Hitting The Wal

Could have predicted that one

2007-04-22T21:43:00.000-07:00

So, a few days ago two different associates died the same day, both from cancer. From what I gather, both funerals took place this afternoon. Apparently, many of our cashiers decided to call out today in order to attend. Naturally with no notice, no replacements could be scheduled, and the entire night saw a severe cashier shortage. I had three different managers all separately ask me if I knew how to run a register, which I thankfully do not. Of course, one manager basically threatened to throw me on a register trained or not. Good thing that was only about ten minutes before I could clock out for dinner, so she never got the chance to follow through on that. It was actually unusually busy for a Sunday night, also. Generally while the weekends are never "good", Sunday can typically be relied on to be a little bit of a breather compared to Friday night and Saturday. But people really just kept pouring through. Even so, we got out at about quarter past ten, which is fairly early. But that's also partly because the manager who called it didn;t seem to realize that the department most of us had ended up in to help finish zoning was not actually done. Good job. Lousy little smart-ass, anyway.

Oh, and dude who works in Pets became far too amused by someone calling to ask if we carried horse products. Specifically looking for horse enemas. Thus starting a running joke for the whole rest of the night. On the other hand, I did find that to be pretty damn funny, especially this exchange:

Him: "A horse enema. Can you even imagine what would come out?"
Me: "...shit?"
Him: *cold stare*

But yeah, now two days off, and do I ever need it...

Well, it's been a while.

2007-04-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

Almost five months since my last post. Situations have changed a little bit, too. In February our store got a "Royal Visit" from the regional and district managers. The inspection tour, meant to find anything not being conducted to the highest of Company specs, was passed with flying colors, thus securing our Store Manager's job for at least several more months until the next such visit might occur. Not long after, the twice-yearly event of the assistant managers switching positions occured, meaning we got a different assistant manager over Pets. A few weeks after that, we got rid of our fish tanks, and while I was certainly not sad to see them go, I was not especially happy about having to perform the task of draining the damn things. After that, things pretty well went without much incident. The new Assistant over Pets and other areas had a much different style of management than the previous. And while I like this manager, I don't like the way she manages. I can stand and talk to her quite easily, she's a very nice person and easy to get along with. I just don't like the way she runs the show.

On the other hand, this turned out not to be a problem for long, as a long-held goal of mine was finally reached. Through other personnel shuffling, an opening was about to become available in Toys, a fact I knew was coming for weeks ahead of time. So obviously I was expressing my interest to every relevant manager at every level, with sole exception of the Store Manager himself. I try not to bother him, else he might eat my soul or something. But in the end, the squeaky wheel approach paid off, and I got my wish. I'm now one of the second shift Toys associates. I think it helped that the assistant manager over toys now is the same one who used to be over Pets. She knows my work. Plus I impressed her further by taking it upon myself to cover Toys one night when for some reason or another nobody was scheduled there, after finishing up my own department way early. Nobody told me to go over there and do that, I just did it because I knew it had to be done and I was arguably the best-qualified to do it. And I did it right. This would be the first of two such occasions, the other I was actually told to go over there and work because nobody was there, but the result was the same. Plus I'd had a history anyway of going and helping to finish up fairly often. The good job I did earned me the praises of the one I eventually ended up taking the place of, another factor I think helped push me over the top when the time came for the decision. I had both second shift Toys people championing me as a replacement.

But after actually getting over there, I realized there was one significant problem. I came to work at 4:00. And with a typical load of projects to finish before zoning, I'm right up to the deadline of 6:00 before I can start zoning most of the time, and that's just not enough time. Management gets antsy if Toys isn't pretty damn close to finished before 9:00, and on an average night it's just not possible for one person to get most or all of the department finished in less than three hours. My personal best is about four, and that's under totally ideal conditions. Second shift in Toys, me or anybody else, really needs to get in at 2:00 in order to finish projects early enough to get the time needed for zoning. The only upside is that management understands this, and apparently doesn;t think I'm just lazing around over there all night until they have to send me help. I've talked about this subject directly with the assistant manager over me, and she seems to understand that I'm giving my all over there every night but that it's just a really, really formidable task for even the best workers. Even my predecessor, who is very well regarded as a hard worker probably wouldn't be able to pull it off under the conditions I'm often faced with. Such realizations have made me feel better about the whole thing. That and reassurance that a third person will be added to the department, at which point we can start playing with scheduling to get the best effect out of everybody. My ideal result would be a four day week for each of us, where we all do 2-11 closing shifts, and equivalent opening shifts on the weekend as applicable (likely 8-5). It'd make everything go so much smoother.

And then, the fish story

2006-11-28T22:42:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, Billy mentioned something about leaving a note for our department manager in the fish book. See, we have a notebook back at the fish tanks in which we record the dead fish removed from the tank each day, as well as any other important information that needs to be brought to the attention of the next shift. In theory we should all check with the book as soon as we come on shift in case there's any special instructions or anything. Anyway, since I didn't see Billy for even five minutes Sunday despite that our shifts overlapped by an hour, I ended up going and checking the book, only to find some of the tanks weren't getting any pressure. No pressure = no fresh water entering the tank. That means no cleaning and no aeration, essentially reducing the affected tanks to little more than over-glorified fish bowls. Billy wrote a note in the book and didn't say a word to anybody, even me. Now, when he wrote the note, apparently all nine tanks in the first block were getting no pressure. That changed after a while, since it ended up just being the three tanks on top that remained with no pressure. The situation had become less severe, but still needed attention. So I grabbed the Assitant Manager over Pets and explained the situation. Unfortunately all she would do was talk to the department manager the next morning. Meanwhile everytime I had to dip fish out of those tanks, the water level would drop and not recover, which would have been trouble if many people wanted a fish from there. Plus, I couldn't clean those tanks right because of the irregular water pressure. I couldn't use the siphon since no water would be returned and all the fish would have ended up dying even quicker.

So, I come back to work the next day at 4. Randy the department manager had not been in all day, so nothing had still been done. Somehow all my fish were still alive, but I knew they were on borrowed time, as cloudy as the water was looking. I grabbed another manager and explained what was going on. Now see, he actually did something. He started playing with what plumbing we could reach from the front and eventually produced a very clogged intake cover piece thingy. A big PVC pipe with slots cut into it that apparently has suction enough to draw sediment from the resivoir and get stopped up. Once I cleaned that piece and we got it reattached, pressure returned to normal or thereabout. To accelerate the filtering process and get more water cleaned quicker I went and siphoned the formerly stagnant tanks. It helped since the water became visibly clearer very quickly. All was pretty much well for the most part, though I still warned off anybody wanting fish from there, since it couldn;t have been healthy for those fish to be sitting in that water for probably a good 24 hours, condition worsening the whole time.

Then, later that night, I notice an odd, brownish puddle near the fish tanks. Looked like cola that had been spilled. So I grab a bunch of paper towels and wipe it up. No big deal, people spill crap all over the store all the time. Thing is, when I came back an hour or so later, the puddle had reappeared. It was only then that it occured to me that this was not a simple spill. In fact, the goldfish tanks were slowly leaking water all over the floor. The floor underneath the rug was completely wet and soaking into the carpet, and the mess was expanding out to the side as well. Once again, management was called to this, and could really do nothing except promise to keep maintenance after it so there wouldn't be standing water everywhere. Randy was finally working today, and when I went in I found out that a similar thing was going on with the goldfish tanks as was messing up the A block before. A part of the plumbing was clogged (with snails!) and the water was backing up and out of the system. This resulted in me getting a new instruction: Get rid of any snails I find in the tanks. I also got instructed to scrub out the fish tanks better, which is fair enough. I hadn't cleaned them especially well the two previous nights given that there were mishaps occuring all over the place with them. To correct the damage, I spent a good half of my shift scraping, scrubbing, and siphoning the tanks, and wiping down the outside surfaces. In short, the tanks are as clean as I can possibly make them. It helped too that I had a quick night in the dog and cat food aisles, which I got finished earlier than normal. It allowed me the extra time I needed at the fish tanks besides the half hour or so I spent when I clocked in doing some early corner scraping. In fact, it was a good night in general. They let us go home at 10:30, since it was a slow night everybody pretty much got finished early and quickly like I did, and I even had time to go and help zone Toys when I finished with my fish. I like doing Toys every now and then, especially since I wanted to work there to begin with. Now with two days off, I'll be very interested to see what those tanks look like when I go back on Friday.

I'm either lying, or I'm stupid.

2006-11-28T21:36:00.000-08:00

I'm sure everybody's played this game from one side or the other at some point. Customer comes up to you and asks for a somewhat specific thing. This thing is not carried in your store, and you know this for a fact. You may even be aware that this never existed in all the time you've been there. You relate this experience to the customer. Now, the reasonable response to expect would be something like "Okay, thank you." or maybe even "Do you know who does have it?" But no, more often than not, customer responds by saying "No, I get this here all the time." At this point both parties are thinking the same thing: You're either lying, or you're stupid. Customer is either lying to me to perhaps cover up that they're misremembering something, or is possibly stupid in thinking that there is a magic phrase, a secret code word even that will make me suddenly produce additional items from a secret location that only the select few in-the-know can purchase from. This is of course not the case. And with exception of items that are truly out of stock, what's on the shelf is all we currently sell. Meanwhile, customer thinks the same of me. I'm either lying because I'm maybe lazy and don't want to help (probably goes along with the thought that we have all kinds of stuff in back that we won't bring out for anyone), or I'm stupid and don't know what's in the aisle I'm working.

This tends to come up pretty frequently to some extent, especially when someone does ask if we have more of something in back. If we do have stuff, and I can get to it, I'll usually happily go and grab one for somebody, especially if they're reasonably polite about it. I don't have a problem with that, and it is my job and all. On the other hand, most of the hours I work they're unloading trucks at the same time, and it's not actually possible to get stuff out from the Pets bin in back. I explain this fact to people, though I know they don't always believe me. Still, the incident that really set me off here was a couple nights ago when a woman simply refused to believe me when I told her we did not carry a certain variety of Ol' Roy dog food in the 22 ounce cans. What she wanted was what's called Chopped Meaty Combo - a revolting combination of beef, chicken and liver products (I'm almost curious as to what this liver component comes from, since if it's a cow liver wouldn;t that also fall under the extremely vague definition of "beef" that dog food is constrained to?) that we only sell in boxed six-packs. We don't have it in single units in either 13 or 22 ounces, and we have not for as long as I've worked at this Wal-Mart. But no, the guy working in Pets doesn't really know anything about the goods he has to work every day, and the woman maintains that she buys that flavor in that size at that store "all the time", and since I'm really not allowed to say to anybody that they're out and out wrong or whatever, I just have to stop talking by then since I'm not going to be able to convince this woman of anything within the bounds of conduct I have to follow. Eventually she settles on a few cans of just beef and just chicken, and a third kind that I don't remember. And it probably wouldn't have bugged me except that she had such a bad attitude about something she was entirely mistaken over. And yet, I can remember more than one instance where I've done the same thing. Oh, true, I may not have treated the poor retail slave so badly over it, but I can't say I didn't think the person was either lying or an idiot, and I start to feel bad about it. But then, that's why the saying is true: Everyone needs to work retail at least once in their life. Until you do, you just have no clue what these poor people have to go through every single day of their working lives.

A week's review

2006-11-08T10:35:00.000-08:00

For various reasons besides being rather beat after work every night, I've fallen a touch behind in the chronicle of my ~~enslavement~~ employment. So, let's go with some of the highlights I can recall right now.

::Too Many Sweaters::
Of course we all know there are those people out there who have the perhaps uncontrollable desire to make their dogs into four-legged fashion statements. I'm not saying anything bad about people who do that, since I even wanted to dress my dad's Pug in flannel shirt and overalls. But that's not the point. Wal-Mart carries a small variety of seasonally themed dog apparel. T-shirt kind of things for warmer weather, sweaters as it gets cooler, even jackets and raincoats. For Christmas, we're even now carrying printed dog-sized bandanas, collar scrunchies, and holiday themed collars separate from our Collar Wall. So one night last week, there was a big pile of sweaters and such. And I literally mean a pile - they were just thrown on top of the shelf of stuffed dog toy PDQ's directly below the clothing racks. It didn't take me long of sortingand trying to rehang these things to realize there simply was not enough peg space to have all these things hanging. So I went after the only reasonable solution. I started a small fire, and... wait, no. No, I went to the fixture room in back and got a new peg with intent to print an extra label and make myself some extra space. See, size regardless, most all of the dog clothing is the same price, so it's a small matter to set up another peg to fill with whatever assortment I decide should hang there.

The only stumbling point in my plan was that the D-8 printer had gone missing for a couple days, so I didn't actually have my own printer to use to make the new label. Uh, oops? So thus the quest began to find a new printer. A small side-story to that follows, but is not relevant to this particular tale. In the end, I went and borrowed the printer from the fitting room, and got a roll of adhesive labels from the stash in Housewares. So it was a bit of a task, but I finally got to set a new space for an item, and fill it with stuff. It was pretty easy, since I'd decided to only put the smallest sizes on the new peg, so I was able to just move a couple things over slightly to make the extra room. And once I got eerything sorted and hung back up, and then straightened the stuffed toys under them, that space was looking mighty good. Unfortunately people being the way they are, I had to go and fix it all over again three or four times. Made me wish my cell phone had a camera so I'd have been able to keep some proof of the work I'd done that night. Oh well, what can you do? Making it worse, I'm pretty sure nobody else noticed the change had been made, so I won't even get any credit for it from a manager or anything.

::"This is the way to help a customer!"::
So, when I couldn't find my own printer, I went to Housewares because I used to know where that printer was hidden. It wasn't there anymore, and apparently the Telxon had been missing as well. But normally they were hidden behind some of the small appliances, so that's where I went looking. It was a bad idea. See, associate in Housewares was on her dinner break at the time. And it just so happened that when I got there, some older woman was trying to replace her coffee maker. Now, of course we have all kinds of things on display there, but that doesn't necessarily mean we actually have said item in stock. Lady was looking for an $18 programmable coffee maker. She didn't see one in a box, so of course she yells for me to come and help her. I look, and of course I don't see one either. Somehow she seems unsatisfied that I could not magicaly make one become visible. Then the obvious question follows: "Do you have any in the back?" I explain that, no, we don't keep very much stock in the back, and it's mostly high sell-through items like dog food. Not coffee makers. I do word it more politely than that, but it was the basic gist of what I said. This didn't thrill her either. Then she instructs me to help her find another comparable machine. She's very much appaled when I point out a same-size, programable machine that costs about $35. Apparently despite the fact that she says clearly that she must have her coffee in the morning (and by the way she's starting to act I concluded that she was without her machine that morning as well), it's not in fact worth $35 to satisfy that particular addiction. So I keep looking, and there's a similar but I guess less advanced model in a box for around $25. She's still not pleased with that, but I guess her resolve is beginning to break down. Now, it looks very similar to a machine on display at $30, and she wants to know what the difference is between the two that they seem so similar but there's a $5 difference. At this point I must note that there is no boxed example of the $30 machine, nor does the product tag on the shelf carry any actual specific information beyond the price. Further, I am not a coffee drinker (and if I were, I'd care enough about it, I think, to do most of the process manually and not rely on a machine), nor am I conversant in most small appliances - I don't work in that department afterall. I explain as politely as I can to the lady that I do not know what difference there is, the tag doesn't give any information, and there's not a boxed one-of-those for me to compare directly. She's unsatisfied. She begins demanding that I read the box and tell her what the difference is. I attempt to explain again that I do not know anything about the display machine, and that reading the box we do have isn't going to give any comparative information. She grabs my arm, and at this stage I am seriously about a half second from going off on her. Still holding my arm as though I were about to run away, she again demands that I read the box and tell her the difference between the machines, telling me that she can't see the print on the box, and had some medical reason for being unable to either bend over or pick up the box to examine for herself. I'm really losing my patience at this stage, but am saved at the last moment when I catch sight of Mary in the aisle. I call her over, since she actually works there and Knows Stuff. She went on to explain that the machine on display was a previous version of what was in the box, and it was replaced because the labels fell off the touchpad style buttons. See, this is the kind of thing you know when you work in a department. Lady asks why the new machine is cheaper than the older type, which the true answer would be because Wal-Mart made Black and Decker lower their price on it. But lady asked for the box to be opened (for the first time, mind you), and of course Mary cut the tape on the box. Lady seemingly gave up and resigned herself to the $25 coffee maker, and said, "Okay, put it back together and I'll buy it." Thus began at least a five minute ordeal of trying to figure out how to get one certain piece of cardboard wrapped back around the coffee pot. A problem I fixed within seconds of contributing, but that's not really important. I felt better after the woman left and Mary told me she was about ready to scream at her too. But, the part that really bothered me was that she grabbed me like that. You just don't go and latch on to some person you don't even know like that - and I'm not one of those people who makes a big deal about personal space, either. If Mary hadn't ended up distracting her, I'd probably have ended up telling her in no uncertain way to release my arm. Also, the entire time this was going on, I was carrying around that merchandise peg, and I'll tell you what, it makes a really ineffective stress device. But lady sure came close to driving me to bend metal.

Those are the events that really stand out, but here's some highlights:

Taught the new girl in Domestics how to dip fish, which will come in handy very soon.
Got to throw a Claimsed dog house into the trash compactor, but sadly couldn't wait around to watch the destruction. What a waste.
One night Billy and I were both working 4-11, and the aisles were all finished before 6. Yeah, we were bored.
During zoning, a manager assigned me a helper while I was working in someone else's department. That was pretty cool.
And finally, our store has reportedly finished all their seasonal hiring, despite still having major shortcomings in a number of already high-load areas.

Finally, for Thursday and Friday of this week, I'll be alone in Pets, nobody will be working Housewares or Stationary, and Ricky over in Paper Goods has these two days off. Now see, under normal circumstances, when it's time for me to take a break, go to dinner, I tell one of the people in those areas so they can cover any calls, get fish, whatever. But now the only people that will be around are whoever will be working Domestics, and one or both of them go to relieve whoever's working the fabric table between 7 and 9 every night. The problem is greater than it may seem. Depending on the mood of the assistant manager, I may be told to cover Stationary and/or Housewares, besides which Pets has got to be worked on and the fish tanks tended to. In short, it's impossible for me to properly work two or more departments by myself, especially since I'll have to run returns for my usual three departments and probably the other two. If it does happen that I have to cover, I've already made a good plan for how to handle it, but it'll hinge on a manager allowing me to borrow the new girl out of Domestics. I can probably make everything work if I have a second set of hands. But then, I haven't been told yet that I'll have to cover either department, and I know how I'll try to handle the situation if it comes up, so I'm not gonna worry about it right now. Oughta make for an interesting entry or two, though...

Just when you thought it was safe to work at Wal-Mart...

2006-11-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

New Wal-Mart associates are now at a higher risk of stolen identities due to the theft of a computer from a subcontracted firm in Denver.

Yesterday I and many or all Wal-Mart employees hired since February 1st, 2006 received by mail a notice that Wal-Mart learned Affiliated Computer Services had one of their computers stolen from a Denver facility. This computer is believed to contain names, addresses, and SSNs of Wal-Mart associates hired within the past eight months. This security breach is also indicated to affect other companies, but none were named. A transcript follows.

Dear [specifically named associate]:

Under a federal law created to enforce child support obligations, all employers - including Wal-Mart - are required to provide information to the government on all newly hired associates. For the last nine years, Wal-Mart has fulfilled this duty by providing new hire information to the New Hires Directory of Colorado, which compiles this information for all 50 states, using the services of their subcontractor names Affiliated Computer Services (ACS).

We learned last week that ACS experienced a security breach involving a computer stolen from its Denver office. We believe it is very important to report this information to you. According to ACS, this computer may have contained the names, addresses, and Social Security Numbers of employees of many companies - including some Wal-Mart associates hired in the last eight months, whether or not they live in Colorado.

At this time, ACS has told us there is no indication that anyone's identity has been compromised or that the computer was stolen for that purpose. Law enforcement agencies are investigating this matter. If you were hired after Feb. 1, 2006, ACS has informed us that it may notify you by mail about the incident and include precautions to follow if you believe that your identity has been compromised, and a toll-free number for any further questions. In the meantime, we have attached information about how you may check your credit reports for free. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission (www.ftc.gov) provides helpful information regarding identity and credit protection.

If you have questions after receiving this letter and ACS notification, feel free to contact ACS at its toll-free number or speak with your supervisor, manager, or HR director.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

The People Division.

An interesting thing to note is that this apparently came by way of Sam's Club headquarters, and not Wal-Mart's Home Office itself. Though not clearly stated in the letter, this does apparently affect Sam's employees too, since someone I know who worked at Sam's Club in the indicated timeframe got one of these letters yesterday as well.

Night of the Dead

2006-11-01T12:19:00.000-08:00

No, I don't mean the costumes. Only saw a few really good ones. And by "really good" I more mean "cute girls in skimpy outfits", though there were some legitimately good costumes beyond those considerations. One customer had a really good Jack Sparrow costume. Anyway, I expected one of two things to happen last night. First is that it would be super-busy as everyone blew through on their way to and from parties or whatever. Second is that it would be really slow since most everybody would have better things to do than hang around Wal-Mart all night. And as it happens, that's exactly what I got. Plus, Billy was working last night too, so Pets was finished I wanna say before 7:30, despite neither of us clocking in before 4:00. And I still did the majority of the work. The only thing I know Billy did was to repeatedly tell me how the fish tanks weren't getting cleaned well enough, and effectively calling me a liar when I would tell him each time that I've been cleaning them as I'd been directed to do already. It begins to occur to me that he probably thinks the same thing about me as I tend to about him. Namely that he doesn't do anything except the minimum it takes to get by, goofs off, etc. This isn't helped by the fact that any shift we're both working, none of the kinda stuff comes up like it does when I'm working alone. Nearly every night I work by myself, any number of things will come up that take me away from my main job and prevent me from being able to finish early. Billy has commented before that I zone really fast, and when nothing is taking me away from the job, that's true. But he doesn't seem to get that most of the time I can't sit and focus myself on that non-stop until it's finished. I only wish it was possible for me to make all my work in Pets linear that way. Work on zoning the aisle until that's finished, then work on getting fish for people until it's time to clean and close down the tanks, then maybe go help zone somewhere else until it's time to go home. My work becomes weaker, and I think this true of many people, when I have to change to a different task in the middle of one I'm already doing. This is to say nothing of whatever little side jobs my managers decide need doing and that I'm the right person for. But anyway, Billy totally pissed me off last night and I was fuming almost non-stop until we got to go home. The fuming mostly manifested itself as a depressed appearance, though, which seemed to concern any of my friends that I let notice. And one of them in particular unknowingly ends up contributing to the depressedness whenever it's already going on. So, I really wasn't having a fun time last night, and actually for a minute seriously thought about walking out at lunch and not coming back. I felt that lousy last night.

So, it was so slow last night that none of the departments were getting hit very hard, which means zoning went really fast everywhere. In fact, I got sent to work Stationary around 7:00, but it hadn't looked like anybody had touched it at all, so I mostly just walked around the department looking like I was straightening stuff up until it was time to go to lunch. And after I got back, almost everyone was finished. The managers had to keep coming up with busy work for us to do, since nobody can leave before almost 10, and it wasn't even 9:15 yet. I ended up having a group slowly form around me, all wandering around trying to find something to do in order to look busy. It was really boring. You know we're bored when we ask any manager we can find what there is still to do. I half suspect that toward the end the managers were starting to untidy stuff just so they could tell us a minute later to go and fix it. You could see really clearly on their faces that they were struggling to come up with anything to keep us busy. I think they were having trouble keeping busy too. Between how bored I was, everything being finished, and how crappy I felt all night, I was ready to get out when they finally made the call for second shift to start filtering out a little before 10:00. In general I'd have been annoyed at the loss of an hour's pay, but seeing as I'm scheduled for over 38 hours this week, it wouldn't have been a big deal anyway. At this point, I'm looking forward to a normal-traffic night. I just hope Billy's not on as well. If I have to put up with his attitude much more, somebody is gonna hear a little story about Billy. I'm seriously getting sick of putting up with him, and I'm certainly not going to let it go on unknown in perpetuity. Yeah, I know; If I already knew the way he was, why did I ask to stay in the department with him? Fortunately we're usually not scheduled on together but maybe once a week plus a few overlapping hours. Besides, the workload is still preferable in Pets.

Shift shifts.

2006-10-29T20:37:00.000-08:00

Y'know, if you're going to call in sick, there's probably better times to do it than immediately after your scheduled two days off. But on Friday that's exactly what I did, due to some pressing medical issues, the kind of stuff you just can't ignore in favor of going to work unless you want to, like, lose a kidney or die or something. Anyway...

Following that up, I was scheduled to work first shift this weekend. First time I've had to do that, as previously the earliest I've had to work was noon, and that hasn't been for several weeks. It was challenging just to drag myself out of bed that early, especially after having my sleep screwed up by medication, and getting ready and out the door in time to make it to the store was a mad rush I do not much enjoy. Making it worse was that since I work second shift always, I don't hardly know anybody on first shift. The earliest any person I know comes in is 11, which is right in time for my first 15 minute break. Of course, that's Ricky over in Paper Goods, who is getting more and more bitter by the day because he's being made to take up some of the slack in Chemicals since my transfer. Today he even made an offhand remark about talking to the Assistant Manager over that area that I'd "have to be put back." While I wouldn't put it past him to say something, I don't think the managers would act on it. Plus, when he said that, I became resolved that I'd probably put in my notice if they tried to put me back on Chemicals. I don't intend that as a threat; if they tell me they're putting me back, I'm gonna tell them that I can't stand working Chemicals, and if it's the only way I can keep my job, it's only gonna be for two weeks. But we're getting off track.

First shift sure is different. Especially on the weekends. Our store is infamous for its shorthandedness on the weekends, and this was no exception. There's nobody at all in Hardware before 2pm this weekend, which means nobody to mix paint, which seems to be the main customer interaction task in that department. Last week, one of the women from Toys taught me how to use the paint mixer, so that came in handy as I helped to cover the paint when I could. Mostly just if I was in the area already and somebody turned up. I ran a gallon for one guy before I'd been clocked in an hour. Then later on I did another two, after a few people from local departments were rounded up to move Hardware's freight that didn't get worked the night before. I'm not sure what exactly happened after that, but the paint machine was said to have broken down and wouldn't dispense color anymore. But that wasn't too big of a deal since by then I didn't have to cover anymore. Otherwise all I was doing was hauling dog food and cat food out from the back to replenish the shelves for my whole shift, in between calls to the fish tanks. And naturally the little measuring cup I use to put aquarium water in the bags went missing at some point in the three days I wasn't present. That ended up kind of fun, as one of the Assistant Managers told me to go to get one from Housewares and take it to Claims for them to mark off inventory. Unfortunately, being the weekend there was nobody in the Claims office, so I had to get the manager to go and mark it off. Better than trying to use the horribly cracked and leaky containers that were still there, though. The top off for Saturday, though, was a manager grabbing me twenty minutes before I was to clock out and telling me to start working chemical pallets that were in grocery. Grocery receiving was a horrible mess, couldn't hardly even move a cart through to load stuff on. Once I finally did get a cart back to the chemicals pallet, I ended up blocked in for a good five minutes or so. The short version is that I ended up having just enough time to push the cart out to the aisle, look at it for a second, then push it back to GM receiving to get it out of the way and go clock out. It was so stupid it's hilarious.

Speaking of fish, we have no goldfish. Oh, sure, we have Fantails, Koi, and the like, but none of the 28 cent, basic, essentially disposable feeder goldfish. As it turned out, our fish vendor mixed up our order with another store, and in the meantime, we're stuck without our most popular fish product. Add to that about half the individual tanks are sick, and I'm not going to sell sick fish to people, so the selection I'll actually get for people was pretty restricted. If the situation continues much longer, I'm gonna have to go over my department manager about it - a move he won't like, but the condition in the tanks just isn't improving despite whatever is being done to treat them.

Sunday ended up being much the same. The paint mixer was still broken to some degree, so I didn't do any paint. My day largely consisted of hauling food out from back and doing fish. Fish were fairly slow, too, except for an inconvenient rush at the end of my shift which caused me to be five minutes late clocking out. Always at the worst times, I guess.

Okay, I take it back.

2006-10-25T11:07:00.000-07:00

Monday, I felt bad for my manager getting in trouble because I didn't get all my work done. I'm over that now. When I clocked in yesterday, I had plenty waiting for me. First, I was to construct a stackbase (essentially a plastic pallet that all "action alley" displays are supposed to stand on since Upper Management doesn't let us have real pallets on the floor during the day anymore) of cedar chip bedding, which we not only had an excess of, but would make a good run of considering last night was the clodest it's been so far since the end of summer. And actually it wasn't even one stackbase, it was two, side by side. Now, this in itself I don't consider a big deal, and it went well since one assistant manager help me get the stackbases from the pen out back, and set up the signing, and another assistant manager helped me by pulling the cedar bedding off the high shelf in the aisle. So, that was the first thing I was instructed to do before my department manager took off. The second thing was the put away the contents of a shopping cart full of stuff that I'd come to understand later had come out from underneath... somewhere. I suspect shelving, mainly. But some of this stuff was so old it wasn't in the computer system anymore, and some was still in packaging we haven't used in at least two years - not to mention how downright filthy a few items were. I also came to know that this cart had been presented much earlier in the day to my manager, and he'd effectively had all day to dispose of this stuff before I showed up. Next, there's the returns. The returns which obviously hadn't been worked all day, since there was a shopping cart packed full near to the point of overflow. I know they hadn't been worked at all because that simply doesn't happen. Pets, Chemicals and Paper doesn't get that kind of return volume during the day, and certainly not during the day on a Tuesday. It took me almost two hours to get all the returns and the cart left for me finished, that after spending forty five minutes setting up those stackbases.

It should be clear that given this, I barely had time to just do a bare-minimum zoning. I couldn't pull anything from the risers, I couldn't stock anything from the back, all I could do was pull stuff forward and dispose of empty boxes. And doing that, I did get done, and finished the fish before the call to go home. But I could have done a much better job if my department manager hadn't dumped a good bit of what should have been his work onto me.

Bad timing.

2006-10-23T22:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Drive-Thru Goldfish

2006-10-22T21:46:00.000-07:00

So, at one point tonight, I get paged by an assistant manager. When I call him back, he tells me that someone will be over by the fish tanks in five minutes, and I'm asked to have a bag with ten goldfish ready to go when he shows up. Perplexing, eh? So, I make a slight dash for the fish tanks, since most of the time I work on the opposite side of the store (beats me why they didn't lay out the stores to have all the pet stuff together), and begin dipping the fish out. Now, the goldfish tanks are a little bit crowded right now, so it's not hard to get ten of them in just a couple passes with the medium net. Thinking back on it now, though, it might have been faster if I got the biggest net. So anyway, I tie off the bag and write the UPC number on it and hang around waiting for dude to come get his fish. And amazingly, just a couple minutes later, a guy comes tearing out from Lawn and Garden, and about fifteen feet away from me starts saying, "Those are for me!", though he was basically polite. I asked the obvious, and indeed these were to be feeders. And then he asked for a bowl to keep them in, so naturally I take him to our selection of goldfish bowls. Bizzarely, he needs something "flat", and naturally we don't actually have flat fish bowls. Luckily, two or three stainless steel dog dishes had been misplaced in the fish aisle, which he seemed well pleased with. I can't begin to imagine why the shape of the temporary housing was so important, but then I also don't grasp most of this situation.

I talked to that Assistant manager later, and he asked me if I got that guy his fish. He then went on to explain that the guy had called the store from ten minutes or so down the road, and essentially placed an order through the manager. It's not a bad idea, since if the guy is really in that much hurry, he succeeded in cutting off a good bit of time waiting for me to get set up and scoop all those fish. But even so, I've never had to prepare fish as though we were a take-out before. I can't decide whether it's good or terribly sad that this was the noteworthy part of my shift.

Two steps forward...

2006-10-22T10:52:00.000-07:00

One step back into Chemicals. Yesterday there was apparently a shortage of physical laborers, by which I mean truck unloaders. They paged me to GM receiving at least three times yesterday *before I clocked in* to help unload a truck. Then very shortly after I did clock in, one of the co-managers grabbed me back to Grocery receiving to start unloading pallets of chemicals into the aisle, since they needed the space and there's not exactly anybody else to be doing it. However, they did send me five truck unloaders to assist in my efforts, since they'd finished their first truck between the times I was paged and the time I was made to haul detergent. Of course, they were only there for about twenty minutes before the next truck came along and they had to go. So I was left just as before to do everything myself. Now, there's some things to keep in mind here. First, the reason I was allowed to switch to Pets was because it's a relatively important department that always needs somebody working it. I don't just mean the fish, either. Pets needs to be "zoned" every night. Zoning simply consists of making the aisles look pretty by removing empty boxes, and facing the shelves as much as possible, among a few other minor tasks. If I'm left to it, I can get that done in maybe two hours if I'm doing it myself, much quicker if I have a second set of hands. It wouldn;t even take that long solo except for all the cans of dog and cat food which get more or less turned on their heads through the day, and that's the most time-consuming part. Also all the chemical supplies, anything from shampoo to flea collars. Basically, all the little highly numerous, really little stuff takes a long time to zone properly. But the work that I would normally do in chunks over a whole shift had to go undone for a number of hours because I was emptying a pallet of chemicals all by myself. (there were actually two pallets, but since I didn't get the first finished until it was time for my dinner break, the second was just gonna sit anyway). So, I had decided once I came back from dinner that Pets would have to get done regardless of all else, so I started working on that. Part of which was also running the returns for three departments, which is more time consuming than you'd think sometimes. So, I run all the "local" returns, and have a box of aquarium salt to go over to the "fish aisle" on the other side of the store. Naturally when I get there someone turns up wanting fish (to say nothing of the ten minute diversionary trip to find the price of a toy for some little kid's grandmother when the aisle scanner won't work). Since I was there, I decided to go ahead and do a dead count. Any fish that die during the day have to be counted, logged, and then of course removed from the tank. It was a bit early, being probably not even 9:00 by then, but I figured it better to just be done with it. It's probably the most important part at night anyway, so...

Finished that, fed the fish, turned the lights off since that generally cuts down the number of fish calls, and took a couple minutes to talk to the cute hardware girl. Knowing the night stockers would be along at any moment, I started a mad dash of zoning, and was actually doing quite well for a bit there. I got all of the cat food aisle finished, which is something since it takes the most time to zone of any of my areas. I tried to get over to dog food, but that was immediately apparent as a lost cause, since a pallet had already been dropped in the aisle, which is a sure sign of the night crew making their way out. So I did what little I could and just collected all the empty boxes. At that point zoning stuff would just mean my getting in the way of the night stockers, so it's better to let it go. Besides, by then I had another damn cart of returns brought to me. Saturday is amazing for the amount of returns. Earlier that night I was helping sort through all the returns at the service desk, and a man getting a money order or something saw everything and asked incredulously, "Is this all from one day?" Silly, unknowing man. I quickly informed him that this was just a few hours worth at most, a remark that left Money Order Man near-speechless. If that didn't do it, the service desk associate correcting me that this had all turned up in the hour or so since she'd gone to and come back from lunch or break or whatever certainly broke that poor guy's mind. And really, it is amazing how much crap comes through there on the weekends, both actual returned mercandise, or things left in people's aisles as people change their minds or whatever. And it was slow last night, since we've got the World Series going. As of 7:00, there were at least ten shopping carts, most full to the top with returns waiting to be picked up, as well as several plastic bins behind the counter with grocery and things from other departments that we didn't have carts set up for. It's nuts.

I suppose the point I was getting at before is that I really hope they get someone hired into chemicals before too long, because I can see that I'm gonna get tapped in the meantime to move that stuff whenever they need space cleared in back. Though, if it happens again, I'm gonna have to say something to somebody. I can't keep getting pulled out of Pets like that, or stuff that *needs* to be done just isn't going to get done. Already yesterday there was conflict about my reassignment, since Co-Manager wanted me to move the chemicals, and Assistant Manager wanted me to go unload a truck. Fortunately, Co-Manager overrides, so I was able to get out of that, but it's totally obvious there's gonna be problems with getting my work done, since I don't think some of these people understand exactly what work has to be put into Pets to get it finished every night.

Changes all around...

2006-10-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

But hey, things are pretty much all positive right now. I had my 90 day evaluation on Wednesday. Somewhere between 45 and 50 days since my employment, I figure. Beats me, that's just the way they do it. Regardless, my effort so far has not been unnoticed, as I scored basically as high as I possibly could have, given my short period of employment. Jean, the assistant manager over my area conducted the evaluation, and made specific mention of how well I always dress, as well as that I'm very friendly interacting with the customers, and while I forget the exact wording of the comment, she was happy with the way I immediately carry out any tasks I'm assigned. Basically, my evaluation says I've been a good, hard worker, and deserve my 60 cent raise which will kick in the week of Thanksgiving, best I can tell.

This was actually the second good thing that happened that day. As I mentioned in my previous post, I was made to cover Pets following the departure of one of the people there in favor of a $9 an hour job at the new Office Depot. Anyway, I'm finding that on the larger part, I'm liking working in Pets pretty well. At this point I'm not hauling massive loads of freight the same way I had to in Chemicals, which is the big deal, and what I do haul is items that I take from in back to fill empty shelf space, so I only get the stuff I need to have, rather than taking everything and being stuck with disposing of it, essentially. This supposedly will change by February, but at this point I don't care since who knows if I'll even still be working there by then? So yeah, I'm getting on pretty well in Pets. My caring for the fish tanks has been limited, but that's more a matter of not having enough time, and when I can I still stay past the call for second shift to go home so I can at least scoop the dead fish (27 on Tuesday!). I'm doing what I can with the time I've got to work within. But that's not really the point. Since it is going so well thus far, I asked my assistant manager, who is, best I can determine, partly responsible for selecting new employees in her areas of control, if instead of seeking new help for Pets, if instead she could find a replacement for Chemicals. Looks like I got my wish. Wednesday she had me log on to the network and update my career preferences to reflect a desire to work in Pets. This step is required for anybody who wants to opt into a new job, though I can't technically opt into a new job until I've been there six months. Confused yet? Anyway, Jean told me I would be moved permanently, I just had to add Pets to my preferences so that when one of the Co-Managers logged on the next day, that would appear, and the change could be properly effected. Since it was my day off, I'm not sure if it actually occured yet, and Jean is on vacation until or through Sunday, I forget which. But I'm sure I'll find out whether it's happened or not.

When I asked to stay in Pets, I offered to help train a replacement in Chemicals. I may only have around six weeks of experience, but I think at this point there's not especially much difference between six weeks experience or six months, and someone would be well helped if I can condense the basics I had to learn in little pieces on the fly into a couple days of instruction. I mean, shoot, practically nothing was explained to me compared to what I ended up learning as I went along. One thing Wal-Mart doesn't seem big on is sitting new people down after all the orientation videos and explaining some of the other basic concepts one needs to understand to be an effective worker. Fortunately I'm adaptable and can kind of just roll with the changes as they come along, perhaps with a bit of complaining, but y'know. I really hope they take me up on the training offer, since it would be really interesting to me. Especially explaining how the department manager can't be counted on to do any meaningful work. Makes me wish they cared about Chemicals more, since Paul probably wouldn't get away with slacking the way he appears to otherwise. I'm still waiting for one of the managers to get on him for locking up the Telxon, but it doesn't even really matter anymore, since Randy leaves the Department 8 telxon where we can get to it. I just really don;t like Paul. And that's pretty bad that I want him to get yelled at regardless of if it benefits me at all. On the other hand, getting it done now might help my replacement down the road. I'll have to remember to tell him or her that they need to request to be enabled on the Telxon. When you actually know how to use the thing at all, it's really helpful for learning an aisle. I pity anyone who has to cover Stationary without a Telxon. I know this because I've had to do it. All those hundreds of pens, mechanical pencils, markers, push pins... it's a nightmare!

Perhaps the name isn't so accurate anymore

2006-10-14T10:03:00.000-07:00

So, we have a new Office Depot opening in town pretty soon. And naturally some of Wal-Mart's less than thrilled employees applied for and got jobs over there, at disgustingly higher pay rates. One of these people was employed in the Pet department, which is right next to me. His last day was the 13th, which means that as of now, there's only one guy working Pets. personally, I don't see the big deal, since there's only one guy working chemicals (me!), one guy working paper goods, one girl working the five aisles of Housewares, and one lady working in the similarly large Domestics. Regardless, I was informed that starting today I'm to be transferred over to Pets until such time as a permanent replacement is found. Along with this comes a change of my hours, which so far I'd been pretty happy with. I'd had a stable schedule, with decently arranged days off. But that's apparently going out the window now, and I have no idea what my schedule will be for the next two weeks until I actually show up today. I probably won't like it, no matter what it ends up being. Meanwhile, I'm no longer supposed to work in Chemicals at all. I guess any work that gets done there will be carried out by the ICS people, since the department manager never does anything with it. This situation will of course irritate my department manager quite a bit, since he gets pissy when they send me off to help close other departments at the end of the day and tell me not to do the same with Chemicals. That in itself is probably the only redeeming element of this entire situation.

On the other hand, I've been getting a bit sick of Chemicals. Maybe I'll have a better time in Pets, and at least the remaining guy actually does *work*, so I can be pretty reassured that something will have been done by the time I get there. Plus for at least part of the day I'll have an extra pair of hands around. Of course, I also can barely tolerate my coworker just working in the next aisle over. I'm afraid if we have to spend much time together in Pets, somebody's going to die. And then I'll really be stuck over there since after I kill Billy, there won't even be anybody to work first shift, and it'd be all me. That would be not-good. Assuming I can deal with Billy, and no murder occurs, I guess things could be worse. I'm pretty sure that at least for the time being I won't have to haul any frieght out from Grocery, since all the Pets stuff still comes in on the other side of the store, and by the time I expect to be there, I won't have access to any of it to begin with. That will be Billy's job, you see. And maybe Randy, who's the department manager for Pets. But I don't think he does stuff much either. Of course, now I'm sort of expecting that I'll end up liking Pets, but it won't happen until right before they can hire somebody over there and then I'll get sent back to Chemicals. Maybe if I do end up liking it, I can get them to keep me there and just hire somebody new into Chemicals. But then I'll have to change the name of this place... oh, what a pain this all is...

Freight Lines

2006-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

Perhaps some backstory is in order. A Wal-Mart Supercenter has two receiving areas for trucks to back into and the ICS people, unloaders, and whatever other associates get shang-hai'ed for the task of emptying it of its goods. One receiving area is in Grocery, while the other is on the opposite side of the building, called General Merchandise, or GM. GM Receiving is a relatively spacious area that actually does have storage room for excess products for various departments. (So if anybody at Wal-Mart ever tells you that there are no extras of anything in back, they're either at a crapily supplied store, or just lying to you. They may not have everything back there, but there is some) When a truck comes in to GM, all the stuff on it ("freight") is essentially loose. Boxes stacked on each other haphazardly with no external wrappings to secure it, and it must be taken off piece by piece, run down a belt, and then placed on the correct pallets or carts for eventual stocking in whatever department. Until it's time to stock, the pallets sit back in GM Receiving. On the Grocery side, however, things work a bit different. The space is much, much smaller, and about all the extra we have back there is drinks, paper towels, and minimally perishable food items. Freight from the trucks comes top us already stacked and shrinkwrapped on pallets, divided by department. The unloaders in Grocery who generally consist of the Grocery ICS team would need do little to clear a truck but roll twenty-something pallets off of it, except there's not room to place that many pallets back there without both killing any walking space, and blocking the other bay doors. So, they still have to break down pallets onto carts, and take the carts out to the floor and work them.

Now, my chemicals used to come in primarily at GM, so I didn't really have to worry about it much. The night stock guys would come along and put all of it away while I wasn't there, and all I really had to do if I got in early enough was go back to GM before they started staging for the trucks was grab a couple cart-loads of bleach. The rest of the time I pulled stuff down from the risers to fill my shelves. Now, the Home Office has decided things are being mixed up a little. Most all of chemicals now comes to Grocery. And since there's no space back there to leave stuff sitting all day, those pallets have to be worked right away. If I'm not there to do it, then someone on ICS has to do it. And if ICS does it, my risers invariably get screwed the hell up. Basically I only know two or possibly three people that will do the risers well. One of course is myself, but filling risers is very time consuming seeing as I have no help, and I already don't have time in my silly little six hour shift to deal with all of my aisle and a half. Another is a night stocker who regularly works the chemicals. When he does it, and things aren't already messed up, I may not have everything available, but what I have will be arranged logically, and in a way that it's easy for me to refill empty spaces. The other is potentially my department manager, who I presume did and still does some of this when I'm off. But I have no real evidence of this, and am not exactly sure he even works to begin with.

So, my average shift now consists largely of multiple trips to Grocery to load a cart off usually two or more pallets, and go try to stock my aisle. It generally doesn't work out so smoothly. Many of the things we get we get far, far too much of, and it can go neither on the shelf nor the riser where extra goods are supposed to be kept for quick access. These items are then considered "backstock" or "overstock". Backstock items have to go on another cart and get wheeled out of the way, and sometimes have to be hauled off to GM depending which manager is on at the time. If I have two pallets to work, odds are that while I actually empty two pallets, only maybe one pallet worth of stuff, at most, will actually go on the shelves. All the rest sits in boys clothing on however many carts I fill up. And let me tell you, laundry detergent stacked higher than eye level, a half-meter wide and over a meter and a half long weighs a damn lot to then maybe have to haul all the way back to GM. And of course when I have to work the frieght, my aisle doesn't get its risers hardly pulled, which just makes things worse since the night stockers then can't really go and fix it if it's been messed up. I really need some help in my aisle for this kind of stuff.

Shorthanded

2006-10-05T14:36:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was an interesting evening to say the least. See, I work in Department 13, otherwise known as Household Chemicals. The main part of which consists of a Damn Bunch of laundry detergent, bleach, and air fresheners, and a lesser portion taking up half of the next aisle has things like bug spray and other low-level pest control gimmicks ( the stronger poisons seem to be confined to Hardware and Lawn & Garden ), as well as your Lysol, floor, kitchen and bath cleaners. So yes, I have ready access to flammable materials, accelerants, and all sorts of things that produce deadly vapors under a variety of conditions. Dude, I could probably kill everybody in the building either by explosion or by deadly gases released from any sort of device I could engineer on the spot. But that's not the purpose of this story, no.

Chemicals, Housewares, Stationary, Pets, Domestics, and sort of Fabrics & Crafts are all connected in as much as the people who work in those departments cover for each other when others have to go to their breaks or whatever. There's usually at least one person in each department. Only this time there wasn't. Mary, who works Housewares has her usual days off Wednesday and Thursday. Sara in Domestics also has those days off this week, and Jean who I'm pretty sure also works Domestics is on vacation. Now, the person working in Fabrics can't leave that area unless there's someone to replace her, because there has to always be someone around to cut fabric for people. So, there's effectively myself and Georgia from Stationary to not only deal with our own departments, but Hosuewares and Domestics, which are both comparatively huge slices of real estate. Nobody was working in Pets until 5pm, either, and while I only came in at 4, it doesn't exactly make a difference. Pets guy never appeared to really do anything outside of his area, and since he's put in his notice in order to leave for a much better paying job at our new Office Depot, he's even more slack-assed. So I only had to cover for pets for an hour, which pretty much just consists of getting out fish for people, and occasionally pulling something off a top shelf, like a dog house. Anyway, if Georgia and I could have both been going through our extra departments together, all at the same time, we could have done pretty damn well, I think, to at least "zone" (basically prettying up the shelves) all over the place and made it look like it would have if the regular people had been there. Of course it can't work out so well. Georgia, knowing how to cut fabric, had to cover Fabrics for an hour while whoever worked there went to dinner, then georgia had dinner. So I was stuck for two hours trying to zone through Housewares, zone my aisle which was sorely neglected, and try to run as much of the returns for three departments as I could, in addition to the returns Georgia and I ran when I came on shift. I've barely spent any time in Housewares, and know where very little goes. So all I could really do was straighten stuff out and put some out of place items I recognized back in their proper places. I'm even more hopeless in Domestics, which Georgia apparently zoned while I was at dinner after skanky electronics woman with all the kids claimed to have gone through and finished it. Not even close. The upshot to this whole mess was that for one thing I wasn't bored, since I was going pretty much all over doing lots of different stuff in my attempts to cover, and for another, I finally got a manager to enable me on the Telxon, the little handheld scanner deal you often see department managers and other employees walking around Wal-Marts with. My department manager so very helpfully keeps the Department 13 Telxon in his locker when he's not on, but I at least have access options now for when I can find one of the other hidden units. And I'm debating making an inquiry to one of the assistant managers to see if we can't unlocker the Telxon I should by all rights have access to when I'm on the clock. I'm not scheduled at any of the same times as my department manager, so I can't even ask to borrow it off him since by the time I'm in, it's already locked away.

In any case, I feel sorry for Georgia today. All those people are out, I'm out, and she's gonna have to cover everything herself. We were both beat by the end of shift last night, and there was two of us dealing with the unmanned areas. Now there's one of her plus an extra department to handle. I might have to buy her a drink on Friday.

Uniform code.

2006-10-05T14:16:00.000-07:00

Something I haven't seen posted much, if at all. Starting around January, Wal-Mart will be changing their "dress code". Now, I use the phrase "dress code" loosely, since the day I was hired, we were told that blue jeans were strictly disallowed as a single example. But pretty much every day since I started the job, several people around the store have been wearing blue jeans in various conditions. Now, they said other colors were okay, with specific mention towards black, which is the color I wear to work every day because I don't want to ruin my nice khakis. However, come January I won't have a choice. The company will be handing out a pair of blue Wal-Mart shirts for each employee, and all associates will be required to wear khakis to work. Think Target or K-Mart, but with blue. I don't necessarily have an issue with this, except that it's gonna be a bit more laundry than I do now. The thing that bugs me most is that I'll be losing all my pockets. I can't keep anything in khaki pockets. Small stuff falls out, rigid objects poke into my legs, and everything else gets crushed. I'm afraid of what will happen to my box cutter. I like my vest just since I have places to put stuff where it generally won't be falling out when I sit down. I do take some issue with having to provide my own pants, since if they're enforcing a particular style of dress, I think they should be responsible for providing at least a couple outfits worth. if they're giving out the shirts, they should hand out a matching number of suitable pants, and after that leave it up to each person to provide more if they feel it's needed. I can just imagine what my khakis will look like after an evening of scooting along the floor under all the liquid and powder detergents, portions of which over the years have built up a very thin yet seemingly impenetrable slick coating on the floor of the aisle as various spills, leaks, and carelessness have exposed innumerable combinations of chemicals that probably shouldn;t be mixed in the first place. I often joke how I could probably build a decent explosive with nothing but the contents of my aisle. I guess I have MacGyver aspirations.

My other deal here is that while I do wear jeans to work out of practicality, I wear black jeans to make it appear as though I make some effort, and I wear nice, collared shirts, always tucked in unless they've thrown me back to unload a truck, a belt, and fairly nice looking shoes. I try to look decent, and I do seem to get treated with a bit more respect as a result. Of course, I have many fewer and at least less severe social quirks than many of my coworkers, such as the 26 year old lady working on her sixth kid, engaged to someone who's not the father, and probably doesn't even know who all the different fathers are. In any case, this whole uniform business seems like it's going to mess me up pretty well in trying to project a semi-professional appearance. Maybe I should go ahead and grab a couple more pair of khakis so I can get as much good "credit" in as I can before we all look alike.