Homebase, Saturday. Lunch hour. Managers discussing how to arrange cashiers to avoid long queues. I’m thinking, “Why not hire more cashiers?” (but that’s far too logical) when I’m awoken from my mental berating of all around by this gem…

“…Uh, what about that one on the end, I’ll have to have a word with her”
“Well, she’s very good when the customer arrives”
“Yes, but she stands there and looks so moody when customers are approaching”
“True, that’s because she’s shy. But she’s very good with them when they arrive”
“Well, I’ll have a word with her and we’ll keep her out the way on the end. Who do we have on who’s good?”
“That lad with the glasses, he’s the best”
“Who, Tom?”
“No, the one with the glasses and the dark hair. Ooh, you know…”
“Err…Oh, I know the one you mean”
“John! That’s it! John!”
“Yeah, he’s so polite! He’s definitely the best cashier we have”
“Well if we put him on checkout 4….”

Now, I feel that there are two distinct ways of looking at this:

A) The way Sir Fat Tony will inevitably take it

B) The fact that he does more work, and is nicer than everyone else despite being paid the same amount of money. Plus, if they think he’s very good there’s the possibility of him being put on customer services, especially since two staff have just left from there. This, at first, seems a very attractively amusing possibility until I come to the frightening realisation that if this happens he will inevitably call me any time anything needs doing, just out of pure spite for me mocking him now. So, in conclusion, I would like to offer this:

WELL DONE!

Moving on, in another piece of remarkable manager-ness, a certain manager (who, it has just occurred to me, I have never named – let’s just refer to him as Pointy Haired Boss , or PHB for convenience) has decided to go around the store removing price labels by stealth from shelf edges. He then proceeds to inform the manager of the given department that a price label is missing. The departmental manager then has to search the entire department, normally taking about half a day, to find the missing label.

This may seem to have a degree of sense behind it – after all, it means that the departmental manager must check all price labels. However, all sense is removed when you realise that:
a) We are chronically understaffed, and can’t afford to spend half a day looking for labels
b) He does this maybe three times a week per department – overkill?
c) He has now started removing labels immediately after they have been placed, so the departmental manager thinks “Hmm…I know there’s a price there because I’ve just put it there” and doesn’t check
d) He flatly denies doing it, even though he has been seen – he claims that the labels “fall off”. In which case it would take him about two minutes, literally, to print a new one off and replace it.

Also, I work on wallpaper. Of a nine hour day , I spent (I counted) thirty minutes in the wallpaper department last Saturday. Knowing full well that the previous week I had been told that sales were down year-on-year by almost 50% and I should be trying to sell more.

Anyway, PHB is rumoured to be leaving soon to become a store manager, instead of his currently position (just below store manager). This scares me a lot, because his replacement (let’s call him PHB2B ) actually has some intelligence and nouse, which should in all logic remove the possibility of him assuming a high managerial position anywhere…and yet it looks likely to happen.

A sensible manager…whatever next?

Originally posted on The LBSC