The Trash Takes Itself Out
Oh boy, I’m tired of being recognized. I live in a relatively small podunk college town, with three grocery stores, a terrible mall, and a slightly decent downtown.
Because I work in one of those grocery stores, in the pharmacy, I’m often identified when I’m out and about, and for some reason, I just look like I work there, wherever this mythical there is.
I’ve just finished watching a movie at our local dying mall, having gone myself since I just wanted to get away for a while. As I’m exiting the theater, I hear that dreaded voice, the entitled call of the snooty customer.
“HEY! HEY YOU!” I turn around, and see your average soccer mom, with bleach blond hair and a purse big enough to brain a camel, carrying a large collection of trash.
She’s holding the trash with one hand, her struggling child with the other, and stares at me pointedly. I don’t want to believe what’s about to happen, but I steel myself.
“Yes?” “Throw this away.” No please, no asking, just a demand. I glance to a trash can that’s only five feet from where she’s standing.
“Why?” Oh, you’d think I’d just offered to split her child in half in front of her with a broadsword.
“You work at (big box store), you’re used to this!” Amazing. She knows I don’t work there, but she still thinks I’m put on this earth to serve her.
I just roll my eyes and turn away, scooting towards the bathroom. “Sorry ma’am, gotta pee.” And I do just that, taking a quick leak and a long time washing my hands.
By the time I exit, the woman and her kid are gone.
I figure that’s all that’s going to happen with this, just some entitled person who thinks that I work in retail she can just treat me like an indentured servant.
Oh boy, was I wrong. Two days later I’m back at work, just doing my thing slinging pills at the pharmacy, when one of our most hated managers shows up.
Let’s call her Gladys. Passive-aggressive, snobby, and more than happy to toss her weight around.
“Would you come with me, please?” I am a bit shocked, since I’ve not been in trouble with this job for over five years, and my mind immediately starts spinning through anything I may have done in the past week or so.
Gladys takes me back to the manager office, picks up some papers, and has a seat. “I had a complaint about you the other day from a customer.”
I sink down, trying not to shake with panic. What have I done? “She says you were very rude to her at the movie theater the other day, and refused to help her.” Silence.
I just blink a few times at Gladys. “I’m sorry, what?” Gladys repeats the accusation. “When you work for this company, you represent us, even when you’re not on the clock.
Now, I’m only going to give you a coaching, but I want you to watch what you do in the future.”
I tell her, “no.” Gladys looks back at me in shock. Did I just say no to her? “What do you mean, no?” “I said, no.
I’m not taking a coaching for something that happened off the clock.” I lean forward, folding my hands in my lap and glaring at her.
“Why are there no other managers here? Why’s my pharmacy manager not here? Shouldn’t he be here when I’m being coached by someone that’s not even over my department?”
“Speaking of which, where’s our department manager? Could you show me where in the code of conduct handbook it says I can’t refuse to clean up after someone when I’m not on the clock?
Doesn’t it say in the training videos we watch when we start NOT to work off the clock?” Gladys is doing her best impression of a gaping fish by this point, eyes wide and staring back at me.
I don’t think she was expecting the happy go lucky nerd in the pharmacy to take such a hard line and not just roll over to her casual bullying.
I stood up and opened the door. “If you want to take it up with my manager, please do. But do know that if I hear anything about this, I’ll take this all the way to the store manager, your boss.
Corporate, if I have to.”
I left, shaking with anger. I’d heard others in the store complain about this manager before and how she’d try to toss her weight around, but I’d never had it happen to me before.
I don’t know if the original customer was a friend of Gladys’s and she thought she’d get some revenge, but I never heard anything else on the matter.
Two months later, Gladys was let go in a store re-structuring.
Every other manager was shifted or re-assigned, but she was the only one to be shown the door.