Today's edition of the blog is a little later than usual, for reasons I
don't entirely want to get into (it involves money and phone calls to
irritating call centres).
Last night was a bit of a pain as well. At the moment it seems
that I cannot do a damned thing right at that place. A part of me
wants to run and get away from it all, but a bigger part of me is far
more stubborn and says that I have been there longer than the people
antagonising me, and therefore they are the people who should go, not
me. It started badly, and then got worse. I arrived and
Totem Pole asked me whether if he had the registration number of a guy
who stole a £10 bottle of wine, he should report it to the
police. I calmly tried to explain to him that this would be a
good idea, and was met with the reply that he thought so but wasn't
sure if the police would be interested. Robbery that is easy to
trace? No, why would they be interested in that?
And then I had the guy who talks to himself come in. What a great
mood he was in! First of all he wouldn't shut up. Not so
much inner monologue, more like inner autobiography gone
external. And yet again he complained about our prices and told
me that I was conning a pensioner. And yet again he bought
cigarettes just to try them. He also put some stuff on the
trolley I was using and told me not to touch his stuff or move the
trolley, then when he forgot where he put it, blamed me for moving
it. But apparently this abuse was nowhere near enough, after
reminding him where his stuff was, adjusting the price of his
cigarettes because they were in a price marked pack, and being as nice
as possible, he then asked for a receipt and told me that he didn't
trust me because he knew I was trying to steal his money. Nice.
Now, I have wanted to tell my readers about this regular for some
time. For the purposes of not letting rotund blondes find this
blog, I shall call her Mrs B. Mrs B comes in and buys 2 or 3
packets of cigarettes a night, every night. Always has for about
3 or 4 years now. She buys them in 10s because, well, to be
honest, I think she gets lonely and wants someone other than her mother
to talk to, and we are around. Bless. Actually, she's a
pretty nice woman, and always asks how we are and tells us to have a
nice, easy shift. Except last night...she was odd. She
didn't buy her cigarettes at all, and she didn't tell me to have an
easy shift. She just told me that she wished me luck for the
day. Every so slightly creepy!
But here is what really made me angry. Slaphead. His mood
swings are becoming more and more bizarre. First of all he didn't
talk to me. Then he was chatty. Then he had a go at me for
my facing up not being good enough. Then he was nice as pie to
me. And then he delivered the mother of all insults. You
see, the night before, he had told me I was slow and said he wasn't
going to mention it to Pedro because he wanted to tell me first.
So I decided to do something about it and slightly modified my
combination of herbs and spices I take. And then last night,
after working 136 cases in an hour (a personal record and 100 cases
more than the company average) he told me again that I was slow.
I was so angry. The thing that really got me angry is that at the
most he can have only worked 90 cases in an hour, which is very
respectable, but he was complaining that I was slow when I did almost
half as much again as he did? So I questioned it, and he claimed
that he was concerned about me, that he thought maybe I was ill and
that he still thought that I was working hard. Uh huh.
Working hard, just slowly. I've always been well known for being
the fastest person on night shift at working stock. To the point
where we had one supervisor who when I told him that I had cleared my
fourth cage yelled "No! Is not possible! How are you doing
this?" The Blonde Bombshell has also, in the past, begged me to
slow down because I was going to get everything done and leave us with
a long time with nothing to do. But then he really rubbed it
in. He got me to get off the tills and come into the canteen for
a meeting. When I asked him what he wanted, he asked me to come
in and close the door because he wanted a chat. I went in and he
told me that he thought I had worked really hard and that he wanted to
let me know that. It still left a nasty taste in my mouth
considering that he had spent the better part of half an hour disecting
why he was so worried about my sudden lack of speed, and that I
normally work the stock like a tazmanian devil. Maybe I'm not so
outwardly fast, and maybe I've learnt control. The point he
entirely missed is that we had almost 200 cases of chilled stock in
last night and when he began working it, of the three cages we got in,
only half of one was left for him. And I still helped him on
it. I also cleared 2 cages of dry stock and served pretty much
every customer last night. But apparently that isn't enough
effort. Well, that's fine. You see, for reasons of safety,
I normally add a low dose sedative to my mix of herbs and spices,
because without it my moods can become a little unpredictable.
But tonight, I will go without, and add a little more stimulant to the
mix. If he wants fast, he is going to get it. The downside
being that when Queen Chav looks at the CCTV tapes, she is going to see
me far and away outclassing Slaphead when it comes to work. Now,
this may seem a little obsessive to some, but, look at it from my point
of view. For the last five years I have been the fastest person
on night shift, and I love that reputation. And now someone
claims that I am slowing down? I have to protect my
reputation. As a businessman once said "A good reputation is hard
won, and easily lost." Permalink |