We hired a bunch of new people at work this last few weeks. A couple of them are actually really good but I'm so conflicted. The two girls I worked with were both excellent with clients and had pretty decent sized sales, but one of them came in in leggings and a crop-top and sneakers, and the other one left six minutes early without “axing” for permission. Just kinda went and got her coat and I'm like... “Are you leaving now?” and she's like well like in six minutes. Just wearing her coat and getting her purse.
I would never just go get my purse before closing time unless I had already asked permission to leave early, which I do sometimes but I always ask.
So I gave her a look and I'm like “.... okay.” Now I have to keep in mind that she left a six minutes before 4, because I'm sure when she texts my boss she'll say her shift was 11:30 to 4 and probably gloss over the fact that she left early.
The other girl also took a bracelet off a display and was just wearing it around, and pointed it out to me midday like yeah I borrowed this.
I'm like 1) we never take jewelry and just wear them without signing them out and 2) even if we do borrow the jewelry we never take it off a fixture! People worked hard on those!! Argh!!
It didn't occur to her to ask if it was even okay to borrow the jewelry at all.
Both girls had their phones out plenty even though my boss and I had already said they can only be on the sales floor with manager's permission.
The problem is, the company I work for makes us run our own social media platforms for our location. That means at any given time plenty of girls are out with their phones out taking pictures and setting things up on our feeds. I don't know much about social media but I don't think it's a good idea to have employees slated for hours of time to look at their phones. Corporate should run the social media aspect of the business, not the sales people. Retail needs to be focused on retail and every once in a while marketing and floor sets. We have a keyholder whose whole purpose, it appears, is to run the company's blog.
I just don't think the company is set up for success. We have very low footfall in our stores because the company doesn't do any marketing, but of those few people we don't get a lot of sales because our team is so focused on everything else we have to do. We're constantly changing up the marketing, we're constantly filling out forms, the iPads are constantly glitching and we have to have someone calling I.T, the printers don't work so we have to call I.T, girls are constantly calling out because this job is so boring because there aren't a lot of customers, there are just endless tasks to do. Corporate is constantly sending us e-mails with new things to print out and put in meaningless binders, but they don't put any emphasis on us reading the papers. Every Sunday I print out the week ending reports and file them obediently in the binder, and I don't even really look at them. I mean I could if I wanted to, but there's no point to it. We need to be already putting together a plan for this upcoming week and how we'll do better.
Our systems are old and useless and hard to use and follow and train people on, our return policy is very strict and it makes people angry, and we're constantly getting people in who want to take advantage of the online deals, which are always better than what we have in store.
The promotions they run are ridiculous and do not help drive traffic or increase our sales. Instead of the kind of sale where you buy a certain amount and you get more, they just discount things you want to buy. Instead of buy one get one free, which would not harm our average sale but would increase the units sold, it's 50% off. And we're supposed to sell twice as much.
It's the same sale – you just need to market it as a BOGO instead. We'd make so much more money.
If it were up to me, I would just say it that way, offer it to people that way. But this company is also pretty strict about spinning promos. I can't win.
This was supposed to be a rant about staff though. Anyway, I'm conflicted. Both of these girls I worked with yesterday were great with customers, made real connections, ultimately had good sales. But overall they were also sloppy, one was skanky, and one was lazy. Just not a great mix at all.
Today me and my boss are working with just us, so I'll be able to talk about it with her at least. That's something great about my boss is she's completely accessible.
My ex-husband updated his relationship status and I saw it today when I logged on my facebook for the first time in months. I'm trying to figure out how I should feel vs. how I do feel about it. I encouraged him to date around and find himself someone more suited. I really do hope it lasts. She's his age, and that's important.
But I hate him if it lasts, because that means that everything he couldn't give me just gets given to someone else, someone who maybe even deserves it, but I was the one who built the foundation for that to happen. I only reaped pain and suffering from what I sowed into our marriage, but she can just waltz in and take the better half of things.
I hope he makes her happy. I really do. He could have made me happy but he didn't want to work for it, and now he wants to work and it'll all belong to her.
But I encouraged him to try. Our divorce is going to go through silently in a few months and we'll both be free. I don't know... I just didn't want any of this. I guess there was just a big explosion and this is where I landed, and fortunately for me it's so nice here that few parts of me want to go back and rebuild.
I did everything I could. I failed.