Is This Why They Went Under?
I found out that everybody was fired but me.
At Blockbuster, you are allowed to rent five movies/games per week for free. Everybody but me at my store rented five on their account and if a co-worker didn’t use all of theirs, they would lend it to someone else. Well…I guess this is ‘stealing’ and HR fired everybody. Cleaned house. I was the only one left. I told the District Manager I could only work 25 hours, he said to just hang in there a couple weeks until they found a permanent replacement for Store Manager. So I ran the store and worked 50 hours a work, 10 hours of overtime they had no problem paying me.
We had another SM on loan (as well as some new hires and CSRs on loan) to help out. I believe at one point, he was going to take over our store but he was terrible. I didn’t like the way he treated our female co-workers, he wasn’t good with customers, and he took shortcuts. He also frequently forgot to settle at night. Settling the computers allows for all the money and data to be updated from the day’s purchases and rents. If you don’t do it the night before, you have to do it in the morning when the morning person comes in. The problem is it takes about six hours for it to be completed. So the morning person would get there around 8 am to take the deposit to the bank and set everything up for the morning shift. Well I got there and he didn’t settle, so I couldn’t open the store until around 2 pm. This is problematic and people GET ANGRY when they can’t rent or buy movies that early for whatever reason.
It really blows when someone does this…but accidents happen.
So I let it go. Problem was, it happened three times in a week. I was working 50 hours a week past when the DM said he needed me to. I didn’t want my grades to fall because school was more important. So, by the time two months came around, no solution had been set, which my DM said he would do. Then I came to work in the morning and the dude didn’t settle…AGAIN. So I said forget it, wrote a note about why I quit and why I left, and I locked the store up and left my keys in the dropbox. Well…no one got there until the evening shift around 3 pm and since he didn’t settle, they couldn’t open the store until 9 pm when we close at 10 pm. I thought it was hilarious.
I had been there a good three years when I quit, so I felt justified. I should have given my two weeks but forget them. It was a great job for me because I was in film school at my college, too, so I had a lot of film knowledge for customers. I love talking about movies, so it was a dream college job. Little responsibility- talk about movies. Well, it gets stressful because retail is always stressful, and when you get crappy co-workers, it’s worse. So I finally had it and quit.
You might be thinking: Did I cost them a few thousand dollars in sales that day? I’m not quite sure. I don’t think so. I would say yes, had the SM on loan from the previous night had settled, but he didn’t.”
Well, That’s Certainly One Way To Beat The System
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“A nice young lady, who was a connoisseur of smack, was finally about to get tested.
It started as a normal day. I was on the first break with some fellow hard-working laborers when suddenly A WILD ADDICT APPEARED! She started acting funny. Talking to imaginary people. Then she leaned against the vending machine all lovingly and sweetly said to the machine, ‘I love you, but I just can’t afford you.’
We asked if she was ok. She said, ‘Yeah, but I can’t find my earplug.’ Earplugs were standard PPE in the plant. We noticed that she had both earplugs in and we tried to inform her. She found a ball of chewed up gum on the ground and said, ‘Here it is,’ and tried jamming it into her occupied ear. She then realized it was gum and ran away out of the break room.
She was nodding off on her machine. A supervisor noticed and decided it was time for a test. Upon realizing this, she ran away. She started running all over the factory. All the supervisors were looking for her. A rather hefty female supervisor found her huddled by a press. The junkie looked up and saw her.
Junkie: ‘Who are you?’
Matilda: ‘I’m a supervisor.’
Junkie: ‘Oh. Sorry.’
So the junkie decided to cooperate. She was walking ahead of two supervisors to a break room. They were escorting her there to calm her down. Little did they know, she had a trick up her sleeve…or rather, up her crotch. She pulled a vial of urine out from her womanly cavity. They noticed she was doing something weird but didn’t know what she was doing. She ended up sneaking the vial into the microwave, not realizing that the microwave was unnecessary, as the urine was inside her and already the proper temperature.
The supervisors finally caught on to what she was doing. One used a napkin to remove the vial of urine that was slathered in crotch fluid. What a trooper!
Then the junkie freaked out again and started cursing profusely as she walked out of the break room. She wasn’t paying attention to the fact that she was in the forklift aisle at a blind spot and gets lambasted. Not to worry my friends, the driver was going slowly around the corner as he should have and the hero of our story appears to have not felt a thing, probably thanks to those delightful chemicals in her body. She got up, unscathed, and kept walking away, swearing like a sailor. Or rather, a stoned sailor.
She then started dogging out ALL the people she knew who shared her recreational activities, whether it was speed, smack, or weed. If it’s illegal, she was saying your name. This almost caused an angry mob and some supervisors had to control those people now.
I don’t know how, but management accomplished baiting her to the hospital where she was examined for any injuries sustained by the forklift. Turns out she had broken her ankle, but she didn’t feel a thing. Then came the test, where she once again, became belligerently violent and the hospital security had to control her.
In the end, we never saw our hero again. The company decided to throw out the microwave and get a new one. But like a renegade army of Xerxes, she left an impressive path of destruction on her way to whatever destination awaited her.
Godspeed, Junkie!”
Aw Man! Now I Have To Go Work For NASA!
“During college, I was working at some mediocre Japanese restaurant just to pay the bills. I was about to graduate with my Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and had just landed a position at Jet Propulsion Lab (NASA), but hadn’t told anyone yet.
One day, I called in sick for the first time in two years. The manager evoked his godlike power and commanded me to come in anyway because he, in his infinite wisdom and might, didn’t want to find someone to cover for me. This was the same manager that told me I didn’t wear enough makeup, that I couldn’t have personal conversations in front of the restaurant, and usually made me deal with homeless people near the storefront (I’m a tiny Asian girl in heels).
Naturally, I didn’t go in that day. During my next shift, I was called into the office for a stern talking-to. He lectured me on work ethic, citing as an example the time he gallantly overcame a 103-degree fever, and against all odds, made it to work, where he bravely locked himself in the office and browsed Facebook for hours. This was his reasoning for writing me up as ‘no-call, no-show.’ He expected me to cower and apologize, but instead, I laughed and gave him my two-week notice. Over the next two weeks, I saw a very refreshing shift in his attitude.”
The Bad News Wasn’t All That Bad To Him
“Knowing I was giving my two-weeks notice that day, I went in two hours early to get all my files off the work machine and clean up anything I didn’t want them to find if they kicked me out (as sometimes happens when you give your notice).
It turns out that the handful of people who were in the office that early were all worried about two company-wide emails that were sent out. Everybody wanted to know which email I received.
I couldn’t believe the irony of what happened next.