Let's begin by saying that you will not be able to tell the players without a program, so I will do my best to do some elementary background first, in hopes that everyone can keep all of the players straight.
Almost two and a half years ago I started my job at Smithfield News and was hired by Dee, one of the 4 main managers of the store. The others would be John, Ed (former owner) and Brian (current owner and Ed's son). Over the course of my 2+ years there I went from being low man on the seniority totem pole to being as of Monday, #5, behind Dan, Brad, Belinda and Rick. I have also went from being lowly cashier to where I do about 75% of the ordering and technically have a crew underneath me, albeit a small one and one's that I really don't boss around all that much. So if you were to ask Ed if I were a manager, he may or may not say yes, I tend to say no just because I don't view my job that way, to me I just do the shit that needs done, if I need help with something then I might ask someone to do it, but I am not the type of guy that hands down edicts from on high, it's just not the way I roll.
Before Monday I was actually #6 on that list, behind a guy named Tom. From what I knew about Tom working with him, I tended to like him. Originally we worked together at Smithfield News before he was shipped out to the ill fated and short lived Weissmart on 5th Avenue. When Weissmart closed he was moved up the street to our other downtown store, Universal News. Again, he started out as just an employee there, but through the course of some shift turnover he ended up becoming the de facto manager of the place, if for no other reason than no one else stepped in to fill the void when the people above him were let go. So for him to be running a store, there was a lot of hand holding on my part. I would give him phone numbers on different vendors he would have to keep in touch with, walk him through how to do different orders, teach him about how to make price changes in the system (they run a different software system than we do for some unknown reason) just to help him out, because help was not coming from any of our main managers in that regard.
The crew in Tom's store I am not all that familiar with, I know some of them because I have worked with them, others I know only because they come in to pick up their check every other Wednesday. Of the ones I have worked with are Cierra, who is Belinda's daughter and was hired probably a year or so after me and while she worked in our store a bit, most of her time has either been at Weissmart or Universal, Brian who I helped train in our store originally, but was moved down to Universal and Darryl who started at our store and was also moved to Universal, though I didn't work with Darryl all that much.
That is some brief background, as needed I will add more to the story, but you have enough for me to get started. Monday afternoon I am in the office, doing something for Ed on the computer (I believe I was in the process of getting tobacco price increases from Sledd that was sent to our email, but I am not positive on that point) when Tom comes into the office and sits down in the chair opposite Ed/Brian's desk. Nobody says anything, so I proceed to make small talk with Tom just to pass the time. Ed is upstairs and John and Dee are both at their desks doing whatever it is they do (I say that because they do do things, they are just things above my pay grade that help the store run and not to be a smartass and suggest they were doing nothing). Anyway, Ed comes in the office and goes around to his desk and calls Dee and John up to his desk also. This is one of those can't be good moments and I am trapped in the office for it. Now Tom has been called to the office before for a tongue lashing or two, we all have, and I have tried to temper those somewhat with Ed by saying, listen,. he hasn't even been trained for the job you all have him in, so it is going to be a work in progress and mistakes will be made. I assumed that would be the tone of this meeting as well, but I didn't really want to be in the room for it. But I am stuck because I have the paperwork in my hands that Ed wanted, and Ed made no call for me to leave the room, so whatever was going to happen, while it would be bad I wouldn 't think it would be that bad. But it was.
Ed starts the conversation by saying "What happened?" If Ed ever asks you that question, there is almost never a right answer. And such was the case for Tom as well. When he wasn't sure what Ed was talking about, Ed followed up with with something along the lines of "Where's the money?" Apparently a newspaper vendor stopped by the store that day and had dropped off $25 in cash, whether that was for credit on old newspapers or just a bonus for selling them, I really have no idea. Tom says, "it's right here, I was going to bring it up after my shift ended" (he normally works 6:30-2:30, but our store is along the route he walks to get to his car to go home) and proceeds to pull the money out of his pocket and give it to Ed. Ed asks what was the money was doing in Tom's pocket to begin with. And why didn't Tom call the store after the money was dropped off to see what Ed or John wanted to do with it. Tom says he was busy and didn't get a chance to call, but he had intended to drop the money off on his way home and explain where it was from. Not a good enough explanation for Ed, Ed believes Tom was going to steal the money and that was why it was in his pocket. And since Tom didn't call the store, or even leave the money in an envelope at Universal saying what it was from, Ed doesn't want Tom working for him anymore. I am of the notion that I can see both sides of this, on one hand the money should never have been in Tom's pocket, it could have been any place else but there and all is good. On the other hand, Tom could very well have been teling the truth, after all if you are going to steal from the store, one would think you would take more than $25. Plus we were getting paid in two days anyway, if Tom needed money that bad he easily could have called and asked for a loan and someone in the office would have given it to him. Or he could have borrowed it from someone, I know he has borrowed money from me a handful of times in the past and has always paid it back, even when I forgot he borrowed it to begin with. So from a solve the puzzle perspective, the pieces there just don't add up for me.
This all being said, after the meeting Ed talks to his managers there (Dee and John) and asks if he handled it okay. John seemed to know more about this situation than Dee, and he said he knew what had happened but was waiting to see what Tom did, if Tom just went home with the money then he would know he had a problem, if he dropped the money off or called later in the day asking what to do with it, well that would answer the question as well. But the determining factor for Ed was that the money was in Tom's pocket.
All of this being said, the big question for me was, how did the office find out to begin with? It is not like they venture down the street all that often to check on the other store, John goes down most frequently and that is usually to do some of their paperwork and grab some invoices so he can balance the books back at Smithfield, but the other three rarely make an appearance at Universal. Enter Cierra into the equation, apparently she called or texted John saying she saw Tom put the money in his pocket and when John didn't do anything right away (we have covered how John wanted to handle it already), she notified Ed as well. And that was when the shizznit hit the fan.
I have had a rocky relatrionship wioth Cierra. While I like her Belinda, her mom, a lot, Cierra got on my wrong side from something that had happened previously. When we first opened the deli section, Ed wanted to start making sandwiches at our store and then ship them down to Universal to put in their open air cooler. Since at the time my crew consisted of just me, it became my job to run the sandwiches down there, so I would wait to hear from them, and then take down whatever it was they needed as they needed it. I didn't take a lot of extra stuff because there were times where stuff just didn't sell and being between two stores I tended to devote my time to what needed my attention most. If I didn't get a call, I assumed they still had enough stuff to get through another day. Well, during this meeting with Cierra, Ed had asked her about something she did or didn't do, I can't recall what the conversation was about because it didn't pertain to me, and I like to stay on a need to know basis on such things and I just didn't need to know. But rather that address Ed's concern, Cierra blurts out that, well, the cooler is empty down there. So, in order to cover her own ass, Cierra opted to throw me under the bus. To make matters worse, it was a day where I had already taken stuff down there, so not only did she throw me under the bus, but lied in doing so. And me, well I am the type of guy that doesn't forget such things. You fuck me over, I don't forget it. Now I find out that the source of this infomation about Tom is that very same person, and more alarm bells go off. That doens't mean Cierra is lying here, but it does make me question the story even more.
Anyway, John calls back down to Universal to let them know what happened, and during the course of the conversation Cierra says something about a radio that was sent to the store like 7 months ago that Tom kept and she wouldn't have said anything save for that radio. This is something I do know about, because I helped broker that deal. What it was was simply, Lipton Tea had started a program where if you ordered X number of cases of their 99 cent 1 liter bottles in a week, you could fill out a form and have some gifts sent to your store. I knew about the program because our store had done it twice already, and with the numbers we were doing, we qualified for all of the prizes, which was 9 t shirts, 5 sweat shirts and a FM alarm clock radio with an ipod dock. And I talked to the Pepsi rep down there and helped broker the deal for that store as well. While they did not order enough for everything, they would still have qualified for the shirts and sweat shirts. As it turned out though, Pepsi screwed up and sent them the radio also. Technically Ed is right when he says the radio should have came up to him and he should have decided what to do with it, but of all of the people there who could have gotten it, Tom was the guy that eventually finalized the deal and did all of the paperwork, so him keeping the radio was but a blip on my radar screen of important things that happened. Yet here it was being brought up again 7 months later. And for all of the complaining about the radio, no one seems to be complaining about the shirts. Shouldn't they have been sent up to our store also for Ed to divvy out as he deemed fit? It would seem no one is complaing about the shit they did get, only the stuff they didn't.
Since the day wasn't over, Monday continued and news got around pretty quickly that Tom got canned. I know I had talked to a few people about it. I went over to the deli and joked with them a bit, saying that they are going to have to make more turkey and swiss sandwiches for Universal now, because Cierra and Darryl had requested more of them previously, and most likely Cierra is now in charge of that location. It was more a flippant thing than anything else, just me trying to smooth over the crap that just happened with a little bit of humor.
But when I talked to some people outside while having a cigarette I did voice some more serious concerns I had over what I had witness transpire, much if not all of which you have already read about and this blog is long enough that I need not be repeating myself. All good, right? Wrong.
Today I am at work, just doing whatever it is I do, and Belinda catches me downstairs and asks to talk to me, and proceeds to bring up many of the things I had said the previous day to a select number of people, including an almost verbatim retelling of my joke to the deli, but she wasn't taking it as a joke. To Belinda's credit, I get she is defending her daughter and she didn't get all hysterical on me or anything and I believe we are still relatively cool, but the notion that the minute I say something to some people they feel this need to go repeating what I said to whomever they choose does piss me off a bit. See, again while I am a sort of manager, I have tended to be the cool guy as much as I can be the cool guy there. When Belinda was looking for a house to buy, I gave her the name and number of a friend who is a real estate agent, I have helped 4 different employees get computers via my ebay account, a handful of times I sprung for lunch (usually pizza) for the entire crew out of my own pocket, or I have made stuff at home and taken it in and shared it. I have hung out and drank with them, even putting a few rounds on my tab. And this is how I am eventually repaid? That the minute I say something my words will be used against me for whatever reason. Fine, lesson learned.
Tomorrow is a brand new day at work, because tomorrow I am a dick. No more favors, no more nice guy joking around with the staff, I am just punching my clock, doing my job and going home. That's it. I don't have to like people, I just have to work with them.
