*Throws Temper Tantrum* (ranty)

[B&NGoddess]

we're getting new carpeting at the B&N. there are so many more new things we need and carpeting is dead last on the list. the carpeting crew comes in over night, and leaves at about 830, right before we open. after a week and a half, they've finally made it to the front of the store, where my bargain section is. yesterday i walked in to find the shelving units (called gondolas) all in disarray. i almost had an aneurysm. not only were they not where they were supposed to be, but the carpet crew had broken the baseboards off of 6 the 8 gondolas. so now there are gaping wounds in the bottom of the fixtures. turns out they were too heavy to move with their normal equipment, but didn't realize that until they had destroyed half of them. they removed the books, but that didn't help much either.

not only did i have to put the books back, i also had to remove the books from the remaining 2 yesterday. by myself. and then the store manager, who does nothing but sit on her ass all day, tells me that i cant leave the department looking like shit. exactly. and why can't you shelve the 5 library carts worth of product thats been sitting back there for two weeks, not to mention the 50 boxes? you also need to go through your department and make a list for inventory corrections before the 24th.

did i mention that we're in the middle of the slow season, so that means 1-1 coverage? 1 in music, 1 in cafe, 1 on registers. floor leads rotate 2 hour info shifts, in addition to covering breaks and whatnot.

[BookstoreEscapee]

ooh, I feel your pain. I was never around for new carpet, but I've been around for plenty of carpet cleaning. Trying to keep people from walking in while we were still straightening up because the carpet people needed to keep the door open (not just unlocked, but open because their hoses were connected to the truck) was ... fun! yeah.

I used to work in receiving a lot, since we were short a receiver, and I was also Frontlist/New Release Lead. So I would come in in the morning wearing jeans and sneakers for Receiving, and then by mid-late morning we'd have unpacked and received so much frontlist that we ran out of V-carts to put it on. So guess who got to go out and do Frontlist, since we didn't have any extra people on the floor to do it? At least I didn't have to bring clothes to change. I'd have refused. Pick a department and I'll dress for it, I ain't changing halfway through my shift. (Of course, I was more productive in jeans and sneakers, since I can move faster and I don't care if I get dirty.) And I'd still have people asking me stuff, of course. And then some of our sections were so packed we had stacks of boxes in front of the library carts in the back because there was just no place to put it all.