I do not work FOR the store in question.
I work AT the store in question.
They don’t pay me, and I should not be expected to do someone else’s job in someone else’s department just so they can save a few bucks on payroll.
That being said, let me explain.
Most department stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Ames and Rose’s and Bradlee’s “rent” space to a shoe company. I work for one of these companies. I get paid by this company, and I follow their policies, not the store’s policies.
I am not required to work in other departments, run registers, answer the phone, do carryouts, or get items off top shelves. As a matter of fact, my worker’s comp won’t cover me if I get hurt while in a department other than the shoe department. So if I fall off a ladder while getting a George Foreman grill off the top shelf in Housewares because the store is too damn penny-pinching to have enough clerks available to help customers, I get to pick up the tab for any medical bills.
As a matter of fact,I can be FIRED if my district manager caught me working in another department.
It’s not my job to do the work that the store pays other people to do. They sure as hell don’t pay ME to do it. I don’t represent the store, I’m not supposed to do their work. I stay in my department and expect them to give me my sales figures for the previous day each morning, then I expect them to leave me alone and take care of their own damn customers so I can do my work.
Yet the store in question, like many others, will frequently have one person cover five or six departments. Matter of fact, there have been several times that only ONE WORKER other than me has been available on the entire sales floor. You know what that means - people come to me for help because the damn store is too fucking cheap to provide more associates for customer service. I get so few hours each week that I sure as hell don’t want to waste it doing someone elses’ work - if they want me to handle customer service in their own departments, they can fucking pay me to do so.
Also, Vinnie, just to let you know: “too many customers + too few salesmen=JOB SECURITY!” is not true. All it means is that your customers get pissed off and go somewhere else, which spells doom for your store. My store has been bought out/gone bankrupt/reopened twice in the four years I’ve worked there - I know what no customer service eventually ends in.
The managers constantly brag about customer service and beat it into our heads, yet we are slowly losing sales. I see the numbers every day - when you have a good-sized, well-known department store that only brings in around $10,000 a day on the weekends, you know the store is suffering. My whole store brings in less gross sales in a week than the local Wal-Mart does in ONE DAY.
That’s sad.
I also happen to live in Eastern Kentucky. Around my area, people think a career at McDonald’s or Wendy’s is “success in life”. That’s all there is around here anymore - fast food joints.
I know people who do the “work a day” thing at places like Labor Ready just to put food on the table.
My best friend sells her blood plasma on a regular basis for gas money.
Believe it or not, I actually have one of the better jobs in the area. I’ve put in dozens of applications over the years, but no one wants to hire someone who has a college schedule that changes every 3 months, not when the unemployment rate is so high here that they can find someone with a totally free schedule in less than a day. I get beaten out for jobs because of my college schedule, but I don’t dare drop out because I don’t want to flip burgers or straighten shoes the rest of my life.
NOW…
having said all this, does it really surprise you that I don’t give a damn about the store or the customers that shop there?
No, I don’t treat people this way in the store. This is the way I would LIKE to treat some people in that store, because I’m fucking fed up and I just felt like venting somewhere where I wouldn’t get my ass fired for it, because I can’t afford to be fired.
I make about $115 a week in net pay. $460 a month.
I have a $164 truck payment, I spend around $60 a month on gas, $20 for my Earthlink account (which I have to have because my college classes are all online) and I also pay $80 a month on my school loans.
That’s $324 already, not counting the fact that I buy all my own clothes, personal needs, etc. I’m not left with much. I live from paycheck to paycheck, I bust my ass for these people and get a 10 cent raise every year (even with a higher than average yearly review). I have no health insurance because I can’t afford it either.
I don’t buy the bullshit that if I give exemplary customer service that it’ll get me somewhere. Five years from now I’ll still be making under six dollars an hour and have no health insurance, or anything else to show for “exemplary customer service”.