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baquerd posted:Maybe you're being too blatantly goal-oriented in your networking? Networking is about forming "business friendships" - having fun spending time with other people you work with or who work in relateable fields. If you only "network" when you're trying to get a job you are being that guy that makes everyone feel awkward. Maybe. But I can honestly say that at least half of the people I've networked with, I still talk to on a semi-regular basis as friends. Networking at work is a futile effort, outside of people wishing me in getting more hours. Trust me, I've tried, and now the village gossip thinks I'm a lazy bum because I haven't been able to get a decent job since graduation.
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Oct 4, 2013 21:50
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YF19pilot posted:Maybe. But I can honestly say that at least half of the people I've networked with, I still talk to on a semi-regular basis as friends. Networking at work is a futile effort, outside of people wishing me in getting more hours. Trust me, I've tried, and now the village gossip thinks I'm a lazy bum because I haven't been able to get a decent job since graduation. That's cool, I won't disagree that networking sucks for many people, myself included. Some people just ingratiate themselves naturally, but we're not on that track. What's your field of expertise? Working on side projects you can talk up can be big in getting a leg up, or can turn into a leg up themselves. I worked the night shift for 3 years doing mind-numbing work, but side projects let me get a fulfilling job offer.
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Oct 4, 2013 22:57
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baquerd posted:That's cool, I won't disagree that networking sucks for many people, myself included. Some people just ingratiate themselves naturally, but we're not on that track. What's your field of expertise? Working on side projects you can talk up can be big in getting a leg up, or can turn into a leg up themselves. I worked the night shift for 3 years doing mind-numbing work, but side projects let me get a fulfilling job offer. Yeah, that's one thing I need to be better disciplined at, doing side projects. I've got a free (legal) copy of Autodesk Inventor and access to the AutoCAD library. I just need to be better at doing stuff. I'm thinking of re-doing some of my college projects in Inventor, especially considering I lost most of those files. Oh yeah, I'm an Aerospace Engineer, focused on aircraft design.
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Oct 5, 2013 01:28
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Azuth0667 posted:People need an income source and there is literally no social safety net for transitioning from one source to another. With the rate retail pays as well there isn't much people can do to save short of forgoing the basics. If it were easy, I wouldn't think anyone would work retail who didn't want to. Desperate times should call for desperate measures. I would say that temporarily cutting out "the basics" wouldn't bother me much if it meant that I could escape working retail for the next 30 years.
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Oct 5, 2013 07:28
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usernamen_01 posted:If it were easy, I wouldn't think anyone would work retail who didn't want to. Desperate times should call for desperate measures. I would say that temporarily cutting out "the basics" wouldn't bother me much if it meant that I could escape working retail for the next 30 years. What's with the scare quotes? Byzantine fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Oct 5, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 08:03
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So, I was enjoying my lunchbreak today at a restaurant near the supermarket where I work. There I was, minding my own business, eating tasty peri peri chicken, when I see a shadow fall over my table. A middle aged lady is standing over me. Her: "You know those little bags you put your toiletries in when you go on Holidays?" Me, with a mouth full of delicious chicken flesh: "Umm... Yeah?" Her: "Which Aisle will I find them in when I go into your store?" loving hell... I'm used to getting recognized all over the place as 'that guy, from the checkout' or being asked questions by customers who recognize me when I'm in the store on my day off shopping, but this is the first time someone has ever harassed me with a work question off the premises. Today was not a fun day. It's never a fun day when the number of shots of coffee you've had before work significantly exceeds the number of hours of sleep you managed to obtain the night before.
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Oct 5, 2013 10:34
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drat, that sounds lovely. I'm used to getting asked things by customers on the way in wearing a blue shirt and all , but getting hit up off premises sounds terrible. Living and working in a small town like I do I can totally see it happening.
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Oct 5, 2013 13:29
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If I made the mistake of walking into stores with my work clothes on, people used to ask me for directions around the store I didn't even work for.
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Oct 5, 2013 14:50
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There must be something about my innocent babyface that screams, "I am a person who would be delighted to hear your bigotry." I helped a blind woman check out and took her to sit down to wait for whoever was coming to help her, and when I came back to my register, I swear to God the tiny old lady standing there said, "All blind people are awful" with absolutely no provocation. Her transaction was completed in silence after me staring at her for a bit. Then the next day, I had a family come up, who waited until after I had scanned all their groceries to show me their WIC check (it needs to be presented before anything else is done). Not only that, but they were a day late for it, which made me feel bad.  After voiding everything and checking out only the essentials they wanted to pay for, their excited little boy grabbed a DVD off our display and was about to run after his parents to show it to them, who were already leaving the store. I'm sure many of you have seen kids do this kind of thing, and we all probably did it ourselves as children. I just said, "Hey buddy, you've got to leave that in the store, okay? Go catch up with your parents," and he gave it back to me. Which is when the guy waiting for cigarettes at customer service says, "You know they train their kids to do that!" I assume they is anyone who appears non-white to him, because I doubt he could even accurately tell me what ethnicity that family was had I bothered to let him enlighten me, instead of just rolling my eyes and checking out some more people.I hate the general public.
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Oct 5, 2013 19:29
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kazz posted:Casual Racism Yeah, one thing I don't miss now that I'm off the registers. Racism, sexism are the biggest, especially with some of the more "enlightened" clientele. Out of curiosity, though, are you Polish in any way? I'm half Pollock myself, and look about ten years younger than I am. Kinda curious about what makes someone stand out as a "hey, racism is okay with me" beacon.
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Oct 5, 2013 20:11
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YF19pilot posted:Yeah, one thing I don't miss now that I'm off the registers. Racism, sexism are the biggest, especially with some of the more "enlightened" clientele. Out of curiosity, though, are you Polish in any way? I'm half Pollock myself, and look about ten years younger than I am. Kinda curious about what makes someone stand out as a "hey, racism is okay with me" beacon. Haha, no, not at all! I'm a mix of Scots-Irish and French Canadian or something, but yeah, I get a lot of comments about looking young for my age (I'm 22 and people ask me what grade I'm in, which is sad because I'm student teaching in a high school...). It's probably just because they think their opinion is right and perfectly normal and have no problem sharing it, combined with you being in a position where people feel they can force whatever they want on you because it's your job to just stand there and take it. And I'm a nice little white girl with blonde-ish hair and big blue eyes, so they assume I feel the same way.
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Oct 5, 2013 22:03
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kazz posted:Which is when the guy waiting for cigarettes at customer service says, "You know they train their kids to do that!" I assume they is anyone who appears non-white to him, because I doubt he could even accurately tell me what ethnicity that family was had I bothered to let him enlighten me, instead of just rolling my eyes and checking out some more people. Either that or he meant "they" as in anyone who uses stuff like WIC, because those welfare/food stamps people, am I right?  Either way it's awful of course.I never got anything quite like that, but I used to get a lot of Obama rants at my counter since we sold ammo and everyone was convinced he was going to take their guns/ammunition away. And for some reason they thought I agreed and wanted to hear about it. All the casual racism/misogyny came from my coworkers unfortunately. 
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Oct 5, 2013 22:49
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kazz posted:Haha, no, not at all! I'm a mix of Scots-Irish and French Canadian or something, but yeah, I get a lot of comments about looking young for my age (I'm 22 and people ask me what grade I'm in, which is sad because I'm student teaching in a high school...). It's probably just because they think their opinion is right and perfectly normal and have no problem sharing it, combined with you being in a position where people feel they can force whatever they want on you because it's your job to just stand there and take it. And I'm a nice little white girl with blonde-ish hair and big blue eyes, so they assume I feel the same way. Ah, that's it. I've also got the Scot-Irish mix and that side of the family immigrated through Canada (there's a town named after us!) Mostly I get people asking what college I'm in, but I've had some ask what high school. I don't have the 'Aryan' look, though (brown hair, brown eyes here).
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Oct 6, 2013 01:59
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YF19pilot posted:Yeah, one thing I don't miss now that I'm off the registers. Racism, sexism are the biggest, especially with some of the more "enlightened" clientele. When I worked retail, it was always the wealthiest customers who tried to determine my ethnicity. Not being German and having an anglicized last name really confused them for some reason.
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Oct 9, 2013 20:39
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My union is on the last day of negotiation before striking. This sucks rear end.
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Oct 12, 2013 19:55
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AlmightyBob posted:My union is on the last day of negotiation before striking. This sucks rear end. You're a rare breed-- an actual, honest-to-god retail union worker. Those are getting fewer and fewer as the years pass. The very first job I had was in a grocery store where I worked part of High School and most of college. Five months before I graduated, the store shut down due to "no longer seeing a future in the (my town) location." Negotiations had fallen through on building a new store across the street, but of 13 stores in our corporate family, we were consistently in the top 3 in all important sales categories. We were doing just fine. The REAL reason they shut us down? They wanted to break the union. We had more than a dozen people in that store with 20 or more years of experience, and with it all the appropriate wages, benefits, vacation time, etc. So corporate cooked up the poor performance story, and then re-opened the store across town 3 years later with a completely different and non-union staff. Assholes. Also there was some embezzlement from one of the higher-ups in the company who cooked the books a bit, but even still it wasn't enough to shut us down.
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Oct 13, 2013 01:44
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I live in one of the states that had an EBT outage yesterday and god does no one really read the signs. We have signs saying that Food Stamps are currently not working state-wide and that we cannot accept them at the moment on the front entrances, just as you walk in, on each register, and in the store in general and we still had people come up to our lines with carts full of stuff that they'd then leave. The best part was someone, in all seriousness, asking "Why don't you guys have signs up?"
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Oct 13, 2013 06:53
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How to deal with annoying managers who you want to throat punch? TBH its not that bad just a lot of condescension. How to shut it down?
ONEMANWOLFPACK fucked around with this message at 01:10 on Oct 15, 2013 |
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Oct 14, 2013 23:33
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Sankis posted:I live in one of the states that had an EBT outage yesterday and god does no one really read the signs. We have signs saying that Food Stamps are currently not working state-wide and that we cannot accept them at the moment on the front entrances, just as you walk in, on each register, and in the store in general and we still had people come up to our lines with carts full of stuff that they'd then leave. I read the news report where a couple Walmarts in Louisiana lost a good chunk of their grocery stock because people filled up dozens of carts and just abandoned them when the system came back up. I feel for the employees who had to sort through and reshop/throw away that poo poo.
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Oct 15, 2013 13:58
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I feel for the people who fill a cart and have their cards declined but assholes who do that on purpose should hang.
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Oct 15, 2013 14:21
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Necrocult posted:I feel for the people who fill a cart and have their cards declined but assholes who do that on purpose should hang. It seems like the costs will be absorbed by Walmart, anyway. "...retailers who chose not to use the emergency procedures that limit sales up to $50 per cardholder during an emergency would be responsible for any additional amount spent over eligible benefit balances."
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Oct 15, 2013 19:23
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There's probably an instance at some Walmart every day involving a freezer failure, causing hundreds or thousands of dollars of food to become worthless. This is before we get into Walmart's produce problems, which were discussed here not long ago. A few people trying to literally game the system (with a problem presumably caused by the government shutdown) are not creating that much anarchy. I want to talk for a minute about how casually petty and evil working retail makes you, and the dumb things that cause you a small amount of glee. -You know those plastic cords they use to tie down cardboard boxes, that can really only be cut with a knife? When you step on these, they sound exactly like eggshells cracking. Lay them across an aisle like a tripwire trap and watch everyone do a double-take. This is sort of like:  -For normal people, babies crying is really annoying. Experienced retail workers can tell which kids are phoning it in and just being little dipshits, and which ones are really having epic wails that you can hear from across the store, while tracking their progress from aisle to aisle. These latter kids deserve medals, and they put a smile on my face. All children hate going to the grocery store for some reason, I know I did when I was little--even though this was how I survived. But you have to be serious about how little you like it. Name Change fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Oct 15, 2013 |
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Oct 15, 2013 19:57
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Necrocult posted:assholes who do that on purpose should hang. I, too, advocate a return to the times when theft of food was punishable by execution.
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Oct 15, 2013 20:01
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LonsomeSon posted:I, too, advocate a return to the times when theft of food was punishable by execution. You joke about that but I've had discussions with my manager where I have to seriously argue with him that public executions are hosed up and should not be brought back. edit: also more pertinent to the subject, on whether we should cut the hands off of thieves or not (for the record i am anti-penal amputation) Pornographic Memory fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Oct 16, 2013 |
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Oct 15, 2013 21:02
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ONEMANWOLFPACK posted:How to deal with annoying managers who you want to throat punch? TBH its not that bad just a lot of condescension. How to shut it down? Have you tried talking to him? He may not know he's being condescending.
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Oct 15, 2013 21:22
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LonsomeSon posted:I, too, advocate a return to the times when theft of food was punishable by execution. I think he is saying people that load up carts with perishables/frozen goods and then just leave it in the middle of the store and walk out, causing all the food to have to be thrown out. NOT people trying to get free food, trying to use benefits, trying to feed themselves, etc. He always made an exception for it because of the unforseen inability to pay for this, and is only deigning such status on people that do this on purpose just to gently caress with the retail employees/institution.
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Oct 15, 2013 21:24
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I want to talk for a minute about how casually petty and evil working retail makes you, and the dumb things that cause you a small amount of glee. I believe it. I saw a guy leave his cart in the empty parking space beside his a few days ago, then start to drive off. Before I could get over there to get it, the wind picked up and bounced the cart off his truck. He got out, cursing, and put the cart where it was supposed to go in the dock...or whatever it's called. Tee hee.
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Oct 16, 2013 03:56
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martyrdumb posted:I read the news report where a couple Walmarts in Louisiana lost a good chunk of their grocery stock because people filled up dozens of carts and just abandoned them when the system came back up. I feel for the employees who had to sort through and reshop/throw away that poo poo. I worked in a Walmart that was budgeted to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter. The goal (for that store) was shutting down competing Hispanic grocery stores, not making money. For me at least, if they're willing to burn money to kill the competition, then they can certainly afford to eat the cost on a few baskets of abandoned groceries. Not to mention the fact that abandoned baskets or excessive perishable returns are only a problem in an understaffed store.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:37
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Yoda posted:I think he is saying people that load up carts with perishables/frozen goods and then just leave it in the middle of the store and walk out, causing all the food to have to be thrown out. NOT people trying to get free food, trying to use benefits, trying to feed themselves, etc. He always made an exception for it because of the unforseen inability to pay for this, and is only deigning such status on people that do this on purpose just to gently caress with the retail employees/institution. Oh, I stand corrected. These are all really good reasons to brutally end the life of another human being.
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Oct 17, 2013 01:22
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litany of gulps posted:Not to mention the fact that abandoned baskets or excessive perishable returns are only a problem in an understaffed store. I thought that was all of them?
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Oct 17, 2013 02:53
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Goddamn waiting for news from the union sucks rear end. They keep adding ONE MORE DAY of negotiations, and today was another ONE MORE DAY.
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Oct 17, 2013 04:15
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*Clock in for the day up front* *Crazy bitch walks up to me*  - I'VE NEVER HAD SUCH A HORRIBLE TIME SHOPPING HERE!!! - What happened???? - YOU GUYS HAVE NO SIZES I NEED, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW HARD IT IS TO SHOP FOR TWO TWINS?!!? - Oh I'm sorry about that, we are light on kids shoes right now but we are getting a truck in Thursday and I have a lot of kids shoes coming in.*Crazy bitch slams a pair of kids shoes on the counter.* - I WANT THESE IN A SIZE 6 - Alright lets take a look to see what store may have those....alright the store 8 miles down the road has them in stock. - I WANT THEM DELIVERED TO MY HOUSE. - Oh I'm sorry we only do house delivery through online, we haven't gotten store to home delivery yet, I can have the other store put them on hold for you though. - THIS IS loving RIDICULOUS YOUR COMPETITORS ALL DO IT! IS THERE A MANAGER AROUND? - Right now I'm the manager*Crazy Bitch laughs* probably because I look really young. - I'm sorry ma'am I'm not gonna lie to you our company is a little behind on the technology. - FINE IF I BUY THE WRONG SIZE CAN I GO EXCHANGE THEM AT THE OTHER STORE SO I CAN GET THE BUY ONE GET ONE HALF OFF NOW? - Sure we can do that for you.*Proceed to ring her up thinking I calmed the hambeast down. She proceeds literally throw 2 coupons at me for 30% off Skechers shoes. I take a look and notice they are coupons ONLY to be used at the skechers store. - Ma'am these coupons are for the Skechers store.- I KNOW THAT I WAS TOLD I COULD USE THEM HERE!!! THE LADY BACK THERE SAID I COULD. - Oh ok no problem I can do that for you then.* Take the 30% off each shoe, which disqualifies the buy one get one half off, I tell her her total* WO WO WO what is going on here let me see that screen.*Show her the screen* - THEY AREN'T Buy one get one half off? - Wait so you want buy one get one half off and 30% off each shoe? - YEAH YOU ACCEPT COMPETITORS COUPONS, I DO IT ALL THE TIME HERE. - Yes we do but we don't take a 30% off coupon and give you buy one get one half off, we would be selling these shoes well below cost. - I DON'T GIVE A drat THATS NOT MY PROBLEM. - Ma'am I'm sorry I can't do that, I would be more than happy to take 30% off each shoe but I can't include that in the buy one get one half off. YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T GIVE A drat I DON'T NEED THE SHOES, GIVE ME YOUR STORE MANAGERS PHONE NUMBER.*Hand her the card* Have a wonderful day ma'am Her poor twins sat through that whole episode. The customers behind her poo poo talked her so much after she left. She didn't lower her voice for a second, everything was a yell. Fantastic loving way to start my day, I literally gave no shits the rest of the day and didn't even try to make the sales goal for the day because I was just so irritated. Guru Yaekob fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 06:51
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AlmightyBob posted:Goddamn waiting for news from the union sucks rear end. They keep adding ONE MORE DAY of negotiations, and today was another ONE MORE DAY. BART ? I'm already expecting to use the ferry next week, and walk to city center if AC Transit goes out too.
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Oct 17, 2013 07:01
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mllaneza posted:BART ? I'm already expecting to use the ferry next week, and walk to city center if AC Transit goes out too. No, groceries in Washington.
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Oct 17, 2013 12:04
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litany of gulps posted:I worked in a Walmart that was budgeted to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars a quarter. The goal (for that store) was shutting down competing Hispanic grocery stores, not making money. For me at least, if they're willing to burn money to kill the competition, then they can certainly afford to eat the cost on a few baskets of abandoned groceries. Not to mention the fact that abandoned baskets or excessive perishable returns are only a problem in an understaffed store. Losing money senselessly is not the same as a defined strategy for destroying competition. One is shrinkage and the other is creating a competitive moat.
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Oct 17, 2013 14:13
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usernamen_01 posted:Losing money senselessly is not the same as a defined strategy for destroying competition. One is shrinkage and the other is creating a competitive moat. Yeah, shrinkage is a bitch no matter where you work. Ask me about the look on my manager's face when I told him we were missing a whole 90' roll of carpet from our last cycle count (probably a DC mistake - receiving is "good faith" so it's possible the 10 cases of tile I couldn't find were just not delivered at all 6 months ago and we're just now finding out). Or if you get managers who are really lenient about the return policy (people returning two rolls of cut vinyl flooring which is against policy, and about an easy half ton of tile that was purchased over a year ago). I don't hate those customers, I just feel highly disappointed with my managers while I have to slowly push that cart back to my department. Otherwise, I'm really learning to pick the slum lords out from the rest of the rental-property owners. Cheap Stainmaster carpet? Actually cares about the apartment, but understands the economics of rental properties. Cheap berber carpet? Okay, but probably more concerned about the pocket book. Cheapest crap commercial or outdoor carpet available to be installed in the entire apartment? Slum lord. Or the classy fellow who was pricing vinyl remnants, wanted me to knock an $80 roll down to $25, and told me there was water damage to the subfloor and he just wanted to cover it up to "get through the winter". I don't understand how it's not better to just repair/replace the subfloor, than to risk a tenant falling through in the middle of a snowstorm. Just as laughable as the guy wanting to buy cheap rubber mats instead of pipe insulation to cover hot steam pipes (because that's not an OSHA suit waiting to happen). But I still love customers who ask for items that just don't exist. Like someone wanting a single 20' long transition strip.
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Oct 17, 2013 19:15
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YF19pilot posted:Yeah, shrinkage is a bitch no matter where you work. 
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Oct 18, 2013 07:42
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bowmore posted:Especially in the sex industry Hey, sometimes it's hard to perform under stress. You give your all to one customer, turn around and there's ten more waiting for you. Half of them are probably gonna be a pain in the rear end, too.
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Oct 18, 2013 12:02
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YF19pilot posted:Half of them are probably gonna be a pain in the rear end, too.
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Oct 18, 2013 12:19
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usernamen_01 posted:Losing money senselessly is not the same as a defined strategy for destroying competition. One is shrinkage and the other is creating a competitive moat. Shrinkage goes down with increased staffing. Most of these stores have made it part of their strategy to pay for a certain amount of shrinkage rather than pay for sufficient numbers of employees. As I said, if they're willing to burn off cash in order to stifle competition, they've got the funds to deal with basic, regular problems that arise while running a grocery store. Every time there's a power outage you get dozens of abandoned baskets, this is not an uncommon thing. There are procedures in place to deal with this sort of problem, it just takes people. If you've cut your staffing to the bone because your shrink formula says that paying a couple of extra employees costs you more than the price of food spoiling at the return desk, extra theft, and lack of ability to respond to emergency situations... well, I don't know what you'd call that other than a defined strategy. YF19pilot posted:Yeah, shrinkage is a bitch no matter where you work. Ask me about the look on my manager's face when I told him we were missing a whole 90' roll of carpet from our last cycle count (probably a DC mistake - receiving is "good faith" so it's possible the 10 cases of tile I couldn't find were just not delivered at all 6 months ago and we're just now finding out). The only possible reason to have "good faith" receiving (which is a joke of a concept) would be that the store or the company doesn't want to pay for the small number of employees you'd need to actually verify that what you're getting is what you paid for. litany of gulps fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Oct 18, 2013 |
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Oct 18, 2013 14:59
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