The office: Chatter about your job

Safeway has been rolling back all our social distancing measures. No more limits on people allowed in. No more one-way floor signs. No more reduced hours. No more senior shopping hours. I don't know what they're thinking - we're right across the street from both an old folks' home and a rehab center, and now the whole country is reopening. This is the last time we should be taking it easy.

On the plus side, I haven't heard the Hefty ad in months. And Northwest Cherries has brought back their old barbershop jingle, which is a lot less irritating than the all-talking ad they used in 2019.

Edit 6/24: Turns out they only moved the floor signs and senior shopping signs so they could clean and wax the floor. Hooray! The other two still apply, though.

Edited by Madison14 on Jun 24th 2020 at 8:06:16 AM

I've been working for the past two and a half months for the Home Depot, and in contrast to the last place I worked in which nobody really cared and the whole endeavor was bathed in an aura of hopelessness and dread, they care a little too much and as a result have this forced corporate culture (which I've helpfully shortened to Corpcult) which I feel at eternal odds with.

Someone was murdered in one of the customer bathrooms sometime last night, possibly during my shift. One of my bosses found the body this morning. By the time I arrived this afternoon, everyone was still blocked from going near the bathrooms, but they were reopened a few hours later. (I'm still not using that bathroom for another couple days, even though they did clean it pretty thoroughly.)

This is a low-crime area. I have no idea who it was, who did it, how it happened, or why the Safeway bathroom of all places. Not helping matters is my bosses' evasiveness. At one point I was told that a "loss management guy" who's paid to help the store with "any problems that arise" wanted to talk to me about the "bathroom problem." I wish they would be more honest - I feel like I have a right to know when someone is murdered in my workplace, or when a police officer is about to question me. My coworkers were more forthcoming, but they didn't know much more than I did.

Makes sense, although I wasn't expecting gory details, just basic facts like whether someone is a cop. Anyway, it turns out it was natural causes - I guess the murder was just employee conjecture.

Edited by Madison14 on Jul 15th 2020 at 9:17:24 AM

Your boss likely can't talk about it all that much in part because they discovered the body and are likely part of the investigation. Not exactly a Folgers moment for someone's morning and it is a bit unreasonable to demand someone tell you the details unless you are personally involved.

I had to quit my job because of how they're handling the pandemic. There was a confirmed COVID case. After they spent an hour assuring everyone that it most likely did not spread because it was one of the office people and not someone in the kitchen or a customer facing job, I took a COVID test anyway. Two days later any results I would have had were invalidated because there was a second case in the kitchen.

The assurances they gave me that time around did not help as they didn't close, nor did they strengthen social distancing protocols. So I put in my two week's notice citing their lack of action. One of the managers also told me they'd quit. Even if I don't get unemployment, I have enough saved up to last until I get another job.

Leradny: That sucks. I hope you don't come down with COVID. Hopefully, you can find somewhere a bit safer to work.

I just learned that five or six other people gave their notice on the exact same day, so I'm hoping the bosses learn from this. If not, at least I won't have to deal with them anymore. Just one more week left.

Yeah it just isn't worth it and it looks like your former co-workers all agree. Best of luck finding the next thing.

Yeah, I think you'd be well justified in explaining that in any interview.

That sounds like a right managerial balls-up, and no mistake. What do they want to be, the next place forced into quarantine like, say, an industrialised farm or meat packing plant?

Edited by Euodiachloris on Jul 22nd 2020 at 1:27:08 PM

My friend/former coworker who's hella immunocompromised and takes masks/gloves/distance very seriously went to responsibly visit a quarantined friend way (with mask/glove/distance/poncho/handwash up to 11)back in March, mentioned as a courtesy to his manager that maybe they should be sanitizing extra the next day, and was fired the day after that. He's been living very well off of unemployment this summer, seeing the extra $600 as "stay inside and don't risk your health on interviews for bullshit jobs" money.

I seem to have accidentally unsubscribed from this thread at some point. I probably already reported some of this: I had been working at one store with aforementioned friend and another friend who was my manager, the manager got moved out to manage another store in January, and while I was taking up the slack as interim manager I agreed to take a promotion to officially manage a smaller store (on the idea that I ought to be getting paid to do what I was already doing. Six months later I'm still paid at the same base rate, just with a health measures bonus).

I was going to be working at the smaller store full time with a full time associate who is the (no longer) quarantined friend of my friend, but after a few weeks, my boss told me, "the numbers aren't working out. We're going to pull your full timer and trade you for a part-timer." The part-timer was the not-my-friend fourth coworker from the other store. The guy didn't care about the standards we were supposed to work at, and was habitually late to the point that for about a month I had to open the store six days a week because if he had an open shift he could reliably not even be at the store at opening time.

About a month ago, he called in with car trouble on a Monday, texted my boss "this is my two weeks, I'm sorry" on Tuesday and blew off his shift that day, worked his shift at the other store on Wednesday, and then came in on Thursday to hand in his keys, never to return. This boy apparently doesn't even know what "two weeks" means.

The upside of him quitting was that because six days working open to close alone was too much overtime, they shuffled things so that I could have a day off again. It's been a month. I've gone a little feral, running the store alone from 10-6 Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays through Saturdays.

Today the new hire that they'd been training at the other store was moved into my store. At least for the next week or two, I'll still be working open to close because he can't be left alone yet, but just having another person to divide the load helps a lot.

I am getting fed up with these lackluster 20 something guards I have been getting at my site. 3 out of 4 decided they couldn't work the shift they agreed to be hired for. Not one of those 3 lasted more than a week. One didn't even finish training.

The site is easy, the pay is higher than average for various posts, its quiet, demands for assorted tasks are low, and the boss, me is very willing to let certain things slide as long as the job gets done and they don't annoy or piss off the client.

That 4th 20 something looked like he was going to make it but decided to literally pitch a temper tantrum over some baby momma drama via text and smashed a wall with a chair and kicked the shit out of the filing cabinet so badly the engineers needed mallets and a pry bar to fix it.

To date, the only guards that have shown any ability to hack it are on average 30+ years of age. To be fair some of the younger female guards in the 20 something range were actually good but they were all Flex ^note temp officers that work various sites officers because of things like school or other situations.

One of my best and most reliable guards was an Ex-Con who did 10 years for dealing. Yet all these other younger folks with clean records can't seem to handle the site.

Edited by TuefelHundenIV on Jan 25th 2021 at 9:26:14 AM

I just learned that the big project (like, 7M big) i worked on like 8 years ago got audited, a former teammate of mine got laid off and other guys from a different team but in the same project went after greener pastures. All of them were friends of mine.

I feel a bit bummed.

Alright, nearly a year and a half at the Home Depot (HYPER DYSTOPIA) and I'm ready to fucking go. I'm tired of being the last man standing in an under-supported, overworked department.

Any tips for a STEM job?

They pay a lot for a reason.

My (former) department decided that they'd save money by laying off my shift and implementing a 10-12 hour workday instead of 8 on one shift. Who'd have thought that it would backfire and cause a bunch of people to quit, lower productivity, and cause our OTD goals to fly right out of the window?

Luckily I got a transfer to a department that I'd been aiming for for a while. The work is way more enjoyable to me but the hours are pretty crazy. Been 6 months at 55-60 a week and its finally catching up to me.

Edited by carbon-mantis on Aug 8th 2022 at 11:43:30 AM

They just moved me to a remote job position. Now I will we working from home, won't deal with users and will focus on software development and database administration.

It's my dream job. I'm really happy.

99.9% of my job could be done anywhere there's an internet connection (and my internet connection seems more stable than the internet at the office), but only the office manager and the customer service supervisor have gotten to work from home, they only let the CS supervisor work from home because she was a single mom with a newborn, and she lost the company laptop in like three months.

Haven't posted here in a while, but unfortunately it's going to be a rambling.

God damn it, having to work in both Christmas eve and the day itself suuuuuuucks. XP

Didn't know we had a thread for this.

So, I work as a secretary at a hospital further details redacted for infosec reasons. We're currently in a pinch in my department, because one person left with a two week notice and before we could really find a replacement — I got the job when another employee decided to change places but waited long enough for a replacement to be hired and even helped out for a few weeks to teach me the works. Then one employee went on a sick leave that just keeps extending, and we've got 1. me doing full time with just under a year of experience 2. one long timer who however has to leave work early most days because of their special needs kid 3. one person doing half days 4. a new employee we don't have time to train to do anything than the least demanding part of the job. Me and the old timer are stuck to the two jobs we're now the only two people qualified to handle, but then also ripped away from that by the afternoon because someone needs to man the front desk.

And that's how it's been for two weeks, and just now got expanded until the 20th. That is, if that one person doesn't contnue their leave, which will also nicely roll towards their pre-agreed on vacation time, so it really looks like there's the two of us, stuck for the forseeable future having to run between rooms and juggle two phones. I had my perfomance review today, and it was OK, but I did tell my supervisor that this is unsustainable, but also that I understand that the recruiting process doesn't move very fast, and as said, we have a new person to train for the job, but we simply don't have any time available to train them to do the job.

Well, I am a SDET, technically a software developer that design automated test... (more easy, I test software writing more software).

Considered an expert in the theme, I am giving training to new elements that join my team and investigating on new technologies. The work is fine, but the payment in Europe can be disappointing for American standards, because, different to American Market, seems that Spain salaries in technologies are regulated...

I miscalculated that, and probably I miss Chicago for the possibilities I left behind (apart of the snow, the food, and the lovely views of the downtown that Madrid does not has), while I would put in my defense that probably would had been hard that a tech company would embrace paying the fees to get a Mexican in their lines, also the health services..

But I am looking forward to stay at least 2 years, get the double nationality and search for better chances in the European market... I love what to do, just I am feeling that is not not well rewarded (probably the prices in this country..)

I remember at my last long term job I got hired full time in November, and in January the store manager got rotated out, the part timer got fired because he wasn't a great worker, and the other full timer got moved to a new project in another location, so I was suddenly the one with the deepest knowledge of that store specifically. Even though I did have a manager over me, she deferred to me for "how do we do that at this store?" until she knew the processes.

Heh, just noticed I posted here about a year ago.

Since then things have improved a bit. We have more people working in our team, and we've trained some of them to do all the parts of the job. One of old timers is still going on long sick leaves with little warning, but we can manage it a better now. Still, things can fall apart unexpectedly too, we had a day when there were just three here.