets like I'm supposed to each night. There comes a time at night when the night stockers begin filtering onto the floor, pallets get dropped in aisles, and the major daily stocking operations occur. It is at these points that we of second shift can no longer work in our aisles, even if we still need to. Last night, this time came before I was able to get going on the dog food aisle itself. I had already done the cat food aisle, and taken care of the fish. So when I clocked in today, my department manager wanted to talk to me before he left. See, early this morning, the aisle was a mess. The store manager saw it, and kind of blew up, with my department manager at the receiving end, despite his not really being responsible for it. The worse part of this is that he wasn't even really mad at me about the whole thing. He talked to me very calmly, and I don't even know what word to use to describe how he taked besides calmly. It was clear of course that it bothered him that all this went down, but he wasn't trying to take it out on me or anything. And that's the part that really makes me feel bad. He had to take the blame for my screw up, and suffer the angry wrath of the store manager, including changing out a whole endcap full of little tiny canned things, and he didn't even try to lay any of the suffering on me. He just told me that I needed to be doing something different where I could make sure that I had time to get everything done. He also told me to scrub the fish tanks some, but that didn't happen since I couldn't find the sponge. At least I went and vacuumed them out before I left. I'll have to try and get him to show me where the sponge is tomorrow. I really don't mind that much to be cleaning the fish tanks out at the end of shift, since it sort of pads my hours a little. I can easily and legitimately tack 30-40 minutes onto any shift that they send everyone home early. Like tonight, the manager called it at 10:25, but I didn't actually clock out until around 10:50, since I was doing the fish tanks.

Anyway, I really do feel bad for what my poor department manager had to go through because of me. This is saying something, too, since my previous department manager I'd probably be pretty entertained for him to be taking the blame, but then I'd also have gotten some of that relayed onto me, so I guess everything ends up balanced. Still, it's gonna have to be better tomorrow, since I did get finished tonight, and even ran another load of cedar chips out to the floor without being told, just because I knew it was there and it's cold out and people need it. And more than half of it was gone before I clocked out tonight. On the subject, I got the biggest static electric shock I've ever had tonight as I was wheeling the cart load of cedar bedding out from the back. I swear, it arced a full inch from the metal door handle to my finger. I just wish I would have been looking directly at the spot, since I'm positive the discharge would have been visible.