Memo to supervisor, D: I like you as a person and you’re generally a decent boss, but can we PLEASE arrange a bit more coverage on Saturday evenings? As in, about the busiest day/time of the week in our store?
Background: I work in a thrift store which doubles as a job training/experience program run by my church (although one does not have to be a member of said church to obtain placement there), and one thing that happens a lot are what’s called “business partnerships”, where the program pays wages for a trial period for an employee at a real-world employer, which frequently results in the employee being kept at said RWE. This happened with a good co-worker, E, recently, and while I’m happy for him, it does leave those he’s in the process of leaving behind a little short-handed.
I arrive at work for my closing shift and find that between 4pm and close, I’m IT in my section and a neighboring, overlapping section has three people, two of whom are very new and the other not much more experienced. Oh boy. Just to add to the joy, I’m basically acting lead over both sections from 1:30 onward when our official lead, L, has left for the day (she worked opening shift, as did one assistant lead, while the other had the day off for school).
OK, I’ve still got some useful people up until 4, let’s see how much we can handle in that time. I’m also stuck with F (see prior rants) who was pulling the usual “let’s be impossible to find when needed” bit. D had left early, apparently still ill (he’d called out at least one day this week). Grandboss K is around. L very kindly gave K a heads-up on F’s propensity for mouthing off to women in any sort of authority position over him. Still gotta address the constant disappearances he pulls, though.
Things are churning along OK until just after I get back from an absurdly early lunch from 3:30-4 (had to take it while someone else who could handle a particular sub-area was still present). K captures me en route to the sales floor after clocking back in. I ALSO need to be a backup cashier. K apparently saw a bit of deer-in-the-headlights, based on the “don’t worry, it’ll work out fine” pep talk I got while acquiring and counting a cash drawer.
Somehow, everything did work out. I had the two newest from neighboring/overlapping section (the two sections do swap people around and help each other when needed) taking turns helping in my usual area, and both M and C proved to be good learners and very useful. I’m delighted with them, and told both quite honestly I wouldn’t have been able to handle that shift without them. Worst problem that did arise was the customer I rang up who left a bag of paid-for merchandise behind. Front-end supervisor had me write an explanatory note and attach it to the bag. He’s confident we’ll hear from the customer on Monday :).
Hoping I don’t have too many gripes coming in from opening shift Monday about conditions in our area, since the people who were there were doing the best we could on housekeeping around various customer service needs.
REALLY hoping the next schedule, due to arrive ca. Thursday or early Friday, has better coverage for the Saturday close shift.
