Black Thursday Shopping

     So we're all aware of the new Thanksgiving tradition, it is a passed time for people to have the day off of work, sit around the table, and give thanks for something. Now, instead of gathering as families, we shop. There are millions of people who are against Black Friday shopping on Thanksgiving, and these people make it very evident, posting on Facebook and ranting on other various websites, but unfortunately, the deals are just too big. Whether you're against it, or all for it, if you want that TV that goes on sale at 6 p.m. Thursday night bad enough, you're going to go out for it. No matter how much you want to sit and finish that plate of mashed potato surprise and odd flavored casserole, the headlines and percentages will always win.
     Maybe you are hardcore. Maybe you've stated your claim and your sticking too it: You will not go Black Thursday shopping. Great for you, but you're not helping anything. Too many people come to our stores, we make too much revenue. Black Thursday shopping is inevitable. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes Black Wednesday in a few years, or maybe even Black November. Does it suck for those who have to work? Yes it does. It's awful. I hated dealing with cranky people who missed the last pair of shoes by two minutes. It sucked getting yelled at because "door-buster prices ended at three, our systems have stopped ringing those prices, i'm sorry that you were in line before that, there's nothing we can do."
     It may sound like I'm telling you to suck it up and just shop, and maybe in a way I am a little bit, but then again what I'm really telling you, if you're against Black Thursday, is to not just state your claim in silence. but rather, fight like hell to stop it. I want my Thanksgiving food that I wait all year for, I want mashed potato surprise, I want family time. Give me my Holiday back. Please, I beg you, picket outside, get on the news, start a petition. It isn't fair to us, the poor college kids of the world, to loose our holiday's. And does it make any sense, to anyone, that more stores are closed on Christmas, a religious based holiday, than Thanksgiving, a day of American pride? No, it doesn't. So if you went Black Thursday shopping, go you! I hope you got some awesome deals, but if you didn't, I hope I see you on the news next year.

Next

     This week went on and on. Slowly. It seemed to have no end. It was one of those weeks for me where I lost track of time, thought I was a day ahead of myself, began to reference things that happened days ago and was corrected with "That was yesterday." It was a sucky week, to say the least. Now, yes, it is true, that by reading my blog you may think that every week is sucky in the life of me, and as I assure you, that is mostly true, this one was worse. Why, you ask? Because I got a new job,
     A new job?! Isn't that everything you've always wanted? Why yes, yes it is. But I asked, and I received. I hear my eight year old nice yelling "be careful what you wish for" in my head, I started my new job on Tuesday, racking up some more hours, which is great. I love money. The problem is, that I absolutely love it. I love everything about it. Okay, I've only had two days, but so far, I love it. I love not smelling like burgers and mustard when I get home. I love that I can dress up, and do my hair and makeup, I love that I can have a bottle of water on the job (this is one luxury I have been deprived of for too long), I love that talking is not forbidden, and if I have to use the restroom I can without having to consult a manager. I love that when it's time for me to leave, I can. I don't have to ask permission like i'm four, I don't have to stay over just because my replacement isn't there, I can just leave. This new job is absolutely glorious.
     So what, you ask, is the problem? Well remember my last blog post, the one about me being crazy? Maybe not, maybe you skipped that one, so i'll explain. Well, in a moment of weakness, some would call it a minor mental breakdown, I applied for management at Foodies. This was before I got my new job, of course. I was thinking, "hey, i'm a broke college student who could use more money and more hours, so management." I then came to the realization that my boss is a shithead who doesn't like me and would probably throw away my application anyways, and took this job. Well now, loving, absolutely loving, my new job, I have been offered a management position officially.
     Excuse the crap out of me but sense when do things actually go my way? Never, that's when. So now i'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. Where the hell do I turn? My new job is seasonal, with a SLIGHT chance I may get hired in officially. Do I bank on that? Do I throw away more money, and an actual opportunity for a chance at happiness? Do I throw away a better income, the chance to move out of my house, independence, more experience, a better resume, on happiness? I've been with Foodies for two years now, I'm sure I can handle more. Or if I stay now, will I be stuck? Just like some of my managers now, who planned on only doing it through college, and here they are fifteen years later? So what is it? Happiness or stability? Its been a bad week.

Apparently I hate myself

Every week I rant and vent about my awful job. I talk about how much I hate people, and working, and people, and life. So why then, would I apply for management? I don’t know, but I did. Maybe it was the visions of my own apartment and hundreds of moving boxes dancing in my head, visions of having no furniture, lying on the floor of my cheap, crappy apartment watching a mini television, or maybe it was the visions of opening an empty refrigerator because I would still be too broke to support myself.

Truth is, no good can come of me being a manager. I would work more, and make like maybe two dollars an hour more than I would after minimum wage fully increases. I suppose I would be able to finally move out because that’s an extra 300ish a month, but if I stay cooped up in my basement until I’m 27 maybe I won’t have so much debt. What good is being on my own if I can’t live well? But ranting about student debt and the lack of financial aid is for a different day, and a different blog. What I really came here to write about is what the hell I was thinking.

Well, fellow students reading this, I wasn’t. Even if my bitch of a boss says to herself, “Wow, Aubrie really has earned this (which I have), maybe I should turn this into corporate (which she won’t)” No one would respect me. Why should they? I would have been their coworker five minutes ago. No one would see me as higher than them, especially because I’m younger than most of them. Not that my age really defines that much because even the 16 year olds would just think my authority would be a joke.

I already have manager qualities, this meaning I snap on people who aren’t working because I’m not about to pick up their slack later. I have a type of seniority. On a quick count I have seen about 40 people get hired in and then leave, this is not even counting the people that where there before me and then left later. There are under ten people working now that were there before me, two are managers, but yet other people don’t see it that way. People don’t think “oh, she’s been here forever, she knows what she’s doing.” They think, “Oh she’s not a manager, so I don’t need to listen to her.” and If I become a manager that’s not going to change, it’s just going to adapt to “Well, she’s a lower level manager, she doesn’t really know what she’s talking about.” Or “She’s only been a manager for five minutes, I don’t really have to listen to her.”

Don’t I hate my job enough? Am I crazy to want to become a manager? Why did I even put in the application? Money, experience, and to torture myself would be the answers. Maybe I just needed something new, or maybe I really just want to punish myself, but it’s just an application, nothing has been done or said yet. So I guess we’ll see.

The other side of the counter

So, this weekend I visited a different fast food chain for dinner and had an awful experience. Being that I always criticize the customers, I found the way the employee's handled me to be completely rude and disrespectful. I decided that it was interesting to me how they were trained so differently. Of course they have different policies when it comes to handling incorrect food, but the fact that they just assume it is us in the wrong is ridiculous. So, here's the story. 

            We went through the drive-through around 10pm. Our order was not that hard, a chicken sandwich. That was it. I’m not sure if someone around the same time as me happened to get the same thing but minus the lettuce and I received that sandwich instead of them, or if it was just a mistake. Either way, my sandwich had no lettuce. I would normally deal with this kind of thing and just buck up and eat it, but there were other quality issues as well. So, I called.

At Foodies, our policy is that if you receive the wrong food, we will replace it. We ask for your name and write it in a book and tell you that if you want to come back later just to tell us who you are and repeat what we are replacing and we will take care of it. Some people come back right away, others, a couple of weeks. It’s on the customer’s terms. This particular fast food chain needed us to come back that second and show us the product and only then would decided if it was actually a mistake or not. This is when I started to get angry, sitting in my pajamas leaning over the stove cooking mac&cheese because I just wanted to be warm. It was almost 11pm at this point and the thought of going all the way back to the not-so-close restaurant in my pajamas when I just settled down, sounded terrible.
                I tried to bargain with the woman. “Please, it’s late, just let me come back in the morning and get my sandwich, It is very inconvenient for me to have to drive all the way back right now.” “Sorry ma’am that’s not our policy.” As I haven’t said those words enough myself. I finally gave up, put my mac&cheese in the fridge and drove back to that stupid place for a sandwich I didn’t even want at that point. The whole way I was thinking about the fact that I was wasting more money In gas than the stupid chicken even coasted in the first place.

When I got back to the fast food place I waiting in there drive –through line (the inside already being closed because of how late it was) for over 15 minutes. Finally, getting to the window and stating my case the woman said. “Well okay, to replace your sandwich you’re going to have to wait about 6-7 minutes so we can get you a fresh chicken.” I lost it.  I became one of those customers. She was only doing her job, but I could clearly tell that she was the one I talked too on the phone. She couldn’t have thought about it and put fresh chicken in when she knew I was coming back? So, I got my non-fresh chicken sandwich pretty quick after that and an apple pie, which was cold and gross. Moral of the story, McDonalds has crappy policies.

            

Do you work here? No.

      An often annoyance of mine is when a customer acts like they know our procedures better than we do. I have hundreds upon hundreds of examples of this, and could probably write a book about it, but for this post, I will just share one and complain. Who knows, maybe I will write a about crappy jobs and make a fortune and never have to work again. Wouldn't that be nice. So anyways, back tot the topic. Less in-depth examples of this would be fill lines. Fill lines are exactly what they sound like, lines that we fill the product to. We are not to cross the line with product for specific reasons, regarding the product.
       So lemonade, for example. On our lemonade cups there are 5 lines and depending on what type of lemonade you get, we fill things to different lines. So if you get berry lemonade we fill the berry syrup to the 1 and the ice to the 3 and the lemonade the rest of the way. This insures that every customer receives the same product. I am going to repeat that, because that is the main reason for fill lines. Fill lines insure that every customer receives the same product.
      So now we relate that to chili. Some people get really aggravated over the fact that our chili doesn't pour out of the cup when we give it to them. "Oh my gosh there is a sliver of cup between the chili and the top why are you so stupid?" is mostly how that goes. But we don't do it to steal your money, we don't do it because we're stupid, we do it to be fair. It wouldn't be fair to the person behind you if I filled your chili all the way to the tippy-top and his and inch from the top, would it? No. We have a standard.
       Knowing this, relate that to our ice cream products. Because there are "for here" and "to go" we have fill lines for our ice cream products. People get very upset about this because we are apparently "jipping" them out of their money, I often explain that we fill it to the same amount so that it is fair for both our drive through and dining room customers. But what gets rather irritating is that many customers jump right to "well if you would just do your job right, we wouldn't have this problem." Excuse me, but you don't work here, I do. I was trained by my managers, I think I know a little better than you do about what I should and should not be doing.
     Why is fast food the go to "stupid" job? I would never walk into Dow and freak out because a chemical engineer is doing something wrong, because I have no clue what they even do. People think that the know everything. I want every single person to work fast food for one month of their lives. I think working fast food makes you more understanding as a person, and it makes you "get it." Monkeys CAN NOT do our jobs, okay? It's actually really difficult and the number one most stressful job in America is Fast food and Retail. Don't tell me that I'm stupid and need to go back to school because you're unsatisfied with the amount of product you have in your cup when it is a set standard. People suck.