work stories

[Dominic]

TigerMegatron's thread got me thinking about this. A few members criticized TM for possible getting one or more people fired from their job at Target. I do not take somebody losing a job lightly.

But, I also doubt that anybody was fired over TigerMegatron making a few phone calls. And, here is why.....

(wavy image and noises as we travel back to the late 1990s)

beeeooowwweeooowwwoowoowwwwoooooooo

It was 1999, (or there abouts). Ricky Martin was at the top of the charts and deep in the closet. Brittany Spears was pretending to be respectable. "The Phantom Menace" had crused the hopes of SW fans. And, TFV members Dom and Ursus were working at a region big box store as floor grunts.

Now, I do not mean to toot my, or Ursus', horn here. And, I am not going to say that we were the best workers they ever had. But, we were probably two of their better workers. We showed up on time, or at least we were consistently tardy. But, this story is not about Ursus or myself, (though there are many such tales, such as how Ursus would often show up an hour late or how I would take my damned lunch when I pleased, and was not shy about it, or the time we both showed up late because "Beast Wars" was moved back an hour one morning and we were not going to miss it.)

No, this is about the company as a whole, and one store in particular.


At the time, before the internet was common, it was not unusual for stores to have comment cards available for customers. Customers could use these cards to anonymously submit messages to the company about the store and its employees. These messages could be complimentary. The could be suggestions. They could even be complaints about the store.

It was also not unusual for management to post these cards around the cash office, (near the time clock), or in other employee areas of the store. And, in the case of the particular store that Ursus and I worked at, the posted customer submissions were predominently complaints.

I do not know if management selected a random sample of customer submissions and posted those. Perhaps management tried to select the (relatively) least offensive cards. Or, given that that place operated, maybe they chose the snittiest comments they could find. I honestly do not know.

But, what I do know is that many of the comments that Ursus, myself and other employees saw every day included the following: (as close as I can recall)

-The store looks like a dump. There are cleaner flea markets.
-You never have advertised items in stock.
-Your store is filthy.
-One day, I was in your store and asked an employee for help. That employee's name was _________."

Yes, you read that last one right. There were written complaints that named specific employees. To my knowledge, none of those employees was ever fired because of a customer complain, if they were fired at all. Hell, if I am remembering correctly, there were a few complaints about managers.

In fact, we were one of the worse stores in the state. (There was 1 other store that was considered worse, if only slightly.) And, we never heard about it.

Every so often, we would get a visit form the corporate office. We would run around frantically for a couple of days before hand, doing our best to make the store somewhat presentable. This usually consisted of making sure that items were off the floor and more or less in the correct aisles. (And, even that standard was loosely adhered to.)

And, still, there was no real penalty. This may have been because the fruits of our labours, even when we went out of our way to make the store look good, made the store look like it would at the end of a bad day. The corporate office may have been crediting us with honesty during their visit.

There are so many stories to be told about that job, and others. And, as I am sure Ursus would agree with me on, many of these stories would make it seem unlikely that somebody would be fired from Target because of an irate phone call or two.

Dom
-and *this* is why we have screen names.

[Mako Crab]

I work with a bunch of people right now that should have been fired long ago. But my company has a no-fire policy. They don't want to risk having to pay unemployment. Sad too, because the people that they would fire are both too lazy and too stupid to bother going to the unemployment office to fill out all the paper work.

[Sparky Prime]

There are a couple people where I work I wonder how they still have the job. A couple guys on the night shift in-particular have a reputation around the store as having bad attitudes and hassling other employees. I don't deal with them that often myself but anyone I've told I've had a problem with them already knows exactly who they are. Yet nobody seems to do anything about it. It might be a different story if they had that attitude around customers, but somehow I doubt they'd loose their jobs even if that were the case.

[Mako Crab]

I used to work at a gas station. Had been there for quite a while and was well respected by everyone. They hire this punk ass kid that comes in and starts blasting his death metal on the radio so loud that you could hear it all the way across the street. I kept turning it down. Told him I didn't care if he listened to it, but not to crank it up so loud that all our customers could hear it. He kept storming over and cranking it back up, louder each time. Finally I just turned it off and that's when he threw his SUPER BIG GULP, which was full of ice, at me. Missed me, but smashed on the wall and completely soaked me.
I had a customer to finish taking care of, and they asked me if everything was all right. I smiled and said everything was fine. After they left, I told the punk ass that he could do whatever he liked. I hopped in my car and took off. Just straight up left work. He was laughing about it and telling everyone, and they were all like, "WTF did you do?! He never EVER leaves work! You must've pissed him off royally!" Kid got fired the next day.

[Onslaught Six]

I am that guy who is lazy at work and does nothing and should have been fired a long time ago. No, I don't care. #jerk

[BWprowl]

I was always generally kind of amazed that the most of the people working the morning shift at my stockroom job were able to keep their jobs, considering the level of self-entitlement they had regarding the issue. Their floors were *constantly* understocked, calling us (I worked the day shift) minutes after they left and all day long for items that they should have had in their inventory (I work in a hospital, so keeping floors stocked with supplies is, in fact, a little bit vital). They would *disappear* during shifts to the point that a 'team lead' position had to be appointed to one of the more trustworthy of their number just so he could essentially function as a babysitter to make sure they would stick around and complete all the tasks they needed to do. So then they complained that they had to have a Team Lead when our shift didn't (God bless our coordinator who, upon hearing this complaint, simply said "They're good enough that they don't need one," LIKE A BAWSS). They also had a elementary-school level of obsessiveness with everyone being appointed equal tasks piecemeal-style, such as everyone threw out cardboard the exact same number of times per day/week (as opposed to, uh... just throwing it out when it needs it and you have the chance), or divvying up their floors to an exacting degree and refusing to help each other if they had spare time just because 'it wasn't fair' or whatever. Really, this is a group of a dozen or so people in their late 30's/40's/50's, and they acted more like a group of children than the adolescents and twenty-somethings who were kicking ass in the shift after them.

My shift, the day shift, had some terrific teamwork. When the aforementioned coordinator first came on, she observed and did assessments of all the shifts, telling them where and how they could improve. She sat down with us when our time came and simply said "I can't find anything you guys can do better. Whatever you're doing, it's working". Mainly because we understood teamwork and the idea that if everyone just did everything as soon as they had the chance, then we'd wind up with a good chunk of chill time by the end of the shift (I'm talking getting done with 1-2 hours of time left to kill), and no one would give a shit if someone had done a little more work earlier since we were all in it together.

Then we got one particular new hire on the day shift.

She did not understand what we understood.

Apparently coming onto this off of a manager job at fucking Taco Bell or something, this fat fuckface would make an artform out of dragging the whole shift down. She quickly laid claim to ONE FLOOR, and found the most efficient way to spend her ENTIRE shift completing one restocking order for them. We actually managed to take that away from her, so then she fell into the habit of being the one to answer calls. Answering calls was something we did AS we were doing the rest of our work, little more than an annoyance, a distraction from the 'real' job: taking inventory of the floors and restocking them for the day. But this lady would spend the entire day sitting by the phone, taking calls for items, putting them out for delivery, and then *not even taking them up to the floors*. She would jab one of her fat fingers at us as we walked by and ask us to take some of these things up when we went up to deliver a somewhat-close floor's inventory. It was not unusual for her to take off at the end of the day, leaving giant pile of undelivered items, some from calls from hours ago. But my other, more competent teammates and I stuck it out. Even on days where one of our prospective number was taken up by her fatass, we were still competent enough to get things done on time. Plus, she came across like something of a drama queen, and we didn't feel like starting shit.

Well anyway, one day, on my day off, I got a call from one of my co-workers telling me that they were sick and not going to be coming in that day, and that this bitch was going to thus be left by herself for the shift. This meant that my boss would probably be calling me to see if I could come in on my day off to assist. I waffled for some time, but ultimately decided to pitch in, so before my manager called me, I called him to let him know that I was aware of the situation and was on my way. Now, I should've expected that just because she thought she was going to be alone for the day, didn't mean this dumb hooker was actually going to get anything done. Indeed, I spent the entire time I was there (having come in, I remind you, on my day off, explicitly to help her in a situation where she would not have had any help) doing EVERYTHING. She sat and answered the phones, and picked maybe one order while I was up inventorying or delivering. So I come to about the seven-hour mark, tired, but happy with the fact that I've accomplished just about everything for the day. Just about. There was one more, rather small floor that needed to be taken care of at the end of the evening. I went to this assbag and told her "Hey, I've taken care of everything else here. I've already done seven hours of overtime on my day off, if you think you can handle this last floor by yourself, I'll just take off for the evening." "I'll be fine, go ahead," she said. And so I left.

I came in the next day to find that the floor had not, in fact, been done at all the previous evening. I profoundly apologized to them, and refilled their stock immediately. I was then told by my co-workers that the bitch had called them up less than an hour after I left, *crying* and *sobbing* about how I had left her all alone with *so much to do*. When I pointed out that she had not even done the one floor that was left, and asked what work she had spent the last two hours of her shift trying to finish, they said that she had apparently been dumping cardboard the entire time (a job that normally takes inside of ten minutes).

Needless to say, I was pretty pissed at such a gross lack of gratitude for what I had done for her. For fuck's sake, I came in, unsolicited by management, on my day off, explicitly to help her. And this was how she reacted to me doing it? What-the-fuck-ever. I silently decided that I was never going to come in for her again, and that helping her was going to be a low priority from then on.

But the plot thickens!

About a week later, we were trying to finish up some orders, and I had a few items that had to be taken up to a particular floor. In a rare moment of trying, the stupid bitch asked me if I wanted her to take them up for me. Well, I was mildly concerned about them going up in a timely fashion, so I declined her offer. Apparently shocked at my refusal of her noble self-sacrifice, she gruffly asked if I "thought she couldn't handle it". I looked her in the eye and said "No, I don't think you can." She snorted and stomped off.

The next day, her *fucking husband* called me up at work to yell at me about how I'd been treating her, and to vaguely threaten me were I not to treat her like the portly taco princess she was. After that experience, I decided fuck not helping, I'm going to avoid interacting with this planetoid as much as I possibly can. So I just hardly spoke to her from that point on.

A few weeks later she faked a hand injury from lifting *a* box (we're a stockroom, we lift boxes from time to time), doctor-shopped for someone who would perform unnecessary surgery on her wrist to maximize the presentable issues it had, and attempted to score workman's comp from the whole thing. When that didn't work, she managed to BS her old job in the stockroom back, but now works on 'light duty' meaning she, that's right, mostly just answers the phone all day.

Meanwhile, I moved up out of the stockroom into Purchasing, where I basically spend all day fearing that I'm not doing my job well enough and that everyone resents for it and that I'm going to get fired any minute now.

[Onslaught Six]

Meanwhile, I moved up out of the stockroom into Purchasing, where I basically spend all day fearing that I'm not doing my job well enough and that everyone resents for it and that I'm going to get fired any minute now.

Talk to someone about this. I'm serious. There actually was a point where I sort of gave a shit about this job (but that day has long passed) and I had similar feelings; so I went to one of my managers and said something similar. "Sometimes I feel like I'm slacking off too much and that I'm not pulling my weight, and maybe my coworkers resent me for it."

The manager looked me dead in the eye and said, "Come over to the other side of my desk. Look at my computer." So I did.

There were like thirty tabs of non-work-related stuff open. For browsing during work. I felt a little better after that. (Of course, eventually that manager got fired. Or quit. I was never sure what happened there.)

[Ursus mellifera]

There are so many stories to be told about that job, and others. And, as I am sure Ursus would agree with me on, many of these stories would make it seem unlikely that somebody would be fired from Target because of an irate phone call or two.

Trust me. NOBODY got fired over this. They may not have even been scolded.

I was about 18 or 19 when I worked with Dom. In the course of my employment I managed to call somebody's child a "schmuck" and shoulder check the store manager into a floor display. I still quit on good terms.

[Dominic]

I can vouch for everything Ursus just posted. (I was there for "shoulder check", but recall it being more of a back-hand.)

I work with a bunch of people right now that should have been fired long ago. But my company has a no-fire policy. They don't want to risk having to pay unemployment. Sad too, because the people that they would fire are both too lazy and too stupid to bother going to the unemployment office to fill out all the paper work.

Why not give them such punishing, if short, schedules that they would have to leave? C'mon, that is an old trick.

They also had a elementary-school level of obsessiveness with everyone being appointed equal tasks piecemeal-style, such as everyone threw out cardboard the exact same number of times per day/week (as opposed to, uh... just throwing it out when it needs it and you have the chance), or divvying up their floors to an exacting degree and refusing to help each other if they had spare time just because 'it wasn't fair' or whatever.

This kind of bullshit is common in schools and hospitals actually. But, damn, that is extreme. Lemmee guess, the night shift has a union. You guys do not.

I came in the next day to find that the floor had not, in fact, been done at all the previous evening. I profoundly apologized to them, and refilled their stock immediately. I was then told by my co-workers that the bitch had called them up less than an hour after I left, *crying* and *sobbing* about how I had left her all alone with *so much to do*. When I pointed out that she had not even done the one floor that was left, and asked what work she had spent the last two hours of her shift trying to finish, they said that she had apparently been dumping cardboard the entire time (a job that normally takes inside of ten minutes).

Card board disposal is the kind of make-work you save for when you want a break, but do not want to sign out. The fact she pulled that shit in a hospital is astounding.

If nothing else, it would make sense to make the damned deliveries as much as possible in order to be seen and do a bit of glad handing. (But, hey, more opportunity for you, right?)

I bet that she is great fun at the company BBQ.

Meanwhile, I moved up out of the stockroom into Purchasing, where I basically spend all day fearing that I'm not doing my job well enough and that everyone resents for it and that I'm going to get fired any minute now.

Calm down big guy. You got the job because the bosses upstairs trust you. Do not take kick backs. Avoid having lunch with reps from drug companies, and pay reasonable attention to your ledgers.


Dom
-still laughing about Ursus' post.

[Ursus mellifera]

I can vouch for everything Ursus just posted. (I was there for "shoulder check", but recall it being more of a back-hand.)

The more I think about it I recall I actually just violently shoved him out of the way, but still... I shoved the store manager, and he didn't even reprimand me.

Target doesn't care about an employee who argued with some fanboy.