Sick to death of drama

Noters Beware!! This is a “mean-note” free diary.

Why does life have to be so up and down all the time? Or is it just me? Sometimes I think I must have pissed off God, if such a being exists. Or many gods, be that the case. The God of Automobiles doesn’t like me, although at the moment he’s being quiet. (Great, I probably jinxed myself now.) The God of Mobile Homes has rebelled against me quite a bit recently. And today, the God of Workplace Relations decided that today wouldn’t be my day. Tomorrow doesn’t look good on that front, either.

We have this employee where I work, a guy, who is seriously lazy. This has been a problem for quite a while, probably over a year. All the rest of the employees have grumbled and moaned about him, and I have complained to the store manager about him on quite a few occasions. Store Manager does nothing. I have no idea why. She seems to be blind to him doing anything wrong.

On our truck day we have tons of stocking to do. Cashiers are usually brought up carts of stock that they are to put out when there are no customers at their registers. We have 3 other cashiers besides this particular guy, and when I work with any of the other 3, they work as hard as possible to get stuff done. Even if it is slammed busy, some of their cart will get done. Not necessarily finished, but at least part way finished.

We have 2 different kinds of carts. Big long blue ones, that we call U-boats and plain old shopping carts. The U-boats, or boats for short, hold boxes and boxes of stock. U-boats are a cart that is about 5 feet long with handles on each side where they can be pushed around. They can be stacked probably about 5 feet high with boxes of stock. So, if boxes are small, like the kind we get shampoo and lotion and other health and beauty items in, you can put probably 60 or so boxes on a boat. Sometimes we will also use some of our shopping carts to put stock in to be put away. Shopping carts are smaller and don’t block the aisles as much.

Tonight I brought up the cashier guy a half a shopping cart of stuff to put away. 5 hours later, it was still there. I blew a cork. I told him that every time I work with any of the other cashiers they get that much done and more, even if we are busy. He tried saying that he hadn’t been able to walk away from his register because it had been so busy. I don’t deny that it was busy, but I don’t think it was so busy that he couldn’t put half a shopping cart away somewhere in a 5 hours span of time. It wasn’t very much stuff. It was a case of Rave hair spray (a case is 6 cans) some Fructis Shampoo, and like 7 or 8 other things.

I didn’t lose my cool until almost 7 pm. Cashier guy got there at 2. I told him that I would cashier for the last hour. And it’s kind of funny. In that last hour, I had busy periods off and on. And I managed to put away 2 shopping carts full of stock. I put away a cart full of the single candy bars that go by the checkout, and a cart of socks and underwear and hair things (barrettes, scrunchies, hair ties, etc.) All in under an hour.

Cashier guy will probably go in to the manager and complain. And the store manager doesn’t always like me for whatever reason. So this could get ugly.

I don’t understand how the manager can not see him for what he is…lazy. He has made statements like, ” I don’t work any harder than I have to.” Even last week, I grumbled about him to the store manager. Each item in the store has a SKU, which stands for Sales Keeping Unit. If, for some reason, the barcode won’t scan, we can type in an items SKU, which is on the price label on the shelf. This cashier has been at our store for going on 2 years. Last week one day, I was ringing a customer up and a can of shaving cream wouldn’t scan. So I asked the cashier guy if he would read me the SKU for it off the shelf label. All SKU’s are 7 digits. Always. Cashier guy goes over there and calls out “11652”. I waited for a few seconds…waiting for 2 more digits. Nothing. So finally, I called out, “Uh, that’s not enough numbers.” And he goes, “Oh, try this”, and then he gives me all 7 digits. On the shelf label, the SKU is written with a dash after the first 2 numbers, like this…09-11652. The first 2 numbers are the department number, and the rest is the items specific number. Every other one of my cashiers knows how many digits are in a SKU. I know this for a fact. I asked them after this happened. Just to see. Cashier guy has worked at our store for longer than any of the other cashiers.

The same day the SKU snafu happened, we had a customer spill hair gel all over some boxes of Theraflu. Whichever customer did it, didn’t bother to fess up to the spill. I found it later, when I was out stocking. There it was, a huge glob of clear gel, on top of like 4 boxes of Theraflu. So I asked Cashier Guy to grab a plastic bag and some paper towels and to help me clean up the mess. Cashier Guy held the bag for me and I dumped the gel that was sitting on top of the Theraflu boxes in the bag, and then I asked Cashier Guy to just wipe the boxes off good. I figured he could handle the rest so I left to continue my stocking. A while later, I asked Cashier Guy what he did with the container of gel that had spilled, because we have to keep track of damaged items, for inventory purposes. There is a sheet on a clipboard where we write down a damaged items SKU and price and what is wrong with it. Cashier guy told me that he threw the container away. I asked him if he wrote it down on the damaged item sheet. He answered no, like he had no clue that we even had to do that. I know for a fact that every other cashier knows about the damaged item sheet. I know their handwriting, and I see items that they have written on there. I don’t see how he could have never had to write an item off, in two years. Not when everyone else writes down several a week, sometimes several in the same day depending on the day. I mean, if a ceramic knick-knack is broken, even right out of the box due to being bounced around on the truck, we still have to keep track of what happened to it, so when inventory rolls around, it doesn’t come up as a missing item. I wonder how much else he has simply thrown away with out writing on the list. I mean, if he dropped a bottle of shampoo and the cap broke, did he just pick it up and throw it away?

Now, I’ll probably get in trouble for speaking my mind to him. But I am tired of having to double time it for him.

He’s a nice guy and he’s great with the customers. He’s friendly, to the point of being overfriendly sometimes. I just don’t know what to do anymore.