November

Well, it's November again. The worst month of the year. I worked at a grocery store for 9 years. For the first few it wasn't so bad. The first two I was under 18 so I was just a bagger (courtesy clerk), and I was awesome at bagging. I could do paper on a large order with the fastest checker and keep up. (bagging with paper sucks and takes almost twice as long usually) I could take care of 2 checkstands all by myself (3 if the 3rd one was an express lane). So November was a challenge for me, and I accepted it gladly.

November holds Thanksgiving, you see. And while only a portion of the population celebrates things like Christmas or Easter, everyone celebrates Thanksgiving. Yes, everyone also celebrates Independence Day, however that is not a holiday about food. Thanksgiving is all about food.


The next year, when I was 18, I forget what I was doing. Whatever it was I didn't matter cause I wasn't anyone important yet. The next year, I was 19. That's when reality hit me. That year the dairy manager quit. I was the first person they went to as a replacement. I was awesome at dairy, too. I'd been doing dairy since I was 17 (part of my shifts were bagging and part were dairy, then when I turned 18 I got checking included to that). I could break down 6 pallets in one night and keep the shelves full. Oh, I look back on that with astonishment. I am not that young anymore. Anyway, it was my first year as a manager, I was in charge and I had a department to run! I know other departments have their fun, meat dept has a whole semi trailer full of turkeys sitting out back (refer on, of course), but dairy also has it's share. More things than you would think are Thanksgiving hits. You have your spray cool whip of course, and butter (butter's a big one, I'd be ordering about 50 cases a load (36 lbs to a case). Whipping cream. Coffee Creamer. Whole milk. Even yogurt! And one year stupid Oprah released a recipe for egg nog and I was selling eggs like it was Easter (bitch. she needs to send out emails to stores when she gives out her recipes or suddenly hates or loves a food) and I was unable to keep up with demand (which made a lot of people angry at me). Egg nog. Even orange juice. Actually, you know what, let's just assume every item in the department is a big hit in November. But, being young and new to this I only thought about what my family did. It never occurred to me anyone would want yogurt for Thanksgiving. I never gave a thought to Black Friday and the need for coffee creamer and orange juice. Luckily the previous dairy manager left me a list of best sellers. But I didn't know how much of these things I'd need. So I ordered a ton each load. It got to the point where I was having to take pallets of freight out and set aside in order to bring in milk loads. (you would not believe how much milk I was having to order), and milk loads were bad because the delivery schedule was way different. Normally they come on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Well since they're closed on Thursday they had to come in on Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday. Do you know how long it takes to decide how much to order for Monday and Tuesday? You have to think, Tuesday's expiration date will be different from Mondays and in order to keep rotation good you must rotate. But you really don't sell enough in one day to make rotation easy if you bring in a normal load. Then you have to realize that from about 6pm Thursday to 6am Friday there will be no sales. Friday is always dead so there's practically no sales. But you do NOT want to be out of ANY product on Wednesday or God have mercy on your soul cause the store director will kill you for it. (at least the store director we got when I was 20 would, thank God the store director when I was 19 liked me) So you have to decide if you want to run Monday's load super light with only essentials and risk running out of something or if you want to order medium to make sure you get through till Tuesday. Wasn't so bad when the warehouse was in town, but it closed at some point so there was no having specials brought in if you needed it.

The next year wasn't so bad in ways cause I was more experienced. In ways it was worse cause we had the store director from hell. He made me cry almost every day I worked there for years before he was finally told by the company president that I'm actually the best at what I do. As an example: I came down with a nasty flu on Christmas day. I worked the next day and was so sick and nauseous I barely made it 2 hours before I begged to go home. It was the assistant that day and she let me. The next day I was still so sick a normal person probably would have called in (I never call in and have only gone home maybe 3 times). My ears were stuffed and I spent all day about to puke. 2 hours before I was to go home the store director freaked out because I wasn't responding to checker calls. (dairy is everyone's bitch, if any other department in the store needed anything or were too lazy to do their jobs you called dairy to do it) I said I couldn't hear them and before he would let me talk any more he said if I couldn't hear them I had to spend the rest of my shift checking. When I got up front I was crying and a braver person than I took notice and yelled at him for it and got me out of the checkstand. The next day he complained about being sick with a nasty flu and his ears were all stuffed up. I looked right at him and said "Yeah, I have it too and was like that yesterday." Actually I think he kinda felt bad for that cause his face turned a little sour and he said "oh" but he NEVER apologized to me. Another time I ran out of milk and he said he was sick of it and was writing up the grocery manager (who is in charge of the dairy people) cause he clearly couldn't keep me in line or something. The next day I spent the first few hours in fear of what he'd say to me and finally at 7AM (I worked 5am-1pm all the time) the store director showed up and said he had never written anyone up, he only said he'd written up my boss to scare me cause he knew I wouldn't care if I myself was in trouble. I almost broke down crying right in front of him, I almost threw my name badge at his feet and walked out. I daydreamed about walking out so often. Other times he'd yell at me (actually literally yell, and he has a dirty mouth and no discretion, I believe it was actually customers who turned him into corporate and got him to finally take people to the office or out back before yelling at them) for having dirty shelves and then yell when the shelves were empty cause I'd spent all day cleaning them. I was threatened with being fired for leaving the store without having every single product stocked full. I got real good at "making magic". That is, when it's quicker to pull a tag off the shelf and stuff it in my apron and make two rows of something in the place where the other product is empty or almost empty so it looks like I don't even carry the first product. I usually worked 30-90 minutes over every single day and when I left the store it was with a sick feeling in my stomach like I might not have a job the next day cause I overlooked something. Most the time I felt I had to sneak out, and if I had to buy groceries and I saw the store director I'd go the long way around an aisle to sneak around him so I could get what I needed and sneak out.

Anyway, he's a big reason for my anxiety, as you can see, but that wasn't really the purpose of this post. So for the next few years here's how my Thanksgiving went:

The ICM would go on vacation so I'd have to cover for her. She is the person who checks in vendors and does a ton of the store's paperwork that no one ever looks at but needs to be there in case corporate walks in. So the week before Thanksgiving I worked from Monday till Saturday and then the week of Thanksgiving I worked Sunday through Thursday. Yes, 11 days straight and 9 hours every day except the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I'd work 10-11 hours. Constant non-stop and generally skipping my breaks and I'd still be behind. I usually spent November in tears most every day, and I took sinus medication for stress relief. While the ICM was gone I'd have to run my department and hers. And if I forgot to do an order because I had so much to try and remember to do I was screwed. The computer only orders so well. Then there's the trucks of turkeys that'd come in and we'd have to try and find room for. One year I reminded people for over a week that turkeys would be coming in and we needed to get a refer trailer in there to hold them all. And you know what happened? One lovely day I went up to the assistant and was all “We have 20 pallets of turkeys, where do you want them?” hahaha, she swore like she'd forgotten all about turkeys and it took them a few hours before they could get a trailer in. In the meanwhile I had to offload all 20 of those pallets and set them outside the store in the back lot and hope no one stole any. We had to leave the back door open during this time. And you know what? In nearly negative degree weather that sucked. The backroom, which is normally like ice anyway, was totally frozen. The poor vendors and icm. Cause we had to have an employee in the backroom this entire time cause the door was open and the security camera watches the back door and if corporate were to check the camera and see the icm left the door open unsupervised she can get in a lot of trouble. But I had to do it cause we had two or three more trucks waiting to be offloaded. All the while I'm the only one in my department and the shelves are running low and I have to do two more orders. And the front end is calling me to check every 10 minutes or so and if I don't go I get threatened with being fired. And then of course some customer sticks their head in the backroom and asks me to search the magical land that is the backroom for a product that's out on the shelf and I know we don't have back there but I have to look anyway to make them happy, but since it's not my department and I don't know the product all I can do is aimlessly wander the backroom and hope it jumps out at me. Occasionally it does. Probably a good 90% of the time it doesn't. And when I say no I sometimes have to deal with a very upset person. “I drove here from 60 miles away” so sorry but if you desperately needed a full case of this maybe you should have called ahead, “It's going off sale on Wednesday and I won't be back before then!” well I can write you a raincheck, “I need it tomorrow!” Maybe you should have thought of this sooner.


Really, why do people think they can wait till the last second and then blame ME when the store is out of something? Also, there is always that one person. Like one year I had a woman come in and say she wants to buy 3 cases of the local eggs. Well, firstly she could have bought them right from the local guy cause he's, you know, local, and very nice, btw. Secondly, it's not something I sell a lot of so I didn't have that many cases. She said that's fine, she can take what I have off the shelf. Oh, I blew it and told her that I was only going to give her one case cause she's not the only customer on the planet who wants to buy that product and if she buys me out other people won't have any. She was all, “But I need them!” I was like “Other people need them too!” I don't care if you want to buy 36 dozen eggs, but call ahead next time! I love special orders, I truly do. They mean people besides you get the product. I take your number, the item, and in 3-4 days you can pick it up. If it's on sale I'll even write you a raincheck in case something happens and it comes in late.

Also, sometimes we literally can not help something being out. The warehouse might be out. Which means no store in the company gets the product. Sometimes the warehouse can be out of something for over 2 months. I don't know why. So don't get mad if I say it's a warehouse out. Ok, well, yeah, sometimes I lie and say it's out when it's not. Why? Cause you look like the kind of person who is going to throw a fit and bitch me out for a good 20 minutes for being out of something and you know, I have stuff to do. I know I'm out. Sorry. Sometimes you can't help it cause of, well, Oprah or like the egg lady up there.

In the two weeks before Thanksgiving you have vendors bringing in tons of stuff. Pepsi and Coke will bring in probably 12 pallets of soda each, the beer and wine guys bring in a combined total of about 7-8 pallets, and the backroom is already stuffed up with nonfoods Christmas stuff, and grocery's Thanksgiving stuff. A lot of the time you wind up with about half a backroom's worth of stuff out back behind the store and a frozen and stressed ICM who is trying to keep track of all this.

Then you have the ads. Yes, ads. There's the standard weekly ad but on Sunday before Thanksgiving the ROP ad starts. And you have no warning about what will be on it unless you're friendly with the scan coordinator and happen to catch her in a good mood. (imagine having to hang tags for every item that's going on sale for Thanksgiving and having to have it done overnight before customers really start showing up and getting upset that things “aren't on sale” even though it's what's in the computers that matter, the tags don't mean anything. Those times that the tag says something is a cheaper price than it scans and the checker changes it for you? That means the scan coordinator didn't do her job or missed something and if the checker happens to have half a brain he tells someone who can do something about it and they go take the tag down and put up the right one. We only give you the lower price due to policy) Well, anyway, she's stressed too. And a lot of the time she doesn't know what's on the ROP ad either and if you ask she has to dig through mountains of tags to find the ones for your department.

And to make things even more fun corporate always comes visiting the week of Thanksgiving. They wear santa hats and hand out candy canes and you have to put on a smile and deal with their foppish ways or get branded a bad employee. Which means no matter how stressed you are it gets worse. You have to make your department spotless, organize the backstock, label all the juice you know will be gone in a week with dates for rotation purposes, make sure you are out of nothing, and come in at 3AM to make sure it's all done! And pray that the trucks are late showing up. Unless you have a mess you want to hide behind pallets of freight in which case you pray they come in early. Also if the health department happens to make a surprise visit you need to get your act together (dairy is the last department checked, so I always get about 2 hours warning cause they visit service deli first so someone calls me to let me know they're in), which is always fun cause corporate and the health dept always look for very different things. What corporate couldn't care less about the health dept will knock points off for and vice versa. So while I'm preparing for two visits, trucks are out back waiting to be offloaded into a backroom that has no more space and vendors are lining up to come in , and the front is calling for checkers, and you have 4 orders to send off, you still have date checking (to see if anything's about to expire), and scan outs to do (scan outs is throwing away broken or outdated product, which, btw, you can get a written warning for too many scan outs in a week, I know from experience though it's not my fault. You get really, really good at cheating the system and getting around high scan out reports), not to mention the milk is empty AGAIN, and there's a handful of people calling through the doors that the butter is empty, do you have more whipping cream, what aisle is the stuffing on, and of course the token foreign person with an accent so thick I can't understand what they're saying and I feel like an ass for not being able to help them, and the grocery manager telling me to do the crew sheets, take these out to the aisle and stock them at some point, oh and can you hang ROP tags on Sunday, and there's half a milk load left waiting to be broken down and two pallets of regular freight left from the last load and of course something I need is right at the bottom and I'm left deciding whether I want to risk collapsing the pallet to dig some out for the customer (who will probably say they want more than what I can safely get out) or lie and say we're out. Omg, I feel like crying just remembering that. Cause I have literally had moments where all that's happening at once. And usually at that point I'm nauseous from hunger and swaying on my feet and my back and knees are killing me and I have bleach smell all over me and my fingernails are nasty from scrubbing and I'm sweaty and running on 5-6 hours of sleep.

Oh, and corporate visits mean you hide product in the back room and tell someone to call you the moment they come in the door so you can put it on the shelf and make it look like you're not out. So, yes, if someone asks for this product I will lie and say we're out. Hey, if it's my job or your dinner guess where my priorities lie. But I will make exceptions! Once dozen eggs were on sale and I was hiding some and told this couple I was out and they said they lived in a town that's far away and only get in once or twice a month. I couldn't go back on my lie and let them know I was lying. So I took an 18pk eggs and grabbed a calculator. I added up the per-egg price of the 12pk sale and applied that to 18 eggs and marked the 18pk down to that price for them. They were happy and thanked me. It doesn't always work out so happily though.

Wednesdays on a good day is a 9 hour shift at least. Wednesday before Thanksgiving? Busiest day of the entire year. And all the customers are angry. And they all want tons of food. And usually by Wednesday you're out of some of the essentials. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving you can have every checkstand open and lines still backed up down the aisles. And I guarantee at least 2 of those checkers aren't checkers and were pulled from their departments to check and 4-5 of the baggers aren't baggers. (so if no one's there to get you the freshest date of that milk you're going to use tomorrow anyway that's why)

And usually Christmas music starts November 1st. Our Christmas music selection consists of about 12 different songs, some of which are duplicates where the only difference is they were sung by different people. Some are classics with a “new modern twist” added to them. Some are so painful I'd cover my ears and wince at certain parts (seriously whoever sings Rocking Around the Christmas Tree or Jingle Bell Rock (for some reason I have trouble keeping those two separate) with that high pitched squeeky click during the chorus gives me a major headache). I can hear the same song 8 times a day on average. You know, I'm 2 months into doing night feedings for my baby on my own and I'll take being woken up every 2-3 hours for 45 minutes at a time every night, I'd do that the rest of my life if meant I'd never have to hear another Christmas song ever. It is torture. It is actually torture. Sometimes when I hear Christmas music I feel panicked inside and sometimes I even tear up and it's all I can do to keep myself from having an anxiety attack. Some years weren't as bad cause they kept the real music mixed into the Christmas and some years it didn't start till Black Friday.

So, please, in this the month that makes me whimper and cry just at the memory of it's wretchedness, be nice to grocery employees. Some of them are taking medicine to cope (like in my case. It was Allergy and Sinus PE, oh that stuff was sooo awesome. But I can't find it anymore! And sudafed just doesn't do the trick. It took about 15 minutes to kick in and then I was morbidly cheerful! And no way was I going for real drugs, so sinus meds it was! And who knows, maybe I really do have sinus problems, I kind of think I do since almost all my headaches are in the sinus area). There were times I'd actually go sit behind the milk where no one could see me and cry my eyes out for a good 5-10 minutes before I could get myself together enough to remind myself I had work to do then I'd go stock the shelves while crying. I perfected the art of bathroom cries. I'd have a breakdown on the toilet, a quick face-wash and blowing air at my eyes, and I'd be out the door in such time that no one suspected anything. Anyway.

Go shopping early and get what you can. I understand if you need to run in a few days before to get milk or something else perishable. But trust me, that turkey can totally be bought the moment the Thanksgiving ad hits. That ad runs 2 1/2 weeks, people! It says so right on the front! So get your shopping in before the rush. The 2 weeks before Thanksgiving are utter hell! And the day before Thanksgiving is worse than hell! I think one year I worked 12 hours that day! Thanksgiving day at least gives you time to catch up a little. Usually there's a big mess in the cooler, a gigantic mess, and it takes you all day to make even a dent in it. And then of course there's the way last minute shoppers. Where someone with guts has to stand out front and chase customers away telling them we're closed. People can get nasty when told a store is closed, especially if they forgot about Thanksgiving till last minute (as if anyone could forget when it is, it's always in November, always on Thursday, make your list early and get what you need asap. If you need a lot make a special order. Call the manager, say “Hi, I need 6 cases of this.” Even if you only need one case please special order! And keep in mind that seasonal items are seasonal! Sometimes once we're out that is it! We literally can not order more. Well, sure we can, but we aren't getting any. It's called an allotment. It happens sometimes with eggs in the winter when they aren't laying so well. Some brands or types will only send you 1-2 cases no matter if you ordered 50.

Speaking of eggs I'll do my Easter rant at the appropriate time. ;)

But please be considerate of your fellow human being. One kind customer can make the difference and keep you going one more day. One kind customer can undo all the work of the nasty ones. Don't be upset if we're out of something, be patient in line, be patient of the employee has to run back to get you something (like if the butter is empty, be mindful that this is probably the first time that day the dairy person has even stepped foot in her department), shop early for as much as possible. If you see an employee frantically rushing door to door scanning various items and then she suddenly stops and seems to be muttering to herself, she is deep in thought and trying to decide if she should order heavy or light and whether or not she'd get fired if she ordered light and ran out or if she'd get fired if she ordered heavy and had to mark things down to sell them. Be mindful that she is a human. Do not mindlessly grope at her in your greedy quest for food. Do not stand behind her and clear your throat or she WILL ignore your rude ass. Politely say “Excuse me”. Make sure you sound polite. I don't know how many times I've ran to the back crying cause someone ignored my existence and reached their arm around me in a definite “no touching” zone to grab product off the shelf. How'd you line some hair man arm brushing your chest as he reaches for the product in front of you? Or the fat woman who steps within “too close” ranges and you step away and she eventually pushes you out of the way and you're holding the door open cause, well, you were doing that anyway and you want to hand the door over to her but you can't causes he won't even glance at you or acknowledge you in any way! And then she takes a good long while deciding what to buy and you're stuck holding the door so it doesn't slam shut on her.

Oh, oh, and one more thing. Do not mess up the facing. If you see two rows of something and one row has products stacked 3 high and the other row's first stack is stacked 2 high, and you need to buy 2 what do you do? If your answer is to take 2 off the 3-stack you are instantly on my I hate you and hope you die in a fire list. The correct answer is to take the single one left in the 1-stack and one off the top of the 3-stack. Same with yogurt stacked 2 high. Take the entire stack, do not take one off the top of each row. Also keep in mind most people are right handed and grab from the right. So the right side is constantly being taken from and is constantly the first to empty. Take from the left and my life gets sooo much easier. Not to mention you probably get a better date on your product since rotation goes left to right.

Also, no, we can not, by federal law, knowingly sell you anything outdated. We can not also “throw the item away into your purse” as that is theft. So don't ask us to mark down or give you expired items.

btw, since dropping to part time last June when I was 24 and quitting entirely last month I am a new person. I have never felt so free and haven't touched sinus meds since last June when I took some to deal the stress of moving. I'm still healing though, as you can see. You might call me a baby or say I have a low tolerance for stress, but you have never had customers treat you like the dirt they treated me like. My job was killing me. It really was. But I was trapped there with no way out. It's why, when my mom said I could move up next to her, I jumped at it. I didn't like the idea of being there, but, what other way out was there? My husband couldn't get a job cause he was dealing with identity theft and no one would hire him cause of it (but that's for another post). I was trapped, I was dying. Every day I longed to escape. I often thought of walking out, but why throw away all those years. And I really was good at what I did. My boss was just a jerk. That last year was far better than the rest. Like I said, the company president said so in front of him and every other department manager at the front of the store. And then about 3-4 months later I carried the entire grocery department through Inventory (which is another hellish ordeal in which my very first inventory I worked 14 1/2 hours) and the ICM got emails saying that in the entire history of the company they've never seen a dairy department do so well. But you know, it just wasn't worth it. Yeah I was the best, but I was dying. I had been burnt out and running on nothing for years. I was cynical. I was hateful. I even risk to say the only reason I wasn't fired for being mean to customers was cause I was so good at everything else. Plus I was ok with being everyone's bitch. Bakery not willing to get their freight and customers are getting sick eating rotted perishable product that needs to be kept cold? Make dairy take their freight over and find room in their freezer! Meat dept not ready for their freight? Make dairy clean up their cooler! 11 pallets of frozen and only room for 8? Make dairy find room! The front end manager and 2 csms want to chitchat? Call dairy to check! And threaten to fire or write up or warn dairy when they ignore a call or two or when they dump bakery's freight on the floor in front of their department ignoring their cries of “But I'm sooo busy”. That's not my problem. You know when load days are. Add into all this that the front end manager desperately wanted to get one of her kids to replace me and spent years trying to backstab me. Eventually her son did replace me. But I left on my terms, I gave my job to him on my terms.

Ok, this rant was kinda all over and I missed several examples and points, but I hope the overall message made it through.