Retail Hell Underground: Corporate Caused Hell

Hey RHU!

Believe it or not I think I'm FINALLY done with retail. Of course this didn't happen without one more ridiculous story! So as I said before, I had to work one more shift to get my vacation paid out which I had agreed to. Now since I had turned in my key I expected to work some dinky associate shift where I wouldn't have to open or close. Ha! Not even close. While I was away actually enjoying my vacation my boss got a hold of me and asked if I could work two opening shifts the week I returned. I can't say I was exactly pleased, but they asked and so I agreed. This also meant I had to drive to work the day before and pick my key back up - a bit of a hassle but I'm a good girl and a team player so I did what I had to do.

The ridiculousness happened both days - each verifying against what I had doubted while I was on vacation. I really did question myself - "Maybe it wasn't as bad as you think it was now that you're away from the situation. You could keep going right? Work less hours but the pay was worth it right?" HA! NO.

Day one as soon as I get the opening procedures done there's a message from Harpy Queen - she wants every employee's customer information capture rate week to date. We are supposed to get each customers name, address and email so corporate can send them coupons once a month, and then harass them every other day with adverts.

Well thankfully with me being gone I didn't have to add myself to the list and all-in-all our rate was fairly decent. Some of our sister stores, however, were being cut-throat as hell. Oh yes friends - we didn't just send this e-mail straight to HQ for her review, we had to include every other store in the district. Nothing like some public humiliation to humble you right? (SHAME! *ding* SHAME!) Some of them going so far as to state "So-in-so is holding us back with their 50% capture rate! If they can't get their numbers up they won't be able to check people out!" "We are going to have sit down and talk to What's-their-face if they can't see how important this is." I thought Holy Shit - HQ is turning everyone into mini her. The witch hunt blame game is spreading.

Then on my very last shift. Boss said they had made changes to the schedule and asked if I'd print out the new one and throw out the old. Upon doing so I notice I'm scheduled to work on Monday. WTF? It was an odd shift too - a 3 hour associate shift.

Now I was nice, I played nice, I always did what was necessary to keep the store running and sacrificed my time for the good of the team but I was beyond pissed. Boss didn't ask me about this shift, they had asked if I could make my one shift two (which I later learned was because they took vacation). I couldn't figure it out - would the shift just sneak up on me and attack me and drag me to work? That I'd totally forgotten I quit? I wanted to roll up a newspaper and whack them on the nose and go "NO! I QUIT!" Now Boss does not do well with confrontation and I don't think I've ever pushed back as hard as I did that day. I replied with "You did not ask me about Monday. You asked me about these last two days and I agreed to them. I have things to do on Monday and I will be unavailable."

I got two replies 1) "That's fine" followed by 2) "It was the auto-scheduler." Now I know that's bullshit about the auto-scheduler. Our scheduler program will populate the week with people according to their positions and average workable hours. It would never put me - a manager - into an associate shift. If they had bothered to just ask me I probably would have agreed. It made me angry that they would just assume, and then I raged when they couldn't even fess up to trying to wriggle just one more shift out of me. Or that they couldn't even be bothered to just ask one more time. I dropped my key off again - for the last time.

Several good things came out of this though - I made one amazing friend whom every day I'm grateful I met. The new manager that replaced me is super sweet and we've started hanging out too. She even begged me not to quit because "I'm awesome to work with" which is probably one of the best compliments I got working there.

On my first day of being retired very dear friend was telling me about the latest hire - she apparently runs up to each customer going "HI! I'm hyper retail girl! Boss, Friend and I are here to assist you! Have you seen our new stock! You just HAVE to try them on! They are so pretty!"

Gag me.

--Samus