A Little Pre-Holiday Retail Rant

I really want a new job.  This is getting ridiculous.  You want to know why RetailEstablishment is failing?  It's because of corporate stupidity, inefficiency, and wasteful practices that were going on for years before the economy tanked. 

Corporate HQ's new policies explain that our poor sales have nothing to do with a slumped economy and ridiculous HQ policies but are a direct result of our (the sales peons') failings.  We're not pushy enough.  Also, sometimes customers see us drink water or coffee on the sales floor.  Obviously, these are huge problems that must be corrected before they further kill our sales!  The solution?  No water and no water breaks.  (Those of us with severe allergies and asthma are ignoring this dictum and hiding behind desks when we need a drink to keep ourselves from choking or having asthma attacks.)  Also an emphasis on pushiness and customer harassment to keep from getting written up for not "doing our jobs." 

And here I thought they would emphasize knowledge, training, efficiency, or anything else that makes a long-term difference and leads to satisfied, repeat customers.  I am so silly sometimes.  What a kidder I am.

I feel like I live in a cross between You've Got Mail and Nickel and Dimed.  Management does not care if you can help the customers find what they really want and get them to it quickly.  Management just wants obedient little brainless sales drones who know 15 ways to segue into a pushy sales tactic.  They also like uniforms, apparently.

I'm stuck in this non-living-wage full time job with no options because I'm a cripple abandoned by the government.  I am a little frustrated. 

Some new and particularly stupid policies are rolling out soon, and I foresee a return to that 90%+ turnover rate our store is famed for.  (Joy, right before Christmas madness begins!  That's the best way to have happy holiday customers: half-trained employees trying to push unwanted merchandise on customers and being utterly incapable of actually helping them get what they came for.) 

We usually have a lot of quitting over the holidays, especially once management starts enforcing two months of no time off.  Most people want to at least have a couple days in a row that they can spend with their families, and they know that being jobless for a while won't kill them, so they leave.

And why not?  These bright, young, non-crippled, healthy things have options!  Of course they should take them!  Why would I want them to continue being miserable, treated like interchangeable cogs in the retail wheel, their talents wasted because of corporate stupidity?  I wish them well as they leave me behind!  I really do. 

I just wish I could go with them.

P.S. Hey, RetailEstablishment, go read that Norm Feuti book Pretending You Care (and think about it really hard), listen to your field employees (not the managers, but the troops, especially the ones who have been around for more than 3 years), and wake up!  There are ways not to be this dumb and wasteful, and you should try them before you end up out of business.  You have so much talent available; why are you squandering it?

I'll leave you with a positive quote I just made up:

God never promised us a rose garden, but He still gives us roses along the way. 

And allergy medicine.

Thank you to all the co-workers who have helped make my time in the big house of RetailEstablishment slightly less hellish sometimes.  I'm always sad to see you go, but I know you're in a better place.  It would be difficult to be in a worse one.