Have you seen Wreck-It-Ralph?
The part where Ralph nearly strangles Vanellope but instead turns and takes out his frustration on a jawbreaker?
Well if you haven't. You should watch it!
If you have. I shall continue.
This blog post, is like the jaw breaker. Even though I told myself years ago when I started this blog I wouldn't post more then once a day....I really just need a place to...well....
I'm going to vent.
Don't worry, it's not another Roommate Rant.
This one, is work related.
Today was the sort of day at work that made me want just go to a corner of the store and scream.
Seriously.
And the sad thing was...work had started out pretty good.
My helping opener was there. She'd done cats, was working on reptiles as today was bedding change day. I'd noticed the past couple of times with the reptile bedding change, her method was a bit...well...time consuming. So I gave her a couple of pointers to help her go a bit faster.
I wasn't too concerned. I mean...Reptile bedding does take a long time. And since my opener is still pretty new to doing reptiles...I wasn't too concerned when she got a late start to reptiles do to the cats being more time consuming.
I left her to continue with her stuff, while I worked on opening the rest of the department. I went first to our back rooms. We have two. One for keeping our newly arrived animals in, so we can observe them and make sure that they are actually healthy before placing them out on the main floor to be sold. And then our sick room, where we keep the sick animals until they get better.
Walking into the New Arrivals room...was a relief to me. It was nice and cold. I love the cold! It felt great compared to the rest of the store!
Only, as I was about to start providing fresh food and water, I noticed something not good.
The birds were all huddled together.
And they were shivering.
Literally they were shaking because they were too cold. They were still. They were quiet.
Uhoh! NOT GOOD!
We have a space heater in that room just for this sort of situation.
Problem. It wasn't working.
Not a problem. We have one in the sick room to!
problem...one of the wheels had broken off. Leaving the heater tilted at a crazy angle.
I feared using it, I wasn't sure if it was safe to use it actually.
So I had to go on the hunt for another heater. Because I totally wasn't going to let the birds freeze!
I finally found one and used it. But that delayed me opening. Like seriously delayed me.
All too soon, we were having our morning meeting before the store opened. And...I hadn't finished the back rooms. I'd been at work for an hour and a half and hadn't finished the back! Not good news.
It also wasn't good news because my partner would be leaving me in another hour. And...she was still working on the first of two reptile cage sets we have.
O.o Maybe trying to show her how to go faster...had slowed her further? Not sure. In any case. We were both going pretty slow this morning. Delayed.
And unfortunately because she would be leaving me in an hour...I had to take my first break before she left. And since my next help wouldn't be showing up for another four hours....and I would need to take another break before help showed up....
I talked with a manager and we decided that it would be best to take my lunch break first. -30minutes- As it's easier for other people in the store to cover 15 minute breaks compared to a longer 30 minute break.
So. I finished the sick room -which took half an hour.
Before going on lunch.
Which meant, I got back about 5 minutes before my help left me.
She'd finally reached the second set of cage. But had only cleaned out the biggest cage before she ran out of time and had to leave.
Not a problem. I mean...she'd left the easiest side of the reptiles for me to finish up. I am pretty used to having to finish up as often the work schedule means that my help leaves basically as soon as the store opens. Surprisingly today my help only had to leave an hour after the store opened. Which should have given us plenty of time to open.
But. Today had to be one of those Thursdays.
The Thursday where everyone and their mom decides to come in right as the store opens.
When normally. We don't start getting busy until around lunch time.
So I was delayed in finishing reptile cages.
I'd had the choice to finish opening the rest of the department, or finish reptiles. Reptiles I deemed more important. so the Small Pets and the Birds hadn't received their fresh food and water yet either. The fish hadn't been fed, or the crickets bagged....
And I had to keep breaking away from Reptiles to go help customers in my department.
*sighs* That's one of the pit falls of being in the 'Animal' part of the pet store.
You can't just point a person in the right direction and be like "The fish are that way! Go catch one!" or "Yah, crickets, here's the bag, bag them up yourself and you can take them up to the register."
No. It's not a point and keep working department of mine.
We have to talk to every person. Provide for them feed back, info, knowledge, materials and the animal. Every exchange with a customer can take at least 5 minutes. And often takes 15 to 20 minutes if not longer depending n what the customer needs/wants.
Again, I wasn't too concerned. Reptiles would get done. I'd be fine. I had the easy side.
And then Gori had to walk in. A visiting higher up. That likes to pop into our store unannounced recently.
Reptiles weren't done, the rest of the floor wasn't open, and there was the Higher Upper breathing down my neck.
"Is it just you today?" he asks me with a raised eyebrow of disbelief as I work on finishing changing the Reptile bedding.
"Yes, well, I had help earlier today, she left at ten, but yah until two, I'm by myself."
"Why isn't reptile bedding done? I see there's a cart by the small pets, have they been not opened yet?"
"My partner in opening took a while with cats, depending on how many we have it can take us 30mins-an hour to get them done." (sometimes longer.)
"You have to do your own cats?" He asked with some surprise. -Apparently the shelters at his old store would come in and care for the cats-
"Yah, first person into the store has to do cats first, then they move to bedding changes and since she's rather new, she's still pretty slow at doing them."
"But the other habitats aren't open."
"No, I had some trouble with a heater in the back rooms, so that took up more of my time. So I haven't reached the floor yet."
-He didn't know I also chose to take my longest break first to help the rest of my coworkers have an easier time covering shorter breaks I nee to take. I chose not to tell him that as I didn't want to be chewed up for not taking the breaks in the proper order -15, 30, 15. I'm sure he's OCD enough to care about the order.-
"The back rooms are supposed to be done last." he states.
"Yah, but the second person who comes in does them first before moving to the rest of the floor."
"Do you know why they are supposed to be done last?" he asks.
"Yah, to keep down contaminants."
-The ideal cycle is to feed the animals on the floor first, then those newly arrive, then those that are sick. That way, in case an animal in the sick room has a contagious disease, it's not transmitted to the main floor or to the newly arrived.
"Then why did you not do them last."
"Because, we can keep down the contaminants by using the gloves and the gown thing."
"But because there is the possibility you should do them last."
DUDE ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME?!!?
Calmly I stated. "We do them first so we're out on the floor when the store is opened."
"But they should be done last."
I KNOW THEY SHOULD BE DONE LAST BUT ARE YOU NOT LISTENING TO ME?!!?
Gah! MEN! I'm now totally convinced that Gori doesn't understand the Petcare department At. All.
This may have been before or after. When he said. "You do know that you should have been fully open when the store opens right?"
"We have until 11." I told him. Conscious of the fact that it was nearly noon and that reptile bedding still wasn't done and that small pets still hadn't been open. Neither birds, or fish or crickets.
And since he was by the reptiles. He happened to look into one of the cages. Our Leopard Gecko cage, probably the cage we didn't want him to look in.
Because we had a couple of Geckos in there that have parts of their tails missing.
"Why is that gecko missing his tail? Did someone smash him?"
"It's possible."
"Aren't you guys being careful?"
"Yes, We try to be, sometimes it doesn't always happen." People make mistakes GEEZ!
"Is it growing back?"
"yah the gecko tails grow back."
"I know...wait are there two in there missing their tails?"
"Yes, we had one lose it's tail and we think that a bigger leopard gecko got a taste for blood and bit off the end of the second geckos. We isolated him and put him in a different cage when there was room, see, he was in this cage, but he was sold."
Thankfully he got distracted with a bearded dragon then, and then onto something else so I was allowed to...well...
Again, Customers. I had to deal with customers. That was also delaying me. People kept needing help, and I was by myself in the department.
Thankfully, one of the managers came over to the department and focused on fish and crickets to help me out. YAY! I'm more grateful to him then you can imagine.
And the Gori...motions me over to the small pets. "Can you open this cage for me?" he asks. He's helping a customer.
Uhoh. I always feel bad when the visiting higher up jumps in to help customers. It makes me feel like I'm not doing my job correctly if they need to also do customer service while they're there visiting.
And guess what...yah. I get stuck helping a customer decide what hamster to buy. like a 30 minute delay.
Seriously?
It's when I'm totally swamped that I have those mutinous thoughts.
"Would you quit calling me to go help customers? Can't you see that I'm trying to finish opening?!!? Can't you do it yourself? Or call someone else to do it? Why is it always me you call?
The answer is 'because you're the Petcare person." They do the animal stuff. They know the answers to the questions.
Like I said before I had two of my managers jump in at different points to bag crickets, get a lizard, and catch fish. So it wasn't like I was by myself the whole time. lol. I think they noticed how frazzled I was getting as they stopped calling me away from doing the reptile bedding.
Finally. Bedding was done.
And one of the managers comes up to me to say that "Hey, you've taken so long already, Gori wants you to just put stuff back and have someone else tomorrow finish the bedding change."
O.o "Uh, I'm done with bedding, literally I'm putting stuff back now." Why isn't he telling me this to my face?
"Oh, Okay, and also, he wants that cart put in the back as well, it's been out too long." -the food cart needed to open birds and small pets.
Of course. I did that, went to do reptiles and...was delayed again.
By a chinchilla being returned.
Great. Just great.
I checked, and saw that he'd been sold last night. Like literally right as the store closed.
This usually wouldn't be a big deal. If the animal is returned within 24 hours we can, if we have room, put the animal back onto the floor, because they haven't been gone long enough to worry about it.
Only. Gori was in the store.
And I had no idea what to do. Because I already had the general concept that he would insist that the chinchilla be isolated (which is a huge hassle because they're a bit higher maintenance compared to the rest of the rodents.) even though the creature had only been gone less then a day.
I couldn't just leave the poor creature in the box for the foreseeable future, and we didn't really have room in the sick room to place him there.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I called Reth. -She's the manager over me, but today was her day off.-
"Hey Reth, sorry for calling, but I have a concern. We just got a chinchilla returned, and he was bought last night when the store was literally closing."
"Why was he returned?!"
"Because they already had a second chinchilla and that one was being mean to this one, so they returned him to keep him safe."
"...are you sure it's our chinchilla. Does it look like ours?"
"Well...yah...."
"Well I would put him in the cage with our other chinchilla and see if recognizes him. That will tell us if it's our chinchilla or not."
"...soo do you want me to not let the guy get his refund?" I ask as I watch him getting his refund.
"Oh no, he can have it, I just want to see if it's actually our Chinchilla they returned."
"Well... Okay, that's great, but there's a problem. Gori's here."
Silence.
Yah. He's currently being that bothersome to us where we moan and cry in horror when he shows up.
"No." She gasps.
"yes."
"And the fish tanks look horrible!"
"I know, but he's just...just. being soo overbearing, questioning everything." -I'm literally tearing up this point, my voice cracking as I try to keep from completely loosing it. "Because I got delayed this morning, and my partner was being slow and it's been totally crazy with customers. He's questioning why bedding isn't done, he's telling me that we should be doing back rooms last, he's just...just."
Reth totally understood.
That's when I got a bit of info about Gori.
He was promoted from a small store.
He doesn't understand that we, being a bigger store, have to work a bit differently.
I mean we have twice as many reptiles as every store in the state. They only have one display while we have two.
We also have a lot more fish tanks.... basically we're bigger over all.
So he doesn't understand that we can't open the back rooms last. Why? Because that would take us off the floor. We can't get the department open by the time the store opens when it's a bedding change day! And what is the main focus when the store opens? Yah, the customers.
-Personally I think it should be the animals. I mean...if the animals aren't happy, they get sick, and if the animals are sick...they can't be sold, the customers can't be made happy, and we loose revenue.
I think managers just look at. "Customers aren't happy, we're not making money! Be on the floor to make sure people are happy!"
But if I'm in the back trying to open that when the store is open...then I am not out on the floor. with the customers. which means...customers aren't happy.
That's why the second person opens the back rooms first. So if it does take a long time, or the second person comes in a little bit later...the back rooms are open. Then we can be on the floor. It's easier to break away from the task on the floor then the task in the back.
Gah!
In any case. I was able to delay putting the chinchilla in the sick room, until after Gori finally left the store. Thanks to the Customers. I had to help a few more and was delayed.
Yay! And thankfully the chinchilla was ours. The other one recognized it. yay!
But yah. Getting everything done? I finally finished the Reptiles at like...1. YAH 1pm! On a good day with reptile bedding we should be done by 10. If all goes well. And it was 1pm!
Finally I was able to do the birds and small pets. Finishing half an hour later.
...If I hadn't taken my lunch first, I could have been done with the birds and rodents before my partner left. And they would have been done when Gori showed up. So I would have only been worrying about finishing the Reptiles.
*sighs* All good plans go astray at some point.
Because of his random visit...I didn't get that second break. Because I had to be on the floor while he was there. Bright side is that I took the most important break first. (they always make sure you take your lunch)
Yah. So I didn't get a middle break, but I did get my third break when the first afternoon guy showed up. He took care of all the bugs. -Did I mention that we also get in our shipment of bugs on Thursday? Yah. It can be total CHAOS! Trying to get everything done.
He did the bugs, while I quickly fed the fish, went on break, and then helped customers until I had to leave.
Overall, I managed to hold the stress rather well. You know, besides basically nearly breaking down while talking to Reth on the phone and just venting. I was able to engage with customers. Help them. I was able to get as much as I could possibly get done in my shift that I could under the circumstances. Small details couldn't be done, but the major ones I needed to get done. I got done.
But do you know how hard it was to bite my tongue? To keep working?
I felt like marching up to Gori and asking "Have you ever worked in petcare? Have you ever worked in a store as big as this?" I dearly hoped the answer would be no. "THEN STOP TELLING ME TO DO WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO!"
Seriously. I was fuming. Probably shaking just to keep myself in check, to stay calm, to not blow up at the big guy and possibly get fired for speaking my mind. For making the day a dark day when it could have just been a crazy day at work.
Personally I feel like it's every 'higher upper's' duty to spend time in every department they're over. To work with those in the 'lower' positions. To understand how each store has to run slightly different in order to be run successfully. To communicate. To listen. And if they don't have time to work in that department. Don't assume you know what should be done. Ask others how it usually is. What is done? How it's done.
*sighs* I wish that it wasn't about the money. It shouldn't be about the money. At Starsment, it should be about the animals first. Particularly the ones we care for in our own store. Then the customers, then the revenue.
I'm aware that without the money, people can't be paid, items can't be bought to sell to customers, and the business dies. But surely, there is a happy medium that can happen.
I guess the one bright part of the day is...I don't think Gori actually ventured over to the fishtanks...as when he dropped by last week he went over there. So I don't think he saw how much worse they looked this week.... Hopefully...
Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
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