I HATE Sundays

Sundays are just the bane of my working week. If ever I'm short of something to rant about, I can always wheel the old Sunday topic out.

The worst part of it is that, despite Sundays having been part of the retail week for a good ten years now, they are ignored by management. For as long as I've been at Food Place, Sundays have always been treated as an annoyance that's tacked on the week after Saturday. As a result, it never occurs to them to take on staff willing to work them and no matter how many times we really struggle, they just let it continue.

Which is a very stupid philosophy to take considering Sunday is our busiest day by far. From 10:15am onwards we operate the checkouts to capacity (or as close as we can get with our lack of staff) and the queues still snake up the aisles. We take the same amount of money in six hours of Sunday trading as we do in 14 hours of Monday trading. And, on top of dealing with the massive volume of customers, there's more work to do on a Sunday.

Like the end of week cash office close. Which is also the bane of my life as it takes a good two hours to complete and often involves spending a further hour frantically searching through the records for the entire week to find out where an unaccounted-for £20 is.

Which brings me onto till discrepancies. Just how do cashiers manage it? You type in how much the customer gives you, the screen tells you how much to give back, you give it. If a customer asks for cashback, you count the correct amount out to them. We have four cashiers who are routinely losing at least £10 a week and no amount of retraining can stop it. We all make mistakes once in a while, but every damn week?

Sandra has been getting on my nerves again. She had agreed to cover a shift we didn't have anybody for, which I won't deny was good of her. But I can't stomach the woman. Her latest project is Emma who works on the deli counter.

Emma is totally useless. She has no interest in the job, which never helps, but she's so stupid she'd get in the shower and forget to wash. She think everything she's shown how to do is a one-off and doesn't understand the fact that, once shown, she's expected to do it all the time - without prompting. She runs off crying because she "can't do the job", but doesn't even try. She comes in late and still goes for a fag before starting work. So, unsurprisingly, her colleagues are getting fed up of her and have lost patience.

This is where Sandra comes in. Sandra likes weak-minded people. She also likes people who are isolated, for whatever reason. She gets her dirty claws in, and starts controlling their minds. Take the incident today:

It was busy at the checkouts and I asked Emma to come off the deli and help out. She moved to follow me and I said "you'd better wash your hands first, you've been handling raw meat." She huffed and made a scene about it, which puzzled me. Later, I seen Emma standing behind the counter talking to Sandra and thought "oh I bet I'm getting called worse than shit in that conversation." Later still, Emma pounces on me as I pass the deli:

"Why do you always have to put me down like that, in front of people?"

I was a little taken aback. "I don't know what you mean."

"Snapping at me to wash my hands like I'm dirty or something."

"Emma, it was a simple request made for hygiene reasons and I didn't snap at you at all. You were the only person with an attitude about it."

"I'm sick of everyone taking the piss out of me."

I just rolled my eyes and walked off. Sandra was behind that. I can just hear her in my head: "Emma they're bullying you, you do know that don't you. And you don't have to put up with it love. Confront him and if he doesn't apologise, go over his head love. You don't have to stand for this."

I've just about had enough of Sandra trying to paint the supervisors as bullies. Wendy and Lorraine have both had similar problems with her and she's at it with David and me too. It annoys me more than it should, especially with Lorraine. Lorraine's the type that would go out of her way to help anybody and is a lovely person. She doesn't deserve it.

Sorry about the lack of good humour on this subject, but there really is nothing to laugh at.