Retail "Horror" Stories
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For most of the positions, my job does first-come-first-serve for scheduling. It's terrible. I was so so so glad when I got to a level where I have a set schedule every month. I had a month where I had barely any hours because I had surgery the day the schedules went out and the next day? There were maybe 20 hours for the entire month left.
They do it because it's easier on management, but it's terrible on the employee end.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
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@Auspice said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
There were maybe 20 hours for the entire month left.
This is why I ended up taking the job at Walmart. I already had a workstudy position and a job at the college bookstore. But the bookstore couldn't really give me enough hours, and the workstudy position there is a /set amount/ you can work for the term. So. Which was super unfortunate because I loved working at the college bookstore. Everyone was amazing and fun to work with. And if someone was being a shit to me it wasnt, "Well you need to smile and suck it up", it was "God that guy is an asshole."
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Eh... an automated system is pretty much what we're working with now, since home office generates the schedule with the AM's supposedly looking it over for mistakes. And the AM's don't really do that job. At all. Ever. >.>
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@Miss-Demeanor I ... don't think that's how it is at my store. The AM over the cashiers does the schedule for the cashiers here. Or at least did. Or at least claims he did.
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Claims being the operative word! Our AM "claimed" she did the schedule.. until people started getting scheduled off availability and would have one week or more without ANY shifts, etc. Then suddenly it was 'the computer generates the schedule, I don't do anything!'. I'm inclined to believe that the computer DOES generate the schedule... but she's supposed to look at it to ensure everyone is getting the right amount of hours at the right times.
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@Cobaltasaurus This is why I specifically do not discuss scheduling hell with my employees standing up. It isn't fair to them. However, I've also learned how to subtly convey extreme irritation from a seated leaning back position. Mind you I only break out the irritation with one particular employee who seems to think everyone else has to pick up the slack and he's entitled to do bare minimum. The last few times of folks refusing to help him out with shift trades finally sunk in.
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Aside from scalper guy, and other jerks, I've found the absolute worst people are TEENAGERS. Especially in large groups because their parents drop them off at the theatre nearby, and then ignore them for like, 6 hours. Well, since no movie lasts that long, the teens invariably roll over to our store and do shit like destroy displays, break merchandise, skateboard/motorscooter/whatever through the store.
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@dontpanda said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
Sure enough, another phone call due to a changed schedule and I was terminated "with cause" because I missed too many shifts. I made an appointment to speak to Management and the GM said it was just easier if I left, and they "wouldn't make it worse" than to have that as the reason on my employment record.
Yeah this makes me angry. It's not legal. not in a single solitary state. An old employer I had decided they'd use that method to rid themselves of an employee they could have justifiably fired for other reasons. Added him to the schedule on his day off termed him for no call no show. State made them pay him from the moment he was termed to the moment they saw the case.
On the flip side, I've had employees play the "I didn't know I was scheduled to work that day." or "I didn't agree to that!" Really? Because at no point during the face to face conversation, the emails about the schedule, or when it was posted 2 weeks in advance did you once say a word!
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FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF FUCK OUT
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There are not enough upvotes for that, @Cobaltasaurus
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@Templari I spoke to a good friend of mine (I'm Canadian, btw) about it, and he said I should keep going to work as scheduled, and make them "send me home" each shift until it was resolved with the labour board.
Frankly, I figured I'd just speak to them about it first. If they don't want me, that's fine with me. I just would've preferred they been straight with me about it
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@silentsophia said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
Aside from scalper guy, and other jerks, I've found the absolute worst people are TEENAGERS. Especially in large groups because their parents drop them off at the theatre nearby, and then ignore them for like, 6 hours. Well, since no movie lasts that long, the teens invariably roll over to our store and do shit like destroy displays, break merchandise, skateboard/motorscooter/whatever through the store.
Acquire a set of portable speakers with decent tweeters and an integrated amplifier. You can get cheap guitar amp/speaker combos in pawn shops, for example. Sit down at your PC with a program that will generate any frequency sound. Set it to some mid-range value (1KHz for example) and turn up the volume enough to be mildly uncomfortable to you. Then ramp up the frequency until you can't hear anything any longer. At JUST the point where you stop hearing sound, turn up the volume really loud. If you can now hear it a bit, boost the frequency a bit higher. You want something that's just barely outside of your range of hearing.
Then record that sound using whatever you've got: say as a WAV file you store in a cheap MP3 player. Take the speakers and the MP3 player to work. Play that sound through the speakers at a very high volume behind the counter on an endless loop. You won't hear it. The teenagers likely will and will go away. Rather quickly. Without quite being able to explain why.
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@Cobaltasaurus said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF CHECK OUT FUCK SELF FUCK OUT
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ugh. our self check machines are like the most retarded things ever. The regularly freak out when you put the item YOU JUST SCANNED into the bagging area. If you have a bag it does this particularly. No amount of "add my bag" fixes it. It just freaks out like: OMG WHAT IS THIS WHA TIS GOING OMG.
And then one got stuck in a loop when someone scanned a $0.50 pack of gum and put down on the thing today. No amount of "i don't want to bag this item" made the fucking thing go away. So I had to restart the whole damned machine.
ETA: And our POS system will not let you swipe your card if it has a chip. So if your chip is in some way damaged you're basically fucked. I had two people today trying to use the self checks without the same of thirty minutes, with broken chips. I finally managed to get one working, but the other had had to use a completely different card because the fucking system wouldn't let him swipe despite his chip being defective.
(Yes, yes, I know go get it fixed if it doesn't work but he should /still be able to swipe!/ augh!!)
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@Cobaltasaurus
And this is why I hate the chips that they're putting into the CCs now. Really and truthfully. I was at one place and the lady in front of me had to swipe it, THEN put it in to the chip reader to have the chip do its thing. And I'm like 'Uh.... that's dumb.' -
@silentsophia
My best friend is the head of security for a mall that's on the new bus route which results in tons and tons of kids. They also have a new theatre, and are near the poor part of town. The number of 'the children are rioting, there are fights, we may have had a gunshot' stories from that mall are insane. It's resulted in a ban on anyone under the age of 17 being in there without a parent. -
@Bobotron said in Retail "Horror" Stories:
@Cobaltasaurus
And this is why I hate the chips that they're putting into the CCs now. Really and truthfully. I was at one place and the lady in front of me had to swipe it, THEN put it in to the chip reader to have the chip do its thing. And I'm like 'Uh.... that's dumb.'If you swipe a card with a chip, it will just tell you to use the chip reader. You don't need to swipe it first. At least not with our chip readers. That would be dumb.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@Lithium
Ahh. None of my cards have the chip, so I haven't had to fight with that. I guess she was just swiping and was told to use the chip, then. My bad. -
@Cobaltasaurus Just wait, the regular card readers are going to start doing it to you, too. Ours already do. A lot of the cards now that have chips? They won't let the customer swipe anymore, the provider is FORCING use of the chip. Which is like, the easiest thing in the world to end up scratching or somehow harming. Because its RIGHT ON TOP OF THE FUCKING CARD. Thank you, idiot that made the chip! I feel SO MUCH SAFER NOW... until someone steals the card or the chip gets scuffed or damaged in some way that I can now no longer USE the damn card!
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Unusable Card is safer than Yet Another Hack. Once the bugs get fixed, we will wonder why we were ever on such an antiquated system as swipe-only. Hey, it only took millions of people to be defrauded for us to scramble to catch up with the rest of the fucking world. If you want to blame someone, blame the CEOs of these banks for refusing to budge until their bottom line was affected, and now they're spending more for a shittier system because it's being implemented in such a knee-jerk manner.
