What Became of Food Place

It's been a long time. Too long. The reason is simple; I just couldn't find the time to keep this blog going after I started university and, on top of the time constraint, the way returning to student-hood changed my priorities and revamped my social life put Food Place firmly on the back burner.

For a while now, I've been occasionally thinking about closure for Working at Food Place. Recent events have finally provided a fitting way in which to do this. But before I go into that, I'll try and give a brief summary of what's happened in the eighteen-or-so months since I last posted.

Store Personnel Changes
Suzanne didn't last long as the customer service manager. Pressure from Terry, who never accepted anything other than perfection, combined with long-running battles with evil-bitch-from-hell-cash-office-supervisor Wendy, left her feeling constantly stressed. She disappeared onto long-term sick leave and never returned.

After Suzanne's departure, no effort was made to fill her shoes and her entire workload cascaded down to Wendy and myself - as the two supervisors. It took two weeks before I cracked and handed Terry written notice that I no longer wanted to be a supervisor. Initially, he insisted that my only option was to leave. When it came to the crunch, however, he offered me a 23-hour contract just working on the kiosk. Perfect.

While I lapped up my new working life as a kiosk assistant - apart from the return to uncomfortably close contact with Food Place clientele - Wendy drowned under the workload and clashed spectacularly with my replacement - Amanda from stock control. The pair had never got along, probably because of Amanda's well known opinion of Wendy as a lazy, argumentative old cow. Wendy lasted a month or so before sodding off to work at Poundland.

This left a vacancy for a cash office supervisor and it wasn't long before I was invited in for a chat with Terry. Would I consider returning to my old job role, but remaining as a basic-grade customer assistant, if it was promised sincerely that I wouldn't be landed with the amount of additional work I had been before. I agreed, with reservations.

Three days later and I'm right back to square one. But before I could kick up a fuss about it, Terry very suddenly disappeared and all discussion of it was banned on the shop floor. It later emerged that Suzanne had made serious allegations against him, the nature of which remains unknown to me, and he'd been dismissed. Cue Suzanne's return as customer service manager.

So, a happy team once more. Amanda and myself managed cash office and the checkouts between us and Suzanne was back to oversee things without the pressures of Terry and Wendy. And this is the way it remained.

Terry was replaced by Derek. He was previously the manager of Ellenfoot Food Place but following it's closure at the end of 2007 he was placed into 'float'. Basically, he was shunted from one store to another covering holidays and sickness leave. His management style was extremely dictatorial - yet fair and consistent. Food Place suddenly became a much stricter place to work, but that only really affected those who were too used to years of taking the piss.

Competitor Hit
At around the time I stopped blogging, rumours began circulating that Tesco had designs on opening a new store on the site of the long-closed Kwik Save store - situated virtually at the entrance to Food Place's car park. These turned out to be true and the local press reported that permission had been granted for the development in July 2008.

There was a long period of silence but just before Christmas last year, the Kwik Save building was demolished and within weeks the new Tesco store began taking shape. Twice the size of Food Place, it was evident that we had very little chance of competing with it. Derek had to attend meetings with our area manager and at the start of February 2009 we were called to an after-hours staff meeting.

Derek and the area manager gave us very frank projections of what was likely to happen when Tesco opened. From an average weekly turnover of £215,000, we could expect to fall to around £60,000. Customer numbers were anticipated to fall from 25,000 to 9,500 and, more crucially for us, the 81-strong workforce would need to be scaled back dramatically. It was made clear that this would not happen through redundancies - instead, staff leaving the business would not be replaced. However, Food Place was not to go without a fight. The area manager announced plans for a £200,000 'tactical investment' in the store. We were to undergo a small-level refit to bring the store right up-to-date with Food Place's optimal trading format.

My worries about the safety of my job were short-lived. In March 2009 I secured a paid placement working within the NHS in conjunction with my degree. The start-date was 1st June and I gave my notice to Derek that I would leave Food Place's employment, after seven and a half long years on May 23rd.

I was there for long enough to see the 'tactical investment'. It was basically a refresher aimed at making the store look new again and making just enough changes for the customers to perceive an improvement. A large area at the back of the store was temporarily filled with clearance seasonal stock, whilst the products that formerly belonged here were squeezed into the remainder of the sales floor. The intention: after Tesco's launch, this area would be walled-off and converted into office space to house the regional offices for Food Place. This would remove over a third of the sales space.

The arrival of Tesco
In mid-May the new competitor opened. It was a Wednesday and our usual turnover of £29,000 was reduced to £9,500. The pattern repeated every day and remained constant: the first full week of trade following Tesco's arrival saw us take £68,000 - three thousand pounds less than we took on 23rd December alone last year.

26 staff had won jobs in the new Tesco, reducing our workforce to 55. But this was still far too many bodies for far too little work. Overnight, we went from needing a fully manned bank of checkouts to requiring only one trolley checkout, two basket tills and a kiosk till - at the most.

My departure
May 23rd came along and my last shift passed unremarkably. I finished at 3:00pm when a staff huddle was called and I was presented with an envelope containing £100 and an enormous leaving card that had been signed by staff past and present. I went home and cried. Then got ready and took myself along to my leaving night out. Which was legendary.

And so ended my time at Food Place. How did it feel? Well, I certainly have no regrets. I learned a lot of valuable skills during my time there, made several friends for life and got one hell of a lot of experience in working with people. A painful process, as this blog confirms! Despite the bad times, my enduring memories will be the fun times.

Thanks to everybody who read this blog regularly and commented on posts - it was a lot of fun reading your responses and I'm only sorry it took me so long to get around to returning to the blog.

Sunday Blues

What a boring day!

Sundays have gone from, pre-Christmas, being so busy we can barely move, to providing us with nothing but a steady trickle of customers. We're still taking quite a lot of money, and the store reports say we're serving more customers now - up to 25,000 each week - but it just feels dead! We seem to spend all day pottering around doing the little jobs that usually get neglected.

Today, it was scraping dried up crumbs and dust from the conveyor belts and obscure little corners on the checkouts. We blitzed the back-stock of impulse confectionery, re-laid the magazines to planagram, went on a paper and sundries ordering spree, tidied up all the junk behind the kiosk and corrected the bookstocks on cigarettes and tobacco. Oh, and I remodelled the cash office - again. Yet still we wandered aimlessly for most of the day.

And the customers weren't in particularly agreeable moods today either. Everybody seemed utterly miserable or hung-over. In fact, I'm a complete hypocrite for saying that because, by rights, I should have been miserably hung-over but, for some bizarre reason, wasn't. I normally feel rough the morning after eating a Wine Gum! So, there we all were, mysteriously happy, and we had to deal with a barrage of horrid customers who were wallowing in self-pity because they had to come shopping with a headache. Try being us lot that keep the bloody place running for you!

Robert
The cretin finally decided to grace us with his presence this week. He turned up, bright and cheery, and asked to speak with Terry. I led him upstairs and tried to poke about for a bit of information:

"So, where you been then Robs?" I ask, overfriendly, to-the-point and utterly two-faced.

"Oh, you know."

"Nah, not really, that's why I asked."

"Oh."

With this conversation yielding nothing, I deposited Robert with Terry in the stock-control office and hurried next door into the cash office. If you climb up on the worktop, you can put your ear to the vents in the wall and hear what's going on next door. Well, you can only hear muffled snatches of whatever is being said, but that would have to do. Here's what I caught:

Terry: "Almost can't believe *muffled* bloody cheek *muffled* say for yourself?"
Robert: *muffled*
Terry: "Oh don't fucking *muffled* that."
Robert: "*muffled* hard time mate..."
Terry: "*muffled* fucking mate me! All the chances I gave you, *muffled* fool I was to actually *muffled*"

I think you get the idea. The exchange continued in this manner for some time. Suzanne walked in at one point and, obviously as intrigued as I was, also climbed up to have a listen. Every time either of us whispered something, the other hurriedly shushed them. We needn't have bothered. There was very little to hear: Robert was sent numerous letters asking for him to get in touch, the last of which informing him his employment at Food Place had been terminated. Terry had nothing more to say and Robert left.

Terry then came into the cash office, forcing me to pretend I was up there looking for something on the top shelf, and told us everything that we'd just strained to hear; we had to act surpised. Much choice-language later, we were fully up-to-speed on what had gone on. It would seem that Robert just needed to 'get his shit together' - God I hate that expression.

So we can turn a new leaf and look forward to his replacement starting within the next two weeks. I'm not sure whether this calls for hopeful anticipation or complete dread. We might end up with somebody much worse than Robert, heaven preserve us!

My Shoplifter Heroism
As I've said before, I'm usually very lax about shoplifters. I'll only jump in and stop them if I'm 100% convinced that I've seen them conceal things and 100% certain they won't attack me. I've no desire to end up losing my job and garnering myself a criminal record, thus damaging my future career prospects, for brawling with a thief!

But this was one different. I knew I was onto something with her. I'd watched her loll her way around the store - in a random rather than organised fashion, always a giveaway, filling her trolley with all the expensive products that people tend to buy only when absolutely necessary. Typically, there was nobody else around to assist - I could have gone into the warehouse and got somebody but I wasn't taking my eyes off her. I perched myself beside the kiosk and watched. Usually, I would simply let them know I was watching because this usually results in them aborting mission. But this day I had a hunger to catch somebody.

She drifted her way over to the DVDs and began to weed out ones without electronic tags on them, filling the front compartment of the trolley with them. Gotcha!

I did a discreet call for Terry to come to the kiosk for a customer service issue and when he arrived we stationed ourselves just outside the doors and waited. There was no way on earth she was intending to pay for all that, so we knew she'd emerge. And she did, not two minutes later. Terry took her upstairs and I took the trolley.

Normal procedure when you catch somebody shoplifting is to take the goods to a vacant checkout and scan everything through the till in training mode to find out how much they were going to steal. This took me a good ten minutes and the total was a staggering £536.00! All in one trolley!

And what happens when the police arrive? Spot-fined. Eighty-miserable-quid. She was one lucky bitch, that's all I can say.

Power Cut Mayhem

Why do people feel the need to rush out and buy enough provisions to see them through a nuclear winter every time there's a suggestion it might snow?

Food Place was absolutely heaving almost from the moment the doors opened this morning. And it the shop wasn't just full - it was full of drama queens. People fighting eachother at the shelves, jumping over trolleys to reach their desired products, stamping one another underfoot...OK, now I'm the drama queen. But, take my word for it, it was busy.

This matter wasn't helped when a member of our checkout staff phoned in sick. We're very honoured at Food Place to have the only woman in the world who's ever been pregnant working for us. If she so much as feels mildly tired she phones in sick and is always referring to herself as being "with child". Thank the Almighty that her morning sickness has passed; I was getting rather tired of her constantly telling me how awful it was, as though I'd never been ill before. I've known people deal with terminal illnesses with more decorum than she's handling this. So, anyways, the selfish, thoughtless swine chooses today to drop us right in the proverbial!

So, being abnormally busy, we didn't have enough staff as it was. I had to run around the other departments asking members of staff to stay behind and cover part of her shift on the checkouts. Some people enjoy the buzz of dealing with such emergencies - morons, that's all I can say about them. After the fifth refusal I was a gibbering wreck, saved only by the lovely Amanda from stock control offering to help out.

By three o'clock, the panic-buying reached it's height. We had every single checkout open - which was an achievement in itself as I almost had to recruit cashiers from the street outside - and queues were sprawling everywhere. The snow had been falling since lunchtime and the gale-force winds were on the go again.

Suddenly, the store was plunged into darkness. The customers all did their little gasp - they always gasp when the power cuts out - and looked up at the lights as if their collective will-power could turn them back on. I was just standing there thinking, shitting hell this is all I need! Glancing up the aisles, I could see people, unabashed by this turn of events, continuing to shop in the dark - as they always do.

The cashiers didn't know what to do. I had to quickly run along telling them all to wait a minute or so and the backup supply would kick in to power the tills so they could carry on. The waiting customers were giving me dirty looks through the darkness, obviously thinking I wouldn't see them.

Meanwhile, the managers were herding people off the shop floor to the checkouts. The emergency power supply will only keep the tills running for twenty minutes, but the customers seemed to have problems understanding this: "YES! I'm almost finished, I'll be there soon!" They're the centre of the universe you see. No concept whatsoever that there were a hundred other people to serve too. I didn't care though - let them wander around in the dark and injure themselves before arriving at the tills and finding they've gone dead. At least they couldn't say we didn't warn them.

So, once all the customers were out, thankfully before the tills died, I posted the cashiers to the entrance. It's amazing how blind customers are. No lights in the car park, no lights on the store signs, total darkness inside - and they still get themselves a trolley and try to get in. Some of them even tried to argue that they only wanted a couple of things. We've got no power you total fools!

It was around two hours before the power came back on, but by this time we were under around 6cm of snow, so nobody was bothered about food shopping by that point.

All of this will create mayhem in the cash office tomorrow morning. Although the tills were still powered and able to handle transactions, the cash office system was down, so it won't have logged the sales taken during the power-out. This will mean that every single till will be hundreds of pounds over and all the credit card transactions will need to be manually processed. Thank the lord I don't start until 3pm tomorrow!

Trading Hours Extension

Every January, Food Place carries out an extensive and vigorous review of every single store it operates. They look at how much money each store takes, how many customers they serve and how many items they sell. They then break this down into fifteen minute time slots for each day of the week to identify when the strongest trading times are for each store.

Somebody had a eureka moment when they looked at our store's trading patterns. They recognised that we take a higher than average amount of money in our first and last hours of trading and thought: 'Ooh, wouldn't it be a good idea if we opened that store for longer!"

So, from 18th February, Food Place will be trading for an extra two hours each morning, opening at 6am, and an extra hour in the evening, meaning we'll be closing at 11pm. An idea that is incredibly stupid in my opinion.

Yes, I know the old argument. If it was my business, I'd want to take as much money as I possibly could. But they must be stupid to think that anybody is going to come to Food Place at 6 o'clock in the morning. Large hypermarkets get custom in the middle of the night because people who rise from their beds obscenely early, or are coming off night-shifts, get the weekly food shop done and dusted when they know the stores will be quiet. Food Place just won't pull that sort of custom.

We're a 'top-up shop'. Being reasonably small in size, people don't generally come to us for all of their weekly shopping needs. Just their daily bits and bobs to keep them going until they go somewhere bigger to get the majority of the food in. And nobody does that at sparrow's cough!

I can almost understand the logic of opening until 11pm. There, I think we will get enough trade to justify being open. But, unfortunately, it's the later closing that's causing the riots amongst the staff. Nobody wants to work until that time of night - although it doesn't particularly bother me because I'm more of a night-owl than an early-bird. In order to trade, we need at least two people manning tills (you can't leave one person on their own for obvious security reasons), two people on the shop floor - which is actually already covered because we have a night-shift), one supervisor (to access the cash office) and one manager. Spread that across 6 days and it's going to be very difficult getting people to cover it. It's not so bad with the earlier mornings, because all of our morning checkout staff are prepared to do their share of 6am starts, and there's already fresh-foods staff working at that time.

I just don't see why, when they weigh the obstacles against the, extremely minimal if non-existent, benefits they actually want to go through with this. When the late Ellenfoot Food Place started opening until 11pm two years ago, within three weeks they had an armed till-raid and were forced to backtrack because the staff revolted. I can see the same thing happening with us.

Mrs Snot and her sodding boxes - again!
The customer from hell seems to be moving house once more - perhaps the neighbourhood she just moved into was too common for her on reflection. She telephoned us again this morning asking us to ensure that boxes were reserved. But she had specifications this time: they're not to be wet, they mustn't be broken down and they should be large enough to hold a 'substantial content'. For want of something better to do, I actually trotted off to the warehouse and sought these boxes for her. Naturally, I had to tape them back together to save her the strenuous effort of doing so herself. She hadn't been to collect them by the time I left, but I hope she was duly impressed by my efforts. Now there's a sign of how bored I was today: I actually went out of my way to please Mrs Snot - what was I thinking?!

On a further note...
The people dressed like lab-technicians who insist on pitching up in our store to peddle free samples of random crap need to be banned immediately. What do they think they're playing at? Handing customers little trays and cocktail sticks for them to leave in their baskets and trolleys, along with small morsels of food waste, for us to dispose of!

Mrs Snot: Round 300

Regular readers of this blog should be well acquainted with Food Place's resident moan-bag by now. If you haven't read about her before, try these posts: Clementines Nightmare and The Return of Mrs Snot. Put simply, this woman should be incredibly thankful that her only punishment for her bad behaviour at Food Place, thus far, has been a few blog posts written about her. My previous dealings with her have furnished me with plenty of information about her: I know her full name, address and telephone number. She needs to watch her back - one more rude, nasty comment and the shop-assistant will bite back.

There are no words that can accurately describe how much she does my head in. If it's not her condescending tone or lemon-sucking-facial-expression, it's the ridiculous things she complains about and the way she thinks the staff at Food Place are all out to rip her off. If I had a pound for every time she's threatened never to shop with us again, I'd be a very rich person. Sadly, it's all a big bluff. She's yet to disown us.

In fact, rather annoyingly, her visits seem to be becoming increasingly frequent; a state of affairs I can only suspect to be the result of her being banned from every other shop in town. None of the rest of them are stupid enough to put up with her.

Last Week's Incident
Don't you think it's unbelievably cheeky for somebody to telephone a shop and ask a favour of them if you're going to be rude about it? Cheekier still if you happen to have verbally abused several employees of the said shop on previous visits? Well, Mrs Snot apparently has no shame:

"Good morning Food Place, Andrew speaking, how can..."

"Yes, I want you to keep me some cardboard boxes. I shall be visiting your store at 1 o'clock this afternoon and I'll need them by then - can you tell me if this is possible?"

How dare you butt in when I haven't finished speaking! And what happened to 'hello', 'please' and 'thank you'? I already know who it is I'm speaking to, so I don't go for any fake politeness. I reply to her question in the same fashion she posed it:

"Well how many boxes will you need? Now isn't the best time because all the cardboard from last night's night shift has been crushed."

"For goodness sake! What sort of supermarket doesn't have boxes?"

"A one that recycles them. The best we can manage at the moment are the cardboard produce trays, but they aren't very big."

"Well when will there be more?"

"We get our next delivery at 5pm today..."

"So, if I come at 5pm I'll be able to trouble you to fulfill this extremely difficult request?"

Butting in again woman! And you can drop the sarcasm, because I've already had a skinful of you and am seriously tempted to slash your tyres as it is.

"No. The delivery arrives at 5pm. The stock isn't brought onto the shop floor until nightshift work it tonight. There won't be any empty boxes until after that."

"Well can you leave them a message that Mrs Jenkins [named and shamed at last] would like seven large boxes? I shall come in to collect them at 8am tomorrow morning."

"I'll be sure to leave a message."

"Good day." CLUNK!

I dutifully leave a message for nightshift. However, I know full well that they are incredibly busy people. They have a huge delivery to work, the entire shop to face-up, the warehouse stock to pull out and all the mess to tidy. I'm not overly optimistic they'll find time to lovingly set aside seven large boxes for a stroppy old bitch.

And surely I'm not the only retail worker who gets frustrated at this general expectation that we have cardboard boxes coming out of our ears. Yes, we receive a lot of them. But they're incredibly bulky. As soon as the stock is removed from them we break them down, cram them into a waste cage and they're quickly crushed and sent for recycling. We have a tiny warehouse and do not have room to reserve boxes for people. Besides, people generally see them lying there and crush them anyways. We have far more pressing matters to attend to.

Tip: if you go into a supermarket and ask for boxes, do so politely, take whatever is on offer, and don't moan that they've been broken down and will need taped back together. That way, everybody stays happy!

So, the next day Mrs Snot arrives for her seven large boxes. Thankfully, I'm too busy living it up as a student to be there to participate in this joyous event. But other staff members told me the scene that followed.

Mrs Snot wasn't amused that the boxes that had been left were all broken down. She was politely told that we don't have space to keep these things (they were bloomin' huge boxes) intact. This still wasn't good enough. She demanded to speak to a manager and proceeded to complain to them that, not only were her boxes not of the standard she expected, but 'every single member of your staff who played a part in handling this has been rude and incompetent'.

She's actually surprised? This is the woman who I don't think has ever uttered a single 'please' or 'thank you' in all the times I've encountered her. The woman who turns her nose up at you, and refuses to make eye contact when speaking to you. The woman who shouts at rotisserie staff because chickens aren't quite ready. The woman who was once overheard telling her daughter that shop workers are 'plebs'.

Who thinks it's high time we banned her?

No More Apologies - Just Moaning!

This blog has taken a back seat recently for numerous reasons. Firstly, I was very busy over the Christmas holidays. Secondly, I had lots of work to do for university after Christmas. Thirdly, Food Place hasn't been a fun place to be recently. I'll elaborate more on the third point in this post, but one thing I should say before I do: I will not apologise for the infrequency of the posts on this blog any more. I'll post when I have time, or something I feel like ranting about.

So, what's been going on at Food Place?
Well, since I haven't been blogging about Food Place matters for some time, it would be very difficult now to explain everything in retrospect. So, I think the best place to begin is to set the scene by quickly running through some of the recent events that have led to such a bitter state of affairs.

- Much loathed grocery department manager, Robert, suddenly disappeared in mid-December. He failed to turn up for work one day and nobody has seen him since. He could be dead for all we know.

- To cover his sudden absence, our Customer Services Manager, Lorraine, was shunted into his role and dairy supervisor Suzanne was hastily promoted to Lorraine's old job - making Suzanne my new line manager.

- I'm very happy with Suzanne's appointment as I think she's perfect for the job. However, she has little experience of the front-line nature of the Services department and requires full training in checkouts, checkout supervision, kiosk and cash office - as well as all the back-office tasks such as staff schedules and attendance management.

- I set about freeing up time to take her through these things, supporting her as much as I can. Wendy, my co-supervisor on Services (remember, the one who's obsessed with cash office and thinks that's her only job) doesn't support at all. She leaves all the gritty tasks to Suzanne and expects her to automatically know everything.

- Suzanne eventually finds her feet and, taking one look at the current supervisor schedules, decides that Wendy isn't pulling her weight. She has shifts that suit her, and she refuses to work weekends and late nights, leaving these undesirable shifts to be covered by me and other supervisor trained (but not paid) store staff.

- Suzanne changes Wendy's hours. Nothing drastic. She is now expected to work just one late-finish and one weekend in four.

- Wendy reacts bitterly and launches a campaign of hatred against everybody. She takes great delight in telling anybody who will listen that she's been wronged and is going to any extremes to try and get out of working these new shifts.

- Suzanne and myself become fed up of getting the cold shoulder and a meeting is called to talk the problems through.

- Wendy says Suzanne and me have formed a little clique and have turned against her. We reassure her this is not the case, and point out that we've spent a lot of time together through Suzanne's training. Things seem to be partially resolved...

- But it doesn't take long for it to become clear that Wendy is still not calmed. She continues to be cold and distant when spoken to and goes out of her way to cause problems. For instance, granting four holiday requents on the week she's on holiday without making arrangements to cover it, leaving Suzanne and me struggling.

- Wendy returns from holiday and moans to Terry (the boss, lest anybody has forgotten) that the place fell apart without her. Terry retorts: "Well maybe that's what you had in mind when you let all those staff have holidays? Suzanne coped extremely well under the circumstances you left her in." Wendy is not amused.

- The hate campaign deepens. Wendy rips down some photographs I had pinned up in the cash office. Doesn't sound like much, but it really, really bothered me. What justification did she have to do that? The only good thing it did was banish my suspicion that it was 'all in my mind'.

Stupid isn't it? All this ill-feeling and resentment over something relatively minor that could have been settled so easily. But the result of it all is that Suzanne has been left doubting whether or not she wants to keep this job. She's brilliant at it and has so much respect from her team (with the obvious notable exception) and she shouldn't be made to feel like this over a bitter old sow who doesn't like it when things don't go her own way.

And just what am I supposed to have done to deserve what I'm getting at the moment. Wendy is refusing to alter her hours to cover my forthcoming holidays - which has led to me having to agree to work part of them. She can't even be bothered to say hello or goodbye to me.

The only consolation I have is that the Services team are, in general, supportive of me. They kindly report back to me the things that Wendy has been saying behind my back. They stubbornly refuse to co-operate when she tried to get them to bitch about me.

All in all, the atmosphere has been terrible recently. Absolutely nothing on the relaxed, casual and fun way of working we had only a short while ago. Everybody got along, even if we did get on each other's nerves from time to time, and work wasn't really such a bad place to be. Now that Wendy has almost totally withdrawn from speaking to anybody, I can't see that she'll last much longer - she's a reasonably proud woman and I doubt she'll stick around when people are beginning to laugh at her. No doubt she'll claim constructive dismissal though.

Other Issues
This hasn't been the only saga going on at Food Place. A huge fuss-and-nonsense errupted just after New Year when it became common-knowledge on the shop-floor that extra-marital shananigans were going on between two married colleagues - one of whom's wife also works in Food Place. I've well and truly kept my distance from this one, but things get complicated. You aren't quite sure who is on who's side and every conversation in the canteen is frought with politics.

A long-serving colleague was suddenly dismissed last week when it transpired that they'd been passing boxes of high-value stock through the back gates. It's reckoned that the losses the store incurred because of it run into the tens of thousands of pounds. It's left us all completely shocked because nobody had even the slightest notion that they were the type to do something like this - it only came to light because a customer who lives back-to-back with the service yard passed comment on what they'd observed to one of the cashiers.

So, that's the miserable post done. I've actually sat down and attempted to write something about it all several times, but I get depressed just thinking about it. The next post, I promise, will be about the customers!

As Promised: The Herald Angel Must Die!

Would it hurt to keep Christmas in December?
Food Place have been exceptionally kind to us this year. They delayed the onslaught of Christmas carols and pop songs until 8 November. That's a whole week of delay that we don't usually get. We're usually straight into Christmas after Halloween.

When I think about it, working at a supermarket helps you to divide the year up into chunks. Boxing Day marks the arrival of Easter with a short respite in early February for Valentine's Day. On Easter Monday we set about changing the ransacked seasonal aisle for the next 'event'. Gone are the cute yellow chicks hatching out of giant eggs, in is Mr Sunshine. Yes, it's summertime. At the end of August, the summer stock halves to make room for Back to School, abruptly followed by Halloween with Christmas hot on it's heels.

Maybe this is the reason it feels like I'm on the fast-lane to being an OAP? And talking of old-age, I notch another year soon. On Sunday the 25th, I turn 22. How depressing. Well, probably considerably less depressing than being 45 and realising you're probably north of the halfway mark (which means I'm, most probably, more than a quarter of the way through my life). Or, worse still, being 75 and knowing the million-year-nap could commence at any moment.

How did Christmas carols lead into old-age and death? Well, let's continue with the theme of death for a little while.

The death, by brutal means, of: Santa Claus; reindeer; herald angels; choirs of children singing their songs who've practised all year long; cheap lousy faggots and old sluts on junk (they've failed to censor Fairytale of New York again); spacemen travelling through the sky; the Wombles of Wimbledon (just what is that all about? Are we in 2007 or 1974?); and Cliff Richard.

What I mean by this gibberish is this: if I hear one more Christmas song, I may not be responsible for my actions.

That's not to say I don't like them. But surely they're suited to a particular, and special time of the year? Christmas perhaps? I mean, come on. It's not even the middle of November, it's still autumn, there's no sign of snow and most people (by this, I mean me) haven't even thought about Christmas shopping yet. So why do we have to listen to this endless stream of seasonal cheer? To get us into the mood? Well that's all well and good. I do, perhaps, have momentary lapses into the Christmas mood. But then I remember that there's still six weeks left.

The solitary exception to this grumble is Elton John's Step into Christmas. I'd quite happily drape myself in tinsel and sing along to that one in mid-April. Oh, and there's Stop the Cavalry. But I'm sure I read somewhere that it wasn't intended as a Christmas song, so we'll discard that one.

And it's not just the songs. The store has already been embellished with tacky decorations and huge banners advertising Christmas food. We've even got the obligatory tinsel draped around the checkout poles (you know it's cheap and nasty, I know that too - but the customers like it).

What's the point in moaning about it? It's all around me and I might as well just start bopping along to all these 'timeless classics' and live for Christmas Day.

Any other business?
Given that I've just rambled on about Christmas and death at length, you've probably guessed that Food Place is not offering anything exciting to blog about at the moment. As I've mentioned, it's probably down to me only being there part-time now. I only work during the busiest times. I go in, do my tasks, and go home. There's very little time for gossip, dumb customers or stupid colleagues.

I suppose one thing worth mentioning is that Terry forbade me to leave the cash office or step down out of my supervisor role. Instead, I was promised the earth: "There will be no more bitching, backstabbing, ill-feeling and you'll get all the support you need." So far, so good. But just wait until the next time I, accidentally, ruffle the feathers of a cash-office colleague.

Revenge on Customers Amongst Other Things

OK, it's gone past a joke now. No posts in twenty days! What is the world coming to? I'll tell you what - exhaustion. My university has seen fit to schedule all but one of my lectures in a 9.00am slot, and I think I've mentioned before that I'm crap at mornings, and the one day I don't have a lecture to get up for, I do a 7:00am start at Food Place. So, what with that and doing all my private study, when I get a spare moment all I can think about is my warm, cosy bed.

But today, in the midst of reading week, I've decided to set aside some time to get something published on this blog. My archive is cluttered up with half-finished and barely-started posts that I've optimistically set about writing in study breaks and after Food Place shifts. I suppose I'll finish them off sooner or later, but for now you'll have to settle for a mish-mash of work-related ideas that I've got running through my mind.

Revenge on Customers

Whilst helping out on the kiosk yesterday, I got talking to Debbie about scoring cheap victories over nasty customers. The conversation made me realise what a fairy I've become. Since becoming a supervisor, I've forgotten how fun it is to be subtly, or even pointedly, rude to stroppy customers. I'm far too nice to them; maybe I should return to the glory-days of being a not-a-care-in-the-world-part-timer who didn't give a toss about pissing off the nasty people.

Here's just a couple of things the conversation turned up:

• When a customer places cash payment onto the desk rather than into your hand. These days, I think to myself "how rude" and proceed as normal. In the olden days, I'd get irate and slam their change onto the counter in return. Sometimes I'd even omit to thank them for their custom.
• When customers sneakily bring 50+ items through the '10 items or fewer' tills. Nowadays, you'd be very lucky if I so much as offered a polite reminder of the item-limit for next time. Too scared of causing offense. Back then, I'd get revenge for their deliberate ignorance by hurling their shopping through so fast that we'd run out of space in the packing well before giving them the smug "this is why it's a ten-items only till" lecture.
• When customers ask stupid questions. I've become far too patient and tolerant of their idiocy. In yesteryear, if a customer asked where the frozen chips were I'd have said "well you could try over there in the freezers." The fairy-queen me of today would say, "oh, frozen chips just over this way, follow me, are these the ones you want? There's crinkle cut ones here too!"
• When customers lie. They do this a lot. In the past, I'd have came out and called a shovel a shovel. "No, you didn't ask for x, I clearly heard you, and you asked for y" or "you did not pick this up from the Buy One Get One Free Display because I watched you take it from the shelf over there!" Now, I go for the easy life and kiss their ass. "Oh, I'm so sorry I must have misheard you."

See what being a supervisor has made me? It's turned me into a customer-is-always-right freak! Well, not exactly. It's turned me into the type of shop assistant that holds it all in and blogs about it.

Food Place Catch-up

I'm not seeing nearly as much of the place, and I already feel a little cut-off from 'the crack'. I never seem to find out what's going on anymore and I don't even manage to catch the nasty customers.

About the only interesting event to note is the music-system malfunction. It usually does a very good job of playing a nice variety of tunes and not looping them round too often. But last week it decided to start playing a particularly long version of 'Kelly Watch the Stars' on a loop. For five days. Just when I was one more play away from learning every single note of the song, it unceremoniously launched into 'Whatever Happened to Corey Haim' and hasn't gone back to old Kelly ever since. Perhaps the system was updating itself ready to start throwing Christmas songs at us next week? It's bound to happen. It's usually on or around November 1st. So the next post I write is likely to be titled 'Stick the bloody partridge and it's pear tree where the sun don't shine!'

The cash office politics have flared-up once more. I'm once again in the position of being afraid to make mistakes, lest somebody else go poking through the paperwork looking for them. That isn't the worst part - I freely admit to making mistakes. It's only natural that the odd procedure goes tits-up when I'm rushing to get back to supporting the checkouts. What really bothers me is that certain individuals are taking their findings back to Terry and trying to make me look incompetent. I know it's unlikely he'll think any less of me for it. He's told me numerous times that he likes having a cash office supervisor who would rather be on the shop floor than locked in a lime-green-cell upstairs. All my mistakes ever amount to is money being in one place when it should be in another. And it's usually a case of one till being £10 down and another till £10 over. It's not as though I'm losing hundreds of pounds!

For a long time I thought our store was different. Other Food Places have their cash offices staffed by old Margarets and Joans who bicker and argue all day long and spend hours doing what can be achieved in 20 minutes. I always liked the way the cash office was a small-job in our store. All it ever amounted to was a couple of hours a day following laid-down procedures and it was operated entirely by younger staff and -unusually - three out of four of them were male. But now, people have left and bickering old women are back on the scene. You can imagine the rest.

I'd probably feel a lot better about things if I'd taken the time to vent some steam by blogging about it. As it is, I've bottled it all up and feel pretty depressed about work again. I'm thinking about speaking to Terry to find out whether he'll allow me to work my hours just supervising the checkouts. I don't want any of this cash office hassle now. Either that or I wait until there's a vacancy for kiosk staff and ask to be demoted.

Cashier, In the Canteen, With the Lead Piping

Internet Woes
If you’d been wondering why I’ve been quiet over the past few days (not that long periods of time without posts is anything unusual for this blog), then please look to my internet ‘service provider’ for an explanation. What I mean by this, I’m sure you’ve already gathered, is that they haven’t been providing a service to me. At all. I’ve had green ‘LINK’ lights blinking at me for several days. I’d given up hope and was playing a game of Solitaire – face it, what other uses does a PC with no internet connection have? – when my anti-virus software unceremoniously launched it’s web-update function. A connection, at last.

Back to Food Place...It's probably not such a bad thing that my internet deserted me this week because, quite frankly, until today there was nothing to write about. Another week of everybody behaving themselves and no real problems emerging.

But today was something else.

Ringing Bells
Every now and then, the checkout staff at Food Place will take it upon themselves to have a bell ringing day. They ring for extra change, they ring for product replacements, they ring to say they've broken their till, they ring to say they can't send a pod, they ring to say they've dropped their pen on the floor and could I pick it up please. These days invariably coincide with days when I have a lot of other things to be getting on with.

There's nothing worse than trying to do the wages and being interupted every three seconds by a cashier ringing for your assistance. What could they possibly want? I ask myself. I've given them all change and left my keys with the front-end runner. How can they need me? Still, I'd better go down and see what they want...

"Andrew, I think I've just short-changed somebody," a dopey cashier informs me.

"Who?"

"A customer."

"NEVER! I mean, which customer?"

"Oh she's gone now."

So you really thought this was such a huge emergency that you needed to call me away from a very pressing task to tell me all about it!? As a matter of fact, you haven't even told me about it, all you've done is given me a vague outline of the events. Do you even know how much you've messed your till up by? Probably not. Because you're away with the fairies, as per bloody usual!

I tell the fool she'll have to wait until the end of her shift to find out. No way am I interrupting my long list of tasks to pull the drawer off and spot-count it.

The bells continued to ring in very much that fashion all day. Stupid questions, dumb mistakes, false alarms. By the time I'd finished the wages it was a miracle I had any hair left. More so that none of it had turned grey. I was seriously ready to batter the next idiotic cashier to ring a bell to death. Brutal murder at Food Place.


Robert
You may recall that some months ago - God it feels like yesterday - we got a new department manager. He immediately got on everybody's nerves, rattled cages left, right and centre and showed himself to be nothing but an arrogant fool.


Now, I can't remember whether I bothered to blog about the enormous improvement in his attitude and conduct. I probably didn't since this blog tends to focus on negative (more interesting) things. Basically, he was given a stern telling-off by Terry and he immediately bucked his ideas up. He started taking an interest in all of the store functions. Asking people about their jobs, watching them at work, asking for training and then, finally, offering to support us. It was actually beginning to become quite a pleasure to work with him.


Well he's gone and stamped over all of that now.


For the past week, he's done nothing but interfere, poke his nose in, complain and, generally, get in the way. Every corner I've turned he's been there, ready to criticise everything I'm doing. Most notably, he keeps banging on that I'm "relying too heavily" on his staff to cover checkouts at busy times.Well excuse me. I thought we were all a team here? Since when do any of us belong exclusively to one department? Since never. We're all there to run a supermarket - whatever that entails for us, be it serving on tills, baking bread or putting out stock.


Perhaps I should tell the checkout staff to stop filling and facing the cosmetics section? He forgets about things like that see. The cosmetics aisle is part of the grocery department, and should be replenished the same way. But no - "the lads on shopfloor" now don't do toothpaste and shampoo. When Terry came to Food Place, he put a lot of work into breaking down the old divide of "lads on the floor, lasses on the tills". Robert is now stamping all over that. He thinks fiddling around trying to balance tiny boxes of headache tablets is beneath the dignity of his "lads" (never mind the seven women who work primarily on grocery). If it's lighter than a 24 pack of lager, it's not hard enough 'graft' for them.

The man is just grating on me - badly. It was so bad on Sunday that I couldn't face getting him to sign off the weekly accounts. The duty manager has to do this - basically it's confirmation that a manager has viewed the cash sheet, checked for discrepancies and given it their approval. I just could not bear the thought of inviting him into the office. He'd stay there all day and droan away about a load of crap. And I'd end up killing him in cold blood.

Well that just about sums up Food Place at the moment. I'm preparing a post about the dumb things that customers do. Nothing fresh, I hear you saying. But I promise they'll all be hitherto unmentioned antics. Things that really make my blood boil. Stay tuned.

"I know my rights!"

Oh, I really should never get going about this type of customer. You know them, the kind that, upon failing to get their own way by kicking and screaming, will resort to inventing their own consumer protection laws.

It's a subject that can arise at any time. We often get customers who will attempt to play the legal card for the smallest of problems.

Wrong Price, Wrong Label
A very good example of this occurred last week. A gentleman had picked up a bottle of wine - one of the more expensive ones we sell - and taken it to the till. It scanned at £10.99, which resulted in a huge tantrum.

"The shelf said £6.99!" he protested.

Cue supervisor calls and checks being made. We located the item on the wines section and it was merchandised next to a price label that clearly stated the name of the wine in question and said £10.99. It wasn't long before the man came stomping up the aisle, pointed at an empty space, three shelves along, and insisted: "This is where I got it from. Look. The ticket says £6.99!"

"Yes, but that space is for the Hardy's Stamp variety, as it says on the label there. I can only guess that somebody has picked up the bottle you took and put it back in the wrong place. The price for the bottle you have is stated over here where it belongs - £10.99," I explained patiently.

I wasn't being a jobsworth. If there had been a whole case of this particular wine merchandised against the wrong price tag, I would usually admit that it had been a replenishment error and refund the difference in price. But when there clearly hasn't been a mistake made by the staff, I won't give refunds willy nilly.

"BUT IT WAS NEXT TO A TAG THAT SAID £6.99!" the gentleman roared in my face.

I calmly explained that the name of the wine that is £6.99 is stated on the label - and it wasn't the one he'd picked up.

"But you have it on the shelf at that price, therefore you are legally obliged to give it to me at that price!"

Oh my bloody God, not this again. You may recall I was reduced to tears by an evil customer whilst having the exact same conversation some months ago (here). As soon as somebody gets it into their head that they're legally entitled to something, they won't budge. Never mind the fact that they're completely wrong.

I remained as diplomatic as I could be: "If the ticket next to the wine you picked up bore the name of that wine, I would refund the difference. But it doesn't. The ticket says that £6.99 is the price for another wine. This one is £10.99. Would you like to chose a different one?"

He continued protesting that I was breaking the law and promised to call Trading Standards about it. I don't really know why I bothered putting up such a defense, because if it gets back to Food Place HQ, they'll only back down and shower him with gift vouchers to apologise for his trauma.

Electrical Goods
This post is being written thanks to an incident today that involved an electrical appliance.

This is, by a long way, the worst product category for producing angry, refund-demanding customers. I've seen it all - people demanding that they're legally entitled to a refund on a product despite having absolutely no proof of purchase, people demanding refunds for toasters that broke when they 'fell off' their worktops. Yes, I'm sure your toaster jumped onto the tiled floor! One man, upon being refused a refund for a DVD because it wasn't faulty, proceeded to remove it from it's box, right in front of us, and run a scratch down it with his car key! He actually thought that would help his case?

Today's incident was less dramatic, however. A lady brought back a small kettle, not boxed, and informed us that it had stopped working. OK, I thought, this should be nice and straight-forward.

"Do you have your receipt with you?"

"Yes, it's just here," she said, pulling out a slip of paper. As soon as I saw it, my heart sank. It was a yellowed, tatty slip of paper that had clearly been printed on our old impact-receipt-printers - when the store was operated by its previous owner. Knowing that we'd had thermal printers for at least three years, I knew right away that this product was far too old to be refunded as faulty.

"OK, when was this purchased?"

"Er, will it have the date on the receipt? I can't see, you look." She handed it to me.

"Right. You bought this kettle on the 6th October. Two thousand and one. Six years ago."

She looked at me, waiting for the refund. That she certainly wasn't getting.

"I'm afraid we only guarantee electrical goods for one year from the date of purchase."

"WHAT?"

"We will only refund items in store that were bought less than a year ago. Any faults that develop beyond that are covered by the manufacturers guarantee - which is usually just two years as standard."

"But I've paid you for this kettle! It doesn't work! I want my money back!"

"Well I'm not arguing that it doesn't work.." - it didn't look too healthy - "...but it has been in working order for six years. That's a bloomin' good life for a kettle in my experience." Particularly one that only cost you four pounds and ninety-nine-bloody-pence!

She wasn't amused: "Get me the manager! Trading Standards need to know about this!"

Terry was called. He told the woman exactly what I'd just told her. The product had clearly reached the end of its working life and needed replacing. He even offered to show her the ones we have in now. But no. She continued to demand her money back. By the time she'd finished ranting I was ready to grab a new kettle, throw it in her face and scream "THERE! Take it you tight-fisted old vulture!"

Once again, she promised, Trading Standards would be hearing about us!

Personal Property
We've had a lot of cases of customers telling us we're liable for damage to their property. None more unpleasant than the lady who had her bicycle stolen from the racks outside the store (which are on the street and have nothing to do with the store). She ranted at us for about twenty minutes whilst waiting for the police to arrive, insisting we pay her £300 immediately. She tripped herself up, in mid-rant, by admitting that she hadn't put a chain on the bloody thing!

Once again, though, she was absolutely convinced that we were liable for any damage to her property. We're not. There are signs all over the exterior of the store and around the car park, that vehicles are left there at the risk of the owner. Now I can't be sure of the legality of these notices, but I'm pretty certain Food Place wouldn't put them up if we were in fact liable for such theft or damage.

You Can't Throw me out!
A lot of people seem to be under the impression that they have an automatic Human Right to enter Food Place and do whatever they like. A few years ago, a middle-aged woman was heard, by several people, making racist remarks about one of our cashiers. A few people complained to the duty-manager and the woman was asked to leave the store.

"You can't tell me to leave! This is public property! Make me!"

What? Public property my arse!

In the end, the police were called, the woman was escorted to the office and issued with a life-long ban on entering any of Food Place's stores. She continued protesting, and began repeating her racist insults, in front of the police, and ended up being prosecuted. Turns out she was a council worker and ended up losing her job, as well as being plastered over the local newspaper.

Bet she wishes she'd kept her big mouth shut now.

Fame at Last

Well, hardly. I was mentioned in the Guardian's blog roll. Big thanks to Al for pointing this out to me as I hadn't noticed - I actually read the Guardian on that day too! It was only a small mention, but in the three days since there's been an extra 100 visits per day. Not bad. So, to any new readers, welcome and I hope you enjoy what I've got to say about working at Food Place.

Which isn't a great deal at the moment...

The most boring week ever?
Perhaps it's because I'm not spending much time there recently, but Food Place has been such a dull place over the past week. The customers have all been perfectly well behaved, none of my colleagues have got on my nerves - though that's definitely got a lot to do with spending less time in their company - and Food Place haven't moved the shop around or installed new equipment.

To add to this tedium, I haven't had any stressful days. I've gone to work, got on with my daily tasks and routines, gone home again. No staff sickness, no workload of fiddly, time-consuming admin tasks that everybody else considers themselves too important to do. Even the wages were a doddle this week - not one person forgot to swipe and virtually everybody worked their flat contract - no overtime to process at all. Hitherto unheard of. I know I don't like stress when I'm experiencing it, but it does, at least, give me something to blog about.

So, no crack (as we say in these parts).

Time Management
You may recall my post that dealt with the new, and extremely unfair, attendance management system that Food Place is introducing across all of its stores next month (here). I'm pleased to announce that my prediction was, predictably, correct. There was mass-outrage and a never-ending stream of hypothetical scenarios were put forward by store managers that rubbished the system. What if there's a queue at the swipe machine? What if somebody is late for a genuine reason? What if somebody is at work on time, but is harassed by a customer en route to the swipe machine?

As a result of this, Food Place have backed down on the original proposal to force staff to swipe at very precise 15 minute intervals. We will now have a three-minute leeway. So if we swipe at twenty-seven minutes past, we'll be paid until half past.

A result.

Yet Another Catch-Up Post

It's been a while since I last posted and there are several reasons for this. First and foremost, I've started my university course over the last couple of weeks, so I've been settling into that. Another reason is that I've been ill. I was struck down (how dramatic) with a sickness bug - the sort that leaves you with bad chest pains caused by overly energetic vomiting. The other reason is, I've been so sick to death of Food Place that I completely lost my sense of humour about working there. But that's, hopefully, buried now, so I can get back to normal.

The frequency of my posts might well decline from now on. I've got my degree to think about and I'm still, rather foolishly, trying to cram in 27 hours of Food Place a week. I'm actually feeling a lot more confident that I can cope with this now that I've got started with it. My university timetable is pretty forgiving and, considering that I can work the majority of my hours over the weekend, I can still get another three shorter shifts in through the week and still get a day-off from both education and work - although it's probably going to end up being my 'frantic independent study day'.

So, back to Food Place...
The atmosphere at work has improved dramatically. Whether it's because I haven't been there as much or whether it's to do with people calming down, I'm not sure. I'm just happy that things have settled onto an even keel.

The first point to note: the powers that be have decided to make yet more changes to our store. Not content with doing a full refit early this year, installing new freezers in March, removing the deli and installing new checkouts, they now have deemed it necessary to install a 'queuing system' at the kiosk.

Now, I'm not denying that this particular addition is more than welcome. Customers are notoriously useless at organising themselves into orderly queues - particularly at the kiosk. You get five people queuing at one side and three at the other; you get people barging to the front regardless. Well not any more! Next week, they're installing railings around the kiosk with 'impulse purchase' racks in the middle. And we'll be able to press a little button from any of the tills that will cause a robotic voice to herald:

"Next customer to cashier number two please!"

Very Post Office. I'm actually finding the whole prospect quite amusing. Ever since Peter Kay mocked the little voice you hear in Argos, I can't think of it without giggling. I can only imagine how bad I'm going to be when it's actually installed.

Bakery Disaster
On Sunday I was called upon to help on the bakery as Margaret had phoned in sick. It was all going to be so simple. I'd been left a list of exactly what I needed to put into the ovens, which setting to use and what times I should do it. I wasn't overly thrilled at the prospect, probably through the certain knowledge I was going to burn myself, but I nonetheless thought I'd cope.

The burn scenario popped up much sooner than anticipated. As I was removing the first batch of crusty rolls, I pulled the tray a little too forcefully and it shot right into my forearm. Ouch. My reflexes pulled me back quick enough to avert a major blister situation, but it still hurt.

And then I got burned again. I'd taken out the wholemeal bloomers, wrapped them all with the cursed sealing machine and placed them back onto the tray to take to the shelves. I prodded the tray to make sure it wasn't too hot and it didn't appear to burn me. So I picked it up with my bare hands and set off. It was fine at first, but at the very moment it was too late to turn back the thing suddenly became intensely hot. By the time I arrived at the shelf it was as though I was carrying a red-hot poker - I've never dropped anything so fast in all my life! I now have very red fingers.

Things passed without further catastrophe for an hour or so. At one stage I actually felt like I was on top of things. I had the shelves fully stocked with every single product line, it was all selling, quite literally, like hot cakes and I had my next batches in the ovens. Alas, sadly I hadn't timed things very well. When a load is ready to come out of the oven, a very loud siren sounds and refuses to shut-up until you open the oven door. All four ovens blasted off within five seconds of each other - it sounded like the Germans bombers were on their way - and I handled this sudden emergency very badly. I tried to get the sodding pastries out as quick as I could (the time between them being fully baked and turning black is roughly eight seconds) and ended up dropping a whole tray of Very Berry Muffins. Cue much swearing and further panic about getting the other trays out.

I muddled my way through it all though in the end. Considering I hardly ever work on there, my sales figures for the morning weren't bad at all. So I was, at least, praised for that. I got a nice little thank-you mention on the board for my efforts.

Still, I won't be doing that again in a hurry.

Office Politics

Malicious Bitching
The past couple of days at work have been particularly unpleasant. So much so that, for the first time in a long while, I've felt like I don't want to be there. I won't go into too much detail about what's made me feel like this. There's nothing more dull than listening to somebody droan on and on about the intricate details of their working relationships.

The whole situation has arisen because one supervisor got into trouble for poor job performance and, rather than accepting this and pulling their socks up, is attempting to drag everybody else down with them. They started with obvious targets like Ed - somebody who wouldn't know an honest day's work if it slapped him in the chops. But I didn't think for one moment the mud-slinging would extend to me.

There have been accusations made that my work in the cash office is "sloppy and full of mistakes". What makes it harder to take is that these slurs are coming from somebody who I'd previously respected and thought a great deal of.

My first reaction to hearing that I'm "sloppy" and "mistake-prone" was anger. How dare somebody accuse me of being incompetent at a job that a monkey could do - never mind somebody who's studying for a degree and has five A-levels. All the cash office entails is entering numbers into a computer, counting things and extracting information from printed reports. To even suggest that there's a level of skill involved, or more than a minimal level of concentration required, really annoys me.

My next reaction was to give tit-for-tat. Fight back and defend myself. Of course I'm going to make the odd whoopsie with the cash procedures -I'm the first to admit to it - when I sandwich the job in between running about doing so many other things. In my mind, if the checkouts are busy, I need to be down there supporting them. That comes before sitting upstairs doing admin jobs. But other supervisors who operate the cash office think differently. When the door swings shut, they're in the office and won't move from it. They spend an hour doing something I'd cram into twenty minutes.

My final take on the issue was influenced by my subsequent chat with Terry. As far as I'm concerned, I'm now satisfied that I do the best I can and I'm happy with that. If somebody else wants to go nit-picking and scouting for my mistakes, then let them. I'm not perfect.

But I remain very disappointed with the person who's said these things. It feels like a betrayal.

Loo-Roll Woman & Tricia

Yesterday a lady came storming into the store, went to the kiosk and demanded to speak to a manager at once. She was carrying an opened pack of Charmin toilet paper, with one roll missing, under her arm and looked like she really meant business.

Gina didn't argue with the lady and called a manager to the kiosk. I happened to be nearby when Robert arrived to handle the situation. When I heard what followed, it made me very glad that I hadn't jumped in and tried to help...

"I was in here doing my shopping last week and I put into my trolley a 12-pack of Andrex bathroom tissue - the one I always buy."

"Uh-huh," Robert went along with the story.

"As I did so, a man in a shirt and tie approached me and said, 'do you know that the Charmin is on promotion? Same size pack, half the price' and proceeded to force me into putting the Andrex back and buying this!"

She was clearly referring to Terry. He's always stalking the customers, watching what they buy and talking them into getting the special offers.

Robert continued to nod along whilst, in the background, I made an effort to look busy so I could listen to the rest of this encounter.

"Well, I got it home, used it and I was very annoyed to find it's the shoddiest variety of bathroom tissue I've ever had the misfortune to use!"

I was already smirking away to myself at the way she said 'bathroom tissue' rather than loo-roll. Perhaps she felt better about standing in the middle of a supermarket ranting and raving about the stuff if she didn't refer to it as bog roll.

"Oh I see," said Robert, "What appears to be the problem with it?"

"It has a very rough texture and it's flaked everywhere, all over my bathroom!"

I ducked under the kiosk counter to have a good giggle to myself. I mean, honestly! If you were so peeved off about a pack of loo-roll, you'd return it and pretend the sheets were splitting or something; save yourself at least some embarrassment. She might just as well have brandished it in Robert's face and screamed: "It's like wiping my arse with sandpaper!"

Tricia
When I first started at Food Place, there was a lady on the checkouts called Tricia. I didn't really see much of her - at the time I worked around my school hours and she mostly worked mornings. I'd actually completely forgotten about her existence until Susan, the new woman on the tills, mentioned her today.

Susan said: "do you remember that woman on the tills here that used to be so unbelievably slow, it looked as though she was about to stop?"

I had a think about it and Susan helped me along with a description before I finally placed this woman as Tricia. Susan was laughing away to herself as she did humorous demonstrations of how Tricia used to work. By the end of it I was peeing myself laughing - but I think that had more to do with me being extremely tired. I tend to react quite hysterically to the slightest amusement when I'm tired.

Basically, Tricia was so slow that it could only have been deliberate. Nobody could ever work at a pace like that naturally and she certainly didn't dawdle around when it came to home-time.

She would turn to the conveyor belt. Examine the items nearest to her. Carefully select one. Inspect it very intently, taking so long that she almost had time to read the complete ingredients list of the product. Turn the product around to look for the barcode. Grip the item with both hands. Present it to the scanner. Shake it around a bit if it didn't swipe first time. Listen for the bleep. Carefully pass the item to the waiting customer. Repeat the process.

It's very likely that readers won't see the humour in this. You have to have seen this woman in action to realise why she was so funny.

It was partly to do with her mannerisms and facial expressions. Her eyes were always narrowed to slits and she would move her gaze, slowly of course, around the area. She would always be chewing gum - but very very slowly. Grinding it in her mouth - combined with her general lack of haste, to look at her you could almost believe your vision had switched to slow-motion mode. And she never laughed. If a customer made a small-joke to her, she would stick on a wide grin and loll her head from side to side - as though simulating laughter.

Not content with reminiscing about this character, we proceeded to do impressions of her. We all sat ourselves on tills, dying for the next customer to arrive. Just so we could serve them Tricia-style. I found it impossible - I just could not go that slowly! And I ended up bursting out laughing in a customer's face and having to spend the rest of the transaction apologising and murmuring that "something tickled me earlier".

That's what the monotony of working at Food Place does for you.

Timesnatchers!

This is a landmark post. It's going to be the first blog entry I have made that directly criticises Food Place management. I'm perfectly aware that if the Food Place mafia (the security staff) ever read this blog entry, they'll know instantly that this blog is about our company. But I'm confident that I've been vague enough about my location that it can never be traced to me.

Anyways...

The New Time Management System
On September 23rd, a new system will 'go live' in all Food Place stores across the country that manages the working hours of staff. It's, basically, an upgrade of the system we already use that will tighten the grip the company has on how much it pays us - and when I say tighten, it beggars belief just how strict they are proposing to become. And I predict mass outrage about it.

The current system involves staff swiping their clock-card on a reader at the start and end of their shifts. The times these swipes are made are then used to calculate our pay. But it's changes to the 'rounding rules' that are going to cause major problems.

At present, we're paid in fifteen minute intervals, which means the system is already rounding-off our swipes. At the moment, the watershed is the midway point. For example:

You're supposed to work 12:00 - 16:00. You swipe on at 11:53 and swipe off at 16:08. The system will recognise you as having worked four and a quarter hours. In actual fact, that's exactly what you have worked, but the system calculates it slightly differently - you don't get paid for the fifteen minutes between 11:45 and 12:00 because you worked less than half of it. But because you worked more than half of the fifteen minutes between 16:00 and 16:15, it will pay you for that.

You can't say fairer than that really. Sometimes you're very slightly short-paid, but other times you're very slightly overpaid. So the overall effect on your take-home pay is minimal.

The new system
The rounding rules have been tightened in such a way that, using the above example, you would only be paid for four hours - despite the fact that you actually worked exactly 4 hours and 15 minutes.

Allow me to elaborate. The new system doesn't have a mid-way cut-off. To be paid for a 15 minute time period, you must work for every second of it. This means that any swipes after 11:45 will round off to 12:00. So let's examine the example again, but with different swipe times.

You swipe on at 11:46 and swipe off at 16:44. This means that you have worked for 4 hours and 28 minutes. Which, to any right-minded person, is four and a half hours. But to the Draconian swipe system, it is four hours! You worked 14 minutes at either side of your scheduled shift, therefore you didn't work for a full 15 minute unit and won't be paid for it.

Similarly, if you swiped off at 15:59, instead of 16:00, you would only be paid until 15:45.

What's right about it?
Before I launch into a tirade about why this is outrageous to me, I should show Food Place the courtesy of making it clear that I can see why they are tightening the rules. At the moment, there's a hell of a lot of employees taking the piss out of them.

When an employee is scheduled to work 12:00 - 16:00, this has been planned so that the employee is there to cover the period when Food Place has recognised there is work for them to do. Some people exploit the current swipe system by swiping in early and swiping off late. The company thus ends up paying lots of employees an extra half an hour each day. Spread over a month, I'm sure the amount of money that canny workers are extracting from the company is huge.

And the majority of those employees practising this method of pay-boosting aren't providing the company with the benefit of more work. Lots of people swipe early and then stand and have a good gossip until the time they're supposed to start. So basically, Food Place is currently paying a lot of people to stand and chat and they're quite right to be pissed off about it.

What's wrong with it?
Basically, they've tipped the scale so far in the other direction that it's going to actually deter people from working. They've gone to the extreme of being so penny-pinching that it only doubles the blow from the insulting rates of pay Food Place offers.

Can you imagine the struggle I'm going to face at busy times on the checkouts? No longer will anybody be willing to stay an extra five or ten minutes to help get the queues down before leaving. And quite rightly. I would refuse too. Why should I stay back to help out if the company isn't going to pay me for it?

Other problems are going to arise when it comes to 'finishing off' after the store closes each night. We currently schedule the evening checkout staff to finish at 22:10. By the old swipe system, this meant they got paid for the tidying-up and cleaning they did. But now, we're either going to have to eat into our stringent labour budget and keep them there until 22:15, or stop expecting them to clean up. I would never continue to ask them to work until 22:10 knowing they would only be paid until 22:00.

Which leads me to the other MAJOR criticism I have.

Food Place seem to be quite keen on keeping this 'migration' -as they're calling it - low-key. They don't want the staff to be formally briefed about it, although they've stopped short of telling us to remain silent. This is despicable. I've already illustrated how easy it will be to lose 15 minutes' pay. All it will take is for somebody to do that three times a week and over the course of a month they've lost 3 hours. To some of our part-timers, that's a whole shift. Some of them perhaps won't notice this - but many will. And it's going to be me that has to give them the bad news:

"Sorry Debbie, over the course of the last pay-month you deprived the company of 12 minutes of productivity by swiping off a minute early to go home. As a result, you've lost three hours from your pay."

Terry's attitude has disgusted me too. He says "bring it on". He's looking forward very much to the 'minute-grabbers' in our store finding their pay smaller than expected. Doesn't it just show that he's paid rather too much? Doesn't he understand? We're talking about people who are paid at just above the National Minimum Wage here. Lots of our staff live in very difficult circumstances. Yes, the system will rightly hit the deliberate con-artists who've been at it for years. But lots of genuinely hard-working staff are going to be short changed!

What about people working overtime to help out at short notice? Go back to my earlier example and imagine that somebody comes in and works 4 hours and 28 minutes to help us out - out of the kindness of their hearts. And the company neglects to pay them for the 28 minutes of honest work they've put in.

It's all wrong. It's far too strict. All it's going to do is cause bitterness, resentment and discourage people from working. If the big bosses view us workers with such contempt that they need to introduce an all-take and no-give system like this, then what hope is there for us? If they get away with this, what will come next? Incidentally, the briefing pack we were sent commented that 'scores of retailers' have already adopted this approach and it's been a resounding success.

Yes. A success for the company as they've cut costs by robbing their staff!

Drama Queens & Corpses

After a reasonably quiet week on the fussy customers front, a lady chose today to table her motion to have our entire product range tweaked to suit her.

The lady in question is a customer who frequents Food Place. She's one of those strange customers that you never know how to take. Some days she appears to be in high spirits and chats away to you like a best-friend. Other days she does nothing but moan; usually about the finer details of her personal life.

This week, the big topic is that she's been diagnosed with diabetes. She's told us all about how she is waiting to find out whether she will have to inject insulin on a daily basis; all about her new diabetic nurse, who's lovely by the way; all about her quest to discover whether she can milk any money out of the government. Well, her words were closer to "this is affecting my quality of life! I might have to stop working, they should be paying me disability."

I felt like slapping her in the face and yelling at her about the four or five diabetic staff we have at Food Place. You didn't hear them moaning for days when they were diagnosed and they aren't screwing it for all it's worth by trying to get out of work and extracting extra benefits.

I digress.

This lady has decided to complain to us, formally, that our product range is not suitable for diabetics. She wrote Terry a snotty letter which went something like this:

Dear Mr Lucas
I am very annoyed that Food Place does not cater for me properly as a registered diabetic [oh, we're keeping a directory of people with blood-sugar disorders now are we?] and here are some examples of this.

• You stock Dr Pepper full sugar, but not diet
• You stock cans of full sugar Tango, but not the diet version
• You don't stock Robinson's Summer Fruits in a low sugar variety

[the list continued ad infinitum] I feel very discriminated against by this stocking policy. Please change matters.

Just who the hell does she think she is? The opening paragraph of her letter suggested that Food Place doesn't cater for diabetics in general. She then moved on to give a list of very specific products that we stock in a standard variety but not a low-sugar variety. So what about the several hundred sub-brands we do stock that are suitable for diabetics?

So basically, Mrs Muck, you're actually saying Food Place is discriminating against diabetics who insist on buying summer fruits squash rather than blackcurrant & apple. Who insist on buying Tango rather than Fanta.

Or, closer to your meaning still, you're moaning that we don't stock a long list of products you want, and using diabetes discrimination as a weapon to get your own way.

Dead Customers

Today we found out a regular customer had died. Paula, who lived on the row of houses opposite Food Place, died of a heart attack aged 52. She wasn't in ill-health and seemed absolutely fine when I spoke to her yesterday morning - only about three hours before her death.

As most people know, a sudden death like that brings some harsh realities home. Any day on this earth could be our last. And what are we doing with our lives? Working in supermarkets. I spent a lot of the day walking around in a little daze thinking about dying and how seemingly random it is. Paula got up yesterday morning and went about her normal daily routines - popping over to Food Place to get something in for her husband's tea before she started work - all for the last time. She might have been worried about a dentist appointment next Wednesday. Or putting off paying a gas bill. And it's all over now.

And death makes people talk. Everybody at work was discussing it today. I was helping Deborah out on the kiosk this afternoon and we got talking about other customers who have died on us. I worked on the kiosk for quite a long time, and if there's anywhere in the store where you get to know the customers, it's there. Mostly because it's the same people coming in for the same products. A lot of the time, I used to find myself subconsciously going to grab a packet of their brand of smokes before they even asked for them. Every now and then, a customer would suddenly stop coming in and you always assumed they'd kicked the bucket.

The most memorable is the one we'd all like to forget about. The customer called Bob who visited the store twice every day - and then died in it. He collapsed in the wines & spirits section, suspected heart attack, and was dead before he even reached the hospital. Strange that I even remember the date - Tuesday 2nd November 2004. My God, it seems like last week! I'm getting old!

Not quite a customer, but linked to the store nonetheless, was a 10-year-old boy called Dylan. His mother was a regular customer who I often spoke to and I remember, vaguely for I was never paying that much attention, she often had her small son with her. He was run down by a truck on the road immediately outside Food Place and three members of our staff were on the scene administering First Aid. That was a terrible week too. The staff involved were deeply disturbed by what they'd seen and the front of the store was covered in floral tributes.

There was a young-ish man who shopped most evenings for odd-bits. I didn't know his name until after he'd died, but he was always chatting away to us. I had no idea he was an infamous criminal until the night he fell through a glass skylight whilst trying to break into a warehouse and plunged 30ft to his death. JPS Lights were taken out of our tobacco range not long after he died because he was the only customer who ever bought them.

Another slightly bizarre one was a young woman who often came in with her father. She was on holiday in Africa and was killed in a safari accident. The local rag never elaborated the details, which is probably a blessing because I don't imagine a safari accident would be very pretty.

There's lots more, but I'm going to stop being morbid now you'll be pleased to learn.

Jekyll & Hyde

The Strange Case...
There was a bizarre customer today that seemed to have a split-personality.

She'd gone to Cleo's till just as she was opening it up at the start of her shift. Most supermarket shoppers will know that it can be quite a pain if you've got a big trolley load and you're the first customer there - you don't get time to get everything onto the belt before the action starts.

Seeing that this lady was going to fall behind with the packing, I went over and started bagging things for her whilst she finished putting her shopping onto the conveyor belt. When she'd finished, she seemed delighted at this help:

"Oh my, oh thank you so much! You've made my day!"

She watched me packing for a few moments before suddenly exploding:

"Don't put all that in there! It'll be too heavy and I can't lift it!"

Taken aback, Cleo and I shared a puzzled glance with each other. I don't think the lady noticed this but, nonetheless, she swung back to her former self:

"Oh, how ungrateful of me to complain when you've been so helpful!"

My God! What is this? I was thinking to myself, almost too scared to speak in case she burst into another furious rant. In the event, I didn't need to speak, she did it of her own accord.

"NO! That's still too heavy, I'll never get that into the car!"

Miffed at such ingratitude, I reorganised the bags a little so the weight was more balanced.

"Oh, you're ever so kind, thank you."

But seconds later...

"I'll never get all THIS into the car!"

And then, she flipped back once more...

"Thank you very much. At least I've got a good strong husband at home to help me get it all back out again."

By the end of that encounter, I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Cleo was just as baffled as I was. Perhaps you couldn't appreciate how unnerving this customer was without seeing her. She literally veered between being so smiley and chirpy it was intolerable to being so full of rage and hatred she was shaking and spitting as she yelled. Perhaps she was doing it on purpose to make my day interesting?

Long winded
A customer telephoned the store today and when I answered, I got perhaps the longest query I've ever come across. "Oh, hello, my name's Madeleine Hayes, and I'm just telephoning you because I thought you, or one of you staff, might be able to assist me in discovering whether or not you might sell such a thing as an electrically operated toaster?"

So, basically, "Do you sell toasters?"

I mean, come on! It was as though she was asking for something completely bizarre that she'd never heard of before. Have you ever come across a device for toasting bread that isn't electrically operated? Apart from a spit for holding bread against a fire, I doubt it. And since when was it necessary to formally introduce yourself to shop assistants?

Still, I suppose I shouldn't be complaining because she was, at least, polite about it.

Self-Centred Staff
An incident today has given me the opportunity to have a good old whinge about people who think they're important and should have priority over their colleagues when it comes to booking holidays.

Today's event involved a team member requesting 25th August off as holiday because it's their wedding anniversary. They were told, quite rightly, that two weeks' notice was nowhere near enough and that because so many other staff had already booked holidays over that week, the only way they'd get it off is by asking somebody to swap a shift.

They went off in the huff at this and stomped off to Terry's office to complain. But they didn't just complain about the holidays not being granted. The complaint was made personal towards the supervisor who had refused the holiday request.

Just who do people think they are? It's made perfectly clear in the company induction and in the terms and conditions handbook, issued to all staff, that the company's standard notice period for holidays is three months. In our store, we say give two months' notice to be guaranteed the dates you want. You can ask at shorter notice and you will get the holidays if they're available. If not, tough.

There's just no fairer way of doing it than allocating dates on a first-come-first-served basis. Which is why I got so annoyed at the team member's reaction to being refused. It's not as though they didn't know when their own anniversary was and they should have booked it months ago. It's no good asking for time off when the schedules are already compiled for that week. As it was, that particular week has been booked solid since March.

When this colleague finally found somebody who was willing to swap a shift, they then started moaning that they'd need to get a babysitter for their new shift. Well Christ almighty! Did you want your anniversary off or didn't you!?

My Review & More Kiosk Annoyances

My Review
Was actually quite painless, I'm very pleased to report. For once, Terry managed to keep the whole thing running at just under two hours. That might sound hellish for some people, but believe me, for Terry it's actually quite brief. The last review I had commenced an hour before the end of my shift ("I'm sure we can squeeze it in," he said) - he ended up having to pay me two and a half hours overtime for it!

The main criticism I got from him is one I entirely accept. I don't throw my weight around enough. Perhaps that makes it sound bad, but the way he put it across, it sounded much better. He said something along the lines of: "you're far too willing to accept other people not supporting you like they should and instead of getting mad and putting your foot down, you take on their share of the work and try to do your own as well, which leads to things falling apart occasionally". This is true. It was a bit rich of Terry to point this out, however, considering he's the main culprit for not supporting me. I mentioned this and he accepted that, yes, sometimes he does tend to overlook my department - but he assured me he only did so because he was always so confident that I'm more than capable of managing. Which, I suppose, is nice. In a way.

On the plus side, he had plenty of positive comments to make about how the department is running. He's "over the moon" about the low discrepancy figures and commented that, of all the departments, checkouts and services feels the most upbeat and has the best morale. Which is all down to me and Wendy's hard work. Aww.

The best comment of all was "I think you're easily the most customer-focused person in the store." He elaborated that, throughout his Food Place career, he's always found cash office, personnel and admin people to consider themselves "back of house" and tend to have as little to do with customer service as possible. He said he was surprised, when he came to our store, at how much time I spend on the front-end and how I "never lose sight of the needs of the customers and plan my days to make sure I'm always around the checkouts at the busiest times".

Ironic really that he should say things like that when I actually spend so much time slating the customers on this blog!

I'm surprised I managed to get my head out of the door when he'd finished with all of that praise. I was so pleased to hear things like that. I thanked him for such positive and warming praise but, never missing an opportunity, I pointed out how much better it would make me feel if he told me these things more often.

So, on the whole, it went extremely well. If I've learned anything it's that, in order to get more support from Terry, I need to give the impression that I'm incompetent and need help (tehe, sarcasm).

Kiosk Annoyances Part Two
So after listening to all that praise for how "customer-focused" I am, I went back down the front and spent the last two hours of my shift getting irate with stupid customers.

I jumped onto the kiosk to get the queue down and immediately found another gripe to add to my list in this post. It fits in with a theme I already discussed - requests. Why can't people just ask for what they actually want without muddling the issue? Today, a lady asked for "Twenty Lambert and Butler and twenty Mayfair". So I turned round and grabbed twenty of the standard L&B (in a silver and blue pack) and twenty standard Mayfair (dark blue).

"I don't want those ones, I want menthol!" She snapped after I'd scanned them through the till.

I felt like blasting: "well you didn't ask for menthol did you!?"

Not long after her, another customer arrived that reminded me of another kiosk moan. People who have their own special names for the brand of cigarette they smoke. Names that aren't printed on the packets and have no fathomable origin.

This lady always says, "twenty B&H red please."

I remember the first time I ever served her because I couldn't find what she was looking for. I was thinking to myself I know there's a B&H gold and silver, but red? What makes this lady more annoying is that she's asked for "B&H red" for years now and, every time she gets a new kiosk assistant, she can clearly see that it causes some confusion - because they don't exist! Yet, she doesn't bother to learn the correct name. She actually desires "B&H Superkings" which are just a longer version of "B&H Gold". But she stubbornly persists that they're subranded as "red" when they aren't.

I always, after picking them off the shelf, deliberately say "Twenty Bensons Superkings was it?". She always looks quite annoyed, but she won't be stopped. We've all just got used to her now.

Another regular is the lady who requests, in the poshest voice you could imagine: "twenty Silk Cut silver cigarettes please." I think she believes that smoking Silk Cut Silver puts her a class above other smokers. Curiously though, for somebody who takes such pride in her brand, she's quite shifty. She shoves them straight into a carrier bag and always glances nervously around - probably checking to make sure nobody she knows is watching.

This is a phenomena usually only seen in the younger smokers that you have to ask for proof of age. Their eyes always dart to the back of the queue whenever somebody else joins and you know they're thinking "Oh my God, is that my Auntie Ally, is she gonna see my buy fags?"

Another kiosk moan emerged soon after; people who trespass behind the counter. This was never a problem before as the old kiosk had a huge heavy counter-flap for access. But the new one has a small door on the front next to the lottery terminal and unauthorised, uninvited access is becoming an increasingly frequent event.

Naturally, the Nosey Woman, discussed in this post, is the most frequent offender. Whenever she's paying for lottery, she pushes the little door open and leans over the counter, gawping at what's underneath. I often wonder why she goes to such effort when she could just stand by the wall and get a perfectly clear view of the back-end of the counter.

But there's other unwanted guests. Lots of people now, upon spotting the door, walk through it and start scrutinising the products on the shelves behind the kiosk. Picking up packets of cigarettes and inspecting them. The kiosk staff just ignore them and hope they'll go away, but I barge right at them screaming "I'm sorry, you can't come behind here, staff only! OUT!" Well, maybe not that blunt, but I certainly show them the door!