Vengenance is Mine, sayeth Matt Pritt

I guess there is lots to blog about, after all it has been a while since I have put cursor to blogpad and proceeded to chime off with anything.  Suffice it to say, The Summer of Suck is still very much in effect this week.  The difference being for some, now I am the provider of said suck.  More on that later, lets begin with some happier notes shall we.  First I have redeemed all of the Coke points I can for this week, the total stands at 1988, and we are mere days away from declaring a winner in the blog giveaway contest for a free year of Pogo.com.  For those unawares, or just needing a recap, here are the contest rules. 

All is not terrible in the land of Suck however.  For instance I happened to turn on America's Got Talent the other night.  I usually don't watch much of the show, but this was the last act before the news was coming on and I wanted to make sure that they weren't misusing the Storm Tracker radar, with it's gazillion watts of power that occasionally get things right from a meteorological perspective.  Anyway, it was the Youtube version of the show, contestants submit videos of there talent, and I use that term very loosely, and the judges then pick a handful of those they deem most talented to perform live, with the possibility of moving on to a million dollar cash prize and Las Vegas show, much like the regular version of the show.  The last contestant is the person of all of the video submissions that gets the most fan votes.  It turns out the fan vote winner was a local girl, Jackie Evancho, all of 10 years old.  Just when I think there is nothing around these parts that can amaze me, something like this happens.





Okay, let's not kid anyone, if the Summer of Suck is in effect, I am not going to be blowing smoke up your asses with all things happy and wonderful, so it is time to go about doing things that are less than positive.

Many moons ago, but not so many blogs ago (because I have been slacking in the blog department) I had mentioned about a new hire we had gotten, Joe, who was possibly going to be replacing my coworker Wayne, who had screwed us over during the US Women's Open.  Well as luck would have it, rather than firing Wayne, Ed instead just suspended him for a week.  Was it punishment enough for blowing off three of six shifts in a two week span?  Maybe, maybe not but considering the last one he blew off was the same day my grandmother had passed away and by him not being there it meant even had I wanted to leave early to spend time with my family I really couldn't without absolutely crippling the store, with two other people having already requested that day off and Wayne's non appearance making us three people down on a crew of 7.  Not that I could have done much with my family during those hours, my grandmother had just passed away that morning, but the notion that even if I wanted to I couldn't was enough to all but evaporate any remaining sympathy I might have for Wayne.  Then Joe doesn't work out, he starts coming close to having panic attacks while stocking the coolers and shelves.  Turns out he had recently been jumped or car jacked or something along those lines and had caught a tire iron to the back of the skull and is all jittery when people are behind him, a very common occurrence when stocking so he basically just doesn't work out, though the work he did do for us I was very happy with.  Wayne comes back after his week suspension and proceeds to be sent to our other store through the whole closing and reopening fiasco that was going on, with his job being to get all of the product out of one location and into the other in time for our opening in two weeks, and it took him all of the two weeks, with help.  Part of that was because anytime he was scheduled from 9-5, as soon as the 7-3 crew left our store and the bosses left, he would go home, usually by 4.  Sure an hour doesn't seem like much, but you do it 5 times a week for two weeks and all of a sudden you have lost better than an entire days worth of potential work.   Not that the bosses ever caught on to this little nugget of information, but I did and I just filed it away.

Wayne finally makes it back to our store starting last week.  All goes relatively smoothly, at least I assume so, I get sent to the reopened store for part of the day to help get them rolling with their ordering and what not, basically being handed the reigns of now trying to do ordering for two different locations as opposed to one.  Then week 2 starts this Monday and Wayne calls off sick.  That's okay, I only have two trucks coming into my store and I still have issues with the other store, such as locating their vendors, to worry about.  Tuesday, more of the same but better, Wayne doesn't show up and doesn't bother to call anyone and say he isn't coming in.  Worse still, Ed has a meeting with Brian and Amber, a married couple that I like that work for us.  Brian has been in charge of our stores, first Weissmart then Universal News, since his mom Patty was let go a while back.  Amber works with us at Smithfield News and I would say she probably does the most work there (others would claim it is me, but the amount of crap Amber has to put up with is something I hope I don't ever get on my plate).  Ed originally wanted to talk to Brian about some issues with the reopened store, isssues regarding our charge sheet policy and regarding the bank at the store, things with which he wasn't happy with how they were being handled.  Suffice it to say that the meeting didn't go well, to the tune of they decided that maybe they were better off parting ways.  With Amber being married to Brian and now having her husband leave the store she follows suit and now we are down two people, two I would argue very key people.  With Wayne not showing up we are shorthanded a third and we didn't find out he wasn't coming in until Ed had to actually call him.   Tuesday was a bloodletting of sorts, two people out and a third not where he was supposed to be.  Ed tells me the good news is Wayne will be back on Wednesday.  I lost it.  I looked Ed right in the eye and said I didn't fucking want him back.  Ed starts with the routine that we are shorthanded to which I replied and part of that problem is because Wayne didn't bother to show up, hell he didn't even bother to call and I was all but tired of his Jerry Springer-esque list of excuses on why he couldn't come into work; 1) it's my kid, 2) it's my girlfriend, 3) it's the bus, 4) it's my stomach.  I have had enough, he wants to work nights and fight with Curtis for hours, great, but I don't want him on my crew.  I would rather work alone knowing I am going to be alone than be expected someone to show up who may or may not grace us with his presence.  And I think my words, or maybe it was my attitude, has some impact, because he was pulled off of the schedule and I have my fingers crossed that it will be on a permanent basis.  Sure it means more work for me, but I would rather put in the extra hours than keep someone on staff who is patently unreliable.  Now with Brian and Amber also gone, I am now doing almost all of the ordering for our other store, as well as trying to reestablish accounts with Coke, Pepsi and 7 Up for them, plus doing all of my normal work at our current store.  Needless to say I am going to be rolling in the extra hours for the foreseeable future, at least until I can get someone trained to take over the ordering at Universal and get back to just doing my thing at Smithfield.

So if things were bad enough I made the mistake of calling home a few days ago.  Lots of "You wouldn't believe how much stuff so and so took out of Grandma's house" nonsense.  Of course I was asked if I would like anything to which I replied with a resounding no.  That's okay I was told, my aunt Carrie (the same one who asked me about my mother's inheritance) aparently took one of the cars my grandfather had collected so that I would have a keepsake.  Now my grandafther may have collected some model cars, I know as a former truck driver he has some scale radio rigs but I didn't consider him to be that much of a collector of them, nor did I ever buy him any of them to add to a collection that by and large I didn't know existed, but I said that it should be put back, I didn't want it.  People just don't get how loathe I am to have anything to do with this picking over the carcass, carrion like circus that is going on, and I have a bad feeling it is going to end up with me saying things that are really going to piss people off.  Please do poke the hornet's nest and see what happens. 

Right about now you are probably wondering if there is anything else "good" happening.  Well on the bright side I think I am just about done here, and hey, only a few days left until we announce a contest winner.  There, I leave you on a happy note, see?