This past year of our Lord two-thousand eighteen marked the ten-year jubilee of my exodus from the Valley of the Sun. I always feel like they should just remove the Valley of part from that nickname, because quite frankly who the hell cares. Hot is hot, no matter where you are. The winters were fine, the summers repulsive, and for a short time I tried to convince myself there was some sort of balance between the two that somehow made it worthwhile. That was, until my car got stolen. So fuck that city with a rusty lug wrench.
Okay, fine. Maybe it wasn't all that bad, Outside of the weather and some punk ass kids taking my car for a day-long joy ride, Phoenix provided some decent joys here and there. Met a good variety of interesting people. Not many of whom were actually from Phoenix, of course. Phoenix is one of those towns where nobody is really from, where most just sort of drifted there, for whatever reasons they cough up your way. Many of the folks I crossed paths with were from the great midwest tundra, and I totally can't imagine why they decided to relocate.
One of these Midwesterners was a fellow I'll call Jeff. Jeff and I met for an interview under the awning of a restaurant, right next door to the store he managed. I was told Jeff was a "Macy's guy." What this apparently meant was that Jeff hailed from the days when the brick and mortar department stores were still very popular. The Macy's, Ames, and Mervyn's Generation - Jeff came up through them, honing his managerial craft of delegation and guilt trips. I guess I made enough of a good impression that he hired me on the spot. I was to start at 7AM the next Monday.
That Monday, I busted out my most comfortable sneakers and khakis, plus a dress shirt. With the sleeves rolled up, of course, to show I was ready to WORK. I was told there was a doorbell on the upper right hand corner of the entrance. I push it, wait around about five minutes. No answer. The lights are on inside the store, but I don't see any movement. Should I press it again? I thought. I don't want to come off as annoying on my first day. I give them the benefit of the doubt, and just stand there, in front of the door. Ten minutes go by, I see an middle-aged lady with glasses walking briskly from the back. "Are you the new guy? Did you ring the bell?" Yes, and yes, I assure her. She seemed nice, and maybe flustered, as we tend to be that early in the morning.
I follow her into the back offices, where she invites me to take a seat near piles of papers waiting just for me. I fill them out as she retreats into a small office down the hall to finish some store opening tasks. The doorbell rings twice. I can hear her sigh as she reappears from around the corner, then down the stairs to unlock the main entrance again. Four guys almost half my age soon appear, placing their belongings into small lockers and the break room fridge. They clock in, then head downstairs. These four are who I am going to be responsible for with this new gig.
Over the course of the next few months, I whittled away those four by actually calling them out on their bullshit, that apparently no other supervisor was doing. Merchandise wasn't shelved where it was supposed to go, pallets in the back receiving room not even opened, just an overall lazy approach to keeping the store running smooth, and getting the product out as soon as possible. Jeff wanted efficiency, and it started with me and as he always referred them, "my team." A team of boys who didn't give a shit and were just there for the paycheck, it seemed. Eventually they each put in their two week notice, and we hired a new inventory staff. They even let me interview a couple of them.
Soon things were bustling. The store had a new inventory team, churning along, doing their thing, nice and efficient. For the holidays, we would get the most ridiculous things in our deliveries, things that had nothing to do with our main product. But that didn't matter - out onto the sales floor they went. A Jeff slogan he got from his Macy's days was "stack 'em high and watch 'em fly." This meant just getting everything out onto the sales floor. No backstock. An empty back room was a great back room. We stacked things like food prep kits, origami kits, and oversized coffee table books that would never fit on a shelf. Jeff didn't care. Get them out of that damn back room. Piles of these dumb kits became the new partition rope up at the registers. Stack 'em high!
At first, my schedule coincided with the inventory crew, six or seven in the morning until three or four in the afternoon. It was a very stable arrangement. The hours were ideal, as we were able to get the product out much quicker well before the place opened for business. A couple months after the holidays, Jeff or whichever minion he delegated the schedule to started putting me on a swing shift, eleven to seven. I'm not exactly a morning person, so I was a little relieved by this. Finally, I thought, I can sleep after sunrise.
On those now-late morning arrivals, I started noticing some of the inventory team working at the registers. I was cool with this idea, covering for lunch breaks. Teamwork! It wasn't long until they started covering for a little bit longer than those lunch breaks. Schedules began churning out featuring the inventory crew on the registers a majority of their shift. I wasn't terribly pleased by this, and neither was Jeff. He'd call me into the office and wonder why product was sitting in the back room. Well Jeff, why the hell do you think? You've got my team on the registers for six, seven hours of their eight hour shifts. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why, pal. I didn't say it like that, of course. But maybe I should have.
Predictably, the inventory team started working the registers more than their actual job titles. The inventory team was soon just ME. Of course this led to more talks from Jeff. Less people available to help me get the product out. Hours getting cut across the board. My forty to forty-five hour work week was now down to thirty-two. Almost part-time hours to do a full time job, all while being constantly reprimanded for being inefficient. There's a reason why I started hiding in my car on lunch breaks.
Look, you don't need a MBA to figure out retail. I'm pretty sure Jeff and none of my peers there had any advanced business degree. It's a simple concept. But it's a close to downright impossible concept when corporate demands you trim payroll to help offset the loss of sales. In retail, a "skeleton crew" is in reference to the lowest amount of employees possible you have in the store, working. Skeleton crews of large big box stores get absolutely nothing done, because there's simply not enough hands on deck to accomplish much. These skeleton crews wound up being commonplace my last few months there. I knew where this was headed. The company went bankrupt just a couple years later.
So when I'm standing at the counter at my local dollar store, ready to make a purchase but with no cashier anywhere in sight, I don't cause a scene. I don't ring any stupid call bell. They're not getting a bad Yelp review from me. Instead, I start putzing around on my phone to pass the time. Because, I know. I know how this goes. This massive store with piles of shipment boxes unopened throughout the sales floor has just one person working in the entire place right now, in the middle of a weekday. Eventually, greedy corporate will yell at management that nothing's getting done at this store. And so it goes. So, I get it lady. Take your time getting to the register. And maybe keep that resume fresh.
And as a reminder, be nice to retail employees this and every holiday season.
Okay, fine. Maybe it wasn't all that bad, Outside of the weather and some punk ass kids taking my car for a day-long joy ride, Phoenix provided some decent joys here and there. Met a good variety of interesting people. Not many of whom were actually from Phoenix, of course. Phoenix is one of those towns where nobody is really from, where most just sort of drifted there, for whatever reasons they cough up your way. Many of the folks I crossed paths with were from the great midwest tundra, and I totally can't imagine why they decided to relocate.
One of these Midwesterners was a fellow I'll call Jeff. Jeff and I met for an interview under the awning of a restaurant, right next door to the store he managed. I was told Jeff was a "Macy's guy." What this apparently meant was that Jeff hailed from the days when the brick and mortar department stores were still very popular. The Macy's, Ames, and Mervyn's Generation - Jeff came up through them, honing his managerial craft of delegation and guilt trips. I guess I made enough of a good impression that he hired me on the spot. I was to start at 7AM the next Monday.
That Monday, I busted out my most comfortable sneakers and khakis, plus a dress shirt. With the sleeves rolled up, of course, to show I was ready to WORK. I was told there was a doorbell on the upper right hand corner of the entrance. I push it, wait around about five minutes. No answer. The lights are on inside the store, but I don't see any movement. Should I press it again? I thought. I don't want to come off as annoying on my first day. I give them the benefit of the doubt, and just stand there, in front of the door. Ten minutes go by, I see an middle-aged lady with glasses walking briskly from the back. "Are you the new guy? Did you ring the bell?" Yes, and yes, I assure her. She seemed nice, and maybe flustered, as we tend to be that early in the morning.
I follow her into the back offices, where she invites me to take a seat near piles of papers waiting just for me. I fill them out as she retreats into a small office down the hall to finish some store opening tasks. The doorbell rings twice. I can hear her sigh as she reappears from around the corner, then down the stairs to unlock the main entrance again. Four guys almost half my age soon appear, placing their belongings into small lockers and the break room fridge. They clock in, then head downstairs. These four are who I am going to be responsible for with this new gig.
Over the course of the next few months, I whittled away those four by actually calling them out on their bullshit, that apparently no other supervisor was doing. Merchandise wasn't shelved where it was supposed to go, pallets in the back receiving room not even opened, just an overall lazy approach to keeping the store running smooth, and getting the product out as soon as possible. Jeff wanted efficiency, and it started with me and as he always referred them, "my team." A team of boys who didn't give a shit and were just there for the paycheck, it seemed. Eventually they each put in their two week notice, and we hired a new inventory staff. They even let me interview a couple of them.
Soon things were bustling. The store had a new inventory team, churning along, doing their thing, nice and efficient. For the holidays, we would get the most ridiculous things in our deliveries, things that had nothing to do with our main product. But that didn't matter - out onto the sales floor they went. A Jeff slogan he got from his Macy's days was "stack 'em high and watch 'em fly." This meant just getting everything out onto the sales floor. No backstock. An empty back room was a great back room. We stacked things like food prep kits, origami kits, and oversized coffee table books that would never fit on a shelf. Jeff didn't care. Get them out of that damn back room. Piles of these dumb kits became the new partition rope up at the registers. Stack 'em high!
At first, my schedule coincided with the inventory crew, six or seven in the morning until three or four in the afternoon. It was a very stable arrangement. The hours were ideal, as we were able to get the product out much quicker well before the place opened for business. A couple months after the holidays, Jeff or whichever minion he delegated the schedule to started putting me on a swing shift, eleven to seven. I'm not exactly a morning person, so I was a little relieved by this. Finally, I thought, I can sleep after sunrise.
On those now-late morning arrivals, I started noticing some of the inventory team working at the registers. I was cool with this idea, covering for lunch breaks. Teamwork! It wasn't long until they started covering for a little bit longer than those lunch breaks. Schedules began churning out featuring the inventory crew on the registers a majority of their shift. I wasn't terribly pleased by this, and neither was Jeff. He'd call me into the office and wonder why product was sitting in the back room. Well Jeff, why the hell do you think? You've got my team on the registers for six, seven hours of their eight hour shifts. Doesn't take a genius to figure out why, pal. I didn't say it like that, of course. But maybe I should have.
Predictably, the inventory team started working the registers more than their actual job titles. The inventory team was soon just ME. Of course this led to more talks from Jeff. Less people available to help me get the product out. Hours getting cut across the board. My forty to forty-five hour work week was now down to thirty-two. Almost part-time hours to do a full time job, all while being constantly reprimanded for being inefficient. There's a reason why I started hiding in my car on lunch breaks.
Look, you don't need a MBA to figure out retail. I'm pretty sure Jeff and none of my peers there had any advanced business degree. It's a simple concept. But it's a close to downright impossible concept when corporate demands you trim payroll to help offset the loss of sales. In retail, a "skeleton crew" is in reference to the lowest amount of employees possible you have in the store, working. Skeleton crews of large big box stores get absolutely nothing done, because there's simply not enough hands on deck to accomplish much. These skeleton crews wound up being commonplace my last few months there. I knew where this was headed. The company went bankrupt just a couple years later.
****
So when I'm standing at the counter at my local dollar store, ready to make a purchase but with no cashier anywhere in sight, I don't cause a scene. I don't ring any stupid call bell. They're not getting a bad Yelp review from me. Instead, I start putzing around on my phone to pass the time. Because, I know. I know how this goes. This massive store with piles of shipment boxes unopened throughout the sales floor has just one person working in the entire place right now, in the middle of a weekday. Eventually, greedy corporate will yell at management that nothing's getting done at this store. And so it goes. So, I get it lady. Take your time getting to the register. And maybe keep that resume fresh.
And as a reminder, be nice to retail employees this and every holiday season.