stop the world; I want to get off
I would like a refund on today.
Work sucked. First of all, Sweetheart is massively stressed both because of general ongoing stuff and also because reports of her problems earlier this week made it back to her family in a garbled and sensationalistic form and now... well, family issues. Which are only making her more stressed and thus compounding the original problems that got her family worried in the first place. It is a feedback spiral going to terrible places and the only solution I can see is something that I think would be emotionally unacceptable to Sweetheart, even as a temporary measure. Nrgh.
I mean, assuming New Hire works out, Potential Hire passes the test and works out, and Puppydog comes back with no issues (his mother sounded optimistic when she called the smoke shop yesterday, but we have heard nothing since), some of the general situational stress will resolve itself automatically. In other words, Sweetheart's work load will go back to normal instead of the extra hours she's been taking to compensate for Boss Lady's family confusion, Beleaguered Miniboss's two-week vacation, and then Lemme-Tell-Ya's departure. But I have no idea what will happen with all the other issues.
As for Melodrama, she's veering wildly between the glee/joy of a new romantic relationship (her last relationship, which had lasted over four years and had been an engagement for three of them, exploded in a messy and painful fashion this summer) and all the stress and upset of both overwork (she's been covering extra hours too) and friends (ie, Sweetheart) in untenable situations. This makes things difficult for me because she doesn't prioritize well under stress, and also her brain-mouth filter goes on vacation.
(My brain-mouth filter also gets iffy under stress, but with me that plays out as bitchy passive-aggression. With Melodrama, the results are, um, extremely unpredictable.)
...
Anyway, today we got an HLA delivery just before I punched in at noon. We're still adjusting to having them as a supplier, and their invoice forms are particularly annoying to deal with. Elmira Distributing calculated all the suggested retail prices for us at a consistent 30% markup. HLA's suggested markups are all over the map -- one of them today was negative 200%, for fuck's sake -- and when their wholesale prices are less than Elmira's, I'm never sure if that's a regular thing or a temporary sale price, because they're inconsistent that way. So figuring retail prices takes forever, and the markups are all different from each other in an attempt to keep some prices close to what we've been getting from Elmira.
Cashup also took longer than it should have, since we got an unholy customer rush right in the middle of swapping the drawers from AM to PM shift, not to mention I was distracted and stressed and screwed up the cigarette count (it bounced back at closing, fortunately), and while Melodrama and I got the two-person daily list tasks done in time for her to leave at 4:30pm as scheduled, that left two-thirds of the HLA order for me to check in and price through the evening in addition to all the normal closing tasks and dealing with customers.
We also had some brief excitement around 2:45pm, when a person on a bicycle slipped on ice and fell right across the street from the smoke shop. I couldn't see if they had been wearing a helmet -- there were several police officers standing close enough to block the body while another gave CPR -- but two police cars and a fire truck joined the ambulance in responding to the scene. Earlier, around noon, there were four fire trucks and an ambulance parked by the intersection of Tioga and Seneca streets a few blocks away, but I have no idea what that was about and no customers seemed to either.
I had to stay nearly fifteen minutes later than usual to deal with a bunch of paperwork I couldn't get to during regular hours, but which Boss Lady would be annoyed if I hadn't finished. And then, once I finally got home... it was laundry day. Because I didn't do laundry yesterday, on account of snow flurries.
...
Tomorrow, I will get to do it all over again. (Okay, not the laundry. But still.) And I have lost my day off, since I will have to cover Puppydog's closing shift on Saturday.
None of us can keep this up much longer.
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Work sucked. First of all, Sweetheart is massively stressed both because of general ongoing stuff and also because reports of her problems earlier this week made it back to her family in a garbled and sensationalistic form and now... well, family issues. Which are only making her more stressed and thus compounding the original problems that got her family worried in the first place. It is a feedback spiral going to terrible places and the only solution I can see is something that I think would be emotionally unacceptable to Sweetheart, even as a temporary measure. Nrgh.
I mean, assuming New Hire works out, Potential Hire passes the test and works out, and Puppydog comes back with no issues (his mother sounded optimistic when she called the smoke shop yesterday, but we have heard nothing since), some of the general situational stress will resolve itself automatically. In other words, Sweetheart's work load will go back to normal instead of the extra hours she's been taking to compensate for Boss Lady's family confusion, Beleaguered Miniboss's two-week vacation, and then Lemme-Tell-Ya's departure. But I have no idea what will happen with all the other issues.
As for Melodrama, she's veering wildly between the glee/joy of a new romantic relationship (her last relationship, which had lasted over four years and had been an engagement for three of them, exploded in a messy and painful fashion this summer) and all the stress and upset of both overwork (she's been covering extra hours too) and friends (ie, Sweetheart) in untenable situations. This makes things difficult for me because she doesn't prioritize well under stress, and also her brain-mouth filter goes on vacation.
(My brain-mouth filter also gets iffy under stress, but with me that plays out as bitchy passive-aggression. With Melodrama, the results are, um, extremely unpredictable.)
...
Anyway, today we got an HLA delivery just before I punched in at noon. We're still adjusting to having them as a supplier, and their invoice forms are particularly annoying to deal with. Elmira Distributing calculated all the suggested retail prices for us at a consistent 30% markup. HLA's suggested markups are all over the map -- one of them today was negative 200%, for fuck's sake -- and when their wholesale prices are less than Elmira's, I'm never sure if that's a regular thing or a temporary sale price, because they're inconsistent that way. So figuring retail prices takes forever, and the markups are all different from each other in an attempt to keep some prices close to what we've been getting from Elmira.
Cashup also took longer than it should have, since we got an unholy customer rush right in the middle of swapping the drawers from AM to PM shift, not to mention I was distracted and stressed and screwed up the cigarette count (it bounced back at closing, fortunately), and while Melodrama and I got the two-person daily list tasks done in time for her to leave at 4:30pm as scheduled, that left two-thirds of the HLA order for me to check in and price through the evening in addition to all the normal closing tasks and dealing with customers.
We also had some brief excitement around 2:45pm, when a person on a bicycle slipped on ice and fell right across the street from the smoke shop. I couldn't see if they had been wearing a helmet -- there were several police officers standing close enough to block the body while another gave CPR -- but two police cars and a fire truck joined the ambulance in responding to the scene. Earlier, around noon, there were four fire trucks and an ambulance parked by the intersection of Tioga and Seneca streets a few blocks away, but I have no idea what that was about and no customers seemed to either.
I had to stay nearly fifteen minutes later than usual to deal with a bunch of paperwork I couldn't get to during regular hours, but which Boss Lady would be annoyed if I hadn't finished. And then, once I finally got home... it was laundry day. Because I didn't do laundry yesterday, on account of snow flurries.
...
Tomorrow, I will get to do it all over again. (Okay, not the laundry. But still.) And I have lost my day off, since I will have to cover Puppydog's closing shift on Saturday.
None of us can keep this up much longer.
You can also read this entry on Dreamwidth, where there are currently (
comments)