We’re getting one fistfight between customers about every three days. And that’s not hyperbole, I’m talking honest-to-Og real fights, two guys pounding the living shit out of each other with fists. Had another today, right on schedule.
Holy shit, it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.
What kind of establishment is this happening in?
Grocery store, right? In … Michigan?
What were the fights over? Any clerks in danger? What did management do? Cops get involved?
@Broomstick, we need all the details!
Grocery store/big box store in Indiana. And no, it’s not Walmart - we’re (usually) more upscale than that.
I don’t know what triggered the fights exactly. I don’t even know all the details. The one three days ago occurred while I was at lunch so I know little about it. Today’s happened while I was at one of the registers. Pretty much everyone cleared out around the two guys so no, no one else what at risk as near as I could tell, then store managers/security showed up.
The root cause is stress, of which there are three principal causes:
So… stress trifecta and because we have two additional major stressors on top of the usual one it’s that much worse. I anticipate the same level of this sort of thing to run through New Year’s. Unless it gets worse, which it very much might.
Used to be I went to work hoping I wouldn’t catch covid. Now I go to work hoping I don’t get in the middle of two battling customers, and really hope to Og that no one starts shooting.
I told a friend about this today and he related as how he went to a hardware store and witnessed an episode of violence where someone who refused to wear a mask was literally picked up and removed from the store. People are getting very, very edgy these days.
So… folks… really… this is happening or having the potential to happen at pretty much any/every damn grocery store, or other business still open.
I am so fucking tired of this year, this stress, and all the bullshit from selfish, self-entitled assholes.
My mom saw the beginnings of a fight in a grocery store parking lot here in North Carolina last week… She didn’t stick around for the outcome.
Mask compliance is decent, although yesterday I saw an unmasked couple in Walgreens. Staff responded by opening a new register in cosmetics, first trying to get the maskholes out of the main checkout line, then taking all the other customers who didn’t want to be around the maskholes.
I have noticed two things about masks:
Much greater rate of compliance in the store, and
For some reason all the “Trump 2020” and “MAGA” masks seem to have disappeared…
Trump voters bought them all up to keep as souvenirs?
We never sold them. I’m talking about what people are wearing.
I’m working from home this week (well, three days) because I thought it would be less stressful. I just got a call from work accusing me of trying to set the building on fire with the test requirements for a customer motor, which we used earlier in the year on the same motor with no problems. 
I had implemented the more harsh test requirements at my supervisor’s insistence; I had wanted to revert to the original, less aggressive test procedure for this job.
I finally told the people calling from work to take the matter up with my supervisor, since he’s the one who wanted the harsh test performed in the first place. Now I’m too worked up to focus on the shit I’m supposed to accomplish this week.
Began the week with a scolding. A stupid scolding at that.
Our system comes up at 6, so I’ve been working 6-230 every day. Some days, I’ll work 6-430, and flex a few hours later in the week, signing off early. I never make it enough where coverage has to pull calls / check my worklists.
“Core hours are 9-3. You can’t leave at 230 anymore, nor can you flex to leave early Fridays, unless you use vacation leave. If necessary, you can take extra time here and there in the middle of the day, or ideally start later. It’s all about client access”
We have 24 hours to return calls and nothing in this job is an emergency…
“You still need to be available until 3. Clients need to be able to reach you during core hours since they’re not able to come into office”
Even if a client comes into office, they wouldn’t see me, we have walk in coverage…
“Doesn’t matter. And be happy, as management wanted it so someone on every team was in until 430 every day, but the supervisors fought to not have that”
You have my eternal gratitude?
I’m not the only one who flexes, so I’m waiting to hear if anyone else on my team gets spoken with about it.
So the solution is that from now on, you work 6:30 - 3:00 on the very dot.
That’s exactly what I’m going to do.
I also noted to my supe that I’ve been bumping the ceiling of vacation leave, but usually ignore 30 minutes here and there, but no more. I’m taking time off this month, but come January expect one day per pay period off, with coverage having to kick in.
Fuck it.
Reply All.
After the mail stated specifically, word for word, “Do not Reply All.”
Nothing remotely New and Unimproved prompted this rant.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why every business in this supposedly-technically-competent world can’t control this? Are you telling me there isn’t a single IT department that can’t, at the first sign of Reply-All abuse, click a button to disable it? The potential replier could get a notice:
Reply All? Is that a good idea?
I thought not.
Please choose a single recipient for your message.
Or better yet, disable Reply All by default, unless the original sender specifies it as an option on their group message?
While misuse of reply all can certainly be an irritation, to take it away altogether would be to remove the joy when someone inadvertently uses it for a company-wide message, especially if their response is mildly (or even wildly - though I have yet to see this) inappropriate. Like you though, I do wonder why companies don’t disable it. Maybe the cure is worse than the disease - there are plenty of email chains where reply all is perfectly legitimate and useful, and to have to manually over-ride a cut-out each time could get tedious. Maybe the sweet spot is to have that over-ride kick in if you attempt to reply all to, say, more than 20 recipients?
Mailing lists with the default set to reply to the sender are the solution. Reply-to: as a mail header dates to 1982. Listserv dates to 1984 or so. I guess it is taking a while to catch on. Maybe your IT department will setup a mailing list for company wide and departmental distribution as soon as they’re done migrating to IPv6.
Which segues into my minor work place rants. Don’t at me that your new students/post-docs/lab-techs aren’t on the mailing list and are missing important departmental emails. I don’t know when new people join your lab unless you tell me. Through multiple HR people I’ve never had one reliably inform me about new hires, even though “tell me about new people so I can put them on the right mailing lists” has supposedly been on the list of intake actions for years.
It’s been a number of years since I’ve seen a Reply All tsunami here, so I think our IT people have at least a few safeguards in place. The last one I remember was years ago when NASA sent out a newsletter with a defective To: list, which allowed Reply All. The tsunami was triggered by someone complaining that they hadn’t subscribed to the newsletter and would like to be removed from the list using…Reply All.
That was just the trigger. The crashing wave came when a number of people sent the complainer a note warning them not to use Reply All using…Reply All.
Of course, now you had people complaining about the number of emails they were receiving and telling the second wave to knock off using Reply All using… Reply All!
And so on and so on…
I, of course, had forwarded the original complaint back to the NASA contact email in the newsletter as soon as I received it, letting them know that this was going on, then created a filter using the Subject line to dump everything I was receiving into a folder for future amusement and got on with my day.
Maybe the new hires have heard about the Reply Alls, and would rather just avoid all emails.
I’ve been on the receiving end of that sort of thing; email sent to many people, most of whom don’t care about it. Various people reply all to say, “remove me from this list” and then others reply all to say “Stop replying all”. It’s somewhat amusing to watch, when I’m not one replying all.
You would have loved the NASA debacle. There must have been thousands of people on their newsletter distribution. When I checked my filter folder, there were hundreds (literally) of emails. Most of the list was probably sensible about it, but it only took a fraction…