Sheesh, talk about work schedules.
What with erratic, and long, work hours, plus the care and feeding of der Brucer, I've been errant and truant in these parts. And it doesn't end with today, because I've been called in to fill in until closing this evening. This was scheduled to be a day off. I'll day off on Saturday, instead.
Take yesterday, for instance. Superbowl Sunday, I get pegged for the closing shift. Before the game, there's business. After the game starts, everything is quiet. Very quiet. It's just me, Stacy as our front end manager, and Debbie. Debbie leaves at nine, so it's just the two of us at the front of the store.
We're to close the doors at ten, normal Sunday schedule. So, ten minutes before ten, a couple of big, beefy guys saunter in, one talking on his cell phone the entire time, casing the joint, the other referring to me as "Mister Boss Man" when I greet him. Oh, yeah, they're cool. The other guy buys a bottle of water, they saunter out when they realize they've been watched the entire time and that they aren't going to be able to pull anything. They've been recorded by the video cams, they don't even think about that.
Two minutes before closing, two other guys, separate from each other, come dashing in for last minute purchases.
Stacy has already annouced that the store will be closing in ten minutes, five minutes. She's locked the doors, announced that the store is closed. I head to the men's room for a quick dump (man, those chili leftovers were tasty but next time I'm not making it with beans), and on my way I find yet ONE MORE CUSTOMER!!!
With a FULL CART!!!
Yep, he'd heard the time warnings, but he'd been given a check for two hundred and fifty by his girlfriend and needed to fill his cart with that much groceries before he could leave.
So of course I headed back to my register, to check him out (he wasn't my type, nowhere near) and he's got short of the amount, but he's within the fifty dollar cash back amount.
But the computer won't accept the check. Doesn't recognize the account, will not allow any cash back, nada.
Stacy goes through the procedure, comes up with the same result. He gets his girlfriend on the phone, she's just telling him to buy more, but the check isn't going to clear, and since it's her check, not his, he doesn't have the correct driver's licence to verify the check.
They don't get the groceries. Boo-hoo. He leaves in a huff. Too bad.
This leaves me with less than an hour to get everything that is in the cart back on the shelves, some of the stuff needing to get back on the shelves RIGHT NOW because it's refridgerated goods and needs to get back in the cool chests. Good thing I know the store as well as I do, and bag like items together, because I got everything back on the shelves in something like forty minutes, not bad for a cart as full as his was.
So, tonight I get to close again. Lots of fun. Hopefully it will be quieter than last night.
But now I'm wondering about how my schedule is being worked. I closed on Thanksgiving. I closed on Christmas Eve. I closed on New Years Eve. And now I've closed on Superbowl Sunday.
It's almost like management wants to have a guy at the registers on holiday closings. Like, maybe, I'm just a little more imposing than the other cashiers could be, just because I'm six foot two and male. Instead of female.
It makes sense to me. No reason for management not to take advantage of their staff, for whatever reason.
And that's why I've been E&T.