A little background. I got a Job at a Wal-Mart in August last year working overnight maintenance. Within the first week I came to realize that there was absolutely no consensus, within the employees or the management, how to do anything or even what needs to be done. My job since pretty much day 1 has been to do the bathrooms, sweep the wood (basically the clothing area), and clean a few other offices/rooms. I was trained by the person who had been doing it previously. She taught me to do it thoroughly, so I did. Then the management started to complain that I was taking too long, and kept piling on ridiculous deadlines for each task.I had to cut corners to save time. The management didn't have any complaints for a while, until the upper management (which normally isn't in the store) complained about the quality of the bathrooms. So they tell me I need to take my time and do them properly again. Fine, so I did. Then they complain about going too slow. So I have to speed up again. Then Upper management comes in and tells me personally to slow down and do it properly. Lower management tells me to comply. Fine, I slow down again. And finally it ended with them telling me to somehow do it all in half the time it actually takes to do it, without sacrificing quality. And this is just the bathrooms.
When I said "sweep the wood", it actually includes picking up all the clothing off the floor as well, which tends to be a lot because management demanding the stockers to not take any into the back room, regardless of weather there's room on the sales floor or not. So stocker hours wasted dealing with stuffing clothing where it doesn't fit, and my time wasted for having to pick it all up again. Not to mention that the wood is usually overcrowded, even without excess clothing on the floor (the store is too small for all the traffic we get), making maneuvering a wide-ass dust mop through it a chore all it's own.
Then there's the break room. I have to clean it. There's almost always someone in there. Some of these people are rather hostile that I dare to clean the break room while they are using it. They verbally assault me and I can't get help from management because there's no monitoring equipment in there (at least that's what management claims...). I had one guy threaten to hit me in the back of the head with a chair for daring to block his view of the TV. Management looked the other way. And without evidence, I couldn't bring it up with anyone higher up. Oh, and it's not just me having problems with these people.
Not to mention we can't seem to keep proper supplies for the employees, as a combination of them not being ordered and other employees wasting/destroying them. Half the machines we need are pretty much permanently broken, and never seem to get fixed properly. The upper management says not to do anything with the machines ourselves, but nothing gets done to fix any of the serious problems and lower management tells us to tinker with it anyways. Repairmen come in to "fix" them, but they seem to end up broken again shortly afterwards. Not to mention that some of the water pipes coming from the roof leak, and so whenever it rains, we gotta waste time cleaning up water on the floor. Did I forget to mention we had roofing people in there, as well? I wonder what they were actually doing up there. Some birds got in a few months back and they are still there, but that's a minor gripe compared to not having the materials we need. Then there's the number of employees. Not enough maintenance because a bunch of them are pretty much just stocking all the time. They are stocking all the time because lots of the stockers just stand around and BS all night. Management only seems to bitch at people actually doing their job.
Given the concerns and ridiculous demands I had been given, I had evolved my routine to meet as many of them as possible. This meant taking my breaks at odd times to save travel time. It meant doing things in a specific order and at certain times to avoid certain people and customer interference. It meant trying to compensate for the things I could not predict and were beyond my control.
Despite (or perhaps because I was) voicing my concerns about the conflicting orders, despite trying to get off bathroom duty and on to something else (scrubbing, buffing, anything), despite being the only one doing the bathrooms properly (from what I'm told by other employees, and seeing the state of the bathrooms after I've had a couple nights off), they have the gall to call me lazy and slow? They have the fucking nerve to coach me about my performance? "No, I don't want to hear it, just sit there and listen. I don't want to hear your excuses.". They obviously can't get anyone to do the job as well as I can. "Just do what I tell you" seems to be the only answer I can get out of them. Funny, I thought I was doing that the whole time (barring some stupid task I shouldn't have to do being shoveled on me at random, and not having the time to spare).
The good news is, I got to tell them off and I no longer have to work there! The bad news is, I didn't give the 2 week notice so I can't get re-hired (why would I want to?), and I have to find a new job. I don't know how the lack of the 2-week notice is going to affect my job search, but I was not going to hang around a minute longer if they were going to talk down to me like that. I should have left months ago, when I first realized the whole thing was BS.
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Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3701696 times)