Black Friday Deals... On Thursday!

It’s that time of year again!  The time where you spend a day of thanks to remember all that you have and all you should be happy about… just a month before you receive things you desired and probably didn’t even need.  I’ve experienced way too many holiday seasons working in retail.  Far more than I ever intended to experience.
This will be a quick post since I’ve mentioned before how pointless I find people lining up as early as Wednesday for some piece of crappy technology that’ll be obsolete within the year.  However, I did want to point out something I heard at my job recently.
One of my coworkers, trying to look on the bright side of only opening at midnight on Thanksgiving, said something along the lines like, “At least we don’t have to open at 10pm or 8pm like [some of our competitors].”
To which I say, “Buuuuulllllshiiiiiiit.”
You see, do customers think the store just magically looks the way it does when they walk into the stores?  Do you see those displays set-up around the store?  Do you see how there are stacks of flyers or ads or pamphlets laid about in certain parts of the stores?  Well, the places you shop don’t magically look like that because a jolly fat man in a red suit makes it look that way.  We’re not elves selling toys made in Santa’s workshop.  There’s no fairy dust that magically turns stores into winter wonderlands.
Since the stores are “closed” on Thanksgiving, everyone has to run around after our store closes for the day on Wednesday like their heads are chopped off trying to set everything up for Friday.  Of the 2-3 times I’ve done this, I’ve stayed to at least 1am.  Then what do you do when you get home?  If you’re me, you have to eat something & then you’re too awake to fall asleep right away.  So, typically, I’m not asleep until around 3am.
Then, since the store now opens at midnight, if one has an opening shift, we’re scheduled an hour or two before the store actually opens.  I’ve started as early as 10pm.  So from midnight on Wednesday to – let’s say – 2am on Thursday, and then again from 10pm to midnight, I’m most definitely working on Thanksgiving.
It’s that kind of thinking that retail companies want you to have.  At first it was, “I’m working 4am but at least I’m not working at midnight.”  Then, when everyone started to open at midnight, we all thought, “I’m working at midnight but at least it’s not ON Thanksgiving.”  To which stores like Target have decided to start opening their doors at 9pm or so ON Thanksgiving.  It’s time we all got together & realized that sales aren’t worth it.  EVERYONE deserves a day – 24 FULL hours – off from work to see the people we don’t get to see very often.  This is something customers AND employees should agree on and need to work together to fix.
Customers need to refuse to shop at stores that open at midnight (or earlier).  Employees, well, I guess the only thing we can do is to keep getting the word out to people we know and tell them to hold off on sales.  My parents never stood in line at 4am for a toy and if I was ever upset that I didn’t get something for Christmas, I quickly got over it because I always got more than I probably deserved.  And so will your kids, relatives, friends, and whoever else you’re in line for.
Incase I don’t get the chance to update before it arrives I wanted to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving.  I thank you all for taking time out to read my rants and ramblings.  This is just a little project I decided to do as an outlet but it means a lot that you all are reading it.  If you’re living outside the States… Count yourself lucky you’re not apart of the crazy bull that is associated with the Christmas season here in the States.
Moor soon from the frontlines...

What Do You MEAN The Store’s Closed? It’s Only 6pm And I Need My New I-Pod!

The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I’ve recently been abroad to the Old World and I must say that there are some things that America could learn from Europe about work.  It was enough to almost make me not get on that plane back to the States.  So, what was so great about it?  I suppose the major point is the fact that the hours seem to be better.  Now, granted, this is a statement about the places I explored while in Europe.  I know not every country in Europe is the same.  So take this info with a grain of salt.
Nearly every single store seems to close no later than 7pm.  Not only that but a lot of stores (that aren’t bakeries) don’t even open until 9am.  I know a lot of coworkers who wouldn’t mind getting out by 7pm on a Friday night.  I can’t tell you how many family gatherings that would’ve allowed me to catch the last few hours of, at the very least.  And when you think about it, what store – other than pharmacies or convenience stores – need to be open past 7pm, anyway?  If you can’t buy your 50” TV by 7pm then maybe it wasn’t meant to be.  If your washer broke down just take your clothes to a Laundromat.  If your cellphone died on you then enjoy the silence and pick up a book.
And forget about finding anything open on a Sunday.  Good GOD!  Forget the point if you’re religious or not but if God could rest on the 7^th day, why can’t retail workers?
Do you know what people in Europe do on Sundays?  They spend the day relaxing and enjoying the world around them.  Novel concept, I know.  Parks were filled with people.  Cafés were bustling with friends catching up with one another.  Streets were more jam-packed with bicyclists than motorists.  People. Just. Slowed. Down.  If they had a 40” TV, they don’t seem to need to rush right out when the 60” version comes out three months later.
It seems like everyone is in such a rush in the States to go from 1 store to the other and by the end of the day, how many of you actually feel like you’ve accomplished a lot for the time you spent running around?  I’ve said it before but whenever I hear customers say that they’re just shopping around and plan to go to 4-5 other stores on their Sunday, I just think, “Why?”  In the day and age of the Internet, just go home, sit out in the backyard, enjoy a cup of lemonade, and look up what you want to buy online.  Even if you don’t want to buy it online and insist on going into a store, at least you know what’s out there before you go out.  This way, instead of going to five million stores, you can just go to 1-2.  Plus, nowadays, it seems like every store is so desperate for your business that they’ll offer price-match guarantees on their items so even if you don’t think you got the best deal, you can still go in after you buy it and get the difference back if it goes down.
I never want to spend a whole day at stores.  If a store has what I want and I know it’s within what I want to spend, I get it.  I’m not going to spend my time and gasoline on trying to save $10.  Life’s too short for that bullshit.
Another bonus of working in Europe – and I know this has its drawbacks, too – is the amount of vacations one can get at many places of employment.  You hear it in jokes on late night comedy talk shows about how they get 6 months vacation out of the year and how even the slightest hint of taking away 1 day from their vacation times will insight massive riots throughout Europe.  But what I want to know is, when life IS so short and when most people work themselves to death and have to deal with mounds of bullshit in their everyday life, why NOT have 6 weeks – HELL, even 4 weeks – of vacation time?
People need to unwind and 2-3 weeks vacation time and a few personal days spattered throughout the year isn’t always enough.  Especially if you work in retail.  Imagine what you can see and do with 4-6 weeks of vacation time!  However, this goes hand-in-hand with pay.  People in retail jobs in the States need to be paid a living wage and not the bullshit most hourly workers get in order to do something useful with those vacation hours.  I hear a lot of stories from people who just take vacation hours to sit around the house.  But why??  Even if it’s just to go into the city or visit family in the next state, that’s still being able to get out and explore the world.  Or at least do something useful with your time at home (like start a blog! Ha).
There are a lot of things wrong with Europe – as there is with any place on the globe – but recognizing people need time to get away from work isn’t one of them.  And for those who say that despite the fact many jobs pay more than their U.S. counterparts they get taxed more, I say, “So what?”  They might get taxed more but, generally speaking, those taxes go toward universal health coverage in many countries (look out, it’s “socialism”!).  It goes towards better roads and other infrastructure projects (without being labeled wasted government jobs.  Yeah, I hate driving on smooth roads and having bridges not collapse).  It goes towards renewable energy sources (“Oh, look at those UGLY windmills!  I’d rather have those power plants that churn out the billowing smoke in my backyard.” – some random U.S. politician).
Okay, I shall leave it there for now.  I will probably pick back up on this topic when I have more time to delve deeper.  I just needed to get out of my writing slump.  Hey look, I’m up to 1750 page views!  Thanks to everyone reading this rambling mess.  Hope you’ve found it amusing.  Tell your friends and family!
More soon from the frontlines...

"You Have An Idiot On Line One... Idiot, Line One."

My apologies for the delay, everyone, but life has been busy.  This will be a brief one but I figured it was amusing enough to share with the rest of you and hopefully it’ll tide you all over until a real entry can be written. The other day I had the opening shift in my department and received a call practically first thing in the morning.  Usually, whenever that happens, it’s a pretty big issue that is waiting to be resolved.  I generally prefer not opening right away for that exact reason.  By the time the 2^nd person comes in, or the closing person comes in, all of the issues are resolved.  So, I approached the phone with a bit of trepidation.
I picked up the phone and here is how the conversation went (with a few modifications, of course):
“Hello, Home Electronics, Parker speaking.”
“Hi, I need to talk to somebody in Home Electronics.”
D’uh, way to pay attention.
“Okay.  That’s me.”
“Oh, okay, well I had a special order TV that was supposed to be delivered today and I never received a call telling me when it was going to be here.”
“Ah, they didn’t call you last night?”
“No.  Today is the 29^th, isn’t it?”
He said this last part with a bit of condescension in his voice.
I looked at my watch.
“No, actually, it’s the 28^th.”
A brief pause, presumably to insert his foot into his mouth.
“Oh, well, no wonder they haven’t called!” he laughed.
“Yep.”
That was basically it.  So, just remember, when you think you have an issue with a retail store and are getting yourself jazzed up to pick a fight with them, always make sure you have your facts straight.  Otherwise, you’re going to look like a moron like the guy who decided to call without looking at his phone or a calendar or a watch or a newspaper for the date.  That’s just a little piece of advice from your friendly retail associate.  Needless to say, after a brief laugh after I hung up, it helped to make the day start off on the right foot.  Good times!
More soon from the frontlines...

Let's Be Friends! ...Or Not!

     In my time in retail I’ve had a number of managers that I’ve had to deal with.  I’m not talking about my direct supervisors, but instead, I’m talking about those who run the store.  At my first job I didn’t really have much direct contact with them and that’s the way I liked it.  They were just these generic (usually male) figures in suits that could’ve been replaced with anyone else and I really wouldn’t have noticed.  That’s not to say some of them weren’t nice but I was a teenager and they were typically older with little in common with myself.  They – probably – only saw me as one in a long line of faceless workers that might not be at that job longer than a year.      As I worked at that same job longer and I grew out of my teenager’s shell, I made more and more friends with most of the workers there.  The supervisors that came and went were usually easy to get along with but I also came into more contact with the store managers since I had been there so long.
     Relationships with managers in retail always swing from one extreme to the other.  They either are complete tightwads who think about nothing other than the job or they are really laidback and relatable.  You get the ones who are only focused on moving up in the business or those who are just cashing in the nice paychecks until something better comes along.

     In the grocery world, I’ve had more of the former than the latter, but that only really affected me when I was a cashier and nearly constantly surrounded by them as they went into and out of their office.  When I was off in other departments, however, I could find ways to avoid them bothering me.  Then again, you would get one or two managers who couldn’t leave you alone because they always had something extra for you to do (you know, besides the 4-5 other things you were trying to get accomplished).  I typically didn’t have many personal conversations with my managers and I preferred that.  I don’t care if a manager tries to be my best friend as long as they let me do my job.  In my years in the grocery retail world, I think I knew 1-2 facts in total about the several store managers I’ve had.

     In the electronics world, I’ve had more direct contact with the managers since the staff and the store are both smaller.  You not only have your supervisor to watch over you but you have several other supervisors who patrol the stores and then there are 3-4 managers who are in charge of everything.  I’ve had one of the best store managers in electronics retail but also the worst store manager.

     The best – let’s just call him Alex – was laidback but also knew how to talk to people as if they were people instead of five-year-olds.  Alex talked to you and seemed to enjoy talking to you.  It wasn’t one of those things where it was forced or awkward.  He could joke around with people but could also put customers in their place when they were being overly obnoxious.  One time, with another manager and a coworker of mine, we had a mini snowball fight toward the end of the night.  How often does one have a snowball fight with their management?  Alex seemed like a pretty straightforward type of guy who, at the very least, presented the image of a person you could talk to about things and felt like he was taking your concerns to heart.

     Sadly, like all the good management people, they don’t last.  They get transferred or a promotion or a better offer from a competitor.  What’s worse is that anyone after that person will pale in comparison.  What’s even worse than that is when that next person isn’t just a letdown but is also truly the worst manager you’ve ever had.  When you go from a nice environment as that to an environment where you dread coming into work each and everyday, things seem truly depressing.

     The worst manager – let’s just call her Karen – was the opposite of Alex.  It was either her way or the highway on a lot of issues.  If she didn’t like you, she really didn’t like you.  When it came to rallying the troops to have “fun”, every word she said felt so forced, as if she was a robot created in a lab with no contact with humans.  Her tone was almost always set to “condescension”.  She treated longtime employees like they were suspected criminals.  Our store lost quite a few good people under her reign than under any of the other managers at that job.

     I hate to say this but I’ve noticed a lot of women managers who seem to take their authority to their heads and act like dictators.  And I feel this is a comment more on the American work environment than anything else.  It’s as if they feel like they have to be harder, stricter, and ruder than their male counterparts just so they can prove themselves capable managers.  Which is ridiculous because I’ve had a number of male managers who were complete buffoons.  And the higher up you found men in management roles, the more idiotic they seemed to me.  If the pay scale was better in women’s favor and more roles of management were opened up to them – not to mention a whole host of different social/economic changes that could take place – I think they wouldn’t feel the need to go mad with power.

     But as it was, whenever Karen tried to have a friendly chat with me about my family or my schooling, I felt like she was mentally ticking off the seconds that the conversation lasted so she would know when she could end it.  This is the mental conversation I pictured Karen having as she talked with me:

     “Okay… now smile as he talks… thirty seconds… nod… forty seconds… say something as a follow-up… okay, now raise your eyebrows in surprise… good, good… almost there… say ‘that sounds nice’… perrrrfect… laugh and then thank him for all his hard work today… and now walk away.  Great!  That’s one conversation down for the day.”

     The only thing I hate more than the fake attempts at being friendly is the fact a lot of managers talk down to their employees like they were all children.  This fact is especially amusing since most of the managers I’ve had in retail were either around my age or younger than I am.  I understand that most electronics stores hire younger people but that doesn’t mean they’re babies.  So stop treating them as such!  Most of my coworkers, while young, are still smart enough to do their jobs, and if you’re hiring them, why don’t you trust them to know what to do?  When you talk down to someone who either doesn’t deserve it or is older than you, you come across as a total douchebag.  Then nobody likes you and everyone looks forward to you being fired or transferred.

     Another awkward development of the Internet age is friend requests on Facebook.  Now, I’m not talking about every person you’ve ever worked with requesting to be your friend despite only saying 3 words to you in over a year of working together.  No, I’m talking about managers who request to be your friend.  I get the fact that some just want to spy on their workers to see what they say about their jobs (and if that’s the case, do they really think we don’t know what they’re trying to do?) but others just either want to keep an eye on people’s behaviors outside of work or truly want to be their friend.  Either way, there’s danger ahead.  I’ve friended a few managers on Facebook but I try to keep that number low – only those who I think are genuine in their request – or I wait for them to have left the store before doing so.

     But what do you do when they request your friendship?  Do you accept it and patrol what you say?  Do you ignore it and then constantly wonder if that manager is going to bring up the fact you haven’t added them on Facebook yet?  Don’t you just hate that?  I don’t do a very good job of patrolling my own thoughts but I’ve learned to deal with the fact that if managers want to judge me on what I say on some stupid social site then that’s their prerogative and I can always find another job doing something else.

     If managers are going to go the route of acting like our friends then don’t act like our warden the next minute.  That will just breed resentment and hostility in your workers.  Nobody likes a two-faced manager.

     I just wish that if all of these managers are forced to attend the same brainwashing training seminar, the seminar instructors teach them how to fake being relatable better.  Because most of them are doing a horrendous job of it.  Again, I don’t think managers have to be our best friends but if they’re going to try and be friendly then look up what the word “friendly” means in the dictionary.  Otherwise, just go about doing your business and I’ll do mine.  Hey, I’m just here to try and help you managers become better people, is all.  You’re welcome.

More soon from the frontlines...