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And then you get the unbelievable customers like the one lady who came to the deli one day looking for turkey. Cheap turkey but not super cheap. We had...I dunno, maybe a dozen different turkey offerings? I made it through about half of them with her husband while she did something else, then we settled with him on the Dietz and Watson no salt added turkey. She came back as I was starting on a quarter pound, took one bite, and balked. During the evening rush, at the head of a line of a dozen, this woman holds up the line for fifteen minutes debating the merits and quality of Deli Counter brand jello "turkey", Primo Taglio pan roasted turkey, Safeway brand in-store roasted turkey, and the myriad D&W offerings. She finally settled on the no salt added. All that for her sick loving cat  EDIT: Eric the Mauve posted:Spousal mouthpiece I often deal with day-to-day scheduling, utility issues, food orders, and food order complaints for my wife - mainly because I have the disease of "it takes a lot for me to get lovely with service industry people" and she just doesn't like doing that stuff. I've asked people to hold on to ask my wife about stuff before.  I, at least, have the courtesy to try to get all of this information beforehand and write down the questions to ask and the answers to them, and put the people on hold when I need to ask my wife something.
D34THROW fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Dec 21, 2021 |
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Dec 21, 2021 20:16
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One of the amazing things that would happen all the goddamn time when I worked hospitality, taking reservations over the phone, was this: Eric: Hi, thanks for calling the Awesome Inn, how can I help you? Man: Yes, I'd like to make a reservation. Eric: Great, for when? Man: That'll be for-- Woman in Background who clearly can hear me: ASK HIM IF THEY HAVE ADJOINING ROOMS. Man: (Muffled) Yes, I was getting there. (To Eric) Hi, sorry. We're looking for the weekend of the 14th and 15th, and we'd like adjoining-- Woman in Background: NO NOT THE 14TH AND 15TH, IT'S THE 21ST AND 22ND! Man: Sorry, 21st and 22nd, and we'd like adjoining rooms please. Eric: Sure thing! Yes, we can do that. How many people in each room? Man: (Muffled) He said yes they have adjoining rooms. (To Eric) Well, it's just me and my wife in the one room, and the other will be three people I guess, it's her mother and-- Woman in Background: DON'T FORGET EMILY'S COMING. Man: (Muffled) Yes dear, I know. (To Eric) Sorry. It's her mother and sister and nice, so that's-- Woman in Background: HOW MUCH DO THEY COST? THE WEB SITE SAID... On and on and ON and ON. It was occasionally a woman on the phone and a man in the background, but like 80% of the time it was the other way around. Almost always people over 50. My question about this is, what the hell? Why is the background person who clearly is actually driving the conversation not just talking to me directly? Why is this mediator who clearly has no agency here, repeating everything the background spouse says to me and repeating everything I say back to them? What the hell is wrong with these people?
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Dec 21, 2021 21:03
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Eric the Mauve posted:people over 50.
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Dec 22, 2021 03:09
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I feel like retail work is designed to leave you to become disoriented then insane.
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Dec 22, 2021 07:28
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And I'm done! Out for Christmas, out of the Box Mines at Amazon, not back until the night of the 26th. Just burned a fat chunk of my time off on the next two days because gently caress THAT poo poo. They're now someone else's problem.
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Dec 22, 2021 13:25
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Oolb posted:I feel like retail work is designed to leave you to become disoriented then insane. The Tommyknockers but without being able to invent cool poo poo.
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Dec 22, 2021 14:08
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Alkydere posted:And I'm done! Out for Christmas, out of the Box Mines at Amazon, not back until the night of the 26th. Welcome to holiday vacation, comrade. Mine started on the 17th and goes through the 1st or 2nd. No one told me that now that I've been with the company 5 years I get 3 weeks a year instead of 2 so I didn't plan accordingly. Also I've been covering everyone else being on vacation and/or sick for the last 6 months.
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Dec 22, 2021 14:25
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I work in a big box store in the craft department. Of course, it sucks. It particularly sucks this year. We started receiving artificial Christmas flowers in the last week of November, a half dozen boxes or so. Around Dec. 6, we got a few more. Then around Dec. 12 they started shipping the rest of our yearly allotment. We now have two features packed full, the non-seasonal flower display (which has been mostly empty for lack of stock most of the year) crammed with poinsettias and berries, and one pallet in the backroom stacked nine feet high with a second one stacked five feet high. All of this should have been here in October, ready to go out immediately after Halloween. And now they're not selling, of course. People already got their Christmas flowers from other places that actually had some in stock. I see a really big Christmas flower clearance in our future. This week has been particularly annoying because unworked freight has been piling up in the backroom. I have my days off, come back to work and find that craft freight hasn't been worked. This happens a lot. This week, I haven't been given time to work it, either. I've been covering other department due to people out on covid leave, paternity leave, other medical leave. So yesterday people were back and I started to work the three pallets of craft freight. I was making good progress. Then management comes around, tells me no, we have to work price changes because they need to be done before Wed. night at close. Okay, fine. I check the price changes. They've dropped "over 500" prices changes for crafts. In the current software, they don't even tell you how many price changes total, just "over 500". When you get it down below 500, you can wait a few minutes and check again, to find it's gone back to "over 500". It went back to "over 500" three times before I left. (I hope morning shift has gotten out from behind their counter and actually worked some damned price changes.) But when I was leaving, I went by the fabric table to put my labels away and discovered they'd found two more pallets of crafts freight in the back, bringing the grand total to five pallets of crap I'm absolutely certain that nobody else has touched, which will all be waiting for me when I get to work this afternoon. And also tomorrow, if the damned price changes take all evening. But, Merry Christmas!
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Dec 22, 2021 19:25
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retail is melting my brain
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Dec 23, 2021 07:13
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yup. it's a real mother fucker
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Dec 23, 2021 20:55
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but why???
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Dec 23, 2021 23:33
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Eric the Mauve posted:It's about the kind of people they invariably are. The people that have nothing better to do than go through the whole loving store hunting for a few out-of-date items are incessantly annoying in a hundred ways and treat retail workers with not a scant trace of basic human dignity. The Lord Bude posted:Yeah any time you can deny people like that what they want and get them out of the store empty handed it's a massive win.  You don't just do it for yourself, you do it for all the customer service employees they've abused in their lives.
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Dec 24, 2021 00:58
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Amazon's having such a hard time getting and keeping people that we've been onboarding new hires all the way up to this week. Oh and they've called overtime for the week after Christmas. I took tonight (and last night) off and am just relaxing while someone else is covering my job. Because gently caress that poo poo.
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Dec 24, 2021 01:56
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Surprised they didn't buy Boston dynamics to try and get some servitors
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Dec 24, 2021 02:00
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What positions are being so burned out in Amazon? All of them?
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Dec 24, 2021 02:15
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Cowslips Warren posted:What positions are being so burned out in Amazon? All of them? Yes. All of them. Everyone's just fed up, tired, etc. Except for me (because I have a relatively cozy job and have learned to ignore the calls to promote* that once appealed to me). Obviously we weren't hiring outbound people the week before Christmas: I'm pretty sure Learning would be up in arms in trying to teach someone how to pack a box the week before Christmas, it's mainly Inbound we're hiring right now. But, contrary every single previous year when all ongoing projects and hiring are Frozen the week of Black Friday until the new year my facility is STILL desperately hiring. It's almost like they treat us like poo poo and pay us like poo poo. Also I love how every time they say they're gonna take away our phones again our rates/attendance suddenly drop and fucks suddenly fly out the window until management backs off again. So now we officially have a "No earbuds/headphones/smartphones" policy, complete with Negative Nancies posting on the digital Voice of Associates board about "Why U No Enforce This?" when its painfully obvious that all managers are actively avoiding doing anything, ever, to notice there is a problem as people openly walk around with airpods in their ears without trying to hide it. *Though the call of $Money$ is strong and I recently learned something that might make me interested again: It's all about the New Contract/onboarding bonus. Every time you transfer to a new building Amazon considers it a new labor contract and you get a hiring/sign-on bonus. So if you transfer every year, even back and forth between 2-3 facilities, even if you don't promote, you can get fat cash. Meanwhile if you promote but DON'T transfer it's considered the same contract (unless your pay changes from hourly to salary, then its a new contract). So don't get promoted without transferring, and transfer often. Edit: The reason I'm still there is I mainly got a cushy rear end job where I stand in the corner at my computer and listen on the radio as management desperately tries to keep a building where everything's going supercritical every night from going prompt supercritical. Just standing there, smiling, being a paragon of productivity in my roll while barely using half of my rear end, watching everything burn down around me and waiting for the next "OH GOD, WHY WON'T ANYONE WORK/STAY HERE!?" pay raise to come through. Alkydere fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Dec 24, 2021 |
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Dec 24, 2021 02:28
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Oolb posted:but why??? no unions, mostly. also the customer is always an rear end in a top hat
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Dec 24, 2021 03:20
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Cowslips Warren posted:What positions are being so burned out in Amazon? All of them? There was a thing that came out about 6 months ago about how Amazon executives were worried internally that their churn was so high that they would go through THE ENTIRE WORKING POPULATION OF THE US in a few years.
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Dec 24, 2021 13:51
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Sankis posted:There was a thing that came out about 6 months ago about how Amazon executives were worried internally that their churn was so high that they would go through THE ENTIRE WORKING POPULATION OF THE US in a few years. That seems like a problem for whoever's in charge a few years from now, the next quarter's profits are much more important.
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Dec 24, 2021 14:35
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Sankis posted:There was a thing that came out about 6 months ago about how Amazon executives were worried internally that their churn was so high that they would go through THE ENTIRE WORKING POPULATION OF THE US in a few years. This apparently happened on a smaller in my city twenty-ish years back. Capital One opened a call centre here and ran it exactly in line with their American standards, not initially understanding that a) this wasn't exactly a huge city and b) people could get paid the same or better and not be subject to the minute scrutiny of their every second at businesses that were literally minutes away from their office. They rapidly burned through the people they could get through the door and had to revise their approach massively if they wanted to keep going. Then in 2008 they just dumped 90% of the work over to the Phillipines anyway.
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Dec 24, 2021 15:45
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Fil5000 posted:This apparently happened on a smaller in my city twenty-ish years back. Capital One opened a call centre here and ran it exactly in line with their American standards, not initially understanding that a) this wasn't exactly a huge city and b) people could get paid the same or better and not be subject to the minute scrutiny of their every second at businesses that were literally minutes away from their office. They rapidly burned through the people they could get through the door and had to revise their approach massively if they wanted to keep going. In 2004 I remember the precise date, December 6, when I worked for BestWestern Hotels in a call center, and we were told we were being outsourced. But don't worry, people who had 5 years would get a small payout! And please don't leave yet, we won't close until March, your replacements are still learning the ropes. Needless to say a lot of people just walked out. I remember others, like myself, hanging up on any customer who gave me an issue, or was rude, and the ones who were nice, I told the truth about the outsourcing. Now the writing was on the wall with Expedia and poo poo coming in full force, but I just remember being so angry and upset and furious that I realized this was how people could and did snap. And meanwhile the CEO cared not, only nodded when one of his peons said the call center got the notice, now did he want panda fetus or blue whale tongue for dinner.
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Dec 24, 2021 23:04
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welp Christmas eve sucked much less than I thought it would. as a mercy, our in store radio went out last night.
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Dec 25, 2021 06:13
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Cowslips Warren posted:In 2004 I remember the precise date, December 6, when I worked for BestWestern Hotels in a call center, and we were told we were being outsourced. But don't worry, people who had 5 years would get a small payout! And please don't leave yet, we won't close until March, your replacements are still learning the ropes. I very briefly got seconded to a strategic programme for my directorate about a decade ago, and having worked the people that make those sort of decisions, I can tell you they pride themselves on their objectivity and making the tough calls about closing down sites. You can't think about individuals, you see, closing that site you work in is because otherwise we can't pay out a big enough dividend. It is ludicrous that we have created a system for resource allocation that works this way.
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Dec 25, 2021 12:55
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Fil5000 posted:I very briefly got seconded to a strategic programme for my directorate about a decade ago, and having worked Pretty much this. You don't see the people panicking over not being able to pay rent or buy food, you just think of all the extra money you'll get. It's probably similar to what people think when they hire an exterminator: solving a problem and I don't care how. And in the back of my mind, I think of poo poo like The Stand or a zombie apocalypse and think, yeah, if I survived the first blastdown of the world, after I got some supplies together, I'd go out and find all those people who see profit instead, and have a nice talk with them. I'd let them offer me all the useless money they have before I used them for zombie food. What goons have to work today? Yesterday was slow for us, because all of our main customers were closed (go fig), but the boss wouldn't let us leave for at least 4-5 hours. She insisted, despite the steady rain and storms, for all of us to drive 30-40 miles to her main office for Starbucks and pizza.
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Dec 25, 2021 21:00
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30 MILES? Go gently caress yourself boss.
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Dec 25, 2021 22:55
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Oh I didn't loving go, I spent most of the day, other than a single delivery, driving a few miles from my base, parking, reading the forums, and then waiting for her to text again.
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Dec 26, 2021 00:53
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We didn't get our corporate-sponsored "thanks for working christmas eve, staying open despite being a loving clothing store and staying open longer than the goddamn grocery store" pizza party because the manager that was gonna order it had some cash office talk and then forgot all about it.
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Dec 26, 2021 17:06
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ON THE checks THIRTEENTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS, LORD BEZOS GAVE TO ME: FIVE DAY ONE TRAINEES! NO SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE gently caress? WHO THE HELL HAS PEOPLE COME IN FOR THEIR FIRST SHIFT THE NIGHT OF THE 26TH? Also the place is a loving ghost town now because this is the week everyone takes off, and the week everyone else is quarantined due to Omnicron racing through at a bajillion cases an hour
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Dec 27, 2021 12:30
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I've noticed this in the past few years, even before COVID: remember when the day after a holiday, there were aisles of holiday poo poo all marked down, and people would have shopping carts full of candy or wrapping paper, etc? No more. Are the stores just sending a lot of it back to their warehouses or selling it to third parties the week before the holiday?
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Dec 27, 2021 13:55
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Cowslips Warren posted:I've noticed this in the past few years, even before COVID: remember when the day after a holiday, there were aisles of holiday poo poo all marked down, and people would have shopping carts full of candy or wrapping paper, etc? No more. Are the stores just sending a lot of it back to their warehouses or selling it to third parties the week before the holiday? Most of it is just getting thrown out. When I worked at the big red M we would toss thousands of dollars worth of merchandise because we needed the space on the salesfloor for all the spring crap coming in. Sometimes you could find a drive-aisle feature with grab bags for a couple bucks but that stopped because people would steal and hide expensive items in those bags.
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Dec 27, 2021 17:06
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I know that at least some chocolates companies used retail packaging with a detachable valentine's element, such that it could be rapidly hotswapped for the day after and retained at the current price.
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Dec 27, 2021 18:22
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Cowslips Warren posted:I've noticed this in the past few years, even before COVID: remember when the day after a holiday, there were aisles of holiday poo poo all marked down, and people would have shopping carts full of candy or wrapping paper, etc? No more. Are the stores just sending a lot of it back to their warehouses or selling it to third parties the week before the holiday? I haven't worked retail in a long time, but I've noticed the same thing in like the last 5 or 6 years. My theory is that stores just aren't ordering as much. I remember when you could go to Walmart Dec 26th and find tons of wrapping paper, artificial christmas trees, etc all marked down 50% or more. The week before Christmas this year the local walmart totally took down the tree display, and were pretty much sold out of trees, wrapping paper and ornaments. There's still some decoration stuff to get rid of, but things have definitely changed. I just don't think they're ordering as much as they used to. Maybe better demand analytics and forecasting is in play. There's also this insane race it seems to get the next holiday decorations out as fast as possible. I was in Louisiana last week, and went to a store on Dec 21st and they were switching the seasonal isles over from xmas to Mardi Gras already. I'm sure my local stores have already changed the seasonal isles over to Valentines. skipdogg fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Dec 27, 2021 |
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Dec 27, 2021 19:06
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poo poo, last year and this year at Target, the Christmas sections were pretty fully cleaned out when I went shopping on the 22nd and 23rd (yeah, I'm bad at planning and I threw my back out so I wasn't okay to shop until then). Even Walmart was running low on their Christmas items. But, of course, they were pushing Valentine's Day 
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Dec 27, 2021 19:28
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Yeah, our store switched out most of the seasonal aisles last week because we literally ran out of Christmas product, so may as well clear out some stock and set the springtime/Valentine's merch early. But we were also regularly running out of stuff like lights/trees early on and waiting for deliveries, so my guess would be it was mostly due to supply shortages and/or delivery issues.
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Dec 27, 2021 20:15
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One store by me has had the first of their Easter chocolates out since the start of December.
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Dec 27, 2021 21:16
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So Sunday Night: we have new hires the gently caress-off week between Christmas and New Years. A week that's traditionally something of a cluster, and doubly so this year with Omnicron rolling through. Monday Night: I'm giving the new hires their second day of training/supervision and my bosses from Learning bring in a 6th woman. She's an Accommodation (usually: injury) from Shipdock. She's a bit lost/stunned because she's worked here since October. Like most Accommodations, Labor Share or Transfer she picks up packing just fine despite never packed before. Tuestday Night: I'm not in my usual happy place doing my technical job since the building is still comically short staffed and there's replacements for me. They're not as good as I am, but I meanwhile can be put into so many places to fill holes. So I spend a happy 1-1.5 hours packing away with no responsibilities when all that is shattered by one of my superiors from Learning arriving breathlessly asking me questions about my Accommodation from last night and what all I trained her to do and told her. Turns out the issue was, since the woman's ankle hurt, she didn't want to walk up to the 3rd floor where Singles was. Understandable, and no one told her about the building's only passenger elevator: it's slow as balls and only 1 person/time due to COVID so management is reluctant to tell people who don't absolutely need to know about it lest there be lines. Her ankle hurts on stairs so I personally judge her in the "need to know about the elevator" and inform her. BUT that happened later. As said, she didn't want to go up the stairs to Singles. So she stayed downstairs and started packing in the downstairs AFE (Amazon Fulfillment Engine: a.k.a. multi item boxes) department. To which she replies "It's all the same, isn't it?" For reference, anyone in the building I told this to temporarily lost 10-15 points of IQ. The two pack processes, mainly how the departments have to be run differently due to their mechanical setups, are similar-yet-different enough to cause a massive pile of confusion on a person's first visit to the one they weren't first trained in. Going to from one to the other on your second day just causes...issues. I spent the next 2 hours training her to forget her AFE muscle memory which just creates a bit waste of tape if mixed with how Singles tape dispensers are set up. Also it's generally not a good idea to have someone with a recently injured ankle working in the pack department that has people doing regular squats/lunges.
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Dec 29, 2021 13:17
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Is there a reason we can't spell or pronounce omicron? I expected fifty hours or more every week all December. I averaged less than thirty-five hours every week for peak season. Hooray for being a non-career postal employee.
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Dec 29, 2021 14:17
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Star Man posted:Is there a reason we can't spell or pronounce omicron? It's spelled and pronounced Unicron, hth
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Dec 31, 2021 00:00
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Volmarias posted:It's spelled and pronounced Unicron, hth If you have time to omicron, you have time to work on....your day off.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:03
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I'm a retail dog trainer, I run about twenty four private classes a week and just since Christmas I've had four people ask for a reschedule because of covid. Last year at this time with the same volume of students I'd maybe have one every month or so. Half our store and almost the entire grooming salon is out with it too.
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Dec 31, 2021 01:47
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