The wrong direction

In watching television tonight, they ran a typical Gillette commercial containing the age-old slogan of "The Best A Man Can Get."

My mind ran in the wrong direction and wondered if they had women/girlfriends/wives for sale, too.

Just a random thought.

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Stress relief at it's finest

Well, what can I say? I finally quit my job.

YAAAY!!!!

Ahem. I will tell you though, putting in my notice was much harder than I expected. Smitty thought it was funny that I was so nervous about it, but I haven't quit a job in about 4 and a half years. I love the vast majority of the people I work with, and I will miss them dearly after I leave (on the 24th). I feel guilty for leaving them, because I have become good friend with most of them. It's like leaving a family, who has been through a lot together. I will admit it- I cried when I gave my notice.

That said, here's why I'm leaving.

As stated in previous posts, I promised to keep my ranting about my job contained to another post. This, my friends, is that post, so be forewarned. There is a lot of not-so-classified information that I will be revealing about my current employer, whom we shall call "Dan." My real company's name is far too long to type, so I'm going to spare my fingers the trouble.

Last year, as I also mentioned in my last post, my grandmother passed away in April. Now, according to the terms of my employment, I am allowed a week of bereavement time. Seeing as how I had to fly to Michigan for 3 days minimum, I filed for the full week from Dan.

I believe the direct quote from the new Operations Manager at Dan, whom we shall call Sandra because I don't care enough to give her anonymity, was "You're taking a week for a grandmother?"

I think the look I gave her was one that could have killed her grandmother.

The previous Office Manager, Sue, was well-liked by the vast majority of the staff at Dan. She was a defender of employee rights, and made sure payroll was done correctly so that no one ended up in financial trouble. For example, when I first started using the new time clock we installed just after opening the store, my hours weren't being recorded correctly. It wasn't until after extensive digging did we find out that someone else's time card and mine had been mislabeled, and our names had been crossed. Problem solved, thanks to Sue.

She was basically hounded by the newly installed upper management until she resigned. Sue had been with the company for about 6 or 7 years. This seemed to be a pattern, because that's what happened with the previous Operations Manager, who was a little wee bit of a pervert, but in that charming way that's harmless. Hey, at least he kept morale up, which is far more than I can say for the current holder of that position.

(By the way, you can stop reading now. This may go on for a while! Seriously...)

When I was given the new position of Boutique Supervisor here at Dan, I had a wonderful employee named Suzanne. (It's funny, we had a lot of S-named people at the store for a while there. Hm.) She eventually put in her notice, because she wanted to work closer to home, which was perfectly understandable. Her commute was insanely long, especially considering the amount of money she was making.

In any case, we threw her a small going away celebration, with some of the staff members from the entire store. It was on a Saturday, and we gathered in my Boutique just before she arrived that day. A client or two stopped in, and I helped them so that the rest of the staff wouldn't have to worry about them. Another client jetted through, saying only "Fine" when asked how she was. She left the department in a hurry.

So I step into the back to pull merchandise for the couple I was helping. By the time I come back out (2 minutes later) the entire crowd had left, and only Suzanne and one of the other Boutique staff members were left. Apparently, our General Manager had thundered in, and yelled at everyone to get back on the floor, there were customers complaining that they couldn't find any help, and why were all the salespeople gathered in one area. Yep, you guessed it- the customer that complained was the one who said "Fine" and jetted through. I hate people who are only out to create trouble. Grr.. The GM lost any respect that I still held for her. Wait, wait. I didn't have any left at that point anyway.

Our Operations Manager seems to think it's okay to ask people when they last went to the gynecologist, because they need to take better care of themselves. She also thinks it's okay to talk down to people, and she doesn't seem to understand anything I explain to her, no matter how many ways I explain it to her. Maybe it's me, really. I mean, after all, she's getting a Master's degree in Child Psychology, so she must know how to talk to people, right?

Not according to the employees she supervises. She started her reign here with the words "I want you all to know I could fire all of you right now." Warm welcome, don't you think? *sigh* I can't say I'm sad to leave Dan, I'm just sad to leave the people behind. Well, all of the people except the management, generally speaking.

I am so relieved that I am leaving, for a real job with normal hours, where I can spend the weekend with Smitty if I want to.

I'm so excited!!!!!

We'll see if I still am in a month or two, right? Right.

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