For Whom the Bell Tolls

Well, had another spectacular week so far.

Last Friday an employee’s wife, who had been recently moved to hospice care, lost her two-year battle against cancer. I stopped by her viewing on the way home Saturday, and since everyone else was off, in a meeting, on leave, or on vacation it fell upon me to attend her funeral on Monday to represent the store. There were several hourly associates who worked with him that showed up at the funeral as well.

We received word yesterday that one of the managers at another store in out district had passed away, also from cancer. He worked at the district store, and I met him briefly during my training. He was a good guy. He had been a Facility Manager at one point in his career, but had stepped down to my level sometime in the year or so preceding my promotion. Everyone in my training class wondered if he had actually chosen to step down or had he been offered the choice of stepping down or separating his relationship with the company. Looking back on it the cancer may have had something to do with it, but I’ll never know. His funeral is Thursday and the entire district is being stripped of hourlies and managers in order to staff the two stores in that city so everyone can attend the funeral. My store alone, even with the Facility Manager and two of my fellow managers out on medical leave as well as a Senior Manager on vacation are being required to send eight hourly employees and one salaried manager for most of the day.

Took a phone call right before I went to lunch today from an overnight stocker who told me she wouldn’t be in tonight because her father-in-law had just passed away. I took down the arrangements and forwarded them on to HR so we could get flowers sent, and someone will have to go to that viewing and funeral as well.

So it’s pretty well been non-stop death all week for me. Great.

One of the managers on leave is Mego. The reason I mention it is because after pitching a right royal fit to get his vacation to run Friday to Friday (instead of the normal Sunday to Saturday for us) he manages to get his comp day for Memorial day onto the end of it (Saturday) and then he has to take a leave of absence because his oldest son is having his tonsils out the following Friday. Then he of course needs to take the next week to help with the recovery. We’re up to three weeks now, all of it paid. Then, on the last day of that leave he’s in a wreck at a traffic light which aggravates an old back injury of his so he’s out for two more weeks. Now we just received word today that his doctor wants him to stay out two MORE weeks to make sure his back is as good as it is going to get. Seven weeks, all of it paid, none of it planned, and I somehow doubt very seriously that a sixteen year old needed his father to sit by his side for TWO WEEKS, one week before and one week after, for what is a fairly routine procedure. I understand he needed to be there the day of the operation and the next day or so, but no one has said anything about adverse reactions to anesthesia or anything else similar so I can only assume the tonsils popped right out with no difficulty and he woke up on schedule so I am at a loss to explain those fourteen days.

And for those of you keeping track, yes, I took an unexpected leave last year for four weeks. I say unexpected but there may have been some inklings so I think they had started making plans for me to crack or quit but I may have caught them by surprise. At any rate, the thing I was getting at was when I went out on leave I was given a firm return date, and by golly I tried to return on that date. I was out an extra three days because I didn’t have a signed note from my doctor saying I fixed. I thought you only needed those when there was a physical injury that kept you out. And even that wasn’t a big deal because they had left the person covering my shifts in place just in case I went all loopy again when I got back.

The schedules have had to be re-done each and every time Mego extended his leave, which means our lives have pretty well been put on hold because we never know if the schedule we wrote down on Monday is going to be the same one on the wall when we come in on Tuesday. I was supposed to be off Saturday and Wednesday this week, which worked out really well for me since today, Wednesday, is the first anniversary of S-Dawg’s death. I had planned on offering to spend the day with Critter since OtherGuy normally works Wednesdays, but now I can’t since my days off got mysteriously changed while I was off last week and this week’s days off got moved to Sunday and Friday. Great. I’ll send her a text in the morning letting her know she can still call if she needs anything. She already knows my days got changed, but she doesn’t know I had planned to offer to spend the day with her. I kept meaning to let her know but somehow it always slipped my mind.