COMMUNICATIONS INTERRUPT: IT'S THE MOST WONDERF-HELL TIME OF THE YEAR

Holy geez. Last time I brought out a CI was right around this time of year, but in 2011. But it's not primarily my blog, so I'm not the bloody slacker around here.

WingTackLE (not to be confused with WingTackER, the W name I used LAST TIME ON RHYMES WITH IDIOT) is still slacking off, clearly. Not so understandable this time around, even though she's still doing the same damn things I naffed off about last time; scrawling less-than-furiously in notebooks, keeping me awake as she screws around on the Pokémon GTS looking for trades--the current X and Y games, naturally, and commiserating with anyone who'll listed about the latest news coming out of the Brewers organization (Corey Hart has interest from three teams besides the Crew but nothing will come of it until he's given a clean bill of health after sitting out the entire 2012 season). Again. The seeming usual.

Black Friday is UPCOMING, and WingTackle is not put out about the shifts she's working this year beyond having to work Thanksgiving Day at all. It means, unfortunately, another twinday of narcissitic shitheads giving her grief because they're not being served immediately--fuck those customers ahead of them, right?--and the fake-ass simpering dicks pretending commiseration that anyone at all has to work on such a family-oriented time of the year while simultaneously passing the plastic to her and shushing the three knee-high irritations who are all clamoring (and oh, YES, sometimes CURSING) for three different toys.

I see no reason to go out, either day, beyond giving her an escape during lunch and leaving a generous tip for whoever might serve us at whichever establishment we frequent. Mental health via Applebee's or somesuch. Yeah, it works.

She's quite better about the whole shooting thing, as you might imagine. The idiotic jokes from oh-so-'clever' people have trickled away to nearly nothing. Few jump at loud noises anymore. The shooter is a complete fruitbat. You can read up on this nutbar if you like, but you won't do it here, at least not by my hand.

Been keeping busy myself, when time allows. Usual crap, mostly. Been running, for a good year, an alliance on one of the mobile card games, MARVEL: WAR OF HEROES; our alliance's very simple blogsite is here, if you give a flying damn and/or play. Small community of players who've grown to be friends, I think.

+++PRIME OUT+++GODDAMN CAP WALLS+++

Sick Of It All

Current song stuck in my head: Look After You by the Fray

Yesterday looked as though it may be a promising day at work: my first assigned area was the GM self checks. I rather like it over there; it's more laid back and much calmer than the grocery side of my store. I can pay close attention to the registers, all four of them, and keep the area clean and organized. However, I was simply covering a lunch break so I'd only be there for an hour. But as the hour came to an end, something happened.

A customer, who was purchasing a case of water along with some other items, had an accident. Her mug, which happened to be filled with what appeared to be orange juice, fell and spilled. Now, this wasn't a small mug, either--it looked as though it held somewhere around 56 ounces and it was full. How much liquid was this? Nearly 2 liters worth. I'm not kidding.

We're talking about a good sized spill, something that would require a mop easily. So I put in the action code for a wet spill clean-up, hoping that whoever's working in maintance won't be too angry. Who comes up? CSM Mary. She looks at the spill, looks at me and says, "Grab some paper towels and clean that."

Paper towels. Yeah.

It took nearly fifteen minutes to clean everything. And I didn't get up all the liquid, either; as I was walking away, I could feel the bottoms of my shoes trying to stick to the floor. Like I said, we really needed a mop. To say I wasn't pleased was putting it gently.

Here's the thing: this wasn't the first time something like has happened. When I told a few of my co-workers about the incident, they said that they too had to clean up large spills with only a roll of paper towels and no help. I was stunned. Why on earth would anyone think that this was a good idea? Then one of the other cashiers told me the reason.

During one of the safety meetings, one of the people who works at the customer service desk--Judy--claimed that all the cashiers were lazy and didn't do enough. None of us clean up anything; we're just a bunch of messy slobs.

I can tell you that this is not true. I clean up after myself. I'm more than willing to clean up a spill and have done so, but if it's huge then I need help. And let's be honest here, mopping up a large amount of liquid is faster than soaking everything up with wads of paper towels. But according to Judy, I'm just a lazy slob who doesn't want to clean up after myself. Whatever.

But it gets better.

It seems that our company has a new way of calculating our productivity. Instead of keeping track the amount of items we scan through our registers, it's now only the scans that count. Management wants all of us to crack a thousand scans an hour. One of the ways they want us to do that is to enter in quantities of items. We're now allowed to use the quantity key on our registers.

For years, we were told to never touch that button. Scanning quantities or scanning one item and hitting enter repeatedly has a tendency to mess up our inventory, especially if the items all have different UPCs. So what management is telling us now is that accuracy doesn't count anymore. Our scanning is now all about speed and nothing more. The faster you are, the better.

This is going to screw up our inventory and make things a lot harder for our department managers, but who cares? We'll be cracking 1000 on our scans per hour and that'll make the bigwigs happy. This is why I can't care anymore; the more I care about my job and try to do decent work, the more upset I become over things like this. It's not worth the tears and frustration.

--Weasel, going to curl up in bed with her Slumblebee because she could really use a hug right about now...

It Just Keeps Getting Better...Or Not

Current song stuck in my head: Only by Nine Inch Nails (Warning: NSFW)

So a few more details came out about the current management situation at my local place of employment. It's--ah--interesting, to say the least.

It seems the manager who was fired was let go because manager Jessie was gunning for his position and now she's taking it over. She's also running roughshod over pretty much the entire store and alienating everyone within sight. They can't stand her new attitude and a lot of people have lost a boatload of respect for her. The co-worker who gave me the heads up about this insane melodrama is now working what she refers to as the "shit shift" which is 3PM to midnight. Oh, and she has no real help in her area, either. But she's expected to do all of her tasks and clean up after everyone else. Oh and the overnight grocery position that just opened up? She's not allowed to go for it. And if she does, she won't get the extra money that the position promises and she'll be stuck in the canned food aisle, zoning that area.

But it gets better. Another of my co-workers is being shoved into an unwanted grocery position: she was working the cosmetics department but her hours have been slashed and she's now a part-timer. So if she wants full time hours and pay, she's going to be working in the freezer all day, whether she likes it or not.

The drama is spilling out all over; seems one of my other co-workers got a text from someone who works in a different store. The text read, "What's up with your management?" Sweetening the deal is the fact that rumor has it that human resources will be paying our store a visit.

It doesn't rain, it pours. I just wasn't expecting this much of a deluge, though.

It's always darkest before the dawn, or so they say. Well, right now it's looking pitch black and I'm not seeing any light in sight. Primus, get me through this slag with my sanity intact, I beg of you.

On Borrowed Time

So while sitting in the breakroom at work this morning, I see one of my co-workers talking to one of the cashiers. They're both talking in whispers, so I can tell that whatever they're saying is pretty sensitive. Me, I just keep eating my breakfast and pretend not to be interested until the cashier leaves and the co-worker sits down next to me. A few moments later, she tells me what's going on.

One of the managers got fired on Tuesday. She honestly thinks that it may have something to do with her--this manager would change the schedule in her area to make sure she had enough coverage so that her work got done. No one else did this sort of thing for her; this newly fired manager was the only one.

The real probably is the manager who is taking over my co-worker's department. This manager--who I'll call "Jessie"--doesn't like said co-worker. Jessie's looked this woman in the face and said outright, "I hate you." My co-worker said that the way management is now, if they don't like you, they will set you up to fail and fire you. I transferred from my old hellhole to get away from that sort of crap. Apparently, that didn't work so well because it's now happening here.

Great. Just slagging great.

And people wonder why I'm ready for the robot apocalypse. The robots can't screw up worse than the humans already have.

--Weasel, "If you'll excuse me, I'll be on Cybertron...or in Unova...where things actually make sense!"

Oh, Yay.

So I found out what I'm working during "The Event", AKA Black Friday.

I'm doing a 6:45 to 4 PM shift. That is completely not what I had signed up for; I asked for something a bit later in the day. (Me and getting up early don't really get along. Well, unless I'm doing something important, like attending BotCon or checking a GTS trade. But I digress.)

I am going to be a zombie this Friday. Wonderful, I can barely wait.

But on the bright side, I can watch Thundercats that night. If it airs, that is.

--Weasel, not feeling the Christmas spirit at all.