Turning in

Another fine Saturday and I am sitting here at the Squirrel Cage, waiting for lunch to arrive in the form of today’s special, a turkey, bacon and Swiss sandwich and French fries.     It is still relatively early yet, not even 2 pm, but there is a Penguins game on the TV above the bar, which is always a nice distraction from time to time.   The Penguins are 8-3 and while I would say this young season, after losing half of the year to the NHL lockout, in truth we are already about a quarter of the way done with the season. 

A week ago I would not have planned on being here, certainly not at this time.  My schedule has been such as of late that I am working lots of hours, and up until Monday morning I could have seen myself putting in another long day, as opposed to the 4 hours I ended up working.  But sometimes things change, and for me they changed Monday morning.

Monday started out pretty much okay, I was at work on time, Sammy and I were busy banging through our early morning work, getting the coolers squared away and what not, when the Pepsi truck arrived, right about 8 am or so.  It wasn’t a huge order from Pepsi, at least by our standards, but it was still sizeable nonetheless, what with 150 cases being on the truck.  After the first of three pallets had been offloaded from the truck, what should arrive next but our grocery order, another sizeable order, checking in somewhere in the ballpark of $10,000 worth of product.  Plus both orders had items that were going back to our vendors, Pepsi had some out of date product that was being returned and Sledd was taking back a few items that were mispicks (items mistakenly put in with our last order that we didn’t request), mostly 8 cartons of cigarettes.  All told, there was about $600 in merchandise that had to go back so we could receive credit for returning them.

While all of this is going on, our accountant arrives.  She normally comes in Monday, pulls a few reports, takes the invoices that I have broken down, and then heads off to her office and does the financial paperwork to keep our books in order.  Because I was the only person in the store keys, I had to go and unlock the office so the accountant could go ahead and get the things she needed.  I stopped what I was doing with the two other vendors, unlocked the office and then went back to what I was doing.

Admittedly, I know that the office is not supposed to be left open, bit with just Sammy and myself in the basement and us dealing with $13,000 worth of product coming in, my intention was to simply get the two deliveries we had squared away so they were in house, then take the invoices and credit slips into the office, place them on my desk and lock it back up and then go about the business of putting everything away. 

I get both vendors taken care of, verifying everything that was on the invoices, got the returns put back on their respective trucks and headed down to the office to set the paperwork aside so I didn’t lose it while doing other things.  When I get into the office one of the managers is in there, John, and the first thing out of his mouth is “You know, the office is supposed to be locked at all times, we don’t want it left open.”  I replied that I had to open the office to let the accountant in and then was dealing with the $13,000 worth of product we were bringing in, to which I was told that I could have stayed in the office until the accountant was done, she would have only been in there for 5 minutes.  Yes, like I was using that time to screw around and not using it to do other work, so I just said, “You know what, you can keep my fucking keys”, tossed them on what used to be my desk and went back to work putting things away. 

So for the rest of this week I have been out of the office, save for when I absolutely had to be in there, and even then only when another manager was present.  If no manager is around, then I no longer have anything to worry about as far as what needs done in there.  I guess I have a hard time getting in trouble when I am busting my ass for 110+ hours every two weeks (I will finish this pay period around 116) while people who are lucky if they even work 6 hours a day while making substantially more than me have the audacity to complain that I am not getting things done in a timely enough fashion for them.   So I just quit doing all of it.

It should make for an interesting Monday morning, when I am sure the accountant will once again be there before any manager arrives, expecting me to open the office for her when it just isn’t going to happen.  Plus our sales rep from Sledd will no doubt be in, looking to see if we want to sign up for any of the upcoming specials and promotions that they will be offering.  Sorry but that would fall under an office related task/decision and I don’t work in there anymore.  Meanwhile my Saturday’s just got a little easier, no access to the office means I do not have to sit in there all day on Saturday checking prices, adding new products to the system.  My life is much easier and less stressful, which is a good thing.

The extra hours I have been working probably will not be affected by this decision either, because all I have been doing is staying later so I can make sure the store is okay for the second shift (3pm-11pm), so I get an extra 2-4 hours each weekday where I make sure all of the coolers are stocked, the coffee and hot dogs are set up, the rugs are vacuumed, actual manual labor as opposed to sitting in the office at a desk mulling over paperwork.  And being out of the office is most definitely a good thing, what with the managers coming in and maybe working all of 5 hours in the office and the entire time bitching and moaning like they are pulling a 5 year stretch in a Vietnamese prison camp.  Half the time they are so fucking lazy they can’t even be bothered to get their own lunch, instead sending Sammy out to pick it up for them.  It is borderline pathetic.

Elsewhere, now that I am done bitching about work, I have finally finished my book on the mob, “Five Families”, which should now be on the bookshelf to the right.  700 pages of Mob history, made even longer because I read a couple of other book after I had first started it, but now it is done, so of course I jumped right into my next book, another nonfiction tome, “Team of Rival”, a history on the presidency and cabinet of Abraham Lincoln.  I just started reading it this morning, so I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of it, but it does look promising.  Of course there is a gold seal on the front of the book and it in is written “”A remarkable study in leadership” – President Barack Obama”, so no doubt I will come to find that Abraham Lincoln was actually from Kenya, was a Manchurian, Muslim, terrorist sympathizing President, who was a socialist because he took away everyone’s blacks that they owned, when of course we should have ended slavery by letting more people own more blacks.  Or something like that.

Anyway, I should finish my lunch, it will be nice to be home while it is still daylight outside for a change.  I still have half a sandwich to go and my second glass of iced tea.  What can I say, they know me too well here. 

Toodles!