Black Friday priorities

As Black Friday is drawing near, my DM the Email Queen, is really getting her priorities straight. I remember exactly a year ago, my old DM was running around to all the stores in the district making sure all products were out and all signage was up for the sales. He was in my store until 10PM the night before Thanksgiving, helping us to add the final touches to ensure a profitable holiday weekend.

My new DM, however, finds it is more important to make up her own policies two days before Black Friday and bother the store managers with it. What's her new policy? Well, we are no longer allowed to ask who is calling before transfering a phone call. To most people it is considered common courtesy to ask who is calling, however to her it means that we are 'screening' phone calls. So instead of supervising the sales floor this morning, I had to sit on the phone with her to discuss this new policy and train the employees on how to properly answer the phone.

The best part is that I still know when she's on the phone by my employees' confused faces when they tell me, "some lady wants to talk to you and she sounds pissed." Oh hello, DM.


I love my job.

Well-qualified applicant

This is a real conversation that I had today...

Random Girl: Hi, are you hiring?
Me: Yes, are you at least 18 years old?
Random Girl: No, I'm 19.
Me: (reaching for blank applications) Ok.
Random Girl: You have to be 18?
Me: Well, you have to be at least 18.
Random Girl: Oh, nevermind.

She walked out before I could even give her an application!

Normally I have to weed through the brainless applicants by interviewing them, but this one did me a favor and weeded herself out. Nice.


I love my job.

My favorite e-mail of the day.

My district manager, the Email Queen, has been busy bombarding us with gibberish emails 24 hours a day. I think I actually spent 2 hours of company time just deciphering her emails today. This was my favorite one...
"If any of you an extra register do you have panels that cover the cart? I need this info asap."

Yeah, I don't know what that means either. My sales associate said this reads like a drunk text message. I think she's right.


I love my job.

This is gonna be good.

I'd like to explain my hiatus from writing the past two months. First of all, I can't believe two months has actually passed without me writing a single entry. It's not that I haven't been trying to find material, it's the fact that for the past two months my job has been resembling normalcy more than ever before. What's normal?...all of my employees show up to work, everyone is happy, the store is doing great, there's no mold growing in the bathroom, and both of my assistant managers are fairly competent. Hard to believe, right? Well, tonight I'm posting because a new writing subject has entered my life...my new District Manager.

My new district manager started on Monday and has already proved several times she is a frantic, belligerent idiot. During her second day on the job, she flooded us with e-mails about employees who forgot to clock out for the previous day. This would have been fine, except all of the employees mentioned did not work in our stores...actually they didn't even have real names. She was yelling at Aim Castle, Stephanie Hello, Rache Building, and a few other imaginary people. The best part was she actually fought with me when I tried to tell her that I didn't have an employee named "Aim Castle." Uh, have you ever met someone named Aim Castle? Yeah, me either.

My new district manager is also the queen of email. She overwhelms us with 10 emails per day of gibberish crap. Yesterday, I happened to check the work email and I had 7 blank emails from her with the subject line, "Call me." Literally, 7 blank emails. The 8th blank email from her had the subject line, "Fix your phone now." In reality, the phone was perfectly fine, I had been using it all day. Trying to explain to her that she had been dialing the wrong number for an hour was a feat in itself. And the best part was that her entire frenzied phone conversation with me was about something that I already knew about.

Wow. It looks like Seal it Up is back and better than ever!


I love my job.

Unrelated events

I would like to update everyone tonight with a few random, unrelated stories from the past two months.

• One morning my sales associate did not show up for her opening shift. I tried calling her cell phone but there was no answer. I pretty much figured she was done with the job and this was her way of quitting. I was shocked to receive a phone call from her 8 hours later to explain what had happened. She was arrested that morning on the way to work and had to wait for her mother to bail her out of jail...and she actually brought in the police report to prove it! I guess when you only get one phone call your mother takes priority over your employer.
• Last night a girl and her father called me over to help them. I asked, "Can I help you with something?" The teenage girl looked at me with a t-shirt in her hand and asked "Um, is a small the same as a medium?" Uh, no?
  
• A week ago I had to work in another store for a few days because the store manager was on vacation. While I was in the different store, I managed to get their cash register drawer stuck closed and their entrance door stuck open. The sales associate panicked, but I laughed and explained these kinds of things happen to me all the time. However, I have a feeling I won't have to work in that store the next time the manager's on vacation.

Good news! I have found an assistant manager to replace Cory so I now have a full management team again. I will also be taking a vacation next week for the first time in a year and a half. It should be interesting to see what kind of shape the store is in when I get back...



I love my job.

True Story

As I was walking through the clearance section with a customer a few days ago...

Customer: (pointing to the sign in front of us) Buy one, get one free? What does that mean??
Me: (reading the sign outloud) Well, you buy one...and then you get one for free.
Customer: Really???!!
Me: No, I'm lying.
Customer: Oh.
Me: ...........I'm kidding.
Customer: Oh! (laughs) so if I buy one I can get one for completely free??!!
Me: Yes, (pointing to the sign again) buy one, get one free.

Does "buy one, get one free" ever mean something else? Is there some kind of secret, underground store where the sale signs say "Buy one, Get Nothing Free!"



I love my job.

My Ex-Assistant Manager

For the past two months, I have been wanting to write about my assistant manager. However, I kept holding myself back because for the first time in my life I had too much to say about one person. Nevertheless, I fired him today, and I would like to highlight some of the classic moments I had with him over the past two months.

Cory- The 'Straight' Guy
Cory had no management experience at all and yet, my company decided to hire him as a manager anyway. At first appearance, Cory came across as a very intelligent, well-dressed, good looking guy. That first impression lasted about a week. Then I started realizing that Cory was only a little bit smarter than a door knob, and actually his greatest talent was standing there and looking good. I think his favorite part of working in my store was checking himself out in the mirrrors, which he did approximately 92 times everyday. Cory insisted that he was straight and yet, wore women's sunglasses and went through a week-long phase of wearing makeup to work. He never knew what time it was, what month it was, or what day it was. Actually, one day he was scheduled to leave at 1pm and told me at 11am that he had an hour left. I asked, "Don't you leave at 1pm?" and he answered, "Yeah, it's 11am, I only have an hour to go." That must have been a long hour. But why did I fire him? Well...

1. He broke every policy possible. He played his own music during business hours (with curse words), broke the dress code, treated the sales associates unprofessionally, did not meet sales goals, used a rude tone with customers, closed the registers early, talked on his cell phone while on the sales floor, sat down on the counter, did not even try to clean the store, closed the fitting rooms early, opened the store an hour late twice, and basically did absolutely nothing while at work.
2. And then lied to me about all of the above.
3. The final straw came on Saturday when he was supposed to open the store and called me 15 minutes before opening saying that he lost his store keys.
   

So even though it was fun to watch Cory everyday, it was also making me lose my mind.


For the record, he was the first person I ever fired...and I have to admit that there was an overwhelming urge inside of me to say "YOU'RE FIRED!" like Donald Trump, but I somehow controlled myself.


I love my job.

Things I've Learned

1. For every problem that is solved, two new problems are created.
2. A day's work is never done.
3. Plan for the worst so that any other outcome is a pleasant surprise.
4. When one thing fails, everything else fails with it.
5. Always stay optimistic.

I love my job.

Killing the Moldy Jungle

As most of you probably remember from my previous post, I mentioned a "moldy jungle" smell emanating from the second bathroom in my stock room. Over the past month, the smell has been getting worse. Actually, a few days ago my UPS delivery man complained that the smell of my stock room was making him nauseous (lol, and yes I'm serious). Today I decided to finally explore that second bathroom and find the source of the odor. Unfortunately, my diagnosis of it smelling like a "moldy jungle" was more accurate than I wanted it to be. There was, in fact, a moldy jungle growing in and out of the toilet. Great.

I spent the first hour of my shift wearing rubber gloves, pouring a gallon of bleach down the toilet and praying I wouldn't find any dead animals floating to the surface. Although the entire experience was disgusting, to say the least, a part of me was thinking, "I should be taking pictures of this for the blog." Needless to say, I didn't want to spend any extra time in that bathroom so no pictures...just memories to last a lifetime.

I love my job.

2 weeks into it

I've officially been a store manager for two weeks now. The transition into my new store has been a little bit harder than anticipated due to a number of reasons. The biggest problem that I have been facing is the fact that there were many unsolved problems in the store that the old store manager failed to tell me about.

The problem that I encountered on my first day was the fact that the lights for the window displays went on and off whenever they felt like it. No rhyme or reason, they would be on for 5 minutes and then off for the rest of the day. After four phone calls to maintenance and two different electricians I can safely say the problem is solved.

The next problem that I found was that the stock room looked, literally, like a third world country. Exhibit A, B, and C:

After spending three hours gutting the stock room, I would like to report my findings:

1. one broken mannequin
2. a brand new credit card swiping machine
3. marketing signs from 2006-present
4. brand new display fixtures
5. flyers from Black Friday sales 2006 & 2007
   
6. another bathroom (yes, I'm serious)

I have not taken "after" pictures yet, but they will be posted shortly.

The third problem that I came across is that out of three credit card swiping machines, only one was working properly. That brings me to one of my findings in the stock room, which was a brand new credit card machine. After an hour long phone call with the computer helpdesk, all three credit card swipers are completely functional.

My last problem is a bit different and hasn't been solved yet. I noticed the stock room has a weird odor of what I like to call a "moldy jungle." It's kind of a hard smell to describe, but when I found the second bathroom I realized the smell was definitely emanating from that area. The smell has also begun lingering throughout the store. The second bathroom hasn't been opened in seven months and I'm a little afraid of what I might find in there. Once I invest in a gas mask, I will be exploring the "moldy jungle" and reporting my findings.

Overall, my first two weeks have went well. The sales associates are ridiculously more competent than my old ones and have helped me tremendously with everything.

It basically comes down to my new motto for myself:
Innocent Bystander: Saving lives one day at a time.

My vows

I apologize for the hiatus, but I'm writing tonight with good news to share. I recently got promoted to store manager and will be taking over a store in approximately two weeks. The promotion actually came in the nick of time because I almost accepted a job at another company with none other than Samantha, the Loveable Lunatic as my manager. Yes, I was that desperate.

The promotion means that I will be officially leaving the Lazy Slob, the Gorilla, Mary Sue, and all of my other wonderful employees to start over as a store manager in a different store with probably even more wonderful, incompetent employees.

As my first week in a new store is quickly approaching, I have taken the time to write some vows for myself. Although I'm not completely sure that I have the knowledge and experience to be a good store manager, I am absolutely positive that I know exactly what not to do due to my previous three managers. These are my vows that I'm dedicating myself to:

1. I vow to spell check every e-mail before I send it to my district manager.
2. I vow to not have a nervous breakdown and breathe into a paper bag while at work.
3. I vow to not yell at customers.
4. I vow to say "thank you" and "good job" when my employees deserve it.
5. I vow to walk around the sales floor like a human being, not a gorilla.
6. I vow to not be an obsessive compulsive neat freak.
7. I vow to talk to my employees on a daily basis.
8. I vow to be on time to work everyday.
9. I vow to not complain about being "tired" every damn day.
10. I vow to never become a lazy slob, genuine retard, raving bitch, or loveable lunatic.

And finally, I vow to stop writing about my poor innocent employees.

haha, just kidding about that last one.

I love my job!