Responsibility

This entry will be less informative than my previous posts and more of a rant. See, where I work, I'm what you call a "keyholder." I'm technically a part-timer, but I hold a key to the store and am able to open or close the store if scheduled to (which I often am). It's a pretty big responsibility, because both opening and closing duties involve important business like counting items in inventory and making cash deposits. There's a lot one can do during an open or a close to seriously screw up my store's business.

The most important keyholder responsibilities during a closing shift (in my manager's eyes) are to leave the store in absolute perfect condition and be finished and clocked out on the hour you were scheduled to do so. See, this company runs tight with hours. Every business does, but this company chooses to manage its time by alloting each store a certain number of hours per week it can distribute amongst all employees. When I'm scheduled to close by 9:30pm, it means that if I finish later than 9:30pm, I have added additional time to our weekly hours and possibly caused the store to exceed its weekly allotment. This is bad.

I've been getting a lot of closing shifts lately. I've also been getting a lot of stern words from my boss each afternoon about the previous night's close. Some days, it's because there was a flaw in the store's perfect appearance. Some days, it's because we finished too late. Yesterday it was both. It doesn't help that she uses the maternal "why was this place left a mess?" approach. I really hate being spoken to like that. It's not professional at all.

Closes are frantic things where I work. We take trades. I think I've established this. We're also a busy store; we take more trades than most stores in our district. We get a lot of these at night, especially within our last hour. As the keyholder, I have certain reports to fill out and cash tills to count, as well as a deposit to prepare. This takes roughly 30 minutes, less if I can prepare some of it prior to the time when we lock our doors. I typically have another part-timer closing with me, who takes care of re-arranging the store so it doesn't look like it was trampled by a ravenous herd of wildebeast toddlers. The store itself closes at 9:00pm (6:00pm Saturdays, 5:00pm Sundays), giving me and my co-worker just enough time to accomplish all our closing tasks before we have to clock out. This is assuming that all things go well. They never do.

Two common obstacles invariably emerge: we get too busy for me to prep any of the closing materials beforehand, and there are customers still in the store after we have locked the doors (often browsing the shelves, unsure of what to fucking buy). Over the past seven consecutive closing shifts I have worked this week, five of them ended with the last customer leaving the store 15-20 minutes after the doors had been locked. That left me with TEN GODDAMNED MINUTES to complete a half-hour's work, which I naturally failed to accomplish in that timeframe. Hence, the stern words from the boss the next day.

My other problem (and we are finally coming to the crux of this post, "responsibility") is that while I am performing the "important" closing tasks, my co-woker is supposed to be putting the store back in tip-top shape. I have a lot of respect for my co-workers, even the ones I don't like very much, and I put my faith in them that they will do at least an adequate job of tidying the store. Turns out my faith is misplaced.

The first time I got the "why was this store left in a mess?" speech, I vowed that I would not leave the store until I had conducted a personal inspection of every shelf, gondola, display, and standee on the floor. This is a great thing to promise during a peaceful and quiet afternoon shift, but come closing time, when we are already running fifteen minutes late and the deposit isn't balancing and I have to triple-count it, the idea of taking more time to inspect the store kind of flies right out the damn window. Yes, that was a run-on sentence, and yes, I do have a Bachelor's degree in English. Blow me. Back to the point, it doesn't help that I have some co-workers who intentionally try to do as little as possible while I am occupied with "closing duties" and who also put pressure on me to be done as fast as possible. Because of certain reporting requirements, both the keyholder and the other part-timer need to be present in the store until the very end. I couldn't let the co-worker go early even if I wanted to. Basically, to ensure I don't get any more stern speeches, I have to play babysitter, keeping an eye on the part-timers to make sure they aren't slacking off during the close or forgetting to tidy any sections.

Tonight was the worst. A giant trade came half an hour before closing time, with a line of other customers behind it, so neither me nor my co-worker had any time to put it away (BTW, I ended up throwing almost the entire batch of games into the defective bin because they were in shit shape, so if you're reading this, co-worker, thanks a fucking lot and go suck a cock). I basically had to ask one customer politely to wait as I raced to lock the doors and turn off the open sign, just to keep more customers from waltzing in. I flew through my reports and managed to get everything done by 9:37pm (thank the gods our timeclock rounded down to 9:30pm). During those 40 minutes, I asked my co-worker to ignore the trades sitting on the counter and just tidy the store itself. That's all he did, and even after getting him to quadruple-check his work, I still found obvious things I needed to clean up once he was gone. I let him go home after we were clocked out. Then I stayed and dealt with all the trades myself. It was 10:40pm by the time I had finished putting everything away and locking the store up for the night. I don't intend to tell my boss about this, because if she hears of it, she'll have stern words for me about being in the store when not clocked it.

I obviously have a lot of frustration about the situation I'm in. I just can't win here; I either screw up one way or I screw up another. Normally I'd have no problem letting my boss know how I feel, except that right now, there's a slim chance that I might get promoted. I'll be 100% honest: I could care less about the added responsibility. It's my current responsibilities that have left me in these no-win scenarios, so I don't relish taking on more. I just need the pay increase. I'm living paycheck-to-paycheck and trying to get married next month.

Sorry for the vent session. It's been a frustrating day, and the back room has a few more fist-shaped dents in the walls to show for it.