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This week at work has been a week of argh.
A couple months ago, Boss Lady managed to demote herself from salaried employee to hourly wage slave, because she didn't want to be obligated to work 40-hour weeks that somehow always bled into 45+-hour weeks. Also she wanted more time to be able to babysit her grandkids while her daughter and son-in-law are going through some life transitions that involve A) her daughter getting a new job in a less fucked-up school system, and B) the family moving to Syracuse, kinda-sorta-maybe? I dunno, Boss Lady is not always good with clear explanations. (Her written notes are a running joke among the rest of the staff.) The upshot is that she is working fewer hours and we have started running... well, not really understaffed, but on tighter schedules. Which is normally fine, but in weeks where unexpected shit happens, or on days when we are busier than normal, suddenly my life gets crazy exhausting, because I am the unofficial assistant manager.
(Unofficial, because if I were officially management of any type, Mr. Speakerphone would need to pay me more and that is obviously unacceptable. Bleh. My work is worth at least a dollar more per hour than he pays me!)
Anyway, we are also in process of adding a new supplier -- HLA -- to supplement Elmira Distributing, which is the distributer from which we buy our American cigarettes, most of our generic candy, most of our snacks, and a whole bunch of tobacco products. The thing is, we get two deliveries from Elmira per week, one on Wednesday (for which the rep stops by on Monday and Tuesday and writes up an order) and one on Friday (for which we write up our own order and fax it in by 2pm on Thursday). HLA sends a rep to the store on Wednesdays to pick up an order for a Thursday delivery. So on Wednesday, Boss Lady wrote up a partial HLA order and then left that plus an explanatory note in my employee box in the back room, asking me to finish the order based on what I would have ordered from Elmira if we were doing a normal Friday order, but she wanted HLA to substitute for Elmira this week.
There were two main problems with this. First, Boss Lady left at 11am on Wednesday. I punched in at noon. The rep arrived around 11:30am. Boss Lady had neglected to tell Lemme-Tell-Ya and Melodrama that she'd left a partial order in my box, so when the rep asked if we wanted to place an order, they said, "Not as far as we know, sorry." Whoops!
Second, the Elmira delivery always arrives at the most inconvenient time. (All deliveries are like that, actually. I think it is a subclause of Murphy's Law.) So when I was trying to finish the HLA order and fax it in before 2pm, I had to guess at what we'd ordered (and the rep had ordered), without having any record of the order to reference. When the Elmira delivery arrived around 3pm on Wednesday, it was immediately obvious that I'd guessed wrong in about half the cases. *headdesk*
If we are going to do an Elmira order on Mondays and an HLA order on Thursdays from now on, we will need to ask the Elmira rep for a photocopy of what he writes up... and/or we will need to make the HLA order the main order and use Elmira as a supplement. Which is probably what Mr. Speakerphone is aiming for, but I like Elmira Distributing. We have a long relationship with them, not to mention they do all the calculation of retail price vs. wholesale cost on the invoice rather than making us calculate the difference ourselves, and that saves a LOT of time.
...
( cut for a brief rant about Lemme-Tell-Ya )
...
Anyway, Lemme-Tell-Ya was sick enough that for once he realized that calling in sick was the better part of valor (though Melodrama still had to prod him to leave on Wednesday, when he seemed likely to just hang around looking like death warmed over and doing nothing for several hours), so he got Puppydog to cover his Thursday shift. This was generally a good idea, except... we got the HLA delivery and Puppydog, while a sweetheart and a willing worker, is not exactly efficient, nor is his common sense always up to scratch. *sigh* I had to specifically remind him that he couldn't stock the coolers while I was out back doing cashup, since that would leave the front of the store unstaffed. I also had to specifically remind him that the daily list tasks were most important, and that I could and would price and put away the HLA delivery on my own in the evening if necessary, but I couldn't go down to the basement on my own, etcetera, etcetera.
(Side note: I have been studying Puppydog over the past few months, and I have discovered that the best way to get a concept across to him is to draw a diagram. Not to write a note, not to physically demonstrate -- those don't stick -- but diagrams WORK. This is very useful knowledge! I am good at drawing explanatory diagrams. They are not what I would call great art, but damn if they aren't explanatory, and I am all in favor of communication techniques that actually communicate. *grin*)
The upshot is that I sent Puppydog home at 4:30pm even though he'd been scheduled till 5pm, because we'd finished the daily list tasks, he'd been covering someone else's shift, and he was not going to be that much use in the remaining half hour anyway. Then I finished pricing and putting away the HLA delivery, parcelled out a bunch of rolling tobacco, and generally did all the evening and closing tasks. Normally closing shifts are slow and I have a bunch of time to kill where I sit on our stepstool and read random magazines or surf the internet on my phone, but on this Thursday I think I had a grand total of 15 minutes of free time between the end of my break and when I locked the doors at 8pm... and most of those came because it started pouring rain around 7:30pm.
Oh well, that's how it goes some days.
...
I am so glad I have Friday and Saturday off. You have NO IDEA.
A couple months ago, Boss Lady managed to demote herself from salaried employee to hourly wage slave, because she didn't want to be obligated to work 40-hour weeks that somehow always bled into 45+-hour weeks. Also she wanted more time to be able to babysit her grandkids while her daughter and son-in-law are going through some life transitions that involve A) her daughter getting a new job in a less fucked-up school system, and B) the family moving to Syracuse, kinda-sorta-maybe? I dunno, Boss Lady is not always good with clear explanations. (Her written notes are a running joke among the rest of the staff.) The upshot is that she is working fewer hours and we have started running... well, not really understaffed, but on tighter schedules. Which is normally fine, but in weeks where unexpected shit happens, or on days when we are busier than normal, suddenly my life gets crazy exhausting, because I am the unofficial assistant manager.
(Unofficial, because if I were officially management of any type, Mr. Speakerphone would need to pay me more and that is obviously unacceptable. Bleh. My work is worth at least a dollar more per hour than he pays me!)
Anyway, we are also in process of adding a new supplier -- HLA -- to supplement Elmira Distributing, which is the distributer from which we buy our American cigarettes, most of our generic candy, most of our snacks, and a whole bunch of tobacco products. The thing is, we get two deliveries from Elmira per week, one on Wednesday (for which the rep stops by on Monday and Tuesday and writes up an order) and one on Friday (for which we write up our own order and fax it in by 2pm on Thursday). HLA sends a rep to the store on Wednesdays to pick up an order for a Thursday delivery. So on Wednesday, Boss Lady wrote up a partial HLA order and then left that plus an explanatory note in my employee box in the back room, asking me to finish the order based on what I would have ordered from Elmira if we were doing a normal Friday order, but she wanted HLA to substitute for Elmira this week.
There were two main problems with this. First, Boss Lady left at 11am on Wednesday. I punched in at noon. The rep arrived around 11:30am. Boss Lady had neglected to tell Lemme-Tell-Ya and Melodrama that she'd left a partial order in my box, so when the rep asked if we wanted to place an order, they said, "Not as far as we know, sorry." Whoops!
Second, the Elmira delivery always arrives at the most inconvenient time. (All deliveries are like that, actually. I think it is a subclause of Murphy's Law.) So when I was trying to finish the HLA order and fax it in before 2pm, I had to guess at what we'd ordered (and the rep had ordered), without having any record of the order to reference. When the Elmira delivery arrived around 3pm on Wednesday, it was immediately obvious that I'd guessed wrong in about half the cases. *headdesk*
If we are going to do an Elmira order on Mondays and an HLA order on Thursdays from now on, we will need to ask the Elmira rep for a photocopy of what he writes up... and/or we will need to make the HLA order the main order and use Elmira as a supplement. Which is probably what Mr. Speakerphone is aiming for, but I like Elmira Distributing. We have a long relationship with them, not to mention they do all the calculation of retail price vs. wholesale cost on the invoice rather than making us calculate the difference ourselves, and that saves a LOT of time.
...
( cut for a brief rant about Lemme-Tell-Ya )
...
Anyway, Lemme-Tell-Ya was sick enough that for once he realized that calling in sick was the better part of valor (though Melodrama still had to prod him to leave on Wednesday, when he seemed likely to just hang around looking like death warmed over and doing nothing for several hours), so he got Puppydog to cover his Thursday shift. This was generally a good idea, except... we got the HLA delivery and Puppydog, while a sweetheart and a willing worker, is not exactly efficient, nor is his common sense always up to scratch. *sigh* I had to specifically remind him that he couldn't stock the coolers while I was out back doing cashup, since that would leave the front of the store unstaffed. I also had to specifically remind him that the daily list tasks were most important, and that I could and would price and put away the HLA delivery on my own in the evening if necessary, but I couldn't go down to the basement on my own, etcetera, etcetera.
(Side note: I have been studying Puppydog over the past few months, and I have discovered that the best way to get a concept across to him is to draw a diagram. Not to write a note, not to physically demonstrate -- those don't stick -- but diagrams WORK. This is very useful knowledge! I am good at drawing explanatory diagrams. They are not what I would call great art, but damn if they aren't explanatory, and I am all in favor of communication techniques that actually communicate. *grin*)
The upshot is that I sent Puppydog home at 4:30pm even though he'd been scheduled till 5pm, because we'd finished the daily list tasks, he'd been covering someone else's shift, and he was not going to be that much use in the remaining half hour anyway. Then I finished pricing and putting away the HLA delivery, parcelled out a bunch of rolling tobacco, and generally did all the evening and closing tasks. Normally closing shifts are slow and I have a bunch of time to kill where I sit on our stepstool and read random magazines or surf the internet on my phone, but on this Thursday I think I had a grand total of 15 minutes of free time between the end of my break and when I locked the doors at 8pm... and most of those came because it started pouring rain around 7:30pm.
Oh well, that's how it goes some days.
...
I am so glad I have Friday and Saturday off. You have NO IDEA.
