New Job Disappointments

I have some major rants against Lowe's ....is this the proper place for them.

Let's just say that my bottle of Jack Daniels is getting a little low.

This isn't an entry level sales job - it's not a sales job at all. I don't even "sell" when I'm doing things for my own business. The pay is a minor annoyance. What I didn't expect was to be lied to by every person in the place about what a "great team" there was in the department, how everyone looks out for each other's best interests in the store, how great the working conditions are, etc...

I have no idea what the employee retention rates are for a typical retail store. My guess is that a store (and i"m limiting this to stores with over 100 employees or so...) who's average employee has been with them less than 3 months wouldn't be considered "good" by any measure.

lol No!

Tell me where it is so I can do something like attempt to return a lawnmower to the lingerie department.

PS Sorry this is happening. I guess 71 lbs. for the weight of your dog.

Yoikes!

Where the heck is ehBeth? I gotta get her into this dog weight guessing thing. I bet she'd use the resourses available to her to get much closah!

If I were you, I would write up the original post to pitch to a TV network. You could become wealthy that way.

Last evenings installment:

I show up at my scheduled time. All 6 of the current employees in the Dept. are there. 30 minutes into the shift Mr. Senior Co-worker bitches about bing there. Dept. Manager tells him (sarcasticlly) that if he doesn't want to be there he should clock out and go home. Co-worker clocks out and leaves. Dept. Manager is dumbfounded. I go about doing my job. I find out afterwards that senior co-worker has been there for 3 months. This will be his 21st "sick day" used. He probably won't be coming back - whether he wants to or not.

2 hours into shift I take a 15 minute break. Dept. Manager finds me and asks me to pop into his office. He tells me that "as of now" I am "in training" to be his replacement. I ask the usual questions about what that means, what the job entails, etc.. He tells me. Then he drops the bomb and tells me that he just gave his notice to the store manager...

I finish mny shift, say good bye to the 2 college kids who finished out their last night and came home.

Oh, this department uses quite a bit of heavy equipment (i.e. commercial trucks, forklifts, etc...). The other remaining co-worker isn't qualified to operate them and refuses to learn how claiming medical reasons (however, I have it on fairly good authority that he lost his State driver's license due to one-to-many DUIs and a driver's license is required to be able to get licensed to operate the equipment... Why was this guy hired if he can't do the job? I know they asked for a copy of my license and they supposedly checked with the state to make sure my driving record was clean. ).

I'm not on schedule for teh next 3 days. I think I'll drink heavily... *sigh*

which department and can we get a discount?

At the rate things are going there won't be any employees to stop you from just picking up whatever you want and walking out the door with it!

I've always worked small businesses. the only "big" business had 20 or so unit shops and each unit considered itself an independant store almost like a francise.

48 lbs.






















It's Home Depot, isn't it? It really sounds like Home Depot.

Question... what's the payscale for the higher-up jobs?

I'm not surprised that they figured out that you're overqualified and smarter than any of 'em. Would it be terrible to shoot to the top and then get everything in order? Fire the current crop, start fresh? In this economic environment it seems like it wouldn't be that hard to find better employees...

I have a feeling that there are built-in disincentives for "making things better". I don't really know enough about the structure for pay/bonueses for anything above the Dept. Manager level to say for sure.

The only thing I can really comment on from that aspect is that store managers and assistant store managers moved around between stores quite a bit. 7-8 months seems to be the "norm" for them staying in any one store. From the corporate side I'd guess that they tell those managers that it's for "rounding" so that they get to see how things work in different locations, etc.. which would make them ready to move up to regional or corporate HQ type positions.

Maybe that's entirely true... but I suspect that it also prevents a manager from really fixing things for the lower level employees. If you land an store manager position and tried to get a really good crew in you'd get transferred to another location before it could happen. And what would be the benefit in it for teh manager if that's the case? They move to another store and try to do it all over again?

I dunno... I'm not a "drink the kool-aid" kinda person and the senior managers I've seen thusfar are. They eat the corporate crap up.

<nodding>

That makes sense.

I'd only recommend it if you have some real power to make changes. If you don't, then it'd probably be even worse than what you're doing now.

You are there just for the paycheck, right?
So, just take the money.
Shrugs, I've worked alot of backwards screwed up jobs. To keep your sanity, remember why you are there.
Take their money and run. And keep laughing.

If we could get a picture of your dog, it would help.
My second guess is 36

All true. I am only there for the paycheck. I sucks to be miserable enough to dread going in though.

Errr.... I started a thread on the old A2K about my dog. There should be enough clues there for someone to make an educated guess. *breadcrumb dropped*

I suddenly feel so much better about my own job disappointments.

Keep a notebook, and post your experiences here. We'll help you keep your sanity.

Ok, I haven't worked retail since high school, but there are familiar themes in every poorly run company. Employee retention in the shitter, bad systems in place, people doing jobs or expected to do jobs they know nothing about (because they fired the people who knew how or those people quit), all attempts to make things better met with illogically supported brick walls of resistance.

We have that here too. As I always say, messes this big come from the top. Poor leadership from the top to the bottom.