The past five months...
So I kinda fell out of the habit of updating this journal when I got my job at Argos, partly out of complete paranoia concerning the company policy on the use of "Social Media" *scare chord*. Like, I can't be held accountable for saying anything bad about the company if I say absolutely nothing about the company. But my contract expired at the end of February and it is unlikely that I will ever reapply there so I am free to discuss it with the... maybe two or three of you who still read my updates *solidarity fistbump*
Though in actuality, I don't really want to badmouth the company nor do I have much dirt I could dish out. Compared to the dreadful mental idea I had of retail work before getting the job, it was not an awful experience. I think it helped that I had three primary roles: stockroom, collection point and tills.
Stockroom was were I was most comfortable (i.e. away from the customers), I found it easy enough to learn the ticket system and the biggest problem was the pacing issues: Downstairs had a lot of lulls, there's only so much tidying of the shelves you can do in one day. Upstairs frequently had a trail of tickets running to the floor with only two pickers trying to catch up, not helped by the funny shelving layout meaning it was easy to get confused about which side of the warehouse the aisle you were looking for was located.
The basic gist of working Collection Point is to take assembled orders that have been brought from the warehouse by the pickers and hand them out to the waiting customers. You need to check it's the right item by looking for a catalogue number on the item and matching it to the number on the receipt, then stamp the receipt so they can't defraud the store by bringing back a plain receipt and collecting a second of the same item. Somehow I ended up working Collection Point a lot. I think the managers got the impression that my ruthless efficiency in checking receipts made up for my near lack of people skills with the customers. Pete, one of the managers, tried giving me some tips on how to engage in natural dialogue with the customers but I mostly ended up speaking like a robot ("Hi there!", "Would you like a bag for that?", "11010001", "Have a nice day.") An American robot apparently, being asked if I'm American and answering "No, born and raised in this town" quickly made it onto my workplace Bingo scorecard.
I ended up working Tills a lot more than I thought I would have to as well, again I think my skill with the computer system surpassed my lackluster personality in the eyes of the managers. Pete said it was even more important to initiate conversation at the tills and suggested I use the items the customers were buying as the prompt, I had mixed success with this. Like, I found it easy to talk to a woman buying her ten-year-old a Wolverine action figure, explaining that it's 616 Wolverine and that's why he looks different to the one from the movies. Or when I was able to rattle off the storyline of The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls to help a customer decide which one to get with their Console bundle deal. But trying to be like "Soooo, you're buying a kettle, huh?" was not something I ever accomplished. I think I improved over time but it was always easier to talk to customers who started the conversation and/or who were buying a lot of stuff and/or were ordering for Home Delivery (Seriously, the Home Delivery process on the tills took so long I could get the whole story of what they'd been doing that day before the sale was processed).
Another aspect of working the tills was Add-Ons and Insurance Product Care. Add-Ons is stuff like batteries, additional attachments, or anything else fairly cheap that you can borderline con the customer into impulse buying. Product Care (as my snarky strikethrough may have already indicated) is extended warranty cover. Now, here's the funny/BS part: I'm pretty sure I got kept on for the extended contract (Jan-Feb) because on paper I was great at selling the product care but, here's the thing, I sucked at selling the product care. I could sometimes scrape ~£20 worth of product care on kitchen appliances of other electronic shit that has a tendency to blow the fuck up literally the day after the warranty has expired, so sensible customers would recognise the value of extended cover on those items but anything else and I'd be met with a resounding "No thanks!"
Then, during the Boxing Day sales, I sold a £400 laptop to a guy who naturally wanted the extended warranty since it was a very expensive item... and the more expensive the item, the more the cover costs... So, on paper, my total Product Care sales got a massive shot in the arm right around the time the managers were considering which temps to keep on for the additional two months and all because I was working tills at the right time. Like, seriously, someone needs to calculate averages on that data before they decide who to keep on because I had a hard enough time convincing people to take the free catalogues.
There was also a position called Sales Saver, a fancy term for a person on the sales floor who pesters assists the customers. They only made me do it once.
Part of the reason I applied the job was because retail is a very social atmosphere and I figured it could be a baptism of fire for the supposed improved social skills I gained from the therapy course. I won't say I completely failed on that front but it did bring to my attention certain aspects of my social fail:
1 - I do not relate well to people my own age. The fellow temps I bonded with the most were Dan, Sue (both 15-20 years older than me) and Bella (10 years older than me). I just found it a lot easier to have conversations with them. I did have some discussions with people my own age but it just didn't natural, part of me worries this is me presenting a pretentious front of maturity that causes my peers to disengage, another part of me rationalises that it's because I have very few similar interests to people my own age (i.e. I'm disinterested in drinking/clubbing, the evening and 'forget how fucked up the world is financially and socially at this current time' activity of choice for most twentysomethings). Of the permanent employees, I got along with Teresa (late thirties-early forties), Bushra (ditto) and Maria (approaching retirement, jfc!) Nearer to my own age were Charlotte (Senior Till worker and my savior if the computer system ever did the whacky) and Olivia (Who looked uncannily like a girl I went to Sixth Form with whose name I could not remember and so I spent my first few weeks avoiding her in case it really was her and I seemed rude for completely blanking on her name).
2 - I sometimes forget to provide the context for what I say and expect the other participants in the conversation to share my knowledge base, even when it is unreasonable to assume so (i.e. most of the time). This relates to...
3 - Sometimes when I speak, it's more for my own benefit than because I want to converse with others and this is confusing for people who hear me and wonder if I'm talking to them.
That just leaves the managers:
Karyn - The one to actually hire me after an alternate universe version of myself hi-jacked my body for a day and made me seem sociable, confident and talkative during the interview. (Or just a day that was going abnormally well for me and gave an unrealistic representation of what I was going to be like as an employee, like is discussed in this webcomic). Her role was largely administrative so I barely saw her after the interview.
Jody - Customer Service Manager who was effortlessly lovely and basically at the other end of the spectrum to me in terms of social ability. I won her over to my side by baking cookies and bringing them in one day. Part of her natural patter was using casual endearments like 'dear' and 'love' that triggered my "over-familiarity, argh!" neural response but I refused to comment on it because it's my damage and I shouldn't expect others to change their behaviour to suit all my idiosyncrasies.
Pete - Store Manager who was equally socially adept. He really tried to coax some humanity into my interaction with the customers... Ah well, at least it didn't get to the point where people were thinking I'm actually a robot, like happened at AVDC.
David C/Dave - Stock Manager. Most of the temps hated him and a fair portion of the permanent staff had nary a nice word to say about him. Basically, his role as stock manager meant if anyone fucked up he'd be held culpable, where as Pete and Jody would be the ones to smooth things out and make nice to the customers, so they got to be the Good Boss side of the equation and he seemed all the more unlikable in comparison (though to be fair, he had little patience and a bit of a temper so people disliking him wasn't entirely unreasonable). He and I got off to a bad start by sharing the same name and both disliking the nickname Dave, somehow I'm the one who managed to keep ownership of David (Do not know how that happened). Then it took me two times to learn that he didn't like to be bothered by newbies who can't find a piece of stock on the shelves and that I should take my problem to Matt the Junior Stock Guy instead. Also, when he would get angry I could not help thinking "Man, that is exactly how I used to be back in school" and having someone look contemplative and vaguely stoned when you're yelling at them might kinda make you dislike them. So yeah, not the most likable guy and he quickly took a dislike to me personally... and he was the guy I wanted to bend me over the nearest horizontal surface and fuck me long and hard... because my libido hates me, clearly.
As for my current employment prospects, I'm still flip-flopping on the idea of going into healthcare... I may, or I may hedge my bets so long that something else will come along and I'll fall into that instead.
My social life may not have been invigorated by my time at Argos but it is still chugging along. I've stayed in touch with Chris and Sarah, meeting for coffee and chats every once in a while. Hoping to meet up again soon.
Managed to get the gang back together for New Years and then a couple of times after. The gang consisting of:
Ashley - We are now back in contact, have had a sleepover like we used to back in Sixth Form which meant staying up til 5am watching AMV Hell videos.
Jamie - The guy I had a one night stand with several years ago who could not take a fucking hint for months afterwards. I would not hang out with him willingly but he and Ashley are friends. I'm learning to tolerate him, which in part meant laying a textual smackdown on him over Facebook about not being a creeper.
Hanna - Also back in touch, she's been having personal troubles which is why she'd fallen out of contact.
Yasmin - Good old Yammy. She and I have been going to movies a lot since she started collecting Orange Wednesday codes.
Movies we've seen:
Gravity, a strong case for films as visual art and the use of 3D as more than a lazy gimmick but I wasn't wowed at the story and character level.
About Time, an enjoyable and quirky movie if a bit forgettable afterward (And I spent the previews fretting that people might mistake us for a couple).
Catching Fire, like the first movie a fairly solid adaptation of the book (Though I had to give Yasmin the Cliff Notes of the first movie because she hadn't seen it).
The Hobbit 2, LONG AS BALLS but still enjoyable. I'm hoping for lots of drama when the next one comes out >=D (Hanna came to see this one too)
American Hustle, knew almost nothing about this one except who it starred and ended up thoroughly enjoying it. (Left Yasmin quoting the Science Oven line for several days).
One Chance, a fairly enjoyable film though far from 'the funniest British comedy in years' like it was touted.
Walking With Dinosaurs, the whole gang got together for this one... and almost immediately regretted it when the talking bird showed up.
(During this period we also completely failed at going to see Frozen despite both wanting to see it, Yasmin had to work and the cinema wasn't showing a kids film in the evening.)
The LEGO Movie, this was another movie that the gang got together for (Hanna, Yasmin, the girl we jokingly said Yasmin was lesbian grooming, Jamie and I). Surprisingly good film considering it's based on a toy brand, also left us all singing 'Everything is Awesome'.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, also really enjoyable despite neither of us having a clue what it was about before booking the tickets.
Muppets Most Wanted, our most recent viewing. Maybe I just have a softspot for the Muppets but I really enjoyed it :D
So yeah, I think I've improved emotionally from where I was at about 18 months ago where every trip to the cinema left me disappointed and depressed. It's nice to enjoy movies again.
Amplificathon is running again. I'm trying to get back into podfic and record the fics I had permission to record last year but failed to finish in time... but instead I've been playing a lot of XCOM Enemy Within, Fallout: New Vegas and Pokemon Emerald (Yes, Twitch Plays Pokemon got me back into that timesink of a game!) Also, started watching old Survivor seasons with Sam again, he wanted to watch Pearl Islands because he thought Sandra was awesome in Heroes vs Villains, and he completely loved it (no duh, it's one of the best seasons). So then we started working backwards towards Borneo and then we're gonna watch All Stars and work our way up from there. Currently we're on Marquesas.
On the writing front, I've actually managed to write a bit... Mostly completely unpublishable rampant smut, but hey, words on the page, yea!
Though in actuality, I don't really want to badmouth the company nor do I have much dirt I could dish out. Compared to the dreadful mental idea I had of retail work before getting the job, it was not an awful experience. I think it helped that I had three primary roles: stockroom, collection point and tills.
Stockroom was were I was most comfortable (i.e. away from the customers), I found it easy enough to learn the ticket system and the biggest problem was the pacing issues: Downstairs had a lot of lulls, there's only so much tidying of the shelves you can do in one day. Upstairs frequently had a trail of tickets running to the floor with only two pickers trying to catch up, not helped by the funny shelving layout meaning it was easy to get confused about which side of the warehouse the aisle you were looking for was located.
The basic gist of working Collection Point is to take assembled orders that have been brought from the warehouse by the pickers and hand them out to the waiting customers. You need to check it's the right item by looking for a catalogue number on the item and matching it to the number on the receipt, then stamp the receipt so they can't defraud the store by bringing back a plain receipt and collecting a second of the same item. Somehow I ended up working Collection Point a lot. I think the managers got the impression that my ruthless efficiency in checking receipts made up for my near lack of people skills with the customers. Pete, one of the managers, tried giving me some tips on how to engage in natural dialogue with the customers but I mostly ended up speaking like a robot ("Hi there!", "Would you like a bag for that?", "11010001", "Have a nice day.") An American robot apparently, being asked if I'm American and answering "No, born and raised in this town" quickly made it onto my workplace Bingo scorecard.
I ended up working Tills a lot more than I thought I would have to as well, again I think my skill with the computer system surpassed my lackluster personality in the eyes of the managers. Pete said it was even more important to initiate conversation at the tills and suggested I use the items the customers were buying as the prompt, I had mixed success with this. Like, I found it easy to talk to a woman buying her ten-year-old a Wolverine action figure, explaining that it's 616 Wolverine and that's why he looks different to the one from the movies. Or when I was able to rattle off the storyline of The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls to help a customer decide which one to get with their Console bundle deal. But trying to be like "Soooo, you're buying a kettle, huh?" was not something I ever accomplished. I think I improved over time but it was always easier to talk to customers who started the conversation and/or who were buying a lot of stuff and/or were ordering for Home Delivery (Seriously, the Home Delivery process on the tills took so long I could get the whole story of what they'd been doing that day before the sale was processed).
Another aspect of working the tills was Add-Ons and Insurance Product Care. Add-Ons is stuff like batteries, additional attachments, or anything else fairly cheap that you can borderline con the customer into impulse buying. Product Care (as my snarky strikethrough may have already indicated) is extended warranty cover. Now, here's the funny/BS part: I'm pretty sure I got kept on for the extended contract (Jan-Feb) because on paper I was great at selling the product care but, here's the thing, I sucked at selling the product care. I could sometimes scrape ~£20 worth of product care on kitchen appliances of other electronic shit that has a tendency to blow the fuck up literally the day after the warranty has expired, so sensible customers would recognise the value of extended cover on those items but anything else and I'd be met with a resounding "No thanks!"
Then, during the Boxing Day sales, I sold a £400 laptop to a guy who naturally wanted the extended warranty since it was a very expensive item... and the more expensive the item, the more the cover costs... So, on paper, my total Product Care sales got a massive shot in the arm right around the time the managers were considering which temps to keep on for the additional two months and all because I was working tills at the right time. Like, seriously, someone needs to calculate averages on that data before they decide who to keep on because I had a hard enough time convincing people to take the free catalogues.
There was also a position called Sales Saver, a fancy term for a person on the sales floor who pesters assists the customers. They only made me do it once.
Part of the reason I applied the job was because retail is a very social atmosphere and I figured it could be a baptism of fire for the supposed improved social skills I gained from the therapy course. I won't say I completely failed on that front but it did bring to my attention certain aspects of my social fail:
1 - I do not relate well to people my own age. The fellow temps I bonded with the most were Dan, Sue (both 15-20 years older than me) and Bella (10 years older than me). I just found it a lot easier to have conversations with them. I did have some discussions with people my own age but it just didn't natural, part of me worries this is me presenting a pretentious front of maturity that causes my peers to disengage, another part of me rationalises that it's because I have very few similar interests to people my own age (i.e. I'm disinterested in drinking/clubbing, the evening and 'forget how fucked up the world is financially and socially at this current time' activity of choice for most twentysomethings). Of the permanent employees, I got along with Teresa (late thirties-early forties), Bushra (ditto) and Maria (approaching retirement, jfc!) Nearer to my own age were Charlotte (Senior Till worker and my savior if the computer system ever did the whacky) and Olivia (Who looked uncannily like a girl I went to Sixth Form with whose name I could not remember and so I spent my first few weeks avoiding her in case it really was her and I seemed rude for completely blanking on her name).
2 - I sometimes forget to provide the context for what I say and expect the other participants in the conversation to share my knowledge base, even when it is unreasonable to assume so (i.e. most of the time). This relates to...
3 - Sometimes when I speak, it's more for my own benefit than because I want to converse with others and this is confusing for people who hear me and wonder if I'm talking to them.
That just leaves the managers:
Karyn - The one to actually hire me after an alternate universe version of myself hi-jacked my body for a day and made me seem sociable, confident and talkative during the interview. (Or just a day that was going abnormally well for me and gave an unrealistic representation of what I was going to be like as an employee, like is discussed in this webcomic). Her role was largely administrative so I barely saw her after the interview.
Jody - Customer Service Manager who was effortlessly lovely and basically at the other end of the spectrum to me in terms of social ability. I won her over to my side by baking cookies and bringing them in one day. Part of her natural patter was using casual endearments like 'dear' and 'love' that triggered my "over-familiarity, argh!" neural response but I refused to comment on it because it's my damage and I shouldn't expect others to change their behaviour to suit all my idiosyncrasies.
Pete - Store Manager who was equally socially adept. He really tried to coax some humanity into my interaction with the customers... Ah well, at least it didn't get to the point where people were thinking I'm actually a robot, like happened at AVDC.
David C/Dave - Stock Manager. Most of the temps hated him and a fair portion of the permanent staff had nary a nice word to say about him. Basically, his role as stock manager meant if anyone fucked up he'd be held culpable, where as Pete and Jody would be the ones to smooth things out and make nice to the customers, so they got to be the Good Boss side of the equation and he seemed all the more unlikable in comparison (though to be fair, he had little patience and a bit of a temper so people disliking him wasn't entirely unreasonable). He and I got off to a bad start by sharing the same name and both disliking the nickname Dave, somehow I'm the one who managed to keep ownership of David (Do not know how that happened). Then it took me two times to learn that he didn't like to be bothered by newbies who can't find a piece of stock on the shelves and that I should take my problem to Matt the Junior Stock Guy instead. Also, when he would get angry I could not help thinking "Man, that is exactly how I used to be back in school" and having someone look contemplative and vaguely stoned when you're yelling at them might kinda make you dislike them. So yeah, not the most likable guy and he quickly took a dislike to me personally... and he was the guy I wanted to bend me over the nearest horizontal surface and fuck me long and hard... because my libido hates me, clearly.
As for my current employment prospects, I'm still flip-flopping on the idea of going into healthcare... I may, or I may hedge my bets so long that something else will come along and I'll fall into that instead.
My social life may not have been invigorated by my time at Argos but it is still chugging along. I've stayed in touch with Chris and Sarah, meeting for coffee and chats every once in a while. Hoping to meet up again soon.
Managed to get the gang back together for New Years and then a couple of times after. The gang consisting of:
Ashley - We are now back in contact, have had a sleepover like we used to back in Sixth Form which meant staying up til 5am watching AMV Hell videos.
Jamie - The guy I had a one night stand with several years ago who could not take a fucking hint for months afterwards. I would not hang out with him willingly but he and Ashley are friends. I'm learning to tolerate him, which in part meant laying a textual smackdown on him over Facebook about not being a creeper.
Hanna - Also back in touch, she's been having personal troubles which is why she'd fallen out of contact.
Yasmin - Good old Yammy. She and I have been going to movies a lot since she started collecting Orange Wednesday codes.
Movies we've seen:
Gravity, a strong case for films as visual art and the use of 3D as more than a lazy gimmick but I wasn't wowed at the story and character level.
About Time, an enjoyable and quirky movie if a bit forgettable afterward (And I spent the previews fretting that people might mistake us for a couple).
Catching Fire, like the first movie a fairly solid adaptation of the book (Though I had to give Yasmin the Cliff Notes of the first movie because she hadn't seen it).
The Hobbit 2, LONG AS BALLS but still enjoyable. I'm hoping for lots of drama when the next one comes out >=D (Hanna came to see this one too)
American Hustle, knew almost nothing about this one except who it starred and ended up thoroughly enjoying it. (Left Yasmin quoting the Science Oven line for several days).
One Chance, a fairly enjoyable film though far from 'the funniest British comedy in years' like it was touted.
Walking With Dinosaurs, the whole gang got together for this one... and almost immediately regretted it when the talking bird showed up.
(During this period we also completely failed at going to see Frozen despite both wanting to see it, Yasmin had to work and the cinema wasn't showing a kids film in the evening.)
The LEGO Movie, this was another movie that the gang got together for (Hanna, Yasmin, the girl we jokingly said Yasmin was lesbian grooming, Jamie and I). Surprisingly good film considering it's based on a toy brand, also left us all singing 'Everything is Awesome'.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, also really enjoyable despite neither of us having a clue what it was about before booking the tickets.
Muppets Most Wanted, our most recent viewing. Maybe I just have a softspot for the Muppets but I really enjoyed it :D
So yeah, I think I've improved emotionally from where I was at about 18 months ago where every trip to the cinema left me disappointed and depressed. It's nice to enjoy movies again.
Amplificathon is running again. I'm trying to get back into podfic and record the fics I had permission to record last year but failed to finish in time... but instead I've been playing a lot of XCOM Enemy Within, Fallout: New Vegas and Pokemon Emerald (Yes, Twitch Plays Pokemon got me back into that timesink of a game!) Also, started watching old Survivor seasons with Sam again, he wanted to watch Pearl Islands because he thought Sandra was awesome in Heroes vs Villains, and he completely loved it (no duh, it's one of the best seasons). So then we started working backwards towards Borneo and then we're gonna watch All Stars and work our way up from there. Currently we're on Marquesas.
On the writing front, I've actually managed to write a bit... Mostly completely unpublishable rampant smut, but hey, words on the page, yea!