Tuesday, August 27, 2013

So Much Can Happen In A Day...


So, for some inane reason (maybe work?), it has been taking me a week to write/finish a blog post. Usually what happens is that I get the meat done in one shot of verbal diarrhea, then it's a matter of the potatoes and vegetables being added to make it a square meal before I post it. With that in mind, most of this was written in one shot; the ending is what I finished up today in an effort to get it off of edit/draft and posted. Is it just me or can you completely tell in my writing style where the one shot of verbal diarrhea ends and the "let's get it finished" part begins???
 ___________________________________________________
Wow, it's been a whirlwind of a week!! Last Sunday, when I was finishing up the previous post (all I had to do was grammar check & add photos, which took me a week to do!!), I was also applying for unemployment to help with my eight (8!) hours a week schedule at Sad Corporation. Karmically, on page 4 of 8 (I think), my boss called and asked if I wanted to come in for an eight hour shift, which I jumped all over, of course. I found it karmically hilarious, but then I usually do. I worked the 8 from hell, came home exhausted and worked out with Mom that I would go with her to the Laundromat to help her out and that way I could earn some extra dough. (If you're paying attention, that's a total of 3, yes - 3, jobs. None of which are full-time, permanent, or stable to live off of separately). Needless to say, it was exhausting thinking about it.

Now, I need to do some background on this one before I continue...:

I have grown up (as a child, not as a grown-up) in four houses in my entire life, three of which are literally adjacent to each other. See crappy drawing below:
Ok, that pretty much sums it up. The "u" represents the Jeremie St. cul-de-sac. The lines are two separate brick walls; it's the very back one, next to the Jeremie house, where Mr. Pigg put in a locking wooden fence (so not everyone could use it), and we walked from there to our Grandparents, or to the neighborhood 7/11, which was five houses to the left of my Grandparents house. My sister and I would "go to the Store" (which is the continuous refrain in our house) for milk, my dad's cigarettes (it was the 80's people!! No judging!), bread, and my mother's never-ending need for Dr. Pepper Super Big Gulps. Essentially, I have been going to this store since I was 9years old, so for almost 30 years now. Seriously. The only time period I did not go to the 7/11 was when I lived in Fresno (I mean HELL) for 13 years. Needless to say, I knew the managers and the clerks as I saw them sometimes three times a day. When I moved back home in 2007, I started going back to the store (for the usual suspects, particularly the Dr. Pepper), and got to know the clerks and new manager. The clerks were actually the owner's kids, who worked their butts off at the store, along with their mother. The new manager is from Sri Lanka, and incessantly flirts with anything that has a vajayjay (who has a child, age 8, and "fiancee" here in the States, and a family and wife back in Sri Lanka), and who constantly tried to flirt with me. He did ask me out eventually, but I told him I'd love to go to lunch as FRIENDS ONLY, but not as anything else - ever (not my type, especially with the loads of already married/engaged thing). I always gave him grief to hire me, and eventually started talking to Donna (the owner's wife) and Ashlie (the daughter) about hiring me. It became a running joke between the three of us, although the Manager said he couldn't hire me because then he couldn't date me. THAT was a running joke also... They knew how bad things were getting at work, and couldn't understand how a company could expect their employees to perform when they were treating them the way they were treating me - and this is only regarding hours; I didn't disclose all of the other crapola I was dealing with at work. 

Ok, now ya'll are caught up with the background. So, returning to Monday night, sitting at the Laundromat, waiting til it's time to go in and start cleaning the store up for closing (we usually wait until the least amount of people is in there at around 9pm), when I get a phone call from a number I don't recognize. But, fortunately, they leave a message (so many don't), and I got a text simultaneously. It was Ashlie from the store, who wanted to know if I was interested in coming in and working for her parents at the Store. Um, hell to the yes?!?!!!! We set up my coming in the very next morning (turns out that they were having to fire 2 employees for theft, 1 whose last day was a week from that Thursday, and Ashlie going to run her boyfriend's auto shop by September 1. Five major openings in a matter of weeks, so they desperately needed help). She mentioned that she and her mom over-ruled Tom (owner/dad) on hiring me, because he was worried that - because I was a girl - I wasn't going to be able to do the heavy lifting they needed doing (literally and figuratively). I owe Ashlie a great deal because she really went to bat for me, putting her ass on the line to get me hired. Donna hit up my brother for my phone number (I told ya'll, it's a family tradition), and the rest is history. I started on Tuesday, and today will be my seventh day straight. I didn't care how many hours they gave me, as long as it's over 20, and they will give me a weekend off if I need one (and I won't lose 1/2 of two paychecks in order to do so!), let me take time off to go to Oregon to see the Monkey, and are starting me at a higher wage than Sad did, with raises every six months to a year. The kicker: my commute is a three minute walk. Hell to the yes I'll work for ya'll!!! And I'll take as many hours as ya'll want to give me (hence the seventh day in a row). It just so happens that my glasses and favorite bandanna already matched the uniform!
I'm working the swing shift (3-10 or 11pm), and will definitely be working weekends, unless I need one off. I already have the days off for my BFF Sugar Skull's baby shower in September. My nails are shot, and I get to wear jeans or black pants (but no skirts, sad panda), and capris are ok too. I'm exhausted because I was/am still doing the tubes, and have been helping my mom at the Laundromat, plus it's the week before the Red Wave. But I am happy. Purple has been in several times to say hi and visit, and a lot of the Sad people have been in and out, or promised to come by.

Which leads me to... what to do about Sad Corporation. I started 7/11 on Tuesday morning, and my next scheduled day to work Sad was Wednesday night, a 3.5hr closing shift. As I worked at 7/11 on Wednesday, I realized that I would have to take all of my PTO, all 12 hours of it, that week or I would lose it (because they were not cashing out PTO - aka Paid Time Off - any longer when someone left). Which was fine with me, because I was 1. exhausted (see above explanation) and 2. not looking forward to going to Sad. Wednesday I ended up calling out with a family emergency, went home from 7/11 and slept from pretty much 4pm-4am Thursday morning (I told ya'll I was exhausted! I did get up to eat, but was only up for an hour or so). With the PTO, we were allowed to use it to supplement our paycheck, so I went down to Sad to put in the hours for Wednesday night and to write up the PTO supplement for the rest of the hours of my PTO to be used. Apparently, there had been a new policy placed where the supplement PTO now had to be approved by the Store Manager... who resignedly approved mine. I kept going back and forth in my head on how I was going to leave Sad... going over scenarios with Purple and Ethel... I wanted to just walk in and go off on the managers and walk out. Then I decided I was going to work my last day (Saturday) as scheduled, then quit after that shift was over. I knew that if I said anything prior to the shift about leaving, I would not be allowed to work it fully, and I wanted full control over how I was leaving, and when. That became the plan, then. But Friday night came, and I decided that I really didn't even want to work the last shift, and that I was going to go in on Saturday morning and quit. That Sad didn't deserve my last efforts and time, especially when I was working somewhere that wanted me to come in as much as I could. So the plan changed - again.

And Saturday finally rolled around. It got really hot really fast and I think it definitely contributed to my lack of desire to go down to Sad... even if it was to quit. And I did not feel obligated to anyone in particular about doing this properly, or even in person. I did not feel that there was a mutual respect there that would otherwise compel me to quit in person... so I didn't. I called the call-out phone number, which leads to the answering machine, and quit in a voicemail. No reason why, no explanation, nothing more than "effective immediately, I am resigning my position at Sad Corporation. I will be more than happy to come in a pick up my pay check when it is available, please call me when you have it in." Done and done, and I went back to bed. Guiltlessly. I also texted my immediate boss, who had been nice to me, to give him the heads up, as well as posted a little note on my Facebook status. I have gotten nothing but happy thoughts, well wishes and thumbs up from everyone on this happy occasion.

I got ready for work and missed a call from Sad Corporation. The voicemail was from the HR department, who wanted me to call her back at my earliest convenience. I had nothing else to lose, so I did. I ended up being on the phone with her for a good 30 minutes, and since I was no longer on eggshells or anxious, I didn't feel the need to keep anything back. And therefore, I didn't. I told her about the threats of termination if I said anything "negative" (whether or not I actually said it), of the abuse of my abilities while still being kept at the bottom of the totem pole, and the reason I did not feel the need to respect management by giving a proper notice (which I have never done in my life): I had applied for a full-time position in August 2012. I had never been given an interview, never been told that they had no intention of filling it, and was in fact led to believe that my additional work for the store - outside of my job description - would help with putting me in a full-time position. In July of 2013 - a full year later - the position suddenly disappeared. No word, no explanation, no heads up, no nothing. I told her that I felt extremely disrespected, talently abused, and otherwise defeated. It was this, along with the shortening of hours, that made the decision to leave solidify. I received the stunned silence of an HR manager who had no damn clue as to what was going on in her store. Apologies. And shock. And I felt relief. After a half hour of spilling the worst of my old job, getting it out of my system, I was relieved. I didn't realize that I had been holding it in - I thought that my venting both here and with Purple/Ethel was enough to keep my stress at bay. Apparently not. I also left her with the sad note that I was not the only person who was unhappy, threatened, abused, and planning on leaving. Without naming names, I made it clear to her that - unless things changed within the store hierarchy - there was going to be a mass exodus, especially of those that had been at the store longest. (Without bragging, because to me, the end of Sad as a retail giant is truly sad for me; I mean, this is a store I grew up going to A LOT with my family and it was historically significant in retail establishment as a significant piece of American life - anyhow, there has been a mass exodus in the two weeks since I have left. I think there has been about 5-10 more people who have left, and many more who are planning on it. And they have cut down their cashwraps to only having 2 - one on each floor - open in the store. Not a good sign.)

And that is the end of a chapter for me.

xoxo, Desilu

No comments:

Post a Comment