Okay, I think it’s time to vent my spleen anonymously to teh intarweb (that’s you people for those of you playing along at home). Today’s rant will probably fall short of the epic rants of days gone by due to me becoming a bit more sanguine as I’ve aged but hopefully it’ll still be vitriolic enough to satisfy the common crowd.
First a little backstory. For those of you who been living in a van down by the river and don’t get out much, I work at Chapters, Canada’s only chain bookstore similar to Barnes & Noble or Borders in the states. Like all big corporations, they suck at treating their staff properly. For the most part they’re okay at an individual level, but the higher up you get, the more shit comes down and impersonal things get.
Recently the GM of our store was kicked to the curb because we weren’t performing up to the Regional Manager’s expectations. The whole region got a reshuffle and our store got hit fairly hard with one of the two decent managers getting transfered and we accquired a new GM from Winterpeg temporarily who’ll be training our “permanent” GM. We also got another assistant GM from Sherwood Park who’s supposed to be this amazing guru at layout and design. (Note: the key words in that last sentence are SUPPOSED TO BE. I’ll touch back on this later)
Anyway, enough set up and back story, on with the griping.
Since our new GM arrived he’s pretty much turned our store on it’s figurative ear changing shit to suit his needs. Now, admittedly some of it needed to be done as we’ve been fairly lax in certain aspects, but a lot of it is arbitrary, useless and doesn’t help anyone but him. It’s just how he was used to doing it and so that’s how it has to be done. Plus his approach in quite a few of the changes is “Tough! This is how it is, Get used to it”.
Now for those of you who know me, this is is probably the absolute worst thing you can do to get me to help you. I’m as stubborn and obstinant as they come and I don’t take kindly to being told what to do. I’ll take advice and suggestion as long as they’re reasonable and I get an explanation as to WHY but once you go hard line on me all you do is get my back up and make me be totally negative against everything you say from that point on (even if you make a reasonable suggestion). Once you cross that line, there’s no turning back.
So, I’ve been on a slow boil since about day three because of this. We’ve had a lot of pointless changes in the cash office and instead of getting all the information at once in a nice neat package that I can digest and then teach to my crew of all new cashiers, I’m getting dribs and drabs from various managers, EACH with different opinions and ideas of how to interpret things and so I’m getting conflicting information from five different people. On top of this, because I’m not there 24/7 (I’m shocked cause it damn well feels like it some days) they’re telling everyone else the same five different stories and the whole thing is cascading beyond belief. It’s getting on my FUCKING NERVES!
Now I don’t care if things have to change, I can live with it as long as the change is positive. Right now it’s not. It’s ALL Fucking arbitrary. Or at least it seems that way. If you’re going to change something explain to me WHY your changing it and why what we were doing currently is wrong. And MORE importantly, be willing to listen when I tell you that I think your way is stupid and that for our location I feel that what we’re doing currently works better or could we at least try a compromise between the two. Right now I’m not getting any of that. It’s all From now on blah blah blah blah. Well ya know what. From now on you can bite my arse ya wanker. Fuckin idjits need a good swift kick in the head.
And as for our gift guru… I could fucking merchandise stuff better than her if I was blind drunk, senile and sightless. What all she’s touched has been to the plan Head office sends out every month to the letter and nothing beyond that and quite frankly, it looks like shit. She’s had one of the girls who works in the gift section redisplay our journals 4 friggin times this week and to be honest they a) don’t sell well enough to merit the effort she’s putting in and b) they don’t look any different than when she started. Meanwhile there are 4 TABLES worth of shit piled up in receiving blocking everything else because they’re not on the damn planogram and we “don’t have room for it on the floor”. I call BULLSHIT. It’s no greater amount of stuff than we have any other time of the year bar christmas and yet previous people have been able to get it all out and displayed properly. The problem is, she won’t let them. Everything has to be HER way. She freakin calls in on the days she’s not there to tell the people working in gift what to do!?!?. WTF!?!?! She’s a total useless twat if you ask me and from what I’ve seen a domineering control freak with a chip on her shoulder to boot. In other words she doesn’t play well with others. Joy! I’m glad she hates cash so I don’t have to deal with her (unless it’s cleaning up her mess on nights when she closes as she doesn’t know shite about what she’s doing).
And from what I’m hearing the new “permanent” GM isn’t really to thrilled with all of these nitpicky details either so it’ll most likely all fucking change again when she takes charge. Meh… I love my job but as you all know I loathe stupidity to the core and lately work stinks like week old feces. Guess it’s time to dust off the old resume in case things get worse.
Okay. I’m all ranted out for now. Catharsis in action! WooT