Monday, April 19, 2010

People are unreliable no matter what

So the past few days when I've been closing the store, I've been getting out far later than I should have, all because I'm missing the one key person that would have made things go so much better. Like the last time I closed, it ended up being myself and one other person who was scheduled to leave an hour before closing, which is typical.

The other person? Well, she was a no call no show.. I knew that she had been in the hospital because she had apparently passed out. That made me feel kind of bad, except that the next day after she had gone to the hospital, she was in the store acting like everything was normal. It's one of those cases where I feel bad for her, since apparently she had had a baby just four weeks prior, but at the same time, we still need someone to at the very least say that they're not showing, or someone else to take the place. I don't know what to think about whether or not she did have a legitimate hospital episode.

So, I was there about 45 minutes more than I probably would have it have if I had had someone else there during the day. And it's getting commonplace, because of the fact that people come and go so often that it's almost not worth it to learn their names sometimes. So honestly, it's like mcds. Except that I do more work, and my hands are constantly gray from dish washing. I mean it literally, my hands have cracks that the dirt from the place seeps into, and it's like there's no way to get it out.

I suppose that when I do eventually quit, I'll always have that memento.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Not been on here in a while

Working at SW is pretty exhausting, in ways I never thought possible. My back constantly hurts, my legs ache, my feet are developing calluses, and worse of all, all of these pains are the result of repetitive work. Doing dishes sums up a good portion of the repetitive nature of this job.

Why do I say that? Because there are, a LOT of fucking dishes. Some dishes you literally are redoing 3-4 times a day. You clean a cambro that had prep in it so that it can be clean for another item of prep so that it can be used up and need to be cleaned so that it's ready for another item of prep.. it's maddening. And the sink that they use requires a lot of bending over to clean some of the dishes that we have sometimes, because the actual area given in order to scrub is blocked by a handwashing sink. My back hurts just thinking about it.

Already there's been a changeup when it comes to employees. The one woman who was a bit slow and dumb when it came to most anything finally got pissy when a manager was trying to get an order done, and so she's working on the grocery store side now.. for now. She's already talking of trying to find a new job. We've had several new people in, including one who seems to be about as slow and dumb as the previous, but I'll reserve further judgment since I've only worked a two hour period with her (and I wanted to shoot myself). Another person came back because the guy who had left due to unfair treatment was gone.. apparently this 16 year old had been chatting with said guy outside of store hours and parents disapproved. I found it amusing that this guy took the trouble of buying this girl a cheapo cell just so they could "talk". I doubt that mom would really be so pissy if it was just "talking" with an older guy, but I digress.

Well, that's most of what I can think of that's been going on for now.. nothing particular customer wise, which is amazing.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Well, I said that the job wasn't so bad....

Now I'm not as sure. One of the persons who had been working there for a while as a shift leader just up and quit a few days ago. It had something to do with unfair treatment, I didn't try to ask too much about specifics because I doubted that I would learn much.

I could see how he could get mad, though. He was working on training a manager in training on some things, for one thing.. someone that I think was hired from outside, when he was perfectly capable of being a manager himself. And I'm sure he would have wanted to, because from what I've been told, even if we work full time hours, we're not considered full time workers due to how we're defined in the employee handbook. Which means we're not privy to the allegedly awesome benefits that this company offers, but rather given the option of some rather crappy part time benefits.

I also nearly wanted to cry today, because of one customer. A woman comes in with her 4 kids and they all order sandwiches. She says that 2 of them were italian:

Me: So you want two spicy italian subs? Or two sandwiches on italian bread?
Her; I want italian bread, and whatever the italian is.

I assume that she means that yes, she wants spicy italian for the kids. So I make the sandwiches, and in the meantime I get a huge line of customers. Right now it's just me and someone else, and he's taking an order for drive thru. So I get on the intercom and I call for another person who's in the back to come up front. Only when she comes up, instead of helping me, she goes.. to make the two lousy sandwiches for drive thru.

So I'm trying to get the meat and cheese on the five sandwiches for this one family before I go to the veggies, and the woman asks why there isn't more meat on the italians. I tell her that I made them as the spicy italians, and THEN she tells me that she meant the italian bmts and that typically she just calls them italians and people know what she means. WTF? I don't know where this woman orders from, but where I work, people say a BMT when they want a BMT. Plus no two SWs (as I shall hence refer to this place) are alike in terms of what they offer or how things are done, since each is franchisee owned and thus the franchisers can say if they want to do certain things or not, just as long as they adhere to general standards.

She also objected to a third sandwich, since the cheese had melted into the paper and she felt that it was too toasted. Now at this point her kids were all objecting to mom interfering, and they felt the sandwiches were fine; however, mom is paying, so I remake the three sandwiches. Even though I got griped at because I moved from veggies to fixing this order.. although I had started on meat but the other person decided to do the fucking drive thru order instead of helping me with at least ONE order of someone right in front of me.

I don't really know how I feel about this job.. I get a lot more tired because there's a lot more to do. It's hectic and yet it's not hectic; people do quite a bit of work and yet people still laze around and do nothing. I guess the more I work, the less there is to like, but I get real paychecks because I'm working real hours now. I also get worried because turnover is pretty high.. the district manager stopped by and commented on how he was glad I was still there.. two weeks after I was hired. A place like this worries me. They'll always need people, but is it worth it? I'm still on the job hunt because of that fear.