Blogmas - Day 4

Back to work.

Bleh.

Today was a busy day, and it was filled with paperwork and anxiety and a whole bunch of grumbles.

Being already short-staffed as it is in my department when crunch time comes during the work day, even though I do my best to stay afloat - when I fall the tiniest behind, I feel like a failure. Yes, I am a supervisor of my department and therefore have more responsibilities than I used to, I feel bad when I have to delegate them out to others because even though I know I can't do it all in the time allotted, I still feel like I should be able to and am letting people (including myself) down.

Yeah, I know that's lame, but that's me. I know how to do a lot, and when I was just a regular worker bee, I was good at that and kept up all the time. But ever since my promotion, it feels like so much is heaped onto my shoulders and the higher-ups aren't really doing that much to help a sista out.

It's like driving a car and one of the tires falls off. I feel like people believe I can do fine on three... but then another pops off, and I'm pointing out "Hey, we may need to pull over," but nope - you should be able to handle this. And then eventually when we're late to wherever we're going... "Why are we late? And how can we prevent this from happening again?" WELL... you could have listened to me when I mentioned the first tire falling off.

Back in the days when I worked at the bookstore, I started off as holiday help, and they kept me on after the holidays. I was happy to have a job - and in a BOOKSTORE!!! I dealt in genre fiction originally and then was moved out after the holidays to another section (I chose entertainment), but then the woman in charge of the genre section was leaving so they asked me to take that section over - and I became a supervisor.

Somewhere down the line, the girl in charge of the general fiction section was "let go" so while they looked for someone to take her spot, they asked me to "keep an eye" on fiction as well as my department. Always willing to help, I said okay. As time went on, they never found anyone so I ended up being responsible for two departments.

Two? Make that three... since I was again promoted (moved) to merchandising. But wait - who would take over my genre section and the general fiction section? Yeah. No one was really covering those so I was still "keeping an eye" on them because 1. I wasn't about to abandon my books, and 2. everyone kept coming to me anyway.

Oh yeah - I was helping out with events, too. That was cool, but when you're supposed to be aiding an author event, don't think for one minute you're actually going to be able to do that one thing. Nope.

But wait! There's more!

Due to the turnover rate in the cafe, they decided they were going to start training everyone in the cafe so everyone can help out. This was to happen in groups of two for a few days at a time. When it was my turn, me and another girl helped out for a bit, but then we were short people on the floor so cross-training was temporarily postponed (and then forgotten completely). The girl I was being trained with moved back home to the midwest, and I can't remember what happened to the others that were cross-trained, but whenever help was needed in the cafe, I was called on. Even when I tried to get out of it since I was supposed to have displays up by a certain time and fix signage and replace stock - nope. Cafe I went... only to be nagged later about why my other tasks weren't done.

One time when I came in to open, I went to the receiving area after clocking in to go through all my merchandising stuff and sort it out since the section was thrashed, and I like stuff organized. We had a new store manager that had just started, and she loved surprise visits on her days off. So I see her through the shelves of where I've shoved myself reaching for little gift bits and bobs, and she just stands there talking to the receiving manager who's catching up on receiving duties. She has no idea I'm there since she's just standing inside the door. She asks him if he's walked the floor, and he said yes. Then she points out all the trash, etc, that she's seen and asks him why he didn't take care of it. In the end, she basically reminds me of procedure and leaves.

Remember me? Stuck in the shelves? Doing my job? I hear the receiving manager call out to me. When I reply, he asks me, "Can you walk the floor and take care of any issues you come across?" Keeping my grumbles to myself, I wiggle out of the shelving space I'm in, accept the task given to me, and head out to walk the floor.

And the entire time I worked at the bookstore, I didn't have a car, so I was taking the express bus to work in the morning (when it stopped for me) and walking home after the end of my shift. Still zombified and not fully awake, I would get to the store early and just collapse in the break room until I had to clock in. Without fail the merchandising manager (the new one since the old one I worked with when I was promoted left the company) would always come with merch docs and want to talk about work. One time I spoke up and said, "I don't start until 8am so I have half an hour before I clock in. So if this is about work, I'd rather not talk about it until I'm actually on the clock." He said, "Okay," and the proceeded into telling me what I needed to do and handing me a copy of the task from the corporate binder.

The final straw was when toward the end of my shift, I was approached because they needed someone to help out in the cafe for a while. Something inside me cracked, and I politely said no. (Now something you should know about me. I usually give people three chances - meaning if a salesman approaches me and tries to sell me on something, and I say I'm not interested, I let it go when they continue their schtick, but after three offers, I say in a slightly sterner but still polite tone, "I said I'm not interested," and leave it at that, and they usually stop.) This day when I was asked to stay, I said no. It was a question, and if I chose not to, they would have to take that, right? I mean, remember all the times I didn't say no? Remember how helpful I've been?

So when I said no, I went about the remainder of my shift then clocked out and headed for the doors... when the manager on duty (merchandising who asked me to stay earlier) steps before me and asks again, and I politely remind him that I said no. He asks another time. I say no again. The part that irritated me most was that when I stepped forward to go around him, he stepped in way and asked again. He was maybe a few yards away from him, but still - I thought "Are you really trying to block me from the door? During business hours? Really?" I used my sterner but still polite tone and said, "You already asked me, and I already said no." I wanted to yell it at him, but I was so tired, my inner bitch just screamed it at him inside my head.

And eventually, I quit.

People asked me why I left. I loved working there. Being around all those books and my co-workers were a hoot, but the customers and management needed some work. But I left for my own sanity. I could feel the crazy bubbling up inside of me. The more I said yes to helping people out, the more they just came up to me asking... and then expecting... and then assuming. On one hand, I'm flattered that people feel like they can come to me for help.Makes me feel like I'm reliable and dependable and a good worker who knows her shit. But it felt like I became everyone's default and frak the fact that they wanted me to work longer hours and give me the OT pay, but I still had to walk my ass home. Not once did anyone that asked me to stay - and they all knew I didn't have a car - offer me cab money. (The only time I was forced to take cab money was during the holidays where a stack of books fell on top of me, and my friend who worked community relations for the store found out about it, told management I was going home, gave me money for the cab she called me and helped me to the door.)

I don't like being anyone's default. That whole LIFE cereal mentality of "Give it to Mikey. He eats anything." Go to Rae, she always says yes to helping with work.

I had too much on my plate and was being spread thin and did my best to keep up, but when the same manager gives you extra stuff to do and then asks why this other stuff isn't done - you kinda start to unravel a bit. So yeah, I wasn't working full time anymore (around this time I was helping a friend out every once in a while at her job on the weekends cleaning out and sorting old and new files). I know that if I continued to work there, and they continued to treat me the way they were, I was going to SNAP!

Things worked out in the end, but now... I feel like that again.

I started out as a worker bee who knew her job rather well to the point where people came to me instead of anyone else on her team. (Sometimes I reasoned it was because I was the first person they saw, but there were times they'd wait for me to return to my desk or come back from lunch for my help.) There were stresses along the way, but then after a few years I was promoted... and things were okay but then started to get less than okay.

The department manager went on leave so I became the stunt-manager (though I told everyone not to refer to me as that since that would be a lie, and I don't lie). But in while being stunt-manager, the duties that I had before the promotion were still my duties, and then the promotion which added more duties, but the other ones were still there. Then the added stunt-manager duties, and I broke it down to my department manager that I have all these things to do so nothing is going to get done in the eta that everyone wants it done. I had to point it out to her that I was still doing all this other stuff including her stuff, and she then said: "Oh no, we need to fix that." So some of my duties were taken away and reassigned to others... but I still had to train those people on how to do them. And then when my department manager left, it was just me and my stunty-manager-ness. Then the boss decided to pull me into a whole bunch of meetings which started the delegating process.

But now it's gotten to a point where I've mentioned the state of my department (which feels like a dumping ground for everything) to my boss and other manager types, and I've said it often enough that they know, and I know they know. Hell, they've even asked me for updates, but also at other times want to know why this or that task wasn't completed, and I want to scream "WE TALKED ABOUT THIS!!!"

And I feel like no matter how many times I bring up the current status of my department and what we need, it's still my fault that we're behind on stuff, and I want to yell, cry and break people/things.

• I want to be helpful, but I also want to be helped.
• I want to feel like I can talk to people about things, but I also want to feel like I'm being heard and not forgotten about or misquoted later on.
• I want to be able to ask questions (since communication sucks and no one tells me or my department anything) and not get pushed aside with "we can talk about this later" and then forgotten.
• I don't want to have to keep coming to people with the same shit every frakkin day.
• I want to be able to say no once in a while and not feel like I've let someone down or have people think they can no longer come to me.
• I want to be able to sit at my desk and have my lunch break without being interrupted by everyone on the planet that needs help. There are other people in the department that can help you - ask one of them.
• I know others are stressed, but so am I and so is my department, and if we can't work together to figure out a solution, nothing is going to get done. 

And lastly, when I tell you time and time again my department is short-staffed and stretched pretty thin and can't take any more duties at the moment, you cannot get upset with me after I brought it up the first few times and was told that you knew we were short-staffed but there was a bigger priority in another department they needed to hire for... and then it gets to the point where we are now, and you wonder why it's like that or make it sound like it's my fault. It's not. You didn't make us a priority or even as much as a blip on your radar. So as far as I'm concerned, since you knew about the issue, you can't get mad at me for doing the best I can with what I was left with.

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I didn't mean to rant. I'm just too much of a happy camper when I head to the office these days.

I need a cocktail. [sigh]

Later my lovelies.

Have Goodness!
Rae