August 16, 2011

• In my previous post I wanted to delve into the work aspect of my life, but thought my post was long enough, so here I am to bore you to death about my work life. Actually, I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

  Last night I worked 2 hours of overtime because we were totally hooped. One girl called in sick and the other came and then was told to go to clinic. Ultimately she ended up going home too from some crazy infected bug bites on her fingers. So we were extremely short staffed, especially since most of us were going home at 7:30. I feel like putting in that extra help redeemed myself a bit from all the drama I feel like I've created for myself. It only feels like drama to me, anyway. So a few months back I told my supervisor that I was thinking about becoming a supervisor myself. Word travels very fast at my workplace and before I knew it I had my GM and DMGM coddling me and encouraging me to go forth. I thought it was great! I had been given another position within the store to work in the back money room, which I've always wanted to do. So I started working at 4am prepping the tills for business. Then our primary early morning keyholder got sick and was out for some 8 weeks and they told me I should do that position to gain some skills that would help me become a supervisor. I was apprehensive because they wanted to me to start in a matter or days, but I thought, What the hell! and went for it. This was my first time working on the general floor. I knew I already wasn't a fan of working on the floor and stocking, but I tried my best to suck it up. Also I wasn't able to work in the money room and do keyholder at the same time, which was a bummer. Some weeks later our sick person returned so they moved me into another department. It was nice because I was working during the day and not at 4 am and I could have my admin position back working with the tills.

  However, I was so sick of working on the floor at that point. I missed working at the customer service desk so bad. As stupid as customers can be I missed that interaction. I also missed the simplicity of it. I don't run around like a chicken with its head cut off. I have to stay where I am and delegate. I love it up there and all the experience I have up there has helped me master multitasking like nobody's business. I can help two customers at once and be answering phone calls at the same time. It's not great service for the customers in front of me, but I do what I need to do when I'm all by myself. Sometimes the customers are impressed, lol.

  So a couple of weeks ago I was having a bad day. My hormones were going wonky because I was no longer on the pill and I was frustrated as all hell. I wanted to go home early and they wouldn't let me. Not only that they wanted to stick me in an area of the store I didn't like. So I embarrassed myself by crying my eyes out. My GM paged me for something else, but I had no choice but to show my wet, blotchy face to her. I felt so petulant. But it was finally there that I confessed that I didn't like being on the floor, that I would like my schedule to be 70/30, desk/admin, with NO more floor shifts. My GM then told me that I was putting her in an awkward situation because they just trained some people to replace me on the desk. I was a little taken aback. Who said anything about me leaving the desk all together? To be honest I felt like I was stolen away from my original position that I enjoyed and thrown into one that I hated. Anyway, I can see both sides of coin. But, I feel like I shot myself in the foot with this whole supervisor thing. I mean, if I hate working on the floor then how am I going to like being a supervisor? I'm worried that my GM sees that. She's a smart woman with a keen eye. I've put this supervisor thing on hold for now anyway because I've made baby making my top priority in life, but I still hate coming across as a difficult employee. At any rate it looks like I'm heading back in the direction of the customer service desk. I still have some keyholder shifts because the other keyholders are taking holidays, but I'm okay with helping them out with holidays. My DMGM, who is doing the schedule, even called me at home to apologize for giving me those shifts, lol. It was a good conversation though because I was able to reiterate how I felt about being on the floor and how much I wanted to go back to the desk.

  So that is why I feel like I redeemed myself a little last night by putting in that extra effort to help out. See? I'm not totally useless! lol I don't even care about the overtime pay. Just thinking about leaving when they were so short staffed made me feel like an asshole even though I had absolutely no obligation to stay. In fact, my company hates paying overtime but my supervisor was desperate.

  All in all, I'm glad my skills have expanded and I've become a diverse employee, but it's also very important to me that I enjoy what I do.

  • 12:02 pm
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