I Was "So Ready" for This Day OFF from Work

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I ended up calling in yesterday to ask if I could come in two hours later because the first plan wasn't working well.


Lexia was obviously too sick to GO TO THE HOSPITAL as a "visitor" and wait there until someone left to go get Felisia at school.


I had gotten her up and took her with me to deliver Felisia to school. When we got back she only played for a little while. I was sitting here (probably doing my last post) and she pulled her little rocker in here, and her blanket, and a toy phone. She sat there a litte while and massaged her feet with my foot massager, played with the phone just a bit, then she pulled that blanket up around her, laid her head back and ... and I went and got another blanket and folded it up and put on the back of her chair so she'd be more comfortable....and she went off to sleep just sitting in that rocker. She slept there for a long while.

Lexia

After awhile, I got up and went to the kitchen. She woke up went to the potty, came in the kitchen and climbed up to the bar, asked for a cookie and some milk. I gave it to her. She ate one cookie and drank a little milk, then she got down, got her blanket and went and got in the BED and went back to sleep.


So, I knew she did NOT need to go to the hospital. I called work and asked if I could come in later. Then I made arrangements to meet Felicia at 1:30. She was going to come then, get Lexia, go by home, then pick up Felisia at school and take both of them to her mother's for the weekend.


Daxton was to stay in the hospital until Monday anyway.

Daxton in the hospital

When I got to work, one of the first things I do is look at the schedule to see how many will be there for the evening because that makes a difference in how much time I need to allow for recovery.


WOW!


I was the ONLY PERSON "on the floor". (We had someone in fabrics, but she can't leave fabrics. We had people in the frame shop, but they can't leave the frame shop.) There was no Home Accents persons there at all. No one in floral. (Our seasonal employee transferred to the other store in town right after inventory.) No one in art, or hobbies, or wearables, or crafts, or party supplies.


NO ONE BUT ME.


I had been thinking-- before I got there-- that I would be able to do some on my order because I'm off today. And they are getting adamant about getting the order DONE before noon on Monday. But they are also often scheduling me to not come in until noon on Monday (or even one o'clock).


So, I went to the boss and said, "Do you want we to order or recover? I'm the only one here tonight."


"Both."


"There's no way I can get both of those things done tonight."


"Well, you'll just have to figure out a way."


"Then I will only be able to order outs"


Ordering "outs" is a way to do an expedited order and can take less time because instead of checking every item -- like we're supposed to-- and keeping the stock level up to where they want it, you just go through and look for empty pegs and empty shelf spots, and order those. In my department, even that takes awhile but it obviously does not take the amount of time corporate has decreed that I should take to do my order. As I've said in the past, THEY SAY I need 6.3 hours JUST TO ORDER.


"NO. I want you to do a good order."


"I can't. I just won't have time to do a good order and recover."


"Mitchi. I am getting irritated at you. You will have to figure this out." At some point he must have called me stupid, because there was a customer who came up to me later and said that he did. She was very upset at the way he talked to me.


I could see I was not going to get anywhere with the conversation because he obviously could not grasp that I couldn't do a "good order" when I wasn't being given the time to do it.


The schedule for next week was not posted but later when it was found, I learned that-- thankfully-- I do come in at 8 on Monday, so I would not have to do a "good order" AND recover everything as well.


One of the things that he said to me in our conversation was that he didn't understand why I had been able to do it before and couldn't do it now.


Well, that was not true. But I didn't point out how I knew it to be untrue at that point because he was already UPSET at the thoughts of me NOT doing a "good order". But buried back in this blog somewhere, you may find reference to the fact that way back in early December I had decided if I was not going to be given time to order properly, then I would just order outs. And I did that for weeks.


He would have gone ballistic on me if I had told him that. But, later I went back to him, after he was calmed down and explained, "Way back, when I was having difficulty with getting all the work done that I have to do, YOU ASKED ME, "How can we help you if we don't know you have a problem?" 

I told him that at that time I determined that I would communicate my problems to him more effectively and that was what I was trying to do and, that it was NOT that before things had been going well and I was getting it all done, but it was that I was not communicating to him the problems I was having.  (And, the truth is, I really didn't try to communicate any kind of problem to him during the last couple months because I knew that he really couldn't do anything to correct them.  We had too few cashiers, had to hire a policeman,   a lot of people were sick, and other stuff ... things he had actually couldn't "fix" so it would have been unreasonable of me to say anything.  I decided to let it all work itself out until after inventory when things should be getting "back to normal".  Does that sound familiar?)


So, he told me he'd hired another cashier and a stock person and that finally, they had caught up with their payroll issues so that they weren't behind with it, so perhaps he could get me some help.


And I did tell him that the previous managements had always scheduled me to work early on Mondays and had not had me on call to the registers on order day. (I didn't add that the one who had managed for ten years also recognized I needed more time to get out my freight and did not schedule me  as a back up on freight days except in the early morning hours when he realized I had a big order to get out. Also, they didn't demand that we have our order completed by noon on Mondays.   I figured I'd be pushing my luck to add that. )


As it was I felt like I'd made this guy so mad that one more "communication" would have got me fired.


So, communication does NOT work with him. 

When you try to approach someone logically with the thought, "I know everyone is griping about not having enough time to get their work done, but I'm trying to point out that it is NOT ME who has decided how long it should take me to do this department; it was corporate that decided how long it should take a person to do it, and I'm not being given the amount of time that THEY have determined I need to do it," and saying that is just the same to him as everyone else saying, "I (meaning me, myself, just I) can't get this done in the amount of time I'm being given" when CORPORATE has determined that they need MUCH LESS TIME than they are taking.


The really strange things about it is that he's willing to admit that it takes MORE time for most employees to get the order done in other departments than what they have said it should take, but he still insists that I do ALL THAT HAS TO BE DONE --recovery, filling in as a cashier, AND order-- in LESS time than just the order itself should take me.


So....


I guess I'll just go back to the way I did things before.


Come to think about it. THAT was what made him mad. I just remembered that was what really blew his gasket.  After I had tried to reason with him and he said "Do it all anyway", I said, "I guess it's just not going to help to tell you what my needs are." THAT is when he said, "Mitchi, you're really irritating me."


Anyway, I had to tell the lady who heard the whole conversation, who demanded to know who that man was who had talked to me like he did so she could report him, to please NOT do that. When she found out he was my manager, she was appalled.   I said, He's under a lot of pressure himself from our district manager and it won't help me for you to say anything. She was really upset. I'm not sure I calmed her down enough to keep her from saying anything even yet. Time will tell. I do NOT think it would benefit my cause in any way for her to "take up for me". THAT would really irritate him. And one thing this guy does not mind doing is firing people.  He's fired more people in the few months he's been here than were fired for all of the previous ten years I worked at this place.


So I have decided that I just need to keep a low profile, do my job as good as I can -- which I have always endeavored to do from the beginning-- and NOT think about all this any more than I have to.


Today I get to go eat lunch with my brothers and tonight I'm going to keep kids so Jef and Jeni can go to something Jeni wanted to "take" Jef to. I think they also plan to make it their special Valentine's date.


I suppose Tim and Felicia will survive the weekend without me since her kids have gone to her mother's and Daxton will be in the hospital under good care all weekend.