The office: Chatter about your job

Last night the universe (or at least the part containing the supermarket I work at) hated me, apparently.

I brought in a sandwich in a paper bag to eat for lunch, but when I go to get it, I found that apparently one of the closing people took it with them, leaving me lunch-less.

Of course, being a supermarket, there's other food, so I get one of those microwavable cups of mac and cheese. I set it up and started the microwave (which really should be retired, but they're too cheap for that), then went to do something real quick while it was cooking. Come back, and the cup has tipped over, spilling like 2/3rds of the contents out of the bowl. I raided the display rack for the free sample cookies, but they didn't really make up the difference.... and weren't all that great to boot.

New job, here I (hopefully) come.

My raise was pro-rated for my eight months' service. If I'd been here a year, I guess I would have gotten 12 cents more. I have no idea if that's a percentage of my previous wage or some standard. I was previously getting $7.50 hourly.

I just did a 12 hour shift! :'(

I'm applying for a job. I think I've managed to find an answer to "Why do you want to work here?" that shows that I genuinely do want to help the store without sounding needy.

@joey: it's those last 4 hours that do you in.

@drunk: for good reasons,

@BE: could you share it with us?

I had a 5.5 hour shift, which is short enough that I only get a 15 minute break, but long enough that, if it's on time, that break comes two hours and fourty-five minutes in. And it's often (and was today) around 15 minutes late.

That entire time we were busy. I never had a full minute not having customers. At one point, late in my shift, we had what was apparently an entire planeload of Nebraska baseball fans in town for a game, who bought out all our Vitamin Water. We had two cashiers on tonight, and the one who was not me was on break when this hit, and it was only beginning to die down when she got back. We had two or three backup cashiers to handle all of them, and the lines were still backed up ridiculously.

And then after all that, I got off at 10 and had to drive across town to pick up my mom, and the entire way back she complained about my driving and my music.

edited 4th May '12 10:07:50 PM by TParadox

Turns out that the Thursday evening lunch was plain old thrown out by the store manager, not taken home by someone else.

I normally put my lunch in the dairy department cooler, but that wasn't available to me because they were waxing the floor I'd need to walk on to get there. So, instead, I put it in the drink cooler by the self-checkout lanes. He saw the bag in there, and because it's not supposed to be used for personal lunches he tossed it in the trash.

Now, during the day I can understand it, but at close when no one else was present?

Oh well, "live and learn" as they say.

I just wrote, "I want to give back to the store that has sold me useful products," or something to that effect. One of my roommates said it still sounded like a butt-kissing sort of answer, but it's the truth.

That's a actually a pretty good answer, I have got to steal it.

I think I said something similar to that when I got this one. Too bad it won't work for any thing that uses my degree.

One thing I hate about this job, I keep destroying my clothes at a really fast rate. I'm down to two pairs of shorts that don't have holes in them in awkward places. Fortunately, Amazon has my back.

My boss is advising me to learn to say no to taking on tasks which is good I suppose.

He values assertiveness too for some reason. I think we have different value systems.

Geez, I'm only a base-level administration officer, I'm not sure it matters.

Then again, he's an ex-lawyer so I can see where he's coming from.

Because it's a really good quality to have? People who won't stick up for themselves are a liability in any workplace; they take on more work than they can handle and end up fucking things up, costing money and having to be got rid of.

In other news: This has been keeping us busy today.

edited 10th May '12 11:44:01 AM by InverurieJones

Today I got to take a break from setting insect traps, to give presentations to a bunch of school kids about why I set insect traps. And also why people shouldn't move firewood.

Because firewood is for burning?

it was international nurses day today, to show their appreciation they brought cake in and then ask if I could pull 16 hours shift today and come in early tommorrow

Emerald Ash Borers have decimated my back yard. You should not move firewood. Ever.

Blackcat got it in one. When you move firewood, you also move any insect or fungus that killed the tree in the first place. Emerald Ash Borer, Thousand Cankers Disease, and all manner of other wonderful tree-killers.

Work was several kinds of interesting today.

We had this big-shot architect from LA come up to visit; he wanted to see the processes by which we are creating the really weird thing he designed. Now, I don't know the guy's name, but apparently it was the rough equivalent of making movies in your garage and having James Cameron suddenly want to take a look.

The universe being what it is, we suffered a really embarrassing failure on the manufacturing run-through this guy chose to watch. There we are, fighting with recalcitrant clamps and glue (and trying not to swear too much) while this famous architect and his assistant are watching intently and filming us with their Blackberries. Worst 20 minutes ever.

It ended well enough though; he was impressed with our operation, our competence at turning out quality product (he was particularly appreciative on our attention to little details like making sure knots and defects wouldn't show) and the results we were getting.

I chatted with the guy during lunch about what we were doing; he made mention of liking that all of the employees seemed really involved in the process and invested in getting quality results (as opposed to some shops that he's apparently visited, where most of the guys know little, care less and are only there for the paycheck).

So it was on the whole positive, but having a camera on me when shit is really not going well is an experience I'd rather not repeat. Ever.

That twenty minutes probably told him more about the company and the employees than three hours of everything going smoothly would have. So, while it sucked it's that kind of performance under pressure that impresses people. At least smart people.

Yeah, and since he left being impressed I'm guessing that's what he got out of it. We did get the job done, albeit with much more sweating and cussing than we would have liked to show a visitor.

I got cart attendant training back in December (and at that, really only the safety training for collecting carts from the parking lot), but the most I was ever called upon to use it back then was when I got pulled off the register for my last hour.

Today I had my first scheduled cart shift. When not collecting carts from the lot, which I only have to do if the supply inside is getting low, there's a few tasks I can do, but really not enough to fill several hours.

Even on a weekend, we didn't get enough traffic to keep me busy retrieving carts from outside, retrieving abandoned carts from inside, collecting discarded items around the front end, and taking hangers to the back to be reused, but even with nothing to do, I couldn't just stop doing things.

The job has begun for real now. I am now traveling. Low-budget hotels here I come.

Unfurloughed! Two weeks after they told me it was for two weeks, surprisingly. Fewer duties, which isn't great for a freelancer, but still.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATSSSS!

That is all.