spooning - leads to forking

As of March 2, 2006 I am no longer employed by Balfurd Cleaners. I was terminated for reasons beyond my control.

When I took the position as Customer Service Manager, I was explained by the General Manager that I would be given training from her for that position. A year and a half later I still hadn't received any training other than what I had received as a Customer Service Representative. I did my job to the best of my ability and without proper training and, for that, I was terminated.

Since before my dismissal, Balfurd Cleaners has hired several new people, one of which is my replacement. My replacement was hired before my dismissal and has been recieving proper training from the General Manager since I was terminated.

Yesterday I learned the our paychecks are going to be one day late due to an error with the timeclock. While, everyone else is quite upset over this issue, I am not. There really isn't much I can do and it is only going to be one day late, which doesn't make a lot of difference. I'm just glad it isn't going to be a week (or more) late! Of course, like always, this paycheck is out the window before I even see it. Damn, bills!

Inventory went well. We were able to get it done in a timely manner and now I am home to relax.

Inventory was postponed until tomorrow.

So...tomorrow is the last business day of the month and that means that we have to do inventory at work. One of the stores does not have a scanner so I'm not quite sure how inventory is going to work and I have no idea how it is going to go. *sigh* Tomorrow will most likely be a long day. And, after last week's very long week it is going to suck, but it should only be one day this week. It doesn't help any that it is going to snow like crazy tomorrow. Argh...

*screams* I don't want anymore phone calls from work today, damnit!

Is my week from hell finally over? In the course of the last seven days, we were without computers from Saturday through Thursday, the conveyer at the Westerly Parkway store broke down four times, I wasn't able to touch next week's schedule until last night after the majority of the employees went home (which meant I had to call each one to let them know what they are working next week). *sigh* It was one crazy week. Hopefully, I will have two full days off to enjoy it.

This has been one of the longest weeks of my life and it isn't over yet. I worked 10 hours Monday, 12 hours Tuesday, 13 hours Wednesday, and 10 hours today. We finally have our DSL connection back...no thanks to Verizon shutting it off this past Saturday. They thought we "moved." Seriously, that is the explaination that they gave us the past four days. I am so glad to finally be back to nomal, work-wise.

Today was a stressful day at work. Blah. Basically, I found out that I am going to need to terminate two or three employees because we are extremely overstaffed. What makes it worse is that my superior okayed the hire of a new employee, that I interviewed a couple weeks back, and we need to terminate two or three employees (excluding her hire). I'm confused.

I got a papercut today on my left index finger. *ouch* It really hurts, too.

A woman came into work this evening with a pair of nice leather sandals, but she was wearing a pair of navy cotton socks. How dare she committ such a fashion faux pas!

I am still quite alive if you are wondering. I have just been extremely busy with work and all of the new employees that we have recently hired. Once they are all fully trained, we shouldn't have any problem keeping all of the stores in the future...but keep your fingers crossed.

Today was a horrible day at work. First, I learned that one of my current employees cannot work anytime during the next four weeks and then in the afternoon I learned that one of my other employees can only week two days a week and she is very unreliable. *sigh*

Yesterday was the first day in two weeks that I was able to get out of work at a decent hour. Sandy and I had the North store closed and we were ready to go home by 7:20 pm. For the first time in what seems like an eternity, I was able to have some sort of life outside of Balfurd Cleaners.

Today went by fairly fast. Although, I had to wake up too early this morning so that I could get myself into work by 7:00 am. That was hard. That was very hard.

After work I went to Wal-mart with Samantha. We had a blast. We were sniffing shampoo and making comments about what they made us think of. She said that one smelled like an old woman and just then an old woman walked by. We laughed like crazy. :o) We also felt hair glues and gels and putties and waxes, which made some people look at us awfully strange. Then, we looked at all of the different types of condoms that they had for sale before moving on to the women's clothing department. Boy, were there some huge a$$ panties and bras. They were big enough that Samantha was putting her head in the bras. LOL. On one of the clearance racks we found some cotton, t-shirt-like, panties that had the zodiac signs on the front of them. They were cute. I would seriously have bought a pair had they had a size small enough to fit me. Samantha wanted a pair for herself but they were for extra large women, it seemed. :o\

It looks like it is going to be another one of those long weeks...just like last week. Yesterday I had an employee put in her two-week notice which makes her last day October 10, 2004. With that being said, we put an ad in the newspaper which will run tomorrow and then again on Sunday. Hopefully, we get some decent applications by the end of this week so we can get some new employees for the beginning of next week and start training them. If not, then I'm really not sure what we are going to do. *sigh*

Yes, I know that it has been a while since I last posted a new entry. Don't complain unless you update more often than I do.

It was a fabulous day. Nothing really exciting happened, but my day went really well. I went into work around noon and I met with Tracy, our human resource manager, and we discussed a few things and then at 1:30 pm we interviewed a new girl, whom we hired. :o) After that, I was able to finish next week's schedules (for the millionth time) and photocopied them and passed them out. Of course, I wasn't even in the main building 30 minutes before I kept getting paged over the intercom. Jeez! I'm not even fully into my new position and I wasn't even schedule to work at that store and somehow everyone mysteriously knows when I am there (even when I sneak in a side door)!

What a day! First, I learned that we hired two new people, which is great. Then, I did next week's schedules without too much of a problem. And then, I was able to give someone a raise, sort of. I don't have the power to give a raise, but I did suggest it and it was given. :o) On another note, however, I had a few troublesome customers today (it wouldn't be a normal day if I didn't) and I just wanted to tell hem to go the fnck home and leave me a lone, but of course I cannot do that unless they are extremely outrageous.

I seem to be slacking on the posts lately. Sorry!

There really isn't much to post right now. I'm going to be doing the schedules when I go into work today. Hopefuly, *crosses fingers* I will be able to give myself off next weekend, sine I work this weekend. :o) We hired two new people yesterday, one part-time and one full-time. Once they are trained, it will be easier to do schedules.

Jenn's baby shower is this weekend and she is so excited to see everyone. I'm excited just because it'll be nice to hang out with her and Sami outside of work for a change. Plus, I will finally get to meet Jenn's mother. It should be one wild and crazy afternoon. Let's hope mother nature cooperates.

Ooh, David Gray just popped on, so I am going to go listen to it.

Where do I begin?

Yesterday was a very long work day that seemed rather short and tiring. I started the day off by opening the Coin-Op location and lost a few pounds (at least it seems) in the process. I learned a great deal about the Coin-Op since this was the first time I worked it on my own. It's a good thing, too, because I didn't really want to train with Marlene. Very few people get along with Marlene and I'm not sure which category I fit into.

A really nice lady came up to me while working yesterday morning and started chatting with me. She was really nice. She was doing her laundry for her daughter. They're from the Philadelphia area and her daughter was busy with field hockey practice. She said that she wanted to do something nice for her daughter so she thought to do her laundry and surprise her when she got done with practice. I never did catch her name, but it doesn't matter. Easily, she had to be one of the nicest people that I have met in my life. She left to get coffee and returned with donuts, coffee, and milk for the both of us. Later, as she was taking her clothes out of the dryers, she asked me to take pictures of her with her digital camera. It was the craziest thing. I wish she could have stayed all morning because we were having so much fun. And to think, all of this was while I was working and getting paid.

Sami and I wrote next week's work schedule. It wasn't as bad this time around because we weren't as short staffed this week. However, we're still short staffed and it's going to get worse in the coming weeks.

Today was a decent day. It started off when I headed to the downtown store to work with Samantha on a few things and finish next weeks schedules I miss working with her. *sigh* Then, I headed to the North store where I worked for the remainder of the day. I learned that Theresa from drycleaning wants to learn front counter and wants to work at Coin-Op. Yay! This will make things a little bit easier for a while, especially since we have a new employee starting on Monday and then another new employee starting the following Monday. Scheduling should get a little easier after they're all trained.

It's going to be another twelve-r tomorrow unless Beverly can work a closing shift. And, that depends if she is allowed to cover front counter (since she is not longer a front counter employee). Either way, I'm going to have overtime and it is going to rock. I'll just have to get through another long and tiring day. Blah. It's almost the weekend...I just have to keep telling myself that.

I get to work another twelve-hour day tomorrow. I'm not complaing, but I'm not rejoicing, either. It is always nice to get overtime, but long days like that are so draining. It is a good thing I only work a few hours in the morning on Friday. Then, I get a long(er) weekend. :o)

Today was interesting. Around 4:30pm one of the arms broke on the rotating shirt rack at work. This is the same rack goes up into the ceiling and when it stops working there isn't really any way to get the clothing off of the rack. So I called up one of the maintenance guys and he said "I'll try to get there." If I can't get to the clothing on the shirt track, then they're going to be pissed and we were coming up on the 5:00pm rush. Thankfully, I called someone higher up and he got the maintenance guy to come up to our store and replace the broken arm. I'm not quite sure what I would have done had it not been fixed by 5:00pm. I probably would have felt shitty the rest of the night and I'm sure it would have went slower, too. Blah.

My jaw hurts. What did I do to deserve that? Ugh, I have to go to work in two hours. I need to get me ass in the shower and then head on into work. I work with Little Amy today. That should be fun. Hopefully we're not too busy today.

I feel as if I committed a mortal sin at work yesterday. We recently changed the tagging system and bagging procedure for our laundry (e.g. men's button-down dress shirts). In the old system we separated shirts by starch and no starch and also by regular wash and cold water wash. Thus, we had four separate bags for sorting laundry. We then put one to four shirts of similar colour in a mesh bag (white for no starch and red for starch). There were two types of loads: darks and lights. Anything that was bagged cold water wash was considered dark and everything else was considered light. In the new system we have a single dark/cold water wash bag and a single light/regular wash bag. For regular wash, seven to nine shirts are first roped together and then put into the appropriate bag. For cold water wash, six shirts are put into a mesh bag. What was my mortal sin? In this new system we do not separate whites from every other colour. So, in turn, I bagged bright red shirts with shirts that were mostly white in colour. I can't wait to see what kind of pink shirts come of this mess.

Samantha called me last night while I was at $1.00 Nacho Night at Champs Sports Bar & Grill to ask if I could open this morning. Jennifer was having some pains and went to the hospital and there wasn't anybody else left to open this morning. I did it, of course. I can always use the few extra bucks. Now, I'm home on my extended lunch break, if you want to call it that. Because today is Wednesday and we are usually slow(er) on Wednesday's, I left work when Brian came in. I'll be heading back around 4:00pm. Right now I have chicken fingers in the oven and I can't wait until they are done because I am so hungry. *licks lips*

Last Friday I had my interview for the customer service manager position at Balfurd Cleaners. I'm really nervous now. I would really like the position as I enjoy that sort of responsibily. However, it is a lot of responsibility and I'm not sure I feel that I am 100% qualified for the position. I was informed that we would know who got the position sometime this week. :o\

Yesterday was definitely a busy Saturday at Balfurd. Ugh. Tiffany and I were extremely busy all day. We ended up leaving at 7:00 pm because it was so busy and we had so much work to do at 5:00 pm when we closed. The Westerly Parkway location ran out of change so I had to run to the downtown location and get some money and take it to the other location. Traffic, traffic, traffic! When I got there I ended up waiting on a few customers because they got a small rush while I was there. Then, after I got back to my store, Tiffany went to lunch and we got slammed. Oh well, at least I go to work with Tiffany, right? :o)

Yay, I get to work with Tiffany today. I won't get to work with her until next Thursday after today. She has the first few days next week off. :o( I enjoy working with her so much. I do miss working with Sami, though. Today is going to be extremely busy. Saturdays almost always are. We probably won't even get out nearly on time today, either. Blah. Oh well, I get to work with Tiffany. :o)

Today was a long day. I got a phone call in the morning from one of my coworkers, Brian, and he said he was feeling ill and he wanted to know if I could come in so that he could leave early. I didn't think he was going to leave immediately. But, to my surprise, almost as soon as I got there did he finish what he was doing and punch out and leave me high and dry with way too much for one person to do. I was alone for nearly the entire work day. I did, however, get some help in the middle of the day for a little over an hour while we were slow(er). Thanks, Ian.

I was not fired. Phew.

Uh-oh. I must have forgot to check a pocket on a wool coat that I checked in on Monday because before it went through the drycleaning process, the ladies that do the cleaning found chapstick and pens in a pocket. This guy brought in a bunch of articles of clothing that were soaked to the point where you could wring water out of them and they were very smelly and covered in mold and mildew. We can send the clothes down to the plant to be cleaned until they are dry. So, we drape them over the front of the back counter until they have completely dryed. I must have not checked the pocket thinking that I would check them after they dried. I'll be getting another point or two added to my score, which brings me closer to being fired, if not fired. I'll find out when I go to work in an hour. Actually, I'll probably find out if I'm fired at the end of the day. Then, they'll have a nightmare mess of tickets, tags, and clothes to deal with.

Today will most likely be a very long day at work due to the fact that it is also the last day of the month. Each month around the 15th and 30th (or last day of the month), inventory has to be completed. This is a pain in the ass, but it does make sure we aren't missing a lot of clothing and helps keep sanity by causing insanity for one day. Before I leave work tonight, every quick receipt has to be completed, all quicks have to be completely, all redos have to be completed, as well as any other ticket that may need to be completed or voided. This make my life hell since I close tonight on my own (and since Tuesdays are sometimes really busy). I may not get out of work until 9:00 pm tonight...again. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I guess it is a bit slower at work this morning because Sami called me and asked me if I wanted to come in an hour or so later. That gives me more time to work on my blog skin. Although, I could use the money, even if it is only an extra hour on my next paycheck. Tonight and tomorrow should be really busy at work because we took in over 600 articles of clothes on Monday and over 500 articles on Tuesday so I'll be running around out of my mind taking care of bitchy customers. Fun.

Today was a very long and very stressful day. I went into work at 11:00 am and I didn't leave work until 9:00 pm; the worst part is that we close at 7:00 pm! I was alone at work after 3:00 pm and I was hit hard with a lot of customers. I think "busy season" has begun.