I went to work a little late today (intentionally, and for reasons I cannot disclose) and walked in the door to something both amusing and irritating at the same time. My ASSisstant manager, who's life could be a blog all its own, usually listens to sports talk radio all day long. He is pretty obsessed with football and listens to this particular radio station at an annoyingly high volume, lest he miss an insignificant tidbit of "news" about his gridiron heroes. Aside from the volume issue, this is fine with me. We have all argued over workday radio stations in the past, and generic sports news is something that we can all agree on. Being a manager, I approve of homogeneously happy employees, so 93.7 it is.
This has become the daily background noise, so imagine my surprise when I walk in the front door and hear Lady Gaga belting out a chorus of "la la oh ga ga, rum ba oh ma ma, wasabi robots". For some reason, he had decided on top 40 radio today. For those of you that know me, just imagine me being hit by this at 8 AM. I didn't even have a chance to get any coffee. Just...wasabi robots...right in the face. (She says "wasabi robots" at the end of the chorus. Don't argue with me, I'm the manager.)
Onward.
My lovely assistant opens the store in the morning and goes home earlier in the afternoon, whereas I come in a bit later and stay until we close. We have begun calling him Captain Chaos, since he has a short fuse and usually can't handle simple multitasking without at least going to DEFCON-3 . I usually arrive to the aforementioned chaos only to have everything settled and in proper order within 15 minutes or so. The rest of my guys have been around the block enough times to know that our jobs are not worth raising one's blood pressure over, so they just quietly laugh and shake their heads while he has his daily morning meltdown.
I had a small epiphany the other day, about how our attitudes affect our surroundings. My store is usually a shambles in the morning, but my guys have remarked lately at how amazing it is that everything quickly calms down and falls into place once I arrive and take over. It makes me wonder how some people have made it so far through life when they are so unorganized and, well, chaotic. Life is just too damned short to be that damned upset.
Enfeebled musings aside, I must say that I've begun to hate Fridays. Yes. I hate Fridays. "Why?!" you ask? Oh, allow me to explain. Friday, for most people, is pay day. With the advent of online resources and shows like "Pimp My Ride", automobile owners have begun taking it upon themselves to fix their own cars more than ever. Factor in that the economy is tight and that we all can't afford the hundreds of dollars it costs to have a car repaired anymore, and you end up with what we in the auto parts industry refer to as "do-it-yourselfers". Since we auto parts peddlers only exist to steal your hard-earned money, DIY-ers have to wait until pay day to buy parts for their cars, hence, they all come see me on Friday afternoons.
Today happens to be a Friday and true to form, the DIY masses routinely interrupted my attempts to master the newest installment of "Angry Birds". Spanning the spectrum from "my wife is so hard on my car" to "my mechanic says I need a muffler bearing, do you have one in stock?", and the ever popular "your competitor has the same part for 19 cents less", they all zeroed in on me and regaled me with their automotive woes.
I have noticed that standing behind a counter does something to people's perception of you. It somehow infuses them with the belief that you care. In the same way that a bartender has to listen to stories of people down on their luck, an auto parts counter person has to listen to the entire saga of everything that has ever broken on every customer's car. I really don't care that you've put brakes on your turdheap twice already this year, or that your turn signal bulbs keep burning out, or that you just can't figure out what that squeak is. Do you want to buy something? It's been a long week and I have shit to do. Yet I put up with it. I listen to their stories and their complaining. I play the pricing game. I deal with it, because that's what I'm paid to do. I even manage to do it all with a polite smile on my face, despite the malevolence that is churning behind said smile.
So here I sit, drinking beer, telling you tales of everything that bothered me today as if you were my personal bartender, and eagerly awaiting Monday, when I can slack off in peace and quiet. Now buy something or get out.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Coffee good. Work BAD.
Today was a rather slow business day at the store, which was two things: unusual for a Monday, and fertile ground for humorous slacking. I began my morning with way too much coffee in a short period of time, so that didn't really help matters.
One of my minions is a rather lonely gentleman (and I use that term loosely) who lives by himself. He loves watching TV, and spends most of our workday hours telling everyone about shows he watched the night before. We call him The Human TiVo, as he will recount the minutes of a show like he's at a damned city council meeting. This is usually bearable since he at least watches good shows, but on Mondays he has a whole weekend of TV watching to catch us all up on.
He has become a fan of "Ancient Aliens" which sparked a discussion on whether or not extra-terrestrials exist. We eventually decided that they do, but Earth is essentially the "ghetto" of the galaxy, and that aliens fly past us with their doors locked only stopping for fuel, or some chili dogs, or whatever. John Travolta was cited as evidence.
A little while later, I heard the dreaded sound of a diesel engine and a back-up alarm. This means that a big truck is backing up to my loading...zone...area. Perhaps I should explain why this is "dreaded". My store gets re-stocked from our serving warehouse on a nightly basis. Any time something is delivered via an external carrier, it's usually a large shipment of inventory. This means work on my part, and work = BAD.
So I discover that I am to receive three pallets of brake cleaner. This is, as the name implies, a chemical that is used to clean brake parts before installing them on a vehicle. It comes in aerosol cans, and smells like a mix of nail polish remover, gasoline, and Taco Bell farts. Most garages go through it like water, so we sell quite a bit. Someone high up on the corporate ladder apparently got a discount and decided that my store was a good place to keep it. (They do that to me sometimes).
After using the forklift to unload all three pallets and drag them back into the store, I heard a faint hissing sound. Some investigation on my part revealed that I had punctured a can on the bottom of the pallet whilst moving it around. I have two options here: break the entire pallet down by hand to remove the leaky can, or just let the whole thing leak out and stink up my loading...area...zone. Since we have already established that work = BAD, I decided to let the cursed thing leak out into the air and hope no one would notice. When that didn't work, I fork-a-lifted the whole damn thing back outside. OSHA be damned.*
Since most of this shipment was to be broken down and distributed to the retail stores in our area, I spent a good bit of time writing on the cases with a black magic marker. That plus the fumes leaking from the broken can resulted in a pretty sweet buzz, so even though I had to do some work, it was worth it.
Later in the day, I spent a good half-hour watching two of my guys fiddle with their "goddam" cell phones. Two of them have recently upgraded from relatively simple flip-phones to a touchscreen and a smartphone. If you have never watched a stubborn, cranky old codger fiddle with a smartphone, my God, you owe it to yourself to see it. I didn't think it was possible to cram so many curses in to one sentence. I suppose I could have helped the poor man figure out how to open solitaire, but the coup-de-grace came when he yelled "Aww fuck it!" and shoved his phone back in his pocket. It was especially funny to me since I had been breathing brain-damaging vapors not long before.
To sum up, the three things I learned today are:
1. John Travolta is an alien (and possibly a "commie")
2. Brake clean and coffee make things funnier.
3. Work = BAD.
*Brake parts cleaner has been found to cause cancer in the state of California. Fortunately, I live in Pennsylvania.
One of my minions is a rather lonely gentleman (and I use that term loosely) who lives by himself. He loves watching TV, and spends most of our workday hours telling everyone about shows he watched the night before. We call him The Human TiVo, as he will recount the minutes of a show like he's at a damned city council meeting. This is usually bearable since he at least watches good shows, but on Mondays he has a whole weekend of TV watching to catch us all up on.
He has become a fan of "Ancient Aliens" which sparked a discussion on whether or not extra-terrestrials exist. We eventually decided that they do, but Earth is essentially the "ghetto" of the galaxy, and that aliens fly past us with their doors locked only stopping for fuel, or some chili dogs, or whatever. John Travolta was cited as evidence.
A little while later, I heard the dreaded sound of a diesel engine and a back-up alarm. This means that a big truck is backing up to my loading...zone...area. Perhaps I should explain why this is "dreaded". My store gets re-stocked from our serving warehouse on a nightly basis. Any time something is delivered via an external carrier, it's usually a large shipment of inventory. This means work on my part, and work = BAD.
So I discover that I am to receive three pallets of brake cleaner. This is, as the name implies, a chemical that is used to clean brake parts before installing them on a vehicle. It comes in aerosol cans, and smells like a mix of nail polish remover, gasoline, and Taco Bell farts. Most garages go through it like water, so we sell quite a bit. Someone high up on the corporate ladder apparently got a discount and decided that my store was a good place to keep it. (They do that to me sometimes).
After using the forklift to unload all three pallets and drag them back into the store, I heard a faint hissing sound. Some investigation on my part revealed that I had punctured a can on the bottom of the pallet whilst moving it around. I have two options here: break the entire pallet down by hand to remove the leaky can, or just let the whole thing leak out and stink up my loading...area...zone. Since we have already established that work = BAD, I decided to let the cursed thing leak out into the air and hope no one would notice. When that didn't work, I fork-a-lifted the whole damn thing back outside. OSHA be damned.*
Since most of this shipment was to be broken down and distributed to the retail stores in our area, I spent a good bit of time writing on the cases with a black magic marker. That plus the fumes leaking from the broken can resulted in a pretty sweet buzz, so even though I had to do some work, it was worth it.
Later in the day, I spent a good half-hour watching two of my guys fiddle with their "goddam" cell phones. Two of them have recently upgraded from relatively simple flip-phones to a touchscreen and a smartphone. If you have never watched a stubborn, cranky old codger fiddle with a smartphone, my God, you owe it to yourself to see it. I didn't think it was possible to cram so many curses in to one sentence. I suppose I could have helped the poor man figure out how to open solitaire, but the coup-de-grace came when he yelled "Aww fuck it!" and shoved his phone back in his pocket. It was especially funny to me since I had been breathing brain-damaging vapors not long before.
To sum up, the three things I learned today are:
1. John Travolta is an alien (and possibly a "commie")
2. Brake clean and coffee make things funnier.
3. Work = BAD.
*Brake parts cleaner has been found to cause cancer in the state of California. Fortunately, I live in Pennsylvania.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
40 strange hours
Hello and welcome. My name is Scott and I sell auto parts for a living. Specifically, I manage a wholesale warehouse with a cursed retail counter that we all hate (more on that later, I'm sure). I began this venture in high school working part time in a warehouse, sweeping floors, emptying garbage, performing general dirty jobs, and basically getting treated like the garbage I was tasked to remove. I did it for about two years, but eventually quit because my boss was just kind of a mean person. Okay, he was a colossal dick. Most bosses are supposed to be dicks, but being 18 years old, I didn't really understand that and just thought he was picking on me so I quit. During that time, I learned a great deal about auto parts, so I blindly continued along that path. I started with my current company as a minimum wage delivery driver in the spring of 2002 and gradually worked my way up the ladder to the moderately more glamorous position of manager.
I now oversee a crew of six employees, five of whom are drivers, and one who is a driver/assistant manager/weirdo. Actually we're all a bit weird, which, as anyone who has ever worked in the auto parts industry knows, is a prerequisite.They are a fairly hard working bunch, very loyal, somewhat intelligent (they get their shoes on the right feet every day, so I guess that counts for something), and absolutely nuts. I have never met sillier, funnier people. For all the daily aggravations we suffer from being in a customer-service driven business, we have an equal amount of fun. We all spend a healthy amount of each day laughing at the stupidest shit, which I think is why we're all able to survive the ol' forty hours.
Not long ago, one of my minions said that we should turn our store into a reality TV show. I doubt anyone would watch our ugly faces, but I thought maybe a blog would be interesting. If nothing else, it will make me use my brain for something other than a hat rack, and perhaps amuse me for a while. If I'm lucky, it will amuse you, too.
I often remind myself of Al Bundy, shuffling home from a long day at work with my head hung low in the classic pose of unfathomable shame and spectacular failure, yet with still enough spirit left to be able to laugh at the absurdity of the world of corporate consumerism. It is in that spirit that I present this blog.
I have to die someday; I'm pretty sure it will either be from stress or laughter. Welcome to my world.
I now oversee a crew of six employees, five of whom are drivers, and one who is a driver/assistant manager/weirdo. Actually we're all a bit weird, which, as anyone who has ever worked in the auto parts industry knows, is a prerequisite.They are a fairly hard working bunch, very loyal, somewhat intelligent (they get their shoes on the right feet every day, so I guess that counts for something), and absolutely nuts. I have never met sillier, funnier people. For all the daily aggravations we suffer from being in a customer-service driven business, we have an equal amount of fun. We all spend a healthy amount of each day laughing at the stupidest shit, which I think is why we're all able to survive the ol' forty hours.
Not long ago, one of my minions said that we should turn our store into a reality TV show. I doubt anyone would watch our ugly faces, but I thought maybe a blog would be interesting. If nothing else, it will make me use my brain for something other than a hat rack, and perhaps amuse me for a while. If I'm lucky, it will amuse you, too.
I often remind myself of Al Bundy, shuffling home from a long day at work with my head hung low in the classic pose of unfathomable shame and spectacular failure, yet with still enough spirit left to be able to laugh at the absurdity of the world of corporate consumerism. It is in that spirit that I present this blog.
I have to die someday; I'm pretty sure it will either be from stress or laughter. Welcome to my world.
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