May 2007

I ended up having another sixteen hour day today. I am very quickly getting tired of that and am ready to start bashing heads in. One of my managers started whining around noon that his entire afternoon shift had called in and he didn’t know what to do. I helped him cover the shift but also suggested that it might be wise to not schedule them anymore. He knew when he made the schedule who was unreliable and who was not.

I am going in tomorrow morning, but it is my only chance for a partial day off between now and Sunday so I am going to try and get out of there by nine or ten and come home. I will just have to cross my fingers and hope everyone shows up.

I guess that they decided that no phone calls were warranted last night. Lucky me. I ended up staying and cleaning until about seven PM last night and came home. Everyone showed up for work on the graveyard shift, which is a good thing. I actually managed to get six hours of sleep for the first time this week. So far I figure I have worked 44 hours since I picked up the three stores. Since Thursday. I am trying to figure out a way to get tomorrow off right now and it just doesn’t look real likely. I may just arrange to get a cook in there and take care of the drawer changes but come home in between.

When I did get home last night the wife ran me a hot bath to soak in which was nice, and the four year old decided to come in an serenade me with songs on her electronic piano. She kept that up for quite awhile, which was very cute. Something about Santa and I love you…

I’ve been remiss the last couple of days in posting. I can always tell because since I only keep a few days on the main page my sidebar is getting longer than the actual content. Oh well, it’s not that I don’t love you or anything. It’s not you at all, it’s me…

This is my weekend open track-back post for May 5th and 6th. Nothing spectacular. If you are interested in sharing your work and participating in the open linkfest, head on over to http://www.linkfests.us/ and see how its done.

Submit your best work, your lousy work, whatever. Just share the linkage and your stories and give other blogs the opportunity to let your readers check them out as well.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, A Blog For All, 123beta, Adam’s Blog, The Pet Haven Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, Cao’s Blog, Phastidio.net, The Amboy Times, , Pursuing Holiness, Rightlinx, The Magical Rose Garden, third world county, Woman Honor Thyself, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, The Right Perspective, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, The Yankee Sailor, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

…working for me.

Yesterday was not quite as long as Thursday, but just as hard. I started out at my store that has no manager, got the paperwork done, had to cover a couple of waitresses, and got my food pull and banking done at which time I went down to the store that does have a manager. He was off Thursday and Friday, so I was running that one as well. The guy that they have had working as relief manager ended up calling a cook in and sat on his ass all day. The stores are still pretty nasty but I may be making a bit of headway there.

2PM and back to the 1st store. Got them going and got a bit of cleaning finished and headed back down to the 2nd store so that I could give them a bit of direction.

I managed to come home and nap for a couple of hours and headed back out around eight or eight thirty to do shift change. I spent an hour or so at the top of the hill (the store without a manager) and then went to the bottom and took care of getting them staffed and set up with a fresh drawer. I managed to get home last night about 10:45 and got to sleep about 11:30.

1AM and my phone rings. It’s the retards working the graveyard shift at the top of the hill and they have done something to the register and it won’t do anything. We cover the emergency releases on the cash registers so that they can’t get in it except to make transactions, which means that after about 25 minutes of trying to walk them through getting it to work, I head back in to work.

One of them had left their ink pen in the drawer and the little thumb clicker thing on the end had become jammed so that the drawer wouldn’t open. If the drawer is jammed it won’t let you ring anything else up. Luckily the last thing I had grabbed before leaving the house was a big flathead screwdriver. No reason, I just thought I might need it to pop the plate off of the release cover. I was able to use it to get the drawer un-jammed. I went ahead and did a mid-shift drawer change just to make sure none of them were padding the drawer, and left. I managed to get home and back to sleep about 3 AM and got back up at 6.

Once I got the two stores staffed that had three people call in this morning I came back home. I’ll sleep a couple more hours and head BACK in to work about noon or one. Since I will be getting a new manager for the top of the hill, there is a pretty big checklist that I have to have done before Tuesday. Cleaning, supplies, etc. All of these stores are shitholes. Possibly the nastiest fucking places I have worked at in twenty years. I have to have one of them clean by Tuesday. Needless to say I am pretty much fucked for the rest of the weekend but at least I will get a manager out of the deal. She checks into the store on Tuesday, then has Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. That is bullshit. One of my other managers is off Monday and Tuesday and the other is off Friday and Saturday so I have to get them covered as well. I am going to try and take next Sunday and Monday off if my boss will let me.

Enough bitching I am going back to bed.

I had every intention of coming home today and posting something long and witty but I am going to take a nap instead. Running two stores without managers is a pain in the ass.

…this morning when I left for work around six AM. I just now walked back in the house. I guess the sixteen hour work days are for, at least for a short while. I spent most of the morning at one of my stores. I couldn’t even count the cash and inventory until I had put an entire weeks worth or paperwork together.

It only took me about 30 minutes at the next one, he had everything ready for me, thank god.

The best part of the day came at my 3rd store where I charmed the manager with my wit and humor and he quit. Damn, that sucks. I will be running that store in addition to my district for about ten days before I get another manager in there. He was actually on his last week of a two week notice anyway, and I think he was planning on leaving today. There was no surprise or anything in it, except on my part. SURPRISE BUDDY!!

I only had two people call in today, plus two more I had already covered shifts because they hung the manager yesterday, and ALL of my night shift people showed up, so I consider than a win.

Once I had the banking and food pull finished for both stores I had to drive to Oxford Alabama and sit in a management meeting where I tried my darnedest not to fall asleep and drool all over the place. That’s why I just got here. I don’t have a heck of a lot more to post about tonight. I started about five different posts this morning but nothing more than a sentence or two, maybe I will make a collage and post them in the morning.

…is tomorrow. I have to go through all three stores doing audits and inventories, as well as pick up all of the weekly paperwork to turn in at my meeting tomorrow. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that everyone shows up. The manager of what is probably going to be my biggest problem store is off for the next two days. I gave him a short list of things he had to do before he started his days off basically as a test to see if he would do as I asked. It is also the slowest store, so he has had plenty of time since I asked him for the stuff last weekend to get it done.

I have meetings all evening in Alabama and probably won’t get home until pretty late tomorrow evening but will try and get a couple of posts up in the morning, if I am not too brain dead.