My co-workers aren’t horrible people. In fact, after reading the horror stories here, I’d say my co-workers are one of the better bunch of people. However, once in a while, there just is an off day that they annoy the hell out of me.
The first thing I realise was what a slave driver my trainer was when I started. There was a new girl today. Someone different trained her. I helped, but not much because I’ve only been there for two months. Still, I tried the best I could. This is what made me realise what a d trainer mine was. Instead of showing me how to do something and then ask me to do it, she would tell me to do something, then if I was confused or did it wrong, she’d get an annoyed look on her face and say something like “Forget it. I’ll do it myself.”
The place I work at is sort of a family business. More than half the employees are family. the owner’s brother comes in to help out from time to time. Except, he doesn’t really help. He’ll ring stuff up and take orders, but he never ever makes the food. Well, actually, he does make food, but not if someone else (me) can make it for him. Say, a customer wants a ham sandwich, he’d take the order from them, then isntead of making it since the stuff is RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, he calls me over even if I’m all the way at the till, to make it. Maybe he has food phobia. I don’t know. The first few times was tolerable, but now, it just annoys the hell out of me. Can’t say anything about it either since he’s family.
Now, this is the one I’m building up to. Every family has a black sheep. Every school yard has a reject-loser. This is the way it is with us also, unfortunately. When I first got hired, I didn’t see what my other co-workers were talking about. Emma (as I will call her) was really nice despite how quietly she talked. I pulled a muscle in my ear trying to hear her. But that’s not the problem with her. When I first started, co-workers left and right would say things like “Don’t follow Emma’s bad example.” and “Make sure you don’t mess up like Emma does.” At first, I was puzzled, but now I see. The biggest thing, I think, is how she does things that are totally unnecessary. For some reason, she has to go to the storage room every shift. If there is nothing we need to stock, she’ll find something. Like today, she starts rummaging around the cuboards and says “We need [coffee] cups.” Uh. no. The cuboard is half filled with them. Everyone told her so. But nope, she brought some back anyway which pissed my manager off. It wasn’t the fact that she got so many cups there was no where to put them, but the fact that she didn’t listen to us when we said we didn’t need anymore.
Later, my manager was mopping the floor. When the manager mops the floor, everyone knows not to get in the way. So, I stand aside to wait for her to finish. All of a sudden, Emma popsup and says “You’re not doing anything right? Can you fill up the paper plates?” There was a stack of maybe, fifteen left. It was not a lot, but once again, there was enough. Also, it was in the path of the mopping, so I just stood there going “Uhhhh…?” So she goes into the back to get the plates then hands them to me. Fortunately, the manager saw that little exchange and half yelled at her. “Emma, can you not see that I’m mopping the floor? Put the paper plates back.” I started to head to the back. “No. Emma gets to put it back since she got them ut.” Heh.
So then Emma wanders back out and asks me to refill the napkins and the ketchup and mustard bottles. The thing was, I did it while she was in the storage room. So, I ignore her request being the little devil that I am. She repeats herself, and before I can tell her it’s already done, manager cuts in and says “Why don’t you do it Emma?” And there was no reason Emma couldn’t do it. So, she wandered over to the counter, saw that everything was full and wandered back. Manager saw this and said “Well?” in a less than patient tone. Emma mumbled something about “all filled” and dissapeared for a while. That was the end of doing unnecessary things, or at least stopped trying to make me do unnecessary thngs.
We were already on a short fuse with her. Too bad she had to yank at it and stamp all over it.
