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All I can say is, thank God it’s over!!!

Sometimes I just don’t know what people are thinking.  Let me tell you about my Blitz.  First off, Wal-Mart decided that this year we would have a Midnight sale along with a five am sale, that way people could shop while they wait for the big electronic items.  In theory this is a good idea, however in reality, it pretty much equals out to not one preset time of chaos, but two.  What Wal-Mart had intended was that people shop the lesser items and then with full carts get in line for the big items, however what happened was a mad rush of people out to shop the small things and then leave, so they could then go to other stores for more small stuff.  This left a lull in the middle of the night, while the people waiting for the big items settled into their respective lines and everyone else when home for a few hours of sleep.

In Wal-Mart’s wisdom, they only had originally planned to have 12 cashiers on staff at midnight, but in a rare moment of actual intellect, our Store Manager Dick, in his own words, “freaked out and doubled that.”  Which was a good thing for up front cause they were slammed.  However, that rare moment of intellect did not spread itself wide enough for Dick to remember the electronics department, which left me with only my boyfriend to help out.  Also, as those of you who have been following my blog know, I answer the phones at night.  Let me tell you a little about that.

From the moment I stepped onto the sales floor after the meeting, where management finally decided I would be staying in electronics, I was caught up in answering questions about where things were.  I mentioned in my previous post that my freight had not been coming in labeled correctly, and the management that had blown off my concern and stress of this fact, ended up scrambling around trying to find most of the games for the midnight sale.  This was what I had even told my 3rd shift management I was trying to prevent, but what do I know?  One good thing for me was that I have the walkie which attaches me to every manager working that night and so I didn’t have to track one down when I was stumped by a customer’s question.  Also, in response to several of my 3rd shift colleagues request we were given maps, so that we could direct people to the items they were looking for.  I guess last year, we were not thought to be trustworthy enough to carry them and so everybody was lost.  Now, interspersed with the questions I was getting from the customers in the store, people thought it was a great night to call for various reasons.  In the beginning of the night it was things that you would expect, Where we open?, How many of a sale item did we have?, and Where people already lining up?, are always popular.  It’s the ones like, “This isn’t in your sale, but what is the price of a particular toy?”, which isn’t too bad, but, “Could you do a price check on frozen fish sticks?”, really got me wondering about that person’s sanity.

As the time creeps ever closer to midnight, the customers grow more and more aggressive and the time between questions is nonexistent.  I become trapped at my register next to the phone, back to back with my boyfriend on the other.  Management is becoming more and more aggravated in their tones over the walkie, and I am so busy that one task flows smoothly and stressfully into the next.  My mind switches gears as quickly as my fingers fly over the keys of this keyboard, and I surprised even myself with the aptitude that I performed my job under the weight of Blitz.  “Can I help you?  Yes, that TV is by pets, line Q.  The video games will be in the main isle between grocery and the clothes.  One moment please, they’re talking in my ear.  Page maintenance  to move the carts out of isle one, okay.  Attention associates, Mongo from maintenance please move the carts in isle one.  Yes, that TV is by the dairy department.  Yes, by the milk. We have lines everywhere for different things.  The DSs will be by automotive.  The movies will be in the main isle between clothes and grocery.  One moment, let get my phone.  Thank you for calling your friendly local Wal-Mart, how may I help you?  Fish sticks?  Uh, hold on I’ll have to have someone go look.  Management, fish stick price check on line one.  I don’t know what kind, I put them on hold I’m busy.”  The words and actions were almost automatic, like a machine, but even a well oiled machine will break with stress, and my breaking point started with two phone calls.

At about fifteen minutes to midnight, my throat is becoming dry from so much talking and my nerves are frayed by just the massive amount of people I’ve dealt with.  A line of customers with carts piled high with product has formed starting at my register and twisting back towards the restrooms.  I don’t know if my boyfriend had a similar line on his side for even turning my head to look was interrupted by something or other.  It is then that I get the first call.  Nothing to raise my blood pressure over, it’s just a woman that wants to speak with a manager.  I ask over the walkie for one of the seemingly millions of managers to pick it up.  When a call is on hold my phone rings every minute to remind me that it is there, unless someone picks it up.  In between questions, I noticed  my phone rang three times and I reminded management to pick it up again.  Susan claims she will take it, but when she goes to pick it up the caller had hung up.

Midnight hits.

I am consumed with the task of ringing people out and wishing that my register had a belt and a turning bag holder, when the second call comes in.  While ringing some else out, I answer the phone.  It is the same woman from before, she is angry that management did not pick up the phone.  Still ringing out my customer, I tell the woman that just as she hung up management went to pick up the phone.  I tell her that we are just a wee bit busy this night and…  She cuts me off.  “Let me tell you a story!”  She tells me heatedly, snapping my already battered calm.  “I just got off work a little while ago and I just wanted to stop in real quick and pick up a few things, but I could not get down the bread isle, because of the carts!”  She goes on ranting and my temper rears it’s ugly head.  Who the heck did this woman think she was?  It is Freaking Black Friday!  We don’t exactly hide the fact that it is the biggest shopping day of the year and that we are going to be busy!  If her freaking bread was that important to her,  she should have thought ahead and picked it up the day before!  then she has the audacity to call us after midnight when we’re so busy that we can’t see straight and again gets mad cause she has to wait!  Oh, I was livid.  Mind you, I’m still ringing people out.  I try to get her to shut up long enough so that I could switch her to management, and finally succeed.

My voice shaking with rage, I walkie management.  “Would Someone Please Take The Call On Line One!”

Poor Susan, “I tried to pick it up, but is was busy.”

“I know!  She was too busy B*TCHING at me!”

It was only after I had a chance to sit down and think, that I realized that I had cursed over the walkie, with the store manager listening somewhere on the other end.  Oops.  Oh well, if he heard, he must have assumed it was the high stress situation, or I’m in for a coaching sometime in the future.  Honestly, I don’t think I could have stopped myself.

Talking with others later, I found out that while, yes, the carts down isle one was a bad idea from Dick, we did try to help this woman.  Baby manager Jim Bob offered to climb over the carts and retrieve her bread, an idea she rejected because quote unquote “She didn’t know the prices!”  Then they had me page for the carts to be moved, but before Mongo could get there the woman stormed out.  So, we did every thing to help her, but I think she deliberately came in on Blitz to find something to complain about.  Susan told me, that she listened to the woman for only a short time, then told her to have a nice night and hung up on her.  Go Susan!  My boyfriend told me that I was really quite loud when answering that call and my following comments to management where over heard by the customers on his side. This garnered me some interesting looks according to him; on my side I was too annoyed to notice anyone’s expressions as I concentrated on ringing things out.

I’m told that the issues of low electronics help and not having anyone to answer the phones will be addressed next year, isn’t that great?  After the rush at midnight that lasted until at least till 1:30 am, we hit a lull.  My boyfriend left at 2 am, leaving me alone for two hours until the cavalry arrived.  And what a cavalry!  Five electronics people ,including my department manager, a cashier, and two day shift managers.  We had so many people back there that I was practically obsolete.  And, that’s how I felt, discarded.  They came in and acted like I was stupid, and yet they, not knowing where anything was, kept having to turn to me for information.  The five am sale was not nearly as hectic as the midnight sale, because there was not as many customers, and I was not on register.  Finally, I was able to leave.  I picked up a few dvds that had been picked through and then went home where I had a Toy Story marathon.  Don’t judge me!

Two more days until Black Friday, thank God!  Our back room is filled to the gills with crap and trying to find any thing for a customer is impossible.  I had to turn a customer away when he asked me for a particular game; I just couldn’t find it after crawling over pallets full of Blitz ( A direct violation of Wal-Mart safety, I might add) for half an hour.  Then the kicker, I found it at the end of the night on a cart that appeared magically in front of my bins.  Management is stressing.  Susan is taking it in stride, though she just found out she was working it a few days ago, so I don’t think the stress has had a chance to settle on her shoulders yet.  Chrissy, on the other hand, is so frazzled and weighted down that I think her head might spin around on her neck, like in the Exorcist.  This whole event was not planned well in my opinion.  First off they gave it Erbert to plan, who then delegated it to a day time baby manager.  Erbert did this for two reasons.  One, he’s lazy and did not want to do the work himself, and two, if anything goes wrong he can blame someone else, while taking the credit if it goes right.  I’ll never know how he ended up a manager, oh right, this is Wal-Mart.  Anyway this so called plan, has not been explained to anyone in any depth, which scares me.  I don’t like not knowing what to expect, it makes me feel out of control, and that’s an issue for me.  Then on top of that, the freight has not been coming in labeled correctly, witch is stressing me out.  All management seems to be able to say is, “I don’t know” and “It’ll work out.”  I don’t think they’re taking this as serious as they should, or they’re taking so serious that all they do is bite your head off when you ask some thing.  All I can say is, I can’t wait for Thursday night to be over!

I’ve been silent for a while I know, but for a change it was fairly quite at the World of Wal-Mart.  I think it’s like the calm before the Christmas storm, and it is Christmas time, at least according to our company.  The trees are up at the entrance way along with the signing that is upside down if you look at it going out of the store.  The signs bother Dick, but the trees bother the customers.  People actually get offended that the trees are up before Thanksgiving, but if you get paid bi-weekly, like we do, there are only three more pay days, and the last one is dangerously close to the big day.  Oh, by the way, Susan decided to stay with us.  I think this came about from a lot of grovelling on Dick’s part.  Although out of character, it was Dick’s *ss on the line and things weren’t looking good for him after Default Sim’s departure.

Third shift is near foaming at the mouth at the store’s addition of Christmas music over the loud speakers.  From the time the company took our music away, we have begged them to bring it back, but apparently the customers don’t like all the noise.  We tried to compensate by blaring the stereo in Electronics, but then they told us that that was too loud as well.  These are all reasons why when the slowest, most somber Christmas music that you have ever heard came blasting over our speakers, we were a little miffed.  Seriously, it sounded like we were at Santa’s funeral, the soft depressing notes nearly lulling us to sleep on the floor.  Really people, don’t play soft music to workers trying to stay up all night.

Blitz( Day After Thanksgiving) is just around the corner, and having to work it for the first time in nearly five years, does not really bother me.  However, messing my schedule up to fit that day in an and making me work six days in a row does.  My days off are split, because I don’t like to work five days in a row, heck I don’t like to work four days in a row, but I’ll just have to suck it up.  Nothing like working more days than normal over the most stressful week of the retail year.  Yea!

My parting comment, is just this.  Remember how you treated the sale clerk while Christmas shopping when you sit in church on Sunday.

Well, we finally found the dirt on Default Sims Guy.  Apparently he and Dick were screaming at each other over Default’s evaluation, from what I hear Dick was trying to blame all that was wrong with the store on Default.  He, quite naturally took it personally, and stormed out during his lunch, never to return to our store again.  Rumor is he called the head honchos and told them word for word what Dick told him and he was transferred on the spot to another store.  I hope he’s happier, because that incident just spiraled Dick into an even more p*ssy mood than normal.  A few days later he jumped poor Susan over some trifle thing in the morning, which is when I saw her crying.  That was then the catalyst for Susan deciding to take another career choice.  She’ll be leaving us in a few days time, forcing on us Erbert, whom I can’t stand.  Losing two management members in two weeks time, really puts into perceptive the stress retail puts on you, and of coarse Dick doesn’t help either.  All this and the Holiday season hasn’t even started yet.

The rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.  It has been a while indeed, but life happens and for me it seems to happen in the mornings.  Lack of sleep, allergy medicine, and car troubles have kept me away, but really it has been rather quite.  The only thing of note I can tell you is that the other night, I had a pallet stacked six foot seven.  The thing was leaning on the steel in the back where the unloaders had piled it, almost with a crooked grin made out of brown cardboard boxes.  I swear I heard it laughing at me as I tried to move something as sturdyas the leaning tower of Pisa, and it soon became apparent that no matter what I did that architecturalmasterpiece was going to fall like an avalanche in the Himalayans.  My second shifters in electronics were only there until ten and so I did not have time to re-stack the pallet.  I went the floor and called Chrissy on the walkie, explaining to her the situation.  Now, normally, I like Chrissy, but her flippant reply to my plight spun me into a dimension of p*ssed off, that I did not come back from all night.  “You’ll just have to come back later and deal with it.”  What, What, WHAT!?  It’s like, excuse me, but I use to be an unloader, and I happen to know that stacking a pallet is not a difficult job!  Besides, even if it were, I am no longer in that position, and don’t feel that I should have to do a job that they should have done correctly in the first place!  In order for me to “come back and deal with it,” it requires pulling a cashier from up front to do my job so that I can do an unloaders job, there by displacing two people and lowering customer service in both areas, while letting the people who did their duties sloppily get off scott free.  That’s great managing skills right there.  My freight did not hit the floor until one a.m. and was still 6’7″ after half of it fell off in the back.  I know this because I took a moment to measure it.  I hate slackers, the unloaders for not doing their job right, and management for not doing theirs and correcting the issue.

Jeez, you take one day off and miss the gossip of the century at Wal-Mart.  The store is a buzz with twittering tongues tapping out the tunes of tantalizing tales and I had to find out a day late.  In the forefront of the gossip making the rounds on third is that Monica and George have gotten married.  Just like that!  No announcement, no invitations, no rings, just matching tattoos, which given the fickleness of Monica’s nature and the short amount of time they’ve been seeing each other seems a little foolhardy, to me at least.  Just to refresh your memories, Monica was the one in the car with Jason when I first started this blog, what three months ago,  and now she’s bragging about hooking the catch of the decade with George?  The relationships move too quickly at Wal-Mart for me to keep track of, I mean we just found out that they were dating two weeks ago!  It makes me wonder if maybe she is with child, for I can’t see any other reason for George to buy the cow, when he was getting the milk for free, or could it be true love?  I guess only time will tell.

Next on the grapevine, is the fact that one of our Co-Managers, whom I’m going to call Default Sims Guy on account of that is what he looks like, was told to take a long lunch yesterday and never came back.  It’s like the plot of a cheesy horror movie, and I guess that would make our Store Manager Richard the blood sucking vampire antagonist.  You know the nickname for Richard is Dick, right?  That is what I’m going to call him, because, well, that is what he is.  The consensuss of the store is that it’s another mental breakdown.  You see, ourdistrict manager came in and ripped Dick an new *ss hole about something in our store.  No management has come right out and said what the problem was, but Dick ended up with a coaching, and he’s been on the war path ever since.  I tell you what, he might not be a vampire, but I’m pretty sure he’s a blood sucking demon from hell, and that’s as nicely worded as I can come up with.

Now for my own little tidbit of gossip.  I saw Susan red faced, puffy eyed, and crying this morning on my way out.  I asked her if she was alright, and she just nodded and kept walking.  I had assumed that she had had a run in with Dick, even though I had not heard his insincere, “Good Morning.” over the walkie.  Talking with my sister a few moments later, I heard that this had indeed been the case, though I didn’t hear the particulars as to what brought Dick’s displeasure about.  All I have to say to that is, Dick should be careful or else he won’t have an underling left that isn’t out for stress.

Well that ‘s the drama, see ya next time.

We had a big truck last night, and customers were few, but I was held at a steady level of busy.  The only thing of note that happened was when the second shift CSM passed me and broke into a huge grin at the sight of me.  I asked her what was so funny, but she wanted to clock out before she told me,  so Iwaited.  She comes back out and was reduced to giggles telling me that she had just heard my doggie tampon story from the night CSM and when she saw me, she couldn’t help thinking of it.  I told her about some of the other prank calls I get, then watched her shaking shoulders as she continued to giggle down the isle on her way out.  Oh, and one other bit of gossip I heard was that one of our co-managers, Rupert, hit a sprinkler pipe in the back room and flooded the floor.  I saw no evidence of this in the back, but the store was abuzz with the tale.  I’m sure it will come up again, as these things involving management often do.  Other than that it was a quite night, see ya next time.

So last night, at 12 am, the day of my birth began.  It started outwith a bang, or rather a yawn, seeing as my non-drowsy allergy medicine makes me, wouldn’t you know, drowsy.  Normally at our daily meetings, birthdays and anniversaries are announced, but one of the day shift managers is covering Chrissy’s vacation and he over looked it, not that it really matters, because I guess Facebook notifies the people in your friends list and since everyone has the web on their phones now, I received several acknowledgementsthrough out the night.  Also when I clocked out for lunch, the time clock told me happy birthday, in Wal-Mart’s attempt to be joyful.  Susan is back tonight for manager, and I wonder if she’ll make note of it.  Other than it being the day that I graced the world with my presence, not much happened.  A returning would be beau, did make an appearance.  He was there just long enough to catch me in a few stiff hugs, assure me that he would marry me if my boyfriend wouldn’t, and ask if I would mind that his daughter was four years older than me if we did wed.  What do you say to something like that?  I settled for, “huh.”  It seemed articulate enough for the conversation and company.  It’s a good thing this fifty year old’s visits are few and far between.  Anyway that’s about all I got, see ya!

So, Sunday, my normally boring redo the mods night, was actually eventful.  Well, to a point anyway.  As usual the beginning was a slow night, no surprise there, but the game mods changed quite a bit and it put me behind, so I was just starting on the new release movie side at three thirty.  I was concentrating on the mods, very involved in my work and talking to myself about movie upcs not matching when I turned to my cart and caught a figure out of the corner of my eye.  I’m pretty good at hearing people coming up to me, a skill necessary to perfect on a shift of joke-sters, so this guy scared the crap outta me and I said as much.  Instead of cracking a smile or apologising, as most people would, this young man stood sedately by while my heart came back down out of my throat.  I’d say he was somewhere in his twenties, with kind of a John Lennon hair cut and glasses thing going on, and when he didn’t speak I asked him if I could help him with anything.

“Yes,…Rea Mea, is it?”  He asked me, after a look at my name tag.  When he looked at me again it was almost as if he expected me to know him, but I didn’t.  I nodded and he continued. ”Do you have the movie Micheal?” 

I wanted to clarify, so I asked, “The one with…um…”

“John Travolta.”  He provided when my allergy foggy brain drew a blank mid sentence.

“No.”

As people always are of my intimate knowledge of our movies he was doubtful.  “You’re sure?”

“Positive.”  He looked as if he was going to turn away, and not liking not being able to help, I stopped him.  “Was there anything else you were looking for, that I can help you find?”

“Well, a movie dealing with angels, I guess.”  I hate it when customers make a broad blanket comment like that.  I might know all the movie titles, but I don’t know the content of all the movies.  I suggested that we go to my movie list and see what movies we had that had angel in the title and start there.

I look in the A section, and the only movie that I see with angel in the title is “Angels and Demons,” which I was pretty sure was not the type of movie he was looking for.  “I got nothing, did you perchance have another title you were looking for?”

He looks at me strangely.  “Just out of curiosity, you don’t happen to know who I am, do you?”

I answer him back honestly.  “No.”

“Well, that’s probably for the best.”  At this point I’m starting to get annoyed.  I still had a lot of work to do, and this guy wanted to stand around talking riddles, not to mentioned I was getting a sinking suspicion that he was a religious fanatic.

I can’t remember what he said next, but even he admitted that he sounded a little creepy.  I told him that working on third I get all kinds, and he asked what was the oddest thing that had happened to me.  With my recent post on Creepy Guy, and his own comment, that was the story that I told him.  It was the condensed version, keeping in mind my time constraints.

At the end of my tale, he gave me one of his own.  He was sent to come get a movie about angels, but since there was not one to be found he must have been sent for another reason.  That reason he said, was me.  He had given me a message, and although I didn’t get it then, I would later.  I needed to keep faith, and with that last comment he turned and left.  Leaving me to scratch my head and say what the f**k!

The more I thought about it, the madder I got.  What was that all about?  Some religious despot comes in and because I don’t have his movie I must be a sinner, so he has to spend twenty minutes in cryptic conversation with me, to save me?  I don’t care what faith you believe, bothering someone at work with your beliefs is just bad form.  Not to mention, he never even asked what faith I was.  I could be more devout then he was, for all he knew.  So, i ask again.  What the f**k?

Not to mention, I don’t think God, would send anyone to Wal-Mart at 3:30 am for a movie.

Freight was light last night and from a combination of allergies, allergy medicine and headache medicineI was practically sleep walking.  I literally was swaying on my feet and more than once had to catch myself before my knees buckled and I fell, so needless to say my night was boring.  So instead of recounting the several little mini dreams I had during those bouts of rem, i have decided to tell you about The Creepy Guy.

Now working on 3rd I have had my share of encounters with guys that are creeps, but there has only ever been one true Creepy Guy.  I first met him in the normal way that I meet people at work, I asked him if he needed any help finding any thing.  He turns to me and looks me in the eye for about two seconds, before dropping his perverted dark tinted glasses covered brown gaze to my bosom.  His short seventies type haircut is dark brown bordering on black and reminds me strongly of an old porn star past his prime.  He has on gray work coveralls and a brown vest, and instead of a cart he carries one of our baskets.  I peg his age to be about late thirties early forties, and try to ignore his rude glances at my boobs, even as some sixth sense warns me that this guy is just creepy.  On this first encounter, he wants my help in finding a small concealable voice recorder.  I show him out limited options and he then starts to tell me the reason that he wants it.  Apparently, the people he works with were planning a hate crime against him, though what hate crime could be made against a middle aged white guy I don’t know.  Any way he called the FBI, whose number he now had on speed dial, and they told him to keep a voice recorder and camera on him at all times so that he could gather evidence to support his case.  In my mind, I’m thinking yeah, okay.

The next time I see Creep Guy, he is in the shoe department, which borders electronics.  He is again wearing that brown vest and carrying one of our baskets instead of pushing a cart.  He complains to me that he can’t but any of our shoes, because the soles are not soft enough.  You see, he tells me, he was a prisoner of war, and the men who had detained him tortured his feet, so he had to special order his shoes.

After these conversations, Creepy Guy would come in and seek me out, always with that brown vest and shopping basket.  He would follow me around for hours flirting with me, telling me I had prettyeyes, or a nice body.  Slipping in casual touches to my arm while in conversation.  His presence didn’t go unnoticed by my coworkers either, apparently just about every female on third had some sort of run in with him at one point or another.  It became obvious though that Jewel and I were his favorites.  If a male coworker passed by while creepy guy had me engaged, they would stop by ask for some made up thing and Creepy Guy would leave, chased off by the testosterone.  Amber tried giving him the cold shoulder and blatantly told him to leave her alone, and management said if I needed help to just call them, but as long as he was talking to me he was a happy Creepy Guy.  I did not want to know what p*ssed off Creepy Guy was like so I let him continue to talk to me.

And. oh, the stories that he told me.  He was a dresser in in New York at one time, don’t you know.  That is the person that is responsible for dressing the models before they go down the runway.  This he must have fit in between his tour of duty and his current hate crime job.  He also told me that he was only twenty eight years old and he was possessed by three different demons.  Oh, and he just gave away one of his old cars to a friend in need, while a month later donating bone marrow to another friend.  What a swell guy!  He was very concerned the night I busted my head open on my locker door, surveying the damage himself, and thus it went.

Until one day we hired someone new in the dairy department.  Tage, lived in a town close to our store and after hearing the stories of The Creepy Guy and then seeing him, he made a connection that none of us were really surprised to hear.  When a sex offender live near you, they are required by law to make their presence known, which normally means a picture flyer of their sex offender registry.  Guess, who lived near Tage?  You got it, mister Creepy Guy himself, staring out of the flyer wearing his brown vest and everything.  His sex offence involved stalking a girl, which made me glad that I had kept him a happy creepy guy.

Eventually though, Jewel had had enough and on one of my days off, she had the policed called and they kicked him out of the store for good.  I was glad for this, because if he held any grudges, it would be against Amber, not me.