I’d fan the flames in hopes an epic stapler battle would break out.
ETA: The archtypal epic stapler battle would end with both of them in the ER, where the doc would say “Look at all this blood! We need to get these guys stitched up… Oh, wait, never mind. That part’s already done, sort of.”
I haven’t decided if our temp IT guy is terrible, or if our old IT guy did more than I ever gave him credit for. Ever since he left, our system has gone down more often than a sorority girl with low self-esteem, and it’s fucking up my day. Every damn time.
Thankfully they’re VERY low key. They don’t speak to each other unless absolutely necessary, and I had no idea about the affair until the male half confessed to me, I guess as part of his atonement process when it ended.
But dang it was quiet here on Friday. 
Another round of griping about “parents” who are too involved with the precious phone to bother to in any way monitor their children. I get VERY tired of straightening the kid book section multiple times a day because kids were allowed to just pull stuff out and scatter it, and finding toys in that aisle gets really old. Also potentially dangerous. My (apparently) pregnant lead nearly tripped over a little car that was rolled into her path.
I’m chuckling at “(apparently) pregnant lead”. And at the conundrums that a play area in a bookstore cause. A friend of mine was a KidLit manager at a Barnes&Noble, and they’d get clueless parents, and even “mothers” who’d leave the kids playing with the train set and sneak out of the store to do other shopping.
And this was not a store in a mall – they’d have to walk a ways to the next strip of stores… or maybe the moms were going to yoga classes, given how long their kids would require “free child care”. My friend came close to calling Child Services twice one holiday season.
I work in a thrift store :).
As for my lead, since I don’t know her well enough to inquire about her personal life, I can only say “apparently” until I’m in possession of more definite info about her condition :D. I will say I really don’t think she just has a bit of a stomach, since she went from “hmmm, maybe” last week to “nearly definite” this week (she’s quite small).
If I was the store manager, this is how I’d work it;
Notice child unattended for more than 15 minutes.
Page the mother twice, five minutes apart.
Call the Police, tell them you have an abandoned child whose parent is not in the store.
The “parents” tend to be somewhere in vicinity, just too involved in their own shopping or in their precious phones to bother to notice or care about their offspring’s havoc. :rolleyes:
Well, it was Christmas last week - maybe she just ate really, really well. 
That makes sense to me - if you leave your child somewhere where there have been no childcare arrangements made, the child has been abandoned, as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve been wondering about that; I see parents out with their kids all the time, with the parents’ heads buried in their phones. The kids have to notice that, right?
“Unattended Children Will Be Given an Espresso and a Free Puppy”
That’s cruel to the puppy.
Never suggest to a women that she may be pregnant unless you can a actually see the baby comming out, and even then, check with the doctor first.
Not sure who to attibute that to, but someone famouse/witty .
Well, that was nice while it lasted. This year most of the noisy people in the office took their vacations over the last two weeks. Ah, blessed quiet! Now they’re starting to drift back into the office as their vacations end, and I’m starting to mutter “shut up, shut up, just shut up” under my breath again.
Dave Barry, I think.
Another reason why I’ll be happy to get out of here someday soon: (Interview down south next week! And more applications going out over weekend at jobs I feel optimistic about…)
We closed our offices to all but essential personnel over Christmas week to New Year’s. As a director of a part of the office that really has to run 365 days a year, I had to work four of the six days we were closed–two of my subordinates kindly filled in on the other two days. Normally we like to have at least one other person in the office to deal with various issues that might crop up, like if we get two calls at the same time. And, as our VP–who did come in one day–said, it would be good for other directors to set an example and help out during the break. Did they? Of course not. One is still fuming about not being promoted, so he didn’t show up. The other one signed up to work two mornings, but on the Friday before break she mysteriously canceled both work appointments claiming “she needed to be with her family.”
Well, as I found out today, apparently “family” is the other place she works for. This director, who is the second highest-paid person in the office after the VP apparently is not making enough to live on and decided to take on a part-time job at a clothing store in a local mall as a fitting specialist. I couldn’t make this up. It seems that sweet $10/hr she gets as a part-timer is just what she needs to top off the $80K+/yr at her actual job. So the reason she couldn’t come in and help out over break is, you know, the mall gets real busy this time of year and the store needed her to come in, blowing off the instructions of the VP who, you know, is her boss at her real job. The craziest thing about it all is that she works at a men’s clothing store. So it’s not like she’s working there like a lot of other people I’ve known who really didn’t need the money but loved the employee discount.
And the saddest thing of all is that when I was promoted to director I was quite forcefully told by the then-interim VP that under no circumstances was I to seek employment outside of the office or even think about taking any college courses because “now that I was a director I needed to completely concentrate on my job here.” This other director has been working at the clothing store for over five years! God, I can’t wait to get out of this “one rule for you, totally completely different rule for someone else” place.
I would speculate that if you’ve been a director less than 5 years that this woman is the reason the rule exists.
I’ve been told by various sources that the “rule” was made up on the spot for me alone. The other director had never heard of it.
Attn Co-workers:
Please work the shifts you are scheduled. Even, or perhaps especially, if they are annoying/obnoxious.
Do your laundry in a timely manner so that your clothes are out of the dryer before you are scheduled to come to work. (Yes, one co-worker, probably not above the age of twenty, called to say he’d be late because his clothes were still in the dryer).
Read the schedule properly, and write it down (or input it in your phone) so you show up on time (someone thought he was scheduled at 3:30, it was actually 12:30-- I’d have more sympathy for the mix-up if he wasn’t the one with the dryer timing issue).
If you can’t make your shift, at least call a member of management-- and maybe someone in a position of authority in the department-- so that we know not to expect you.
Even if this is a second job, and not your primary source of income, don’t go begging to the management to get the schedule tweaked when it’s been done “wrong”. (Co-worker usually works 2 days a week. One was left off next week’s schedule. I’d have sucked it up and dealt. Now, in fairness, I do intend to ask that one of my shifts next week be moved, but that’s because I think it’s illegal as well as obnoxious to schedule someone to work shifts 3 hours apart.)
They only have one set of clothes?
I did not ask the co-worker whether the clothes he intended to wear to work were the ones in the dryer-- I assume he’s got two or three shirts, probably a jacket, probably at least two pairs of khaki pants, and then whatever clothes he wears the rest of the time.
It was just such a “well, at least he’s honest” moment.