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My Family is Not THIS Dysfunctional

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I saw Ralph (as in Ralph’s Mega-Mart) on TV the other night. They were interviewing him about a new store opening and asked him about his formula for success. He said that one of the keys to his success is that all of his employees are treated like family. I wonder what type of family he grew up in.

The father of one of my co-workers recently died. When my Team Leader heard the news, her response was “But I need her here on Saturday!!” I’m sure that if someone had explained the situation to the poor man, he would have planned things a little better. Of course, this is the same Team Leader who resigned a few weeks later because the stress was making her sick. It appears that employee support is not considered a family value.

Recently the company introduced a new program. It is called Personal Responsibility for Your Behavior (or something close to that – the real name faded once I realized that the message might be new to a 10-year-old). We work in a very “us vs them” environment. If we are more than a minute late arriving, punching in from break or punching in from lunch, we receive a 1/2 point on our record. If we call in sick, we receive 1 point on our record. If we no call/no show, we receive 4 points on our record. If we behave inappropriately or unsafely we receive points on a different record. If either record reaches 12 points in a year, we are subject to termination (kind of death by boredom by that point).

The new policy said that it is our responsibility to control the number of points we accrue. If we went four months with no points, we would get a face-to-face meeting with our manager (!!) so that person could tell us what a good employee we have been. So, if you’re bad, you get points; if you’re good, you get to talk to your manager. And you are responsible for which one happens!!!

As part of a “family” we need to make sure that everyone is safe. So we have quarterly safety updates and videos and readings. The bottom line is – if you get hurt, it’s your own fault. One new employee hurt his back moving a pallet, then got hurt lifting some boxes, then ran a pallet jack over his foot. He was terminated for being a “safety risk”. Of course, no one explained to him why he kept getting hurt –  he had sat through the 9 hours (no joke) of video training before they let him out on the floor. If management had been paying attention at all, they would have told him that taking mind-altering substances at work will lead to lapses in judgment that could affect your health (and safety).

They don’t really have anything that counts as “light” duty. If you are not able to do your job fully, you have the option of toughing it out (and having your co-workers complain that you are not pulling your weight), taking time off (without pay), or becoming a greeter. Greeters are those people who say hello and good-bye as you enter and leave the store (in case you couldn’t figure it out yourself). Greeting is the most boring job on earth (or at least at Ralph’s). They can’t tell you ahead of time when you will be working – as far as I can tell you either take the place of an ill greeter, a vacationing greeter, or a greeter who is injured themselves and has to stay home.

Ralph’s prides itself on hiring people at $0.25 over minimum wage (that’s $10/week closer to the bottom of the poverty line if you work full-time). However, if you are a cashier or service worker, you lose that extra money. Apparently dealing directly with customers all day is not considered as difficult as putting bags of cheese on a hook. Of course, no one is hired full-time so all of this is relative anyway. I wonder what kind of allowance Ralph’s kids get?

If you have the audacity to leave and then want to come back (regardless of how long you have been gone), you have to re-join the family. You have to complete the drug screening (probably a good idea since you know what you’re coming back to), the hours of video training and the on-the-floor training. The best part is that even if you have only been gone a few weeks, your pay drops back to the starting salary and you have no seniority toward vacation, 401(k) match or anything else. You have to be really desperate to return to our family.

Our equivalent to “Wait til your father gets home” is the senior management visit. Whenever someone important is supposed to come, we have to clean, make sure everything is tidy, and stock everything (you would think that would be the norm, not a special occurrence). The higher up the chain of command the visitor, the more stressed out the store director becomes, and the more unpleasant it is for everyone. Does anyone really think that the VIPs don’t know what’s going on? Maybe they are as clueless as some parents.

Thinking about it, maybe Ralph read too many Victorian novels about families. There seem to be a lot of stories with rich families who take in poor relations and seem to be helping them while ensuring that none of the wealth actually gets to the relations.

At any rate, my second ‘family’ is not coming to my house for Thanksgiving.

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Random Thoughts

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I drive country roads to work – why do I only run into slow drivers on the straight parts and never on the parts that resemble a NASCAR track?

Why do they name it head cheese when that’s the only disgusting part of the animal that is not in it?

Why do I only see predators (animal, not human) when they have some poor animal in their mouth/talons?

Should I be insulted that when I was pulled over for driving erratically, the cop assumed it was for a medical emergency not for being under the influence?

Why am I the only one on the sales floor when someone breaks a bottle of (really cheap) strawberry wine or a gallon of milk or a jar of horseradish? They really are the only things in the store that make me really gag. (Aside from human emissions of various sorts.)

Why do I attract all of the really strange people? Do I really look like I know what to substitute for spicy paprika (or know what spicy paprika is)? How about all the stores that carry the products that we don’t? The guy who feels he needs to tell me his life story before asking for money?

If my mother knows that I am liberal in almost everything, why does she insist on telling me everything she has “learned” on Fox News?

Does my car have a sign that says pull out in front me, there’s only a quarter mile of empty space behind me?  Or maybe, it’s icy so test my reflexes by cutting in front of me and slamming on your brakes?

Why do people insist on telling the same awful jokes over and over? (“Where’s the cheese? Where’s the cheese? Oh here it is.” as he enters the aisle.)

Why do I only have the nerve to complain online or at home when those are never the people who need to hear it?

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Do You Ever Get Tired of Being Nice?

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(this post may not be particularly relevant to the chronically snarky)

I am generally considered to be a very nice person. Even the wildlife in our backyard are not afraid of me. The deer and even the groundhogs only look to make sure it’s not a stranger. A raccoon (non-rabid) tried to intimidate me on my own porch. Nevertheless, there are times when I want to say “Were you born that way or did you have to study to get that attitude/behavior?”

For example, I have a co-worker in cheese who started a few weeks ago. When I met her, she was extremely nice and outgoing. Apparently I made a mistake when I told her that the first thing that we had to do in the mornings was to unload the pallets and start stocking. She was arranging the shelves (for two hours).  Apparently she felt that doing the real manual labor was meant for someone else.  She barely spoke to me the rest of the day except to tell me that I was defensive (her radar was glitchy – I was totally ticked off). It generally got worse from there, by the middle of the next Saturday, she was not talking to me at all. When they asked if I would be willing to give up mid-week day off for Saturdays (really – it was a sincere question), it took all my will-power to not do a happy-dance in front of her.

I guess there has not yet been enough time to heal this wound. Last Friday as I was working. I heard someone say “There’s a mess on the floor.” I turned around and there she was – pointing at a trail of coffee on the floor. No “hello”, no “how are you”. I realized that perhaps I had been wrong in being upset that she wouldn’t talk to me – silence was much better than being treated like her servant.

Speaking of being treated like a servant, it appears that there has been a severe decline in mothers’ teaching their children to pick up for themselves. The first thing I have to do every morning is pick up all the stuff people have left behind the previous day. I kinda get the things from the other fresh food departments – I’m generally the last one they go through and they put the stuff they got cold somewhere to keep it cold (being way too much trouble to go back the few hundred feet to return it). What I don’t get is people who leave their canned chili in the coolers. (Are you that embarrassed to tell the cashier that you changed your mind?) But the ones that are truly annoying are the ones who leave their trash for me. (You really couldn’t see that we have trash cans every few aisles for your empty Starbucks cup?) An all-time low was the person who left chewed gum on a shelf, although the person who left cherry pits was a close second. Probably the same person who used the sanitizing wipe at the door so they wouldn’t get germs from the cart.

Other times, I would really like to be someone’s mother. A woman with two children came through. While she was shopping, her kids were playing with (it seemed) everything in the aisle. Finally I asked them to stop because they were making the cheese warm. (Why would you hug a hunk of cheese tightly to your chest in the first place?) The mother turns around and says “Did you hear what she said?” I guess I should be grateful she didn’t yell at me for upsetting her kids.

There’s nothing like the parent whose child is screaming at the top of their lungs for no apparent reason. Some parents are embarrassed and try to calm the child down. Some try to ignore the child and hope that they will get tired (apparently not realizing that the rest of us are already tired enough of it to tell the parent that mother-in-law’s tongue will temporarily freeze the vocal cords and we would be happy to check the nursery to see if they have any). The “winner” in this group was the lady who was having a yelling contest with her toddler to see which one of them could make more noise. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to recommend an amusement park where they welcome that type of behavior.

When buying packaged cheese, why do some people go through every package to make sure they have the one farthest away from its expiration date? It’s not milk or yogurt, where a couple of days make a difference. When it is July and the front package expires November 7, is it really necessary to pull everything off the shelf to find the ones at the back that are dated November 24? Are you really planning your Thanksgiving dinner now? And when you’re done, perhaps you could return them to the hook – even put the newer ones at the front so the next person doesn’t have to waste time rooting through everything. Oh yeah, it’s my job to pick up after you. I actually had a woman complain because she had gone through every jug of juice on the next aisle and they had put the newer ones in the front – she had wasted her time going through them all.

I was hired just before Christmas 2011. The only thing I really remember about the season was the woman who came in around 2p on Christmas Eve. She wanted shredded sharp cheddar cheese. For some reason it had been a big year for shredded sharp cheddar, and we were out. The woman stood in the middle of aisle and screamed that I was ruining her Christmas. Why? Was she giving someone important a bag of cheese as a gift and waited until the last minute to make sure it was fresh? Had she suddenly found the perfect recipe that would bring the true spirit of Christmas to her family? Now she was going to have to go to another store and she didn’t have time for that! I hope she went to one of our competitors and found what she was looking for – maybe I’ll never see her again.

The past Christmas was fine, but I met that lady’s soul-mate at Easter. We sell pre-made mashed potatoes in a bag. The day before Easter a woman came in looking for them and the shelf was empty. I checked in the cooler, but had no luck. I told her we were out and apologized (company policy is that we apologize for anything at inconveniences the customer – we spend a lot of time apologizing). The woman wasn’t interested. She needed those potatoes and wanted to know how we could possibly run out of mashed potatoes the day before Easter. I told her we had a different brand in another department. She said she wanted this brand. I guess it was lucky I didn’t suggest she make them from real potatoes.

There are quite a few other “interesting” people who have passed through, but they will have to wait for another time.

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Promotion?

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It’s been a big week for me at Ralph’s Mega-Mart. Starting Sunday, I am now a full-time employee.

Since everyone starts as a part-time employee, I wasn’t sure how one moved to full-time. Since there are so few of them, I thought maybe someone had to die, and the interested person with the most seniority would move up. Or you had to be there a certain amount of time (if you survived 10 years, they figured you weren’t going anywhere and they might as well offer you benefits.)  Turns out it is not quite that difficult. The requirement is that you average 36 hours/week for 2 consecutive quarters. Of course, it is management’s responsibility to ensure that (virtually) no one averages 36 hours/week.

Luckily, I work in the deli, the graveyard of hopes and dreams in the store. It seems that no matter how many people they hire, they never have enough stay to staff the place. So I have been working full-time hours as a part-time employee for awhile.

Not so luckily, it has taken a couple of tries to get the status change. They really don’t like full-time employees because of the benefit costs (heaven knows the hourly rate isn’t going to to break them). I could have switched in January except I was sick for a week in October (they also really hate it when their employees get sick or injured – destroys productivity). Because we don’t get sick-time (surprise!), it was considered an unpaid leave. A week with no hours messes with the average of a part-time employee (guessing it’s all part of the low pay/high expectations charm of the big-box culture). So I had to start over again in January.

By July 1, I had the numbers. However, you have to ask to be made full-time. And apparently you have to ask right away.  I asked the Admin Asst (of course we don’t have anyone who does HR) on the 9th and was told that I had to talk to management immediately. I only knew I had to ask because one of the other employees had told me during my first month of the job. (At the time I thought she was crazy – why would anyone want to be there full-time. Of course that was before I realized that I would never make enough money there to go to the doctor for the rest of my life.)

So I went to my Team Leader to tell her that I wanted to go full-time. It was her first day as TL (both of the previous two people in the position left as broken women), and she wanted to know why I was telling her. She called her boss (they have weird titles there, and I can’t remember his).

He met with me and told me that I would need to be fully available. We went over my attendance. I cannot get used to using a time-clock and being required to take breaks. If you are a minute late in the morning, at break, or on lunch, the clock forgives you. Otherwise you get “written up”. I’m not sure why we did the review, the rules don’t say anything about needing to be point-free to change status (although by this point I’m wondering if the whole thing might be pointless.)

So I was eligible and the change was made (to their credit, it was the beginning of the following week). I now have more vacation days, a better 401(k) match, better health care, and some change to my pension that I don’t remember. When I hired in they told me that I was not eligible for the hourly pension; the benefit system says I have been since my hire date (they really need HR people).

So am I a happy clam now? Relatively speaking, yes. Total availability means that I have to work whenever they schedule me. I am not overly worried about being put on midnights – it requires a $0.25/hr premium. The manager-guy told me my hours wouldn’t change – of course, I couldn’t see the asterisk saying it was subject to change at any time. I am no longer allowed to take unpaid time off. So I guess if some kind of crisis arises, I need to call in. That gives me a “point” on my record (which I guess is their idea of a deterrent). If I know I need a day off, I have to work on one of my regularly scheduled off days. So basically, I am at their mercy as to when I need to be there (I’m not really sure how that differs significantly from part-time). Like everything else there, I’m sure

So I guess I officially have a “real” job. My professors would be so proud of me.

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The Set-Up

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Somehow my MBA didn’t save me from the bad economy a few years ago. (Go figure – guess it wasn’t just happening to someone else). The job I had excelled at for 20 years (in the HR industry was being swallowed by another, bigger job description. I pictured it as one of those pictures with the line of fish with their mouths open, each one eating the next smaller fish until the giant fish devoured everyone. So I had to find something to do.

I live in the Midwest, that part of the country that no one cares about unless the weather puts us in the headlines. Which is a huge improvement over the previous lumping under “Rustbelt”, a sad commentary on our place in the American psyche. Unfortunately, when it comes to looking for a career, sometimes “The Dead Zone” (apologies to Stephen King) is a better description.

I discovered that I was no longer qualified for most positions in HR. It was probably for the best. In my last position I was in constant trouble because I was standing up for the employees. (I hadn’t realized that the job qualification of ‘being able to say no” applied to the staff, not the customer.) My resume, which had looked eclectic in the past (some HR, some tech, some project work), now showed that while I was talented I didn’t appear to have a passion for anything. At least anything that someone would pay me to do.

So I did what any self-respecting professional would do – sat on the sofa and felt sorry for myself. On the bright side, I did not end up a ‘Toddlers & Tiaras” addict. And I tried to find a job. I discovered that the advice to use “the words that employers want to hear” on my resume (to keep it from getting kicked out from the parser the employer was using) is worthless – thousands of other people were reading the same articles and clips.

Finally, I became desperate enough to take any interview I could get. I applied to the deli at a regional big-box store (let’s call it Ralph’s Mega-Mart and hope there isn’t really one in the Midwest). The day of the interview, I had a semi-rant about how this would probably be the interview that would end in a job offer. Of course, it was the only interview I’d had in recent memory, including other low-paying, low-prestige jobs. Sure enough, Ralph’s wanted me.

I should have had a clue at the orientation when they gave us company-issue polyester shirts at the orientation. They varied by department – the deli wears dirty orange (they call it rust). The first few days reminded my of the saying “the less at stake, the more vigorously people defend their position”. Each person who trained me explained why they were doing things rights and everyone else was wrong. I was on afternoons, so the real ogres were the day-shift. I had learned to do dishes, close up, and fry chicken before management decided they needed someone out in the store on packaged cheese (e.g. Kraft, Velveeta, store-brand). For some reason. Ralph’s sees these products as tied to the deli rather than dairy.

Apparently I showed potential (and very little training investment), so I moved over. I didn’t know it, but it was the best day of my life at Ralph’s (sad, but true). At the time, I didn’t understand the true personality of the deli – a half-dozen people working under pressure, in close quarters, reporting to a supervisor with virtually no interpersonal skills. Not to mention wages approximately $3 below living standards, limited benefits, and hours that could begin at 6a and end at 11p, seven days a week including all holidays + Christmas.

So began my adventures in cheese…