Tuesday, June 29, 2004
Tonight's close, and how I'm becoming my own Shift o' Doom
Tonight was teh suck -- though it could have been worse.
I've been assigned a newbie to train. This is all well and good; he seems nice enough, seems to be picking up on things fairly well. It was only his second shift, so I had to cover a lot of material with him. Plus run the shift.
So, at six o'clock after the manager meeting, I get on the floor. Immediately I have this new guy to train. But this is fine, because I have Hope, David, and Anthony on the floor too. BUT, I have to give all of them breaks, and THEN I have to get Anthony's lunch worked in. Plus they haven't been able to do much pre-closing since they couldn't get to the back room during the meeting, so we're already behind. But, I think, it's all cool, since Hope, David, and Anthony are awesome.
Yet it seemed like the drive through was going non-stop all evening and not everything got done. I couldn't do much of anything because I was busy with the training. Then this dipwad of a guy came in wanting me to call every freaking store in the Austin area to find an Italia automatic espresso machine so he could exchange his defective one. The Italias SUCK. Whatever you do, if any of you ever consider investing $900 in an espresso machine, do not waste your time or your money on this piece of crap. I've heard so many horror stories. Despite the fact that I'm supposed to encourage him to try some troubleshooting methods, I explained how much the machines suck, and how this would continue to be a recurring problem for him (it occurs to me, in hindsight, that this was not the best thing to do. I am nothing if not honest; I just happen to be a bit tactless, too, and telling the guy that his $900 machine was a hunk of junk... probably not a good idea). He didn't seem to care; he just wanted to find a machine to exchange it with. Then he had the audacity to try to come around the bar and look at the list of store phone numbers. I told him to get right on back to the other side of the counter. Finally I found one at another store and sent the loser with the machine of doom on his way.
So that wasted a good twenty minutes of my life, right there. By that time Anthony had to have a lunch at 7:30, then Hope and David both left at eight, leaving me with the newbie and Anthony, for the last two hours of the night. Stuff needed to be stocked and put back, bathrooms needed to be cleaned, we were running out of grande lids, the lobby was a mess, trash needed taking out, dishes needed doing, other stuff needed to be prepped. And I still had an hour of training left. I left Anthony to the drive through and carried on.
Anthony, who we've only had for a few months, is wonderful and I love him to death. He's not exceedingly outgoing. He doesn't say much. He doesn't start conversations. But he is a wonderful person to work with. He's incredibly fast, and excellent on drive-through, and he slides around to different positions with way more ease than many people ever do. He does all the side duties so quickly that I don't even realise he's done them. I'm lucky I had him around tonight.
So, finally, nine o'clock comes, and I say good-bye to the newbie, give Anthony a break, and get down to some serious business. Naturally people come in intermittently through the last of the evening, instead of being dead like most nights. And naturally one of those people is Ciro, one of the most annoying regular customers, who will talk your ear off and follow you around asking questions.
At ten I have Anthony close his till and I realise that I haven't done anything with the safe all evening. So I have FIVE full tills to count, fix, and make change for. Plus the rest of the closing duties. Somehow we managed to get out only five minutes late -- but there were a few things that had to be left undone, and when I clocked out I realised I'd also needed a lunch break and hadn't worked it in.
In fact, I want to know how exactly I was supposed to work in a lunch break with all that going on.
As I was rushing about like a mad thing this evening, David commented that I needed to "lighten up". "Ever since you became a shift supervisor," he said, "you take everything too seriously."
At the time I brushed it off and told him to go make a drink. After all, David has taken after Jon just a little too much and developed several of Jon's bad habits. However, I think he's got a definite point, and it worries me: this is what scared me most about becoming a shift, that I would become the person that no one wants to work with.
The thing is, this is part of my nature. If you give me tasks and put me in a position where it is solely my responsibility to make sure those tasks get done and done to standard, I become deadly serious about that responsibility. I give orders and correct people a lot more often than I've ever done. I try not to talk down to people, but I always seem to be reiterating something to someone. I want the people I work with to be up to my standards -- heck, I'm even berating myself for forgetting things that I should do. Everyone's performance affects my reputation and reflects upon my ability, you see. So, I do take it very seriously.
But I wonder if I'm taking it too seriously. I mean, it's not like I'm running the joint. But I'm not one to take my job lightly and lessen my standards, even if it is just an hourly job pouring coffee. I also wonder if this is an effect of being new to the supervisordom and not having quite adjusted into a routine as a shift. Maybe things'll be different after a couple of months.
Or maybe I'm destined to become the Serious Shift o' Doom who no one wants to be scheduled with because she makes you do everything just so.
| 1:33 AM |
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