Grumble Grumble Grumble

I am finding it hard to stay chipper today. My day started nice and normal enough. Get up, get breakfast, pull together the things I needed for work, give Frank a kiss and off I go. For once even the drive in didn't showcase any creative drivers. Then I pulled up to work to see my boss getting out of her car...

Don't get me wrong, I like my boss, it's just that I know when she's in that early the day is going to be tense. It was then that I remembered she had decided in an effort to make communication better in the back shop she was going to come in early and "facilitate". This has not and will not ever go over well back there, partially because they are stubborn, partically because she isn't good at it.

But then I think, hey, I'm borrowing trouble. I get upstairs, she's in a whirlwind of tension and I just want my coffee. After 3 times asking if she could open a program I had taken offline to back up I finally tell her she can, and she's off to the next thing. She doesn't wait well.

Will came in and I yell my usual good morning...silence. I get up to make sure we don't have an unscheduled visitor, nope, it's Will. So I say good morning again, he grunts at me. He was sick most of last week and still looks it. I ask how he feels, he shrugs. I ask if there's anything wrong, he shrugs. I say he still looks under the weather, he finally verbalizes he's tired. I tell him the boss is in the back with Tony going over the orders of the day and he rolls his eyes. Really? How old are we? And this before he knows WHY she's back there.

Next in is Connie. Her mom is moving today so I expected her to be out of sorts. I call good morning, hear a mumble, and come out to see how she is. She mumbled something else at me, I have no clue what and slumped toward the back shop. It was at this point I sat down at my desk and started to feel a little grumpy. Seriously, can no one say good morning back? I've given up on getting an unprovoked one. I will say that at least Tony answers me back cheerily when I say it, so 1 out of 3 is something.

Then I think, hey, it isn't their responsibility to keep me chipper and I don't have to let their general funk infect me. This is when my boss came back up front complaining that the boys don't say good morning to each other and this has her in a nasty mood now. So I tell her what I'd just decided, she didn't get it and continues on the rant. Great. I find pictures of our gummy bears online in the hopes that cheers her up, it manages to distract her. Sort of like throwing a steak at a charging bear, it might slow it down but probably not for long.

Then the bright part of my morning arrives. Beverly comes in with a smile and big Good Morning. Yay Beverly! What would I do without her? She is unfortunately followed by the Fedex driver who has a truck full of puppets for us. He's about 2 hours early and the guys don't have time to unload him at this point. This is where my boss gets involved, whee. She decides that since the driver can run a forklift he'll bring the crates off the truck and she and Connie will take them from there. Have I mentioned that my boss recently had shoulder surgery? So down I go to witness the birthing of this fiasco. Will comes down after us (thank you!) and he runs the forklift while my boss does her level best to run me over with 6o0 lbs of wood and puppet 6 times over. I really hate unloading with her and try to head it off at every chance I can.

This is also the point where she tells us we are not allowed to lift anything over 10 pounds. Well great, I should just go home now because I can't do my job without lifting things between 20 and 25! If it's over 10 lbs we need a buddy. I understand why but I still think it's dumb. The logic seems to be you aren't allowed to lift anything over 10 lbs by yourself, but as long as you have 2 people 600 lbs is fine. So this is the latest issue, which will shortly be followed by "why isn't stuff getting done?" Well because I can't swim without a buddy and there isn't a buddy available!

It is now 10 AM and I want to go home. Any joy has been sucked out of me, the tension in the office is making me anxious and my nose is runny...whine whine whine...

Quitter

Yup, as of yesterday I'm a quitter. Though I don't know if they've realized it yet...

So I went in on Friday to find they'd scheduled me to work on Black Friday, which I expected. What I didn't expect was that I'd be "manager on duty" which is their term for the chick with the keys. Or as I like to think of it "She who gets yelled at". Not really comfortable with that. The night was long, and though I like working with Suzie she stresses about how long we are there cleaning up so at 10 she asked me to clock out and I worked another 45 minutes. This isn't the first time, but I decided it was the last. It's just not cool.

So I got home around 11, saw Frank for the first time that day, had dinner and went to bed. Oh the excitement. I'd been feeling like I was absent from my own life since this experiment started and not liking it. I miss Frank even though we live together, the animals aren't getting much attention, the house is a mess, I'm tired all the time and I was talking to Greg about getting together and realized we couldn't find a time. All this and I had a party Saturday night.

My original plan had been to work until 9:30 then head to The Lighthouse after, but if I didn't get out until 11 again, and had to get up at 8 for work the next morning I was going to be miserable and there was no point in going! I'd made a costume and was really looking forward to it, so I decided to be irresponsible and call out of work. I knew we had an extra person on that night because I was "training," not that there had been much time to learn things because there was always something more pressing, so I didn't feel too bad about it. I called early and explained I had a family emergency and wouldn't be in. Well it was an emergency, I missed my family and I'd backed out on looking at wedding rings with Frank twice already, I wasn't going to do it again!

No one seemed to care, so I went on my merry way. We looked at some nice rings in the North East, grabbed some Chinese, braved the Franklin Mills Mall (where after 30 minutes I asked if we could go back to civilization), watched a little Batman and Robin from the 1930s and got in a nap before heading out. Oh the party was such fun and it was so nice to see folks! Plus I won a prize for my costume, as did Frank! Whoo hoo!

Sunday morning I crawled out of bed and headed to work where there was a hornet's nest of activity. It seems our manager was incommunicado, they weren't sure if I was coming in Sunday and didn't have my phone number, plus there was a computer issue the night before. So Sunday was completely over scheduled and we still could have used more people. I hate the way they schedule, there are never enough hands even when they know it's going to be a zoo because of a sale.

Anyhow, Sayrah and I were both shunned as we had both called out once that week. Sayrah was still obviously sick and I would have sent her home, but it wasn't my call and no one was talking to us anyhow. So by the end of the night I'd definitely decided to turn in the resignation letter I had in my pocket. But there was no one to resign to as the manager was probably on vacation (no one was sure, but there was a rumor) and the assistant manager wasn't in. So I labeled it with both of their names and left it on the keyboard in the office.

Unfortunately I left my jacket behind and I'm trying to decide how much I like it, if it's worth retrieving...

Things I've learned...

So in the 3 weeks I worked at Joann Fabrics I learned some disturbing things:

1-My coworkers hate it there. So why stay?
2-You don't so much get trained as have instructions hollered to you from across the store as things come up
3-The customer is the enemy. I swear they complain about the customers when they are still present!
4-If you call out you will be shunned the next day-it's like you are an invisible fairy that works there but no one interacts with you.
5-After a week I deduced my manager's name was Sue
6-After 3 weeks I learned Suzie was actually the assistant manager.
7-I don't like working for free
8-Both the amount of the discount and when you get it are top secret. No one will discuss it. In fact, I haven't seen my coworkers use it.