I hatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehatehate my job. And I'm really not a hateful person. Normally, I dislike the word and prefer not to use it, but in this case it's actually a bit of an understatement.
I realized a while ago that I was much too smart to be wasting my time slicing meat and making sandwiches for spoiled rich assholes. However, the job market isn't exactly booming for English majors with poor-to-moderate computer skills, so I'm pretty much stuck here until I can find something better. Or until I finish up my MAT (if I'm not royally screwed over again, admission-wise) and get a job in the school system.
Why the sudden vehemence? Well, it's not entirely sudden. More like a seething rage that's been bubbling and building for several long months. It started out small, with the crappy mid- or closing shifts that no one particularly cared for but that I seemed to get stuck with with alarming regularity. It wasn't so bad when I could spend my nights playing video games and my mornings sleeping in, but when I started back to school it got a lot harder to schedule in study time. Especially when the library was only open while I was an hour away, catering to morons. The fact that my complaints and pleadings seemed to fall on deaf managerial ears only compounded my frustration.
The proverbial straw, however, was tonight's little incident. See, our deli has three sections: fried chicken, subs, and traditional/sliced meat. I was working in traditional, and I asked the next person in line what I could get for him. He mumbled something about a sub, so I pointed out the sub line and moved down to help. There were already two people waiting, but they were being taken care of so I asked the man to repeat his order. He mumbled some more, and I had to ask a few times before I finally ascertained that he wanted a Philly (the bane of any "sandwich artist"'s existence). I turned to get his bread, and when I came back, he had disappeared. The other customers in line were as confused as I, so I just moved on to the next patron. After about 5 minutes, the man (I'll call him "Phil") still hadn't returned. It turned out that he had gone up to the front to complain about me to the manager. About what, I still haven't a clue. But it was bad enough to almost earn me a write-up. I say "almost" because one of the other customers who had been waiting in the sub line was checking out at the same time, saw Phil complaining about me, waited until he left, then went to the manager and told him that he had been there the whole time and saw that I had done nothing wrong. He then came over and told me the same thing. The store manager never came to ask my side of the story, just called the assistant deli manager and told her to write me up. After she heard about the second man backing me up, she went to the manager herself and told him that she didn't want to write me up because she had received two conflicting accounts and didn't know what had actually happened. She was actually told to make Phil's sandwich and give it to him for free because of the incident, and when she took it up to him he apologized profusely, saying that he "hadn't wanted to go to the manager." First of all, then why did you? And second of all, if I'm the one at fault, why are you apologizing? Guilty conscience, maybe?
Whatever. I'm just glad that second guy was nice enough to come to my defense, because he saved me from a blemish on my otherwise spotless customer-service record. Not that I care all that much. I begged the deli manager to suspend me for a week (which is, believe it or not, typical punishment for such an infraction) - it would give me more time to study, see my boyfriend, and look for another job. She just laughed and told me not to worry about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment