A Little Upset

You know what I hate?  I hate to be lied to.  Just tell me the truth, even if I don't like it, I'd rather to hear the truth than to be lied to.  I've just discovered that for the past few months, probably actually longer, I've been lied to by a lot of people at the company I work for.   To them they probably don't think of it as anything major, but to me it was.

Up At The Crack of Dawn...eh, never went to bed....

Just got home from work.  Today was inventory, so it was pretty much an all nighter.  It actually went very well, last year we didn't leave the store until after seven in the morning, so we're doing better.  And I'm still not tired yet....

Dress For Success

I'm going to sound like an old fart here, but I can't help it.

Part of what I do at my job is interview and hire new associates. This week I've interviewed three young men. Now I realize that people don't wear a suit and tie to an interview. I wouldn't expect it. I had a job for twenty something years where I had to wear a suit and tie and am thankful now that the job I have is a lot more casual. We wear a polo shirt and slacks. So I'm not looking for a potential new hire to come dressed up, but....you all knew there was a but coming right? One guy came in shorts and flip flops! Now I'm sorry, that's way too under dressed to be coming to interview for a job. Another guy when I walked up to the counter where he was waiting for me was chewing so hard on gum that he looked like a cow. Really. I have nothing against gum chewing, but keep it low key. Throughout the interview he kept smacking his mouth as he chewed his gum.

I don't understand it. I would think this is common sense. A pair of jeans and a polo or nice shirt, that's all I ask for. You'd be surprised by how some people come dressed for an interview. I just don't understand it. I'm all for casual dress, but there is a limit.

Some Thoughts From Work

Something happened today to make me thing about a few things while at work today.

If you're adult enough to get a job and come work for me be adult enough to call in when you're sick and not have your Mom or Dad call for you. (Of course if you're in the hospital than I understand a second party calling in for you.)

If I have to fire you because you're not doing your job, which means I've sat down with you at a minimum of three times to discuss whatever problems we're having, don't send your Father in to ask me why I fired their child. I'm not going to discuss your job performances with anyone besides you and that includes your parents.

If you have to work a day you want off don't have your Mom or Dad call me to ask if I can give you the day off. I make the schedule two weeks in advance and if you put in a request I try to honor it, but asking me two days before the day you want off because you want to go to the beach or whatever, it's not going to happen.

Ok, I could go on and on but I won't. It just surprises me sometimes what people will do or try to do. I just always assume if you're adult enough to get the job than you're adult enough to handle it. I guess that's not always the case.

Killing Time

I'm just on here trying to kill some time. I just spent ten hours at work and plan to go back in a hour or so and spend another eight or so. I figure if I lay down and try to sleep for just a couple hours I'll be worse off, so I'm just on here spinning my wheels.

A Tale of Todd

I work in retail. I'm a manger. Today, like most Mondays, we had our weekly Managers Meeting. We get together and talk about what's happening for the coming week, what happened last week, I'm sure most of you can figure out the particulars. In today's meeting I made a request of my fellow managers. I asked them to stop the joke playing and teasing of a particular associate. I asked them to please make the request of the associates that work in their department also.

The associate I was talking about, let's call him Todd (of course that's not his real name and the chance that he'll read this is pretty close to nil, but I still feel better not using his real name) is, I guess the current PC would be, mentally handicapped. I personally don't feel that saying someone is retarded is wrong, it's their condition, but the use of that word has been so distorted and overused that it's come to be stigmatized nowdays. I'm not sure of the level of Todd's illness, most people always say that such a person has the intelligence level of an eight year old, a twelve year old, etc. But that's probably too much of a generalization. Ask Todd a question about the Saints and he can tell you more than I know, ask him to do simple math and there's a problem. Of course with such situations like this there are usually emotional problems too. Todd is a good worker, but when another manager will ask him to do something different he usually doesn't want to do it. I'm one of the few there that he listens to without too much trouble. Once he picked up some keys that the Front End uses and even though other associates saw him do this he refused to admit what he had done. I was off that day and only learned this when I came in the following day. Eventually the other managers had to call his Dad in to get the keys from him.

Generally Todd is a good worker. He cleans the store for us. He empties the wastebaskets. He sweeps. He mops. He stays busy. And he is a friendly guy. He's not a kid, I guess he's in his late twenties/early thirties. I guess I should know, since I hired him, but I honestly don't remember.

You can probably figure out where I'm going with this, of course there are people at the store that like to tease Todd or make fun of him. The other day a few people where telling him that some of the managers at the store were being transferred and he would be working for someone else. He was becoming upset. The other night someone spilled something on the floor and when he went to clean it up some of the other associates were teasing him.

And the worse part, it's some of the managers that work at the store that are probably the worst offenders when it comes to this type of behavior. I brought it up in the meeting. I asked if we could refrain from teasing Todd, if we could stop trying to make him look like a fool. I got a little worked up. Basically I told them that I didn't think too much of someone trying to play games with Todd. If they wanted to trade insults do it with someone that was equipped to sling them back and they could take me on anytime they wanted. I can hold my own. See, that's the thing, I don't mind insult humor, when it's against someone with the same advantages. I can give my share, but I can take it also. And that's cool.

I've never seen the humor in these type of situations. To me it's just plain cruel. I've tried to let others know when they do these type of things with a “I don't think that's funny” but sometimes I think they're not the real bright ones, they don't seem to catch on.