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Cowslips Warren posted:If it's not too much info to ask, what are the different kinds of Amazon centers? Are the drivers the ones that burn out the fastest? idk if it's fixed yet but the new UK software was only showing the drivers the next thing on the list and wasn't correlating it by house, so if a house had 4 orders they would have to go back and forth to the van 4 times. The workaround was to knock on the door and then check each item that showed up as delivered then go back to the van.
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Feb 8, 2022 16:48
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Cowslips Warren posted:If it's not too much info to ask, what are the different kinds of Amazon centers? Are the drivers the ones that burn out the fastest? There's 4 types...that I know of. The system is constantly changing (mutating uncontrollably). Basically though there's: -Inventory Cross-Dock (IXD): Where vendor's goods enter the system. Bulk goods arrive here and are sorted, split up and sent to Fulfillment Centers (also their dock crews are experts on loading those trailers to within a couple of inches of the roof: no wasted space here!) -Fulfillment Center (FC): Where I work. The inventory you see online is the inventory we have in our FCs. When you buy something a copy of that item is queued up to be removed from our inventory to be packed out. -Ship Center (SC?): If a city has multiple FCs then an SC usually springs up soon after. A good chunk of Amazon's goods goes directly from FCs to UPS/USPS/FedEx but a lot goes to a ship center to be sorted out and hauled via Amazon's own freight. Either because it's cheaper to deliver certain things to the other shipping people closer to destination, or because it's going to be delivered through Last Mile. -Last Mile center: Amazon's own delivery service and of course a gigantic shitshow. Amazon delivery crew basically work for contractors. Contractors that work for only that LM center and are basically still Amazon employees and the contractor is basically a legal/financial cut-out. This has caused massive amounts of friction with basically Amazon unilaterally firing drivers without the Contractor's permission, or firing the entire contract company when they tried to demand better pay/less hectic shifts for their workers. Do not work in a Last Mile center. And of course of the first three there's all sorts of different specialties. For example I work at SAT2 (I'll just go ahead and state it, I don't care). It's a mid-sized (I.e. loving huge but not as gently caress-huge as many other FCs) AR-Sort FC Medium Hazmat facility. That means SAT2's inventory is handled by robots/computers and we have the hazmat rating/insurance to deal with lithium batteries. Other FCs deal with other hazmats (caustic chemicals and such). SAT1 is also an FC, but they specialize in large items. Large enough the robots don't handle them so they're non-AR-sort. For reference SAT2's largest box is the 298 (formerly known as the S-5) with the dimensions of 12inx14inx18in if I recall correctly. The 298 is SAT1's smallest box. SAT3/4 I have no idea what they do. SAT5 on the other hand is our local ship-center. If you ever work on SAT2's outbound dock there's always 1-2 trailers (or more during Peak) going to SAT5 that are absolutely being slammed constantly with work. SAT6 is the newest in the SAT cluster and is a local Last Mile facility. I was looking into transferring there and getting promoted then learned more about Last Mile and how much of a shitshow it often was and noped the hell out of that. I'll keep my cozy job in the corner (Not actually physically in a corner, but socially in one) thank you very much.
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Feb 8, 2022 23:20
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TransShip madness continues today, if slowed down. Central Flow still not understanding that the pack lines running out of work does not necessarily mean we have infinite capacity for on the dock for transship. There's only so much space down there, for both building and storing the pallets, and only so many trucks heading out. Yes, we do have a robotic arm that builds pallets of transship tote super fast but the moment some picker sends down a tote with an item sticking out the top it freaks out and has to be reset. Also heaven forbid you send down a damaged/cracked tote. CRUNCH! In other news I asked my boss a couple hours into the shift how things are going in the department I technically belong to on the far side of the building. He replies "Everything just broke." Two of the department's seven input lines just...shut down and stopped working. They wouldn't move fresh work to the packers. One of the lines that broke down is Mix line. No biggie, that's one of the slowest production lines in the building and we have 4 Mix lines so we can shift future work to another. The other line that just stopped? SmartPac. The line with 8 packing machines, each kicking out about 600 packages/hour. Guess which line maintenance started to work on first? Anyways, their first attempt to fix poo poo involves turning the power on and off again for the lines and hope the system figures things out. Well they hosed up and turned off all seven lines to Singles. I look up and notice every single line just...stop. I called it out on the radio and got to listen to the sweet, sweet sound of Operations panicking for about 8 minutes before suddenly everything started moving again.
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Feb 9, 2022 13:45
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To add to the description of fulfillment centers, vendors can also send products directly there instead of IXDs. We can't actually limit what types of products are sent so large products often do end up at sortable buildings and high level hazmat at low/mid level buildings. This is the other place transship to other buildings comes up. Also sometimes vendors just enter hazmat info incorrectly/not at all which gets flagged as needing review. Anything so flagged obviously cannot be stowed or packed, because they would potentially be a legal issue. Working on tickets like these (and other discrepancies between product & listing) is my job as an ISS (inbound support services) rep. ISS also tends to get wrapped up in receive, stow and ICQA problem solving.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:07
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Can we rename this thread to Amazon chat? I just want to bitch about Karens and I have nothing in common with the average poster ITT any more.
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Feb 9, 2022 19:56
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 the Karens. We can not and do not want to stop you.
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Feb 9, 2022 20:50
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I love the Amazon chat tbh. It helps me remember that as annoying as store level retail can be, at least I'm not in a warehouse. For some retail talk: All our front end managers were out sick for most of this week and the almost-entirely-teenagers second shift service crew functioned better than normal
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Feb 9, 2022 22:16
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I got a Karen story Mini gets to do all 3; Amazon Pick; Pack; and then store work when she's got no orders in. So, what we call "the Nissan Juke cabal" of boomer Karens are not only refusing to leave the tills, or do any of the online training during work hours, which is one thing, but they also already lost any shred of goodwill from younger employees by holding on to the shifts deliberately designed for people with school age kids for the last 35 years. Amazon department especially hate them because they are not allowed to hire more people on the grounds that there are always enough employees on shift who should be able to pick up the slack if they need help. This group all got offered redundancy, with the excuse that the store is oversubscribed on contracted hours, and there have been a lot of very awkward leaving dos in the staff canteen attended by no one under 65. Management have started quietly pulling younger people aside, mini included, and offering them more overtime with the promise of more contracted hours (important for holiday pay) and till training.
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Feb 9, 2022 22:43
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All the complaining about working (just got an oversize copy of the first volume of the Sailor Moon manga from Amazon Prime)
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Feb 9, 2022 22:45
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After talking with my ATLs at work, I've finally managed to downshift my position. I've been a Customer Service booth nerd for the past year, and honestly the job has gotten pretty poo poo. Customers are a big part, whether dealing with the maskless plague rats or the incessant phone calls, but even some of the supervisors have gotten real fuckin lovely. It didn't hurt that depression came back recently, making it extra fun to try and paste a smile on in the morning. So while the actual pay is decent from working full time, the pay per hour is kinda butt. Same as most other recent hires, as I haven't been here a full year yet, so I figured I'd move down to being a part time cashier, rather than a full time booth jockey. Gets rid of the phone calls, keeps me out of the booth, and I actually get Mondays scheduled off for the first time since September. Honestly, while I may not be making as much as I am now, I can actually plan around doing poo poo on weekends without giving up my social life entirely. It's fuckin wild.
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Feb 9, 2022 22:58
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Hot dang i came back from my day off to that maga conspiracy chud being fired because he said that my coworker was only hired because he was black and also gay. Goodbye dickshit! your bunk alternative medicines and alt right parroting wont be missed. Hihohe fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Feb 10, 2022 |
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Feb 10, 2022 00:37
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ha! that reminds me that the young conservative poo poo at work leaves me alone now. he was trying to show me a video of Steven crowder's stupid loving takes so I told him that crowder is a racist loser who has no talent. I guess making fun of his idol or whatever made him hate me so I will continue to mock his stupid favs at every opportunity from now until forever  folks, insult your local chuds
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Feb 10, 2022 00:56
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cephalopods posted:I love the Amazon chat tbh. As someone frequently in charge of running the front end of an evening after the Manager goes home, I'd like nothing more than to just have a bunch of our 14/15/16/17 year olds working with me; they're the best employees. I just need one adult to sell the Cigarettes and the rest can be kids. They're always happy to be there, cheerful towards everyone, they work hard, don't need to be micromanaged and there's never any bullshit drama.
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Feb 10, 2022 05:30
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Hihohe posted:Hot dang i came back from my day off to that maga conspiracy chud being fired because he said that my coworker was only hired because he was black and also gay. we have a couple of those and I am counting down the days until our company's mandatory vaccination deadline kicks in and they get fired.
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Feb 10, 2022 05:39
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Papa Was A Video Toaster posted:Can we rename this thread to Amazon chat? I just want to bitch about Karens and I have nothing in common with the average poster ITT any more. You've made 2 other posts in this thread, both on the same day back in Nov. Not really sure you have the right to complain about Amazon chat...
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Feb 10, 2022 17:21
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In the past couple weeks, two people in my area have moved on; one of them got another job, the other got a team lead slot on the other side of the store. There were both full time closers. Management has told us they're going to hire three part timers to replace them. gently caress. In the meantime, I've been working three departments by myself every evening. I'm tired.
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Feb 10, 2022 18:20
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renegotiation for our contact starts today. I'm optimistic about improvements, given the current state of labor. i mean, it's hardships all the way down. minimum wage went up, and that's good and it should be higher, but the pay caps for some positions stayed the same so I'm hoping they go up this time. for all his suffering and for all the suffering he brings on himself I think my department head should make more than a dollar more per hour than me
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Feb 10, 2022 23:00
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CEOs bragging to shareholders how they can use inflation to jack up prices. poo poo like this is why people need to be happy I don't have superpowers because I would be going Titan on their asses. Megamind is such an underrated movie I swear.
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Feb 11, 2022 02:02
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The inventory shortages are finally starting to hit me here in central Texas. There was no cream cheese on the shelf besides some flavored vegan stuff (I would have tried it despite the cost but all the unflavored stuff was gone). I managed to successfully stamp down on the urge to be a little poo poo and ask a worker if they had more in the back: HEB doesn't pay their workers enough for them to deal with me being an rear end in a top hat for my own amusement. Also I didn't feel like earning an entirely justified black eye. So instead I put my bag of bagels back, got a baguette of french bread and some nice bree, goat cheese and wenslydale with apricots for snacks because those were in stock I'm sick and tired of hearing spoiled fucks go "Well you'd have a house if you just cut back on the things that make life worth living".
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Feb 12, 2022 01:19
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Confession time: when I worked retail, I never minded being asked to check if something was in the back. Even if I was really busy with something, I didn't mind a quick mini-break to just take a brief walk and catch a breath, and (maybe things were different in the mid-90's) we actually often did have sale items back there if they were bought up quick and we hadn't had time to restock them yet so it never really even felt unreasonable. It never happened so often that it hosed up my stocking or whatever I was doing, and it's not like I needed to spend extra time spinning back up into the right thought process for stocking, it wasn't a complex task. Maybe poo poo's different elsewhere or now but being interrupted from my work seemed like a pretty stupid thing to care about when I was making $5.15/hr.
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Feb 12, 2022 02:17
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IMO it's fine to ask as long as you're not obviously interrupting something important and are ready to cheerfully accept "Sorry, I know for a fact we have no more in the back" for an answer and bugger off.
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Feb 12, 2022 02:38
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I never check out the back, especially with the unprecedented supply disruption of covid. Our shelves are 30% bare at any given time, do people seriously think we'd have stuff out the back if we could fill it? Stock falls into 3 groups - On the Shelf, Leftover poo poo that won't fit on the Shelf, and freshly arrived load that hasn't been broken down. The only scenario in which something could be in the store but not on the shelf is 3; and nobody is going to waste time digging through a still cling wrapped pallet for someone, it's not a productive use of our time (and I have absolutely no problem telling people just that).
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Feb 12, 2022 02:57
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Fair enough. The only worker near me I could have asked anyways was someone I'd seen be interrupted twice while I did the whole "Wait this section is empty...is the thing I want out? Yup. Are their alternatives I want? Nope. Do a quick look-around to make sure corporate hasn't had the store shift poo poo about just to make it harder to find." Sequence. My experience in customer-facing retail is rather limited since I'm retail-logistics, and before that I was a food-sample guy at Walmart (Even as a contractor and not an actual store-pawn: the Waltons can go die in a fire). I just know I'd personally find it kind of obnoxious to keep getting interrupted by people.
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Feb 12, 2022 03:14
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Alkydere posted:The inventory shortages are finally starting to hit me here in central Texas. There was no cream cheese on the shelf besides some flavored vegan stuff (I would have tried it despite the cost but all the unflavored stuff was gone). I managed to successfully stamp down on the urge to be a little poo poo and ask a worker if they had more in the back: HEB doesn't pay their workers enough for them to deal with me being an rear end in a top hat for my own amusement. My dude, as long as you're not an rear end in a top hat about it and don't mind waiting five to ten minutes, its okay to ask these things. In fact, its kinda nice to get to know your local grocery staff. 'dumb' things i've done that were totally okay because I was tactful about it: asking the cheese/deli section to cut a large chunk of cheese down to something more managable (its individually wrapped Asking the bakery to sell me some unbaked cookie dough at the usual cookie price. (i've also done this successfully with both donuts and cinnamon buns; they keep well in the freezer because they come in frozen). To explain, that store used to put out raw dough in their deli section in a take it and bake it at your liesure fashion. At some point they stopped, and I felt like a few peanut butter cookies, but not a whole box. Lately, my go-to when the register (more typically, a manager on register) gives that scripted 'did you find everything you need today' line is to be like 'no, ____ was out, do you know when the truck that usually carries it comes in so I can get it when its in stock?' If you ask the right person, its easy to get tidbits like 'the truck that has that ___ usally on x-days and y-days, maybe check back mid-day on of those to see if we have it?' The key is to be willing to wait for an answer and to try to catch someone at an okay time, in addition to being polite and willing to take no for an answer.
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Feb 12, 2022 05:04
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TheParadigm posted:asking the cheese/deli section to cut a large chunk of cheese down to something more managable (its individually wrapped I've asked the butcher dept. to split a 1lb ground beef into 1/2lb, since I only need that much and more is a waste, they're generally totally cool with it. quote:Lately, my go-to when the register (more typically, a manager on register) gives that scripted 'did you find everything you need today' line is to be like 'no, ____ was out, do you know when the truck that usually carries it comes in so I can get it when its in stock?' I just assume that saying "no" means that someone is getting fired, the same way that leaving a 4 out of 5 on a customer service survey means failure.
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Feb 12, 2022 10:06
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shortspecialbus posted:Confession time: when I worked retail, I never minded being asked to check if something was in the back. Even if I was really busy with something, I didn't mind a quick mini-break to just take a brief walk and catch a breath, and (maybe things were different in the mid-90's) we actually often did have sale items back there if they were bought up quick and we hadn't had time to restock them yet so it never really even felt unreasonable. I've done it on occasion if I know it's the only way to get a customer to shut up OR if it's one of the rare, like one out of a hundred, times where something's been received from the supplier but not put on the shelves yet. In the former case I usually just spend a minute confirming "yep, no boxes out here it could be in" and then spending five minutes shooting the poo poo with the shipping/receiving crew before going back to the customer and going: "very sorry, looked my hardest, ain't there."
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Feb 12, 2022 10:48
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Volmarias posted:
I will say for Staples ours goes 1-10 but the real values are: 1-6: -2 7-8: 0 9-10: +1 Our goal is to maintain 85+%. My department usually runs around 95+% (we spend a lot of face time with customers) And honestly right now with the "labor shortage" most places an employee would have to kill someone or steal from the company to get fired. And even then it's probably negotiable.
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Feb 12, 2022 13:03
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80% is a loving passing grade, any manager who comes down on you for 4/5 has been sucking the secondhand corporate koolaid out of their boss's rear end for too long
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Feb 14, 2022 00:28
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At Food 4 Less a passing score for the secret shopper was 90%. Except all the questions are graded in a way that its impossible to get 90%, you either got 100% or you would get yelled at.
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Feb 14, 2022 00:32
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Alkydere posted:Fair enough. The only worker near me I could have asked anyways was someone I'd seen be interrupted twice while I did the whole "Wait this section is empty...is the thing I want out? Yup. Are their alternatives I want? Nope. Do a quick look-around to make sure corporate hasn't had the store shift poo poo about just to make it harder to find." Sequence. Day during the store though I didn't give a poo poo. I wasn't getting anything done anyway and unless your manager is a piece of poo poo(this is a big IF) they'll understand you had customers all day. I work a department store and there usually is stock out the back, but it's unlisted and impossible to find. Last time I was in we had over 100 pallets of stock from DC unsplit and unworked.
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Feb 14, 2022 02:36
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A passing score at USPS retail services is 95%. That's so high that it might as well be 100% or 0%; pass or fail. All it gets me is a gold star on the wall if I reach 100%. The only people that care are so high up the administration that it's just a pissing contest for them.
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Feb 14, 2022 06:16
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So around September/October I posted about some dumbass trainee manager who had to be told first of all that we're not gonna run the main sorter when we just found a stray belt on it until we found where it came from. Then had to be told "No, maintenance can't fix this thing while it's running." Well the same belt that broke then just broke again tonight. I'm busy doing my best to ignore that I work at Amazon when I hear totes just smacking into each other. Call it in and soon enough maintenance is there to figure out what's going on. This time the belt broke and then got stuck in the housing so it's still there. An easy fix on break, especially now that the building actually goes on break all at once (they updated the break room capacity by creating cramped little cubicles for everyone) so the router actually stops. Last time we had to run it without a belt, just the totes skipping across the smooth plate, all night because the router didn't stop until shift change and it would cost too much to actually stop it if we didn't have to. So...yay to some sanity being restored? Also I'm assuming someone either at my FC or another had a good run at stealing poo poo under their hat. Everyone has to take their hat off for Loss Prevention as they leave the building now.
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Feb 15, 2022 12:56
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Man, our warehouse manager is such a psychopath. Zero understanding of people. So a couple months back, we did a bunch of anonymous questionnaires around the warehouse and it turned out that our department, of all departments, was the one to most savagely call him a useless sack of piss. Today we had our annual department meeting, which is usually where we go over the questionnaire, as a department, explain some of our answers, come up with some suggestions on how it could be improved. And the dumb motherfucker invited himself to the meeting and expected that, with him sitting there, glaring at us, he would get us to explain what we hated about him so he could try to browbeat us. Double lol because we all know our department head is his little rear end-kissing snitch, so we wouldn't even detail it after he spent an embarrassing half an hour trying to squeeze answers out of us, gave up and left.
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Feb 15, 2022 20:07
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just noped out on a pack and ship, laptop with a puffy battery. I am not knowingly leaving a potential incendiary bomb in my store for 21 hours and then giving it to UPS.
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Feb 18, 2022 01:46
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I've been a long time lurker in this thread and holy poo poo do I not miss working retail or anywhere near the public. My friend and I worked at a grocery store in high school that liked to gently caress with scheduling to not give you lunch breaks, etc. Paid minimum wage but had higher expectations than other grocery stores, etc. Nothing too surprising for you hardened motherfuckers. We reminisce about how we managed to "pay" ourselves though. For instance: we would take a bathroom break and just disappear for an hour to create our own paid lunch breaks until they noticed we were gone and called us on the PA. This store had a mini Pizza Hut and Blimpies Subs in it staffed by our fellow employees where you would order, they'd slap a barcode on it, and you pay at a register up front... except for us. We'd just go to the break room and eat. It turns out that the disfunction of the place was rooted in the fact that the owner and GM were vacuuming the profits up their noses and had to find creative ways to make up for it. In little old suburb-to-nowhere Rochester, MN in the 90's. Who knew that half of the town's upper crust was actually keeping a division of a Griselda Blanco linked cartel running for decades? The same cartel that actually killed one of my uncles who was trying to break into the drug game. No joke. The poo poo you find out later in life sometimes... Joe Mama fucked around with this message at 06:01 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 05:57
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Joe Mama posted:I've been a long time lurker in this thread and holy poo poo do I not miss working retail or anywhere near the public. drat MN goes hard
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Feb 19, 2022 02:01
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we play ozzy osboune on our in store radio now  I'm not a huge fan of his solo stuff (and I liked black sabbath more when  was the singer) but man that's unexpected. everything now is like they took the playlist from the local classic rock station and injected it into our radio. it's definitely better than the lovely pop/golden oldies music they used to play though. no more creepy clay aiken songs etc.
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Feb 19, 2022 02:08
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We got to play basically whatever we want, as long as what we want is I Heart Radio.
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Feb 19, 2022 20:25
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Rainbow Knight posted:no more creepy clay aiken songs etc. 🎶 If I was invisible...then I could just loooock you in your room... 🎶 (Yes, I know it's "watch" but lock is better.  )
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Feb 19, 2022 20:34
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Mini's place has 7p off a litre of petrol if you spend £40 in store. She has discovered hell.
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Feb 20, 2022 13:47
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