Update

A quick rundown of the latest goings on and victims of the past week at The Company:

• New spring/summer catalogue came out Thursday, thank goodness for no cheap freebie offers. Not all items are reduced, and some items are featured at full price. Others are a new, lower price. This means less freebie-grubbing bargain shoppers. Though we have 2 whole ranges of cheap women’s tees, all to be placed strategically in the front of the store. We ignore customers in that section.
• Robyn, started in May this year, new manager at Nevertire has quit and finishes next Wednesday. She’d had enough, when given a particularly rude and abrasive store report and confrontation with Angela, having not received proper Store Manager training.
• Janet, manager of Innaloo shortly after starting at The Company around April-May of this year, has also quit, her last day being next Wednesday. She has moved house and found employment closer to home. Not in retail.
• Marg, new manager at Sunshine, worked her first shift there last Thursday, and has quit already. I met and worked with her briefly that day, having not worked there myself for some time, but she seemed like a nice enough, competent person. Well, that leaves the rest of her shifts for this week to fill, which I have ever so kindly offered to help out with.
• James, one of the casuals at Poowong, trained with Stephanie at Nevertire just before last Christmas, has quit and also finishes next week. Poowong is also currently without a manager (that I know of, as Lia recently quit after more than a year of The Company)
  

This leaves Darren as the only manager in our whole region.
Charlene’s region consists of:
- Nevertire: Robyn, quit, finishes Wed
- Innaloo: Janet, quit, finishes Sat (or Wed, if she can’t cover her shifts)
- Sunshine: new manager Marg, lasted all of one week. Charlene trying to cover her shifts.
- Mooball: without a manager since early this year, though they have a new ‘full timer’, Becky
- Dunedoo, a clearance store, without a manager for some months since Naomi quit.
and
- Howlong: Darren, manager there for the past 1 1/2 years and has been with The Company for almost 2 years. Gypped out of his managers bonus for some 12 months, as he was not informed he was entitled to any sort of bonus at all, found out about it by accident.

With no administrator to do rosters and timesheets. Impressive, huh.
There is an “aggressive hiring campaign” taking place as The Company tries to recruit more staff for its “rapidly expanding” business (opening of clearance stores and closing of several retail stores) and rapidly quitting staff. But who will train them if everyone keeps quitting and there is no one that has been around long enough? In our region, there in Caroline who has been around for 7 years, me for over 2 and Darren and Ellen for almost 2 years. The rest have only been around for a matter of months or weeks. Only Caroline has been trained to train new staff, and she is reluctant to do so now that she is a casual and I suppose, doesn’t want the responsibility or stress.

• Still no sign of a reply to my feedback about not being paid to cash up, which I sent mid September, and, not receiving a reply, resubmitted some 13 days later. Reasonable amount of time to wait, I thought. Saw Grant in HO again and he let me know that he appreciated concise, succinct feedback, of which mine was not, in his opinion. I am still awaiting a response, and national publication.
• I received a Managers’ Bonus, split equally with Gina and Jen, for holding down the fort at Sunshine while there has been no manager. There is a new bonus and commission system in place, mostly favouring managers, and since there seems to be a serious shortage of those, Charlene (I presume) has decided to award the bonuses to the responsible casual staff filling in the shifts there. The amount of bonus paid out is determined by the store’s performance in presentation, budget, administration, price errors, etc. Sunshine did pretty badly, but I hadn’t been working there much at all so take no responsibility for it. But I’ll gladly take some of the bonus! This is a first for The Company, acknowledging and rewarding staff for their efforts. Hey, it’d sure make me work harder. I think I may request full time, maybe even manager status when I am on holidays from Nov-Mar.
  

Charlene seems a lot nicer, in the few minutes that I met and talked to her and when I’ve spoken to her on the phone to help cover shifts. Perhaps she has changed. I hope I have too. So it’s reassuring and also somewhat hopeful that maybe things will be a bit different this year under Charlene.

Well, off to work for another all day catalogue weekend. Should be a busy one, the first weekend of the new catalogue. I hope it isn't because I'm covering for Marg all day without a cover (I'm assuming) or key to open. So I have to get in a bit earlier. Perhaps I shouldn't have stayed out so late last night. I'm knackered.

Nine to Fivers

Working in Head Office full time is demanding but I'm not yet sure if it's rewarding. I'm hired as a casual and paid on an hourly basis, but the HO staff are full timers or part timers, probably on contracts. They have set work to do, and obviously would have to finish that before they can clock off and head off for the day. Helena and Jasmine, who helped me out when Helena wasn't in, made it clear that they all work hard (probably just as hard as us in stores) and are expected to put in long days, and often work 45+ hour weeks. I was surprised, but then realised, that's reality in office jobs. And The Company has been demanding enough of us in stores, so there's no reason they'd go easy on their HO operations staff.

Well, sure, I care, and will try to get things done and do things properly, but I can say that when I am training in HO, though I have to get the weekly reports, budgets, summaries and store outcomes, etc done, come 5:30 last Friday, even though the spreadsheets didn't balance, I was out the door! I didn't feel that I'd received sufficient training to be entrusted to carry out all those tasks alone, and it was overwhelming, so I tried my best and did what I could, but I also had Andie's party to go to later that evening. So I wasn't going to stick around for free. There were still several HO staff still working when I left that Friday. I think they were going out for drinks later on anyway. Whenever they managed to pry themselves from their work, I suppose.

This Friday, Helena was in for a full day (she only works part time, as she's got kids) and went over some more training with me and we were able to discuss some of the problems I'd had the week before. I felt it was a good day, and I learnt a bit more and actually understood what I was doing and supposed to be doing, rather than just copying and following. I was given the task of going through the time sheets, calculating budgeted sales and store hours and also go through and record the AMs' day sheets. The last part was the most fun (and also the easiest!), and come 5:30, I still hadn't finished all the AMs. But being the good worker that I am, I offered to stay back and finish it off so that Helena could finish her productivity reports to send to all the AMs and The Owner and other assorted Important People.

The Day Sheets are daily emails all the AMs must complete, outlining what they've done during the day: store visits, discussing issues with staff, travelling between stores and being sick, if it comes to it! It's basically so HO or The Owner, or whoever knows what they've been up to all day and haven't been slacking off and neglecting their stores. Each AM has a set number of store visits that they are required to complete each week, and each store must be visited so many times per month or something like that. It was quite interesting to read what each AM got up to. I usually just look for whether or not they visited a store, and record that, I don't need their Day Sheets for much else. If they have a reason for not being able to complete their required store visits- for example, if they have been tied up in HO conducting interviews, or busy opening up a new store, etc, I record that down as well and adjust their required store visits accordingly. This week, my previous AM, Gemma, who got me the position in HO, has been in one of the new clearance stores daily, busy setting things up and hasn't been able to visit her other stores. So I've noted the long hours she's worked and what she's been doing, and rather than having a required 15-odd store visits for the week, I've adjusted her target visits to 0. She actually managed to visit 4 stores, so she's actually done very well for the week! 400%. Woo hoo! I've got your back Gemma!

I managed to get out at 6 that day, and still got paid for it, which was good. I expect that once I know what I'm doing, I'll be able to work more independently and efficiently. And get out on time! As I'm sure they're not too keen to be paying me long hours for doing relatively 'simple' work that should've been completed by 5:30.

Back in stores again, I've felt rather sad and somewhat frustrated. I can't stand dealing with the customers anymore, and maybe it's because they only buy or enquire about the cheap stuff, but even when they need help with shoes, I just can't bring myself to be bothered anymore. There's still a lot of new stock (we have a new catalogue out next week, can't wait) and I just want to be left alone and unpack and merchandise my stock. Perhaps I should work in the clearance stores - self serve! I've stopped caring about so much already, it surprises me when all the new staff make comments about things they're unhappy with at The Company. I've just blocked it all out for so long.

This week has not been a good one for retail- compiling the budgets in HO, our retail sales were extremely low, and we made probably 60-70% of the target budget for the week. And staff wages in retail were a great percentage of the costings as well, due to all the stock issues we've been having. This has probably made some of the Important People from Upstairs unhappy, and they've probably been putting pressure on their underlings to perform better too. So store visits by Charlene and one of her superiors, the National Training Manager, Angela, have not been pleasant. They made new manager Robyn at Nevertire cry with their scathing report and criticism of her store, and she put in her resignation shortly after. They also went to Innaloo and Howlong (I was at Sunshine that day) and it didn't go well for the managers and staff there either.

The Howlong staff, especially the manager, Darren, have had major issues with their lack of consideration or common courtesy, and the draconian policies of The Company. It was thought that Darren would quit straight away as well (2 weeks notice), he was so angry, he was forced to work 12 hours straight with no covers for lunch or dinner, but he discussed his issues with Charlene and I think Darren has calmed down now. He'll stick it out for a while and see how things go for now. Angela was nothing short of a bitch in her responses to Darren and Linda, who was told off for not wearing "top to toe" The Company gear. Linda has size 11 feet and there is nothing in The Company range to fit her. So I can understand her need to wear conservative, comfortable sneakers with no obvious brandings. Angela wouldn't accept that, surprise surprise. I hope Linda doesn't get a reduction (fine) for that 'breach of policy'. What a load of crap.

So many staff have been quitting this week alone, and I know many others are actively looking for other employment. I'm covering at Innaloo this week as one of the girls has an interview at Country Road. Given the daily stresses and pressures, although we are paid by the hour, overtime and penalty rates where applicable, I don't know how much longer I will last in retail. It's fine as a casual, but I'm not sure if I can handle it day in day out as a manager, '9-5er'. It's a lot of stress. If you care. My new supermarket position, with minimal responsibility, is starting to look more and more enticing.

A second chance

I've been more than just a little apprehensive about having Charlene as our AM again, especially with the departure of Andie and several other staff I was fond of. Christmas is coming, and that last year's experience hadn't helped to ease my tensions either. I haven't seen her since she left our region earlier in the year...or since I changed regions to get away from her, but I've decided to be more compensating and give her another chance. A clean slate. Having worked in HO, I can understand the pressures they are under- required minimum store visits, day sheets outlining what they've done all day, trying to coordinate our bare minimum staffing levels while trying to hire more people, etc. I know it's not an easy job, being an AM, I suppose I just judged her the poorer for being different to my past AMs, Gemma and Natalie. Different people, different personalities.

Trying to coordinate my training at HO with my rostered shifts and shift covers in stores, Charlene was helpful, and tried to coordinate things with Helena and get me to finish some training. And I was worried about not being able to find a cover for stocktake next Tuesday when I have training at my new job that I'm really excited to get to. I was so frustrated and sick of it all today that I gave up and just emailed Charlene and our Administrator that I haven't been able to find a cover but I was willing to come in at 8 or when my "appointment" was over. Charlene emailed back later that day and said I didn't have to come in at 8! Woohoo! I was so relieved and excited. That was a major load off. I know it wasn't exactly my responsibility, as it was outside my availability, but I had ok'd the shift when the roster came out. I really tried to find a cover, but as usual, no one is available or willing. It's nearing exam times and many of us, me included, are extremely busy. I hope she can find someone to work with Angela to do stocktake. It'll be a long shift if she has to do it alone...

So maybe Charlene did know that I didn't exactly think very highly of her when she last had to deal with me. I haven't exactly been Employee of the Year material at The Company. We wondered what it must be like to know that so many people hated you. As an AM, to not be respected by your staff, to the point that many of us openly disliked her. Perhaps she wasn't as oblivious as she appeared to be and has been making an effort to change. I try to be understanding and like to treat others as I'd like to be treated, and that's something I'm still working on. I've always tried to help out in covering shifts and finding covers when myself or other staff can't work a shift, whether it's due to their own issues or due to mistakes in rostering. It's nice to finally get some back. So far, I haven't had any issues with Charlene, and here's hoping it continues to stay that way.