Rocking the Retail in SoCal

8:38
Gave a half-hearted flick at the left-turn signal as car careened into empty parking lot. Drove at ridiculous speed around back of the building to check for usually artless and uninspiring graffiti. Narrowly missed hitting lowly underling's parked 'my mommy gave me this used car' car.

8:40
After clocking self in, explain to lowly underling how he has been performing his job incorrectly. Assign way too much work to aforementioned inexperienced lowly underling who has no idea what I'm talking about. I do a little work, too.

9:47
Cashier staggers in front door still suffering from food poisoning. I send her home. Today is only the second busiest day of the week. So lowly underling and I man the store alone for an hour and a half.

10:00
Put up a QuickShade by myself outside store. District supervisor has insisted that putting this up over exercise equipment wheeled and dragged outside drives sales. Pinch fingers liberally and cuss loudly as a female customer bombards me in spanglish demanding to know why I don't have any navy baseball belts in stock and where might I be hiding them as there is no way we could possibly not have these since she needs one so as she needs one so badly can I just stop playing games and get the belt for her that I am so cruelly hiding?

10:30
By the time help comes, I have shown two guns to customers, cashiered alone, and rung up over $1,000 in sales. The guns were not sold. The lowly underling has not quit solely because he loves me.

10:40
'Help,' in the form of the store manager, queries as to why I did not call him when I realized I was shorthanded. I explained that I became shorthanded just as the store opened. I thought other explanations to myself: 'You never answer the phone,' 'You would have told me to just deal with it,' 'You're full of crap and we didn't want to see you any sooner than we had to no matter what the situation.' I hold back. I've been working on anger management after I got into a shouting match with a customer and flipped her off.

11:30
Real help arrives in the form of two competent cashiers who both begin to do the work together that I was doing alone.

11:31
Reassignment: to drift. I wander the store dizzily with soccer cleat in hand, relacing displays and stuffing the toes of shoes with paper I dig out of garbage cans. I daydream about other stores where the staff just hide from customers instead of masochistically seeking them out like I do, shoe in hand. I do this for hours.

1:35
Go to lunch. It is the week preceding payday, so I eat the last few slices of wheat bread I have with hummus. More lowly underlings have arrived since the morning. I sit in the office ignoring polite coughs, peering faces through the window, and other petitions for help. It's a nine hour day and I only get approximately half an hour to recharge. You are completely unimportant to me.

2:05
Orders are issued to stay away from the gun counter from the store manager as he obsessively vacuums so I continue wandering the store, haranguing the lowly underlings, assigning useless tasks, and demanding they act like they want to be there and grateful, too, that we pay them minimum wage.

3:32
As I attempt to instruct a lowly underling on the proper way to display a shoe, a man whistles in a horribly misguided attempt to attract my attention so that I might serve him. I appoint lowly underling to this unsavory. I stalk away muttering about dogs...

3:33
And I am accosted by a joual- speaking French Canadienne old as the hills who needs a duffel bag because she is going to Antarctica. I don't bother asking the details because anything I might be imagining as to what she will be doing there is most likely true. We get a lot of tourists in our store because of the theme parks and convention center located close by, but this one is even more unusual...than usual.

4:15
I am finally finished with all of the soccer cleats and make it to the gun counter. I display a few guns in the rack which has been emptied out lately but my heart is not in it. I elect to go back into the fray and in five minutes I accomplish in the shoe department what two lowly underlings were incapable of doing in five hours. I remain there, putting them all to shame, since that is, after all, what I'm supposedly paid for.

5:30
I have too much overtime for the week so I cut out early. I'm already thinking about tomorrow. I'll be working the afternoon to closing shift. Strange things happen at night, like vomit, poop, drunken Australians, and prostitutes and Mormons. Who wouldn't want to come back to that?