This has been the weekend from HELL!

For those of you who don’t know, when I’m not at uni I work for that big, evil supermarket chain called Tesco (one of whose bags turned up in the arctic).

The weekend I’ve just had at work was probably harder than the weekend before Christmas (the busiest weekend of the year). It was Mothers’ Day on Sunday, which means that we get lots of fancy things in to sell off over the week leading up to Mothers’ Day. It also means that on a Saturday we have to put one person down at the front of the store to deal solely with flowers! One thing led to another and we were effectively three bodies down in the department that day – not good news on a Saturday in a busy supermarket! So, here is me – the hard working part of the team, left virtually on my own for the rest of the day (the other guy on with me was doing other important jobs and is also very lazy!). I’ll mention here that one guy went home sick 90 minutes into his shift with a sore back; I’ll mention that as I wish to rant about it later!

So between helping out checkouts and trying to keep the department tidy and stocked (an impossible task for ONE person) I ended up with one 30 minute break in a 9 hour shift (I’m supposed to have an hour and a half over two or three breaks). At this point I wish to rant about checkouts. I say I was helping them out, I really mean that I spent most of my shift on a checkout because the idiot manager down there hasn’t a clue how to schedule and has all her staff on when they’re not needed and hardly any when they are. I spend most of my Saturday’s on a checkout, but it isn’t so bad as there are normally about 4 people back in the department keeping things ticking over quite nicely. It’s an absolute farce. The Store manager wants checkouts meeting their targets, while all the shelves are full and tidy with minimal wastage (not possible given the serious shortage of staff).

You’ll remember that I mentioned my colleague who went home sick with a sore back. Well the not very intelligent fool decided that it would be a good idea to come back into the shop to do some shopping later that day and meet his friend when he finished. He was spotted. Talk about a kick in the teeth to everyone who had to work twice as hard to make up for his being sick (we wouldn’t have minded if it was genuine!). Then, on Sunday he comes in with his friend in football kit covered in mud. He must really think we’re stupid (either that or he’s just plain thick). We all know that he plays football on a Sunday and one can bet that you just don’t find yourself in a football kit covered in mud at the beginning of March without having been playing football. Anyone think he had a backache that prevented him from working…I doubt it.

Sunday wasn’t much better. We still had to have someone down at flowers all day, there was one on holiday and someone decided to phone in sick at 11:50 for a shift beginning at 12noon (different person)! Talk about deja vous! So Sunday was just as hell as it was the day before. The other person on the department that day was lazy, but not as lazy as the guy on with me the day before (this made it slightly easier and meant I managed to get al of my breaks). Although, I had drama when I tried to sign onto a checkout and it appeared that someone was using my operator number (not good, especially since security are watching a guy on checkouts who they suspect is dipping the tills). I will need to wait and see the outcome of that (now that security are investigating).

So, all in all I’ve had a pretty rubbish weekend at work and now I need to leave for university and all the lovely work that it will bring me over the course of the week. Who ever said the student life was an easy one was very, very wrong!

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