Finding Confidence

 I suppose no one really enjoys being perceived when it comes to ... being evaluated. Judged. Critiqued. 

But like. I do kinda enjoy just doing my own thing without having to think about how well I'm doing my thing you know?

Especially when I'm already on edge because I know there's the general expectation that I'm going to be the one that's hopefully replacing our manager that just left and stepping up into their position. Which means i'm more aware of all my shortcomings and potential flaws....

Because the brain just loves to focus on the negative and it's much harder to focus on the positives. 

Which I really do have a lot of positives going for me. 

As I had my annual work review today.

Because my 13th work anniversary is tomorrow. 

Which O.o

Huh.

It's so crazy that I've been with Starsmet for 13 years now. 

Like I knew my anniversary was approaching.

But it catches me by surprise every time lol. 

Caught my Head Manager by surprise too.

Because the manager who just left was the one who was supposed to have given my review as they were the one over me.

But because they're gone that left it up to Head Manager to do so.

Which ... I'm kinda grateful for?

I mean PL seemed to say mostly positive things about me on their last day of work and stated that they thought I was the one they thought was the best to replace them when they left.

But it does leave me wondering how they would have rated me if they had given me my review as opposed to my head manager.

Because head manager rated me very well. I got "above" in basically all categories.

And HM had basically all positives to say.

That I'm great at helping customers and coworkers. That I'm the go to person because I know a lot. That I've been quick to catch on and learn my new responsibilities and ask great questions and that the Head Manager is looking forward to seeing how I progress. 

Overall it was basically a "Great job. Keep up the good work! No notes." sort of review.

Though of course there's always room for improvement. And it seemed like head manager was grasping at straws to find something for me to 'work' on that I could do to continue to improve.

And it basically boiled down to like Having more Confidence in myself. 

Which granted. I'm pretty confident in the store. Kinda have to be after 13 years of being there lol.

BUT.

I am always a bit more shy and cautious when it comes to new things. 

And getting thrown into a new position where I have to go from being like an equal to the PL to under the PL meant that I was floundering a bit. 

Because like I'm trying to figure out how the currents are going. Who's in charge. Who answers to who in what situations. Where are we equals and where are we not?

Plus like I'm learning a whole new aspect of the store. Because while I've helped out with stocking tasks. It's been a here and there sort of thing. Where I've learned tidbits over the years but I don't know like the inner workings of like the behind the scenes stuff. I've been more focused on Petcare and then with my first management position with the cashiering aspect as well.

So yah. Stocking side? Still a bit of a learning curve. So I have been a bit less "go get them" than I was before the job change. Because like....still feeling out what I am and am not responsible for. 

Because like. If I'm getting paid less. I'm not going to be doing other people's jobs when they're getting paid more than me. They can do their jobs and earn their money there. 

So I've taken a step back in some areas. Been a bit more "Hey question. Hey is this okay? Hey? Hey? Hey" 

And Head Manager was like "I just want you to get creative. Problem solve a bit more on your own. Take time to look through the apps and the computer stuff and find the answers." 

Which they brought up a good point. We're all new to these positions we're currently holding. None of us have had them before. We're all the first to hold these positions so we're all learning on the job.

So yah. I should be a bit proactive in figuring out things on my own.

But at the same time .... I am really really really tired of feeling like I'm the only one in the store with the brain cell.

Because 9 times out of 10 if there's a problem in Petcare I'm the one who comes up with the solution. 

And probably 7 out of 10 times if there's a problem at the registers. I'm the one who comes up with the solution.

So I didn't really want to be the one who has to 'come up with the solution' with all things Stocking too.

Even though if I'm hoping to jump up into the PL position that's exactly what I'll need to do. Be the 'go to solution finder' when it comes to all things stocking. *exhales* 

But yah.

Basically the main focus point of the review for me to work on was "Confidence. Learn things." 

So I'll have to see if I can fit finagling around and looking up things in amongst all the other things I'm trying to do at work.

Irregardless.

At least I did really well at my review!

With all the doubts that have bee plaguing my mind as the PLs departure approached it's nice to just hear some positive feedback that yes I'm doing well and yes I would be a good fit to jump up into the position.

Now...if only I could get the hiring website to work for me so I could actually get my application in. *exhales*

Gotta love unforseen complications. 

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi

Treasure Above?

 Have you ever wondered what history may be hidden around you?

Like. 

There's always the 'found treasure in the attic' or the 'basement' or in the 'old shed' or the 'cellar' sort of mythos that may be in the back of the mind.

Especially when exploring older houses like your grandparents home.

But there's other areas where you just....don't consider what sort of treasure or history may be hidden behind the walls, under the floor, or in the ceiling of an older building.

And like....I don't consider my work building to be that old.

Even though the building is probably just as old or older than I am.

Like I had a coworker who'd been there nearly two decades before I started working there.

So like ... it's been around for a hot minute.

Long enough that I've already had to field calls in the recent past from the Home Office that basically boil down to "Hey, we don't know what this actually looks like. Can you send us pictures of it." 

Like they had some dude come in and do like a .... radar? Lidar? idk some sort of laser test that maps out the dimensions of the entire building so they can figure out how much footage the entire building has but also like how big the rooms within the building is. 

They also had me take pictures of our fish wall .... because the home office couldn't find the actual plano for the fish wall we have in their system and they wanted a visual of it. 

Today .... some dude from higher up the chain and that is probably in the home office was like "Heeeey. We can't find the building plans of your building. So we don't actually know what it looks like." 

Which ... .... HOW do you not know what your building looks like? I mean you've been sending us MAPs of the building with the AISLES and such on it so that we can set product and rearrange things every month. HOW do you not know what it looks like?! 

PLUS you had that one dude come in and MEASURE the entire store! HOW do you not know what it looks like?!

It's just one of those 'lost to time' things apparently where they knew at some point but the knowledge was lost at some point.

Regardless. They were like "Heeey, we don't have building plans here at the home office, BUT you may have the original plans THERE!"

Like. 

What?

Supposedly the original plans were placed in a PVC pipe and then stored in the ceiling above one of the rooms and if we lifted up the ceiling tile we may be able to find said pipe.

Which. Cool concept. 

IF ITS STILL THERE.

But at the same time WHY WOULD IT STILL BE THERE?

Like was that a trend of the time it was built in? That you store the master plans of the building IN the ceiling of the building itself?

Why not place it in like .... idk CITY HALL or like wherever building records are stored in the town? That's city hall right? Right? Who knows. 

But like shouldn't there be copies elsewhere? 

And WHY the ceiling?

Upon hearing this news I immediately doubted that the pipe thingy would still be up in the ceiling.

Because a few years a go we had some sort of ceiling work that got done....I can't remember if it was ceiling tiles being replaced or something above the ceiling tiles in the previous offices. But like.... things were messed around with up there.

Plus it's been DECADES. 

It could have vanished ANYTIME in that time frame if someone didn't know what it was and went "Oh. Old pipe. Toss it." when they were doing some sort of cleaning or maintenance or something. 

It's just mind boggling. 

Like my head Manager did attempt to look for said mystery pipe in a couple of spots in our ceilings.

Didn't find it.

But like we don't actually know which "office" it could be. "It's above the main office!" 

Well cool....but like is the office we're using as the main office the office THEY were using as the main office when the building was built? Who knows! 

Still. It's weird to think....that potentially it could be up there in the ceiling somewhere. These mysterious building plans. That literally no one would ever think to look for in the ceiling..... 

Except this one dude in the whole office who says they might be there.

So weird.

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi

Change is a Coming

 There's a sort of exhaustion that hits where literally the only thing you can do is go to bed. Because like....there's not really any higher brain power going on. There's no energy to think. No energy to type. No energy to read. Barely any energy to watch something.

And it always catches me off guard when I get those 'super exhausted' days. 

Especially when they happen on days where I got enough sleep.

Like you kinda expect the super exhausted crash out after getting like 2-4 hours of sleep the night before.

But the nights where you get a full night's rest?

It's really weird to feel the deep exhaustion set in at like 7pm and the want to just crash in bed fighting with the night owl tendency to stay up late. 

I suppose the crash out yesterday wasn't fully unexpected. 

As it was our Truck Day.

And working product, lifting heavy bags, moving things around the store for hours on end ... it's tiring. It's exhausting.

So I'm always a little more tired Tuesday nights, but even then....last night felt a bit more extreme. 

And I'm sure there were a ton of contributing factors that just...weighed in on the exhaustion levels.

The first being me working a slightly longer shift. 

Like half an hour extra at work shouldn't have made that much of a difference, especially because we had truck basically done half an hour before I was off so I wasn't really doing much in the last half hour. 

But I also think the mental and emotional stressors were a bit higher yesterday as well.

Why?

Because it was one of my other manager's 'last day' at work. 

So I think there was a lot of back burner stress in my mind because like "Do I know everything they know so we can function without them? Am I missing anything? Will I be a good replacement if I get promoted for that position? Have I learned what I need to learn? What happens if I can't find the thing?" And of course all the background "They're never gonna do this and never gonna do that." and "I won't be able to ask them this or that or this or that."

Though they did tell me if I needed help that I could still contact them with questions. Which is sweet though I'm gonna try to not do that. 

Kinda not a great look to ask the person who left the job about the job lol. But at the same time they've kinda been a savant in their position so they literally know 'everything' that it's hard to 'teach' everything. 

It's also hard because it's unknown if this is a permanent goodbye or not. 

As the manager is stepping down as a manager to go back to school. But may come back to be like a part time worker if the school work load isn't too crazy for them.

But we won't know that answer for sure for a couple of weeks. So who knows.

Still. 

Gonna be weird having them gone as they've been in the store nearly as long as I have. 

In any case. There is all that background emotional stress going on while also trying to get the truck worked as quickly as possible because yesterday was the last day for this manager who usually helps to finish the truck today with what we don't get done the day before but wouldn't because yesterday was their last day....

But there's also other stressors that I shouldn't be stressing about but am stressing about because that's who I am as a person apparently.

Like money is always an issue and with me taking the new management position with the stupid management restructuring that corporate did, I also took a slight pay cut as well. Which while not the end of the world...has also left me not liking the state of how my finances are either.

It doesn't help that corporate is being stupidly tight fisted with hours and making it difficult for us to be scheduled a full 40 hours a week because we DON'T HAVE THE HOURS to do that. 

Not when we've been cut at least 80 hours each week compared to the same week last year.

It's nearly impossible.

But HM said that our DM said in their weekly meeting that all managers should be scheduled at a full 40 each week. Which would be great! Because more money! 

But is BAD because corporate isn't GIVING US THE HOURS to schedule the managers full time. NOT without TAKING AWAY those hours from associates. Like in order to get all the managers up to a full 40 hours each week we'd have to take away just under 30 hours a week from the associates. 

Which they're already working shorter shifts and less days as it is. 

If we cut them any further it wouldn't surprise me if they'll start looking for other jobs.

Because it's rather hard to survive if your job is only sceduling 3ish shifts a week and those shifts are like maybe 6 hours. 

People can't live off of that.  And if people can't live off of that they're gonna start looking for work elsewhere. 

Which is stressful. Like even if the managers get up to a full 40 hours that doesn't mean we'll be able to have more time to do our Manager tasks. No. Those hours will be spent doing the tasks that the Cashiers and the Petcare people should be doing but aren't because we don't have enough hours anymore to schedule them the full day. 

It's stressful.

Because it feels like corporate is doing their best to take us down to pandemic staffing again and THAT SUCKED.

Like I don't remember what amount of cashiers we had. But it literally was the six managers, me and one petcare person. And maybe one or two cashiers. Like we had NO ONE. If ONE person got sick we were basically SCREWED because we didn't have anyone else to bring in. 

It sucked. Big time. 

Like cutting 3/4s of your staff is a stupid and horrible thing to do especially in the middle of a pandemic. And I don't like that the trend with hours seems to be forcing us to go in that direction again. Because it. is. not. fun.

It's just more stress. And more upset customers because there's no people to help them. 

*exhales*

So yah.

No wonder I got home from work and basically just wanted to pass out.

It was an exhausting day on multiple levels. 

But the one bright side of the day is that the manager who's left told me that out of everyone in these tore, if we were hiring internally to replace them, that I would be the best person to replace them.

Which is high praise from them. ^^;;

They later went on to say that I caught on quick in the last couple of months learning how to do all the stocking tasks and that I've been doing really well with all my tasks.

Which again is amazing.

Because until that point I had no idea if they thought I was good replacement material or not.

I mean I hoped I would be. 

I went into my current position with the expectation that I would be learning how to do this manager's job so that I could take over for them when and if they decided to step down. As I wasn't as familiar with the stocking aspects of the store so a few months to learn the ropes would be helpful and help me ease into what I need to know for the position.

So to hear that the manager thought I would do well as a replacement was one less stress on my shoulders at least. Now to just pass through the interviewing process when we hold that and hope that I get the position. *fingers crossed* 

But yah.

It was an exhausting day. 

Exhausting enough that it triggered a migraine towards the end of my shift that trying to go to bed early did not help......but at least the Nurtec made it go away so yay!

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi

Priorities

 So usually on Monday's we have a routine in the mornings. 

That mostly involves me and another manager going through the front half of the store counting holes on the aisles. 

Aka. Looking for empty spots on the shelves and scanning the tags below them to make sure the spots are actually supposed to be empty. And if they're not, double checking that inventory isn't hiding elsewhere before adjusting the numbers. 

Which is semi interesting because like, I'll also scan areas with low numbers too. Places where there's only one or two on a shelf when I know there's usually more of the item. Or I'll scan items that I've found to be higher theft items in the past.

And it's interesting to note the ... idk trends? Trends in like what items are consistently not right on the shelf. 

Which begs the question of.... was it stolen? Or did the DC send us the wrong amount?

Like we were supposed to have 2 large 40 gallon tanks of one particular type on the shelf. I could only find one. 

So does that mean one didn't arrive on the truck when it should have? 

Or does it mean that somehow a customer managed to walk out of the store with a 40 gallon tank without paying for it?

Who knows. 

In any case. 

Every Monday we do these scans first before the store opens so that we can ensure that our truck can be properly replenished in the next week or so. 

....Except the First Monday of the month.

Because then we have AD that we need to set.

Because new sales need to go up and therefore those need to be set first before the store opens and once we're done with those then we can go back to our normal Monday tasks.

Which its pretty easy to figure out priority.

Ad first. Scans second.

And like....I reminded my other manager of this this morning when we were getting ready for the day.

"We need to get ad done first. I'll take petcare, you just need to do the back wall area and then we can do scans after that point." 

Only....other manager....didn't do that?

I think they may have been trying to do both things at once? Scan and set ad? Because I could see the ad in their cart. But I could also hear the beeping of the scanner meaning they were doing their scans as well.

Which didn't make sense to me.....

Like the obvious priority is to get the ad done first. Scans second. Because while the scans for this section should be done today....we can also do them throughout the week. While ad definitely needs to be up on the first day of the sale so that customers can know what deals they can get while shopping in our store.

May main thought is...is that this manager doesn't particularly like doing ad. 

They usually take 3x as long to do ad compared to others.....

Though it's hard to tell if that's just them or if it's on purpose.

As most tasks seem to take longer than they should for this manager.

So who knows for sure.

But it's mind boggling and very irritating when I say "Hey we need to get ad done first." that ....they don't do ad first.

Like why?

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi