Age is catching up to me ....

[Pixelated]

So I'm thinking of reducing my availability.

I worked 21 hours this week -- well, okay, technically it was 20.5 hours, because on Friday I was scheduled for 5-9 (as I have been for several consecutive Fridays and seem to be for the next week or two ... ). Which is stupid, because we lock the doors at 8 p.m. I can understand keeping a couple of cashiers on until 8:30; there might be "returns" to be re-shelved and/or cleaning of registers to be done. But till 9 p.m.? There's bugger-all to do.

So at 8:30 I asked the shift supervisor what she wanted me to do next.

Ssupe: "You're done at 8:30, right?"

Me: "No, 9."

Ssupe: "Wanna go home early?"


Me:

Good thing she wasn't standing between me and the doors ...

Then today I had a five-hour shift, which is a rarity, and I'm not sure how they decide when to schedule one. But I was completely beat by the end of it.

I know this doesn't sound like much -- five consecutive days of short shifts -- to people working full eight-hour days. But I'm finding it draining. I'll see what my schedule looks like for the next few weeks and then decide.

TBH, given the explosion of our click-and-collect program, I'm amazed at the number of people who are still coming into the store.

[Food Lady]

I would do and have done the same thing. I pushed myself the last 6 months before the pandemic and I was so tired and worn out from taking extra shifts. Glad for the money, but....

[Minflick]

It might be age... But it could also be stress during this Covid shit. Or the aggravation of wearing a mask and doing your job, and cleaning more than you EVER thought you'd need to on the job (depending on your particular job, of course). And the general silliness of customers being ramped up so much higher than normal. And the selfishness of too many of them. And dealing with their temper tantrums due to their own stress. It's exhausting as hell.

I work in an animal clinic as an RVT. I'm a pet nurse. We're essential in our county, so we never closed despite being in a locked down county in California. Business slowed a lot the first 2 weeks of lock down, but it's back up again. We have Covid-19 lock down protocols posted at both our customer doors. All 3.5 pages of rules from the county. Duly updated as the county changes things up. I'm pretty sure not one of our clients have read them, and we have a higher demographic clientele, with more education and more money than many neighborhoods in our county. Still not reading posted notices... A very pertinent point is that clients are forbidden from entering unless we are euthanizing their pets.

When people make an appointment, they are told when to come, and to call us from their car to check in over the phone, and that after check in, the Dr will call them to get the pet history, after which the tech will meet them outside the [cat or dog] door and take Fluffy from them. At least 1 or 2 of them still try to walk through the door with us as we take Fluffy in. 1 woman this week had a total meltdown because she couldn't come in with her 3 kittens. She's seen this Dr before, she asked for her specifically, but Wanted To BE There. Left in a huff, making a 1.5 HOUR gap in the Dr's day. Add to that, we have to clean even more rigorously than we did before, we're all wearing masks that muffle speech and make us uncomfortable, we all have headaches, and everybody is generally not sleeping well and we're feeling cranky. Some of us are fighting with partners as SIP gets longer and more claustrophobic.

There is no shortage of stress going around.

[Food Lady]

I've been having migraines everyday or every other day. I'm not even sure that it's due to the lockdown. It's more about job stress--they are pressuring us to meet productivity and threatening our jobs--and having my identity stolen. So now I have to deal with that on top of work and frankly, being nervous about going grocery shopping. I use the self-checkouts. It helps me and it helps the cashiers.

[Pixelated]

It might be age... But it could also be stress during this Covid shit. Or the aggravation of wearing a mask and doing your job, and cleaning more than you EVER thought you'd need to on the job (depending on your particular job, of course).

TBH, Minflick, I'm not overly stressed about contracting the COVID virus (well, not yet). I don't know why. Probably I'm up to my eyeballs in water and staring at the pyramids.

The job itself has gotten harder (despite the boom in the number of people using our 'click and collect' program) because (1) people are coming in less often and so are buying HUGE amounts of stuff; (2) they are prohibited from bringing in their own bags so the cashiers now bag everything, and (3) our bags are shit. Very, very poor quality. And, of course, we don't have packers. Supervisors will jump in when they can but sometimes they are too busy running around doing other stuff, and in any case, on days when the store is really slammed, there are just not enough of them to cover every single register.

And the general silliness of customers being ramped up so much higher than normal. And the selfishness of too many of them. And dealing with their temper tantrums due to their own stress. It's exhausting as hell.

I've been damn lucky; I've had NO tantrums to deal with (if I did, I'd call over the poor schmuck who's the supervisor at the moment and let them deal with it). Sometimes people haven't been happy with this or that, but they don't take it out on me.

I work in an animal clinic as an RVT. I'm a pet nurse. We're essential in our county, so we never closed despite being in a locked down county in California. Business slowed a lot the first 2 weeks of lock down, but it's back up again. We have Covid-19 lock down protocols posted at both our customer doors. All 3.5 pages of rules from the county. Duly updated as the county changes things up. I'm pretty sure not one of our clients have read them, and we have a higher demographic clientele, with more education and more money than many neighborhoods in our county. Still not reading posted notices... A very pertinent point is that clients are forbidden from entering unless we are euthanizing their pets.

When people make an appointment, they are told when to come, and to call us from their car to check in over the phone, and that after check in, the Dr will call them to get the pet history, after which the tech will meet them outside the [cat or dog] door and take Fluffy from them. At least 1 or 2 of them still try to walk through the door with us as we take Fluffy in. 1 woman this week had a total meltdown because she couldn't come in with her 3 kittens. She's seen this Dr before, she asked for her specifically, but Wanted To BE There. Left in a huff, making a 1.5 HOUR gap in the Dr's day. Add to that, we have to clean even more rigorously than we did before, we're all wearing masks that muffle speech and make us uncomfortable, we all have headaches, and everybody is generally not sleeping well and we're feeling cranky. Some of us are fighting with partners as SIP gets longer and more claustrophobic.

There is no shortage of stress going around.

My vet clinic has a similar protocol in place -- sorry, Fluffy or Wiggles has to come in on their own. (I would hope your clinic would fire that idiot of a customer, by the way. She can take her entitlement somewhere else.) I went to pick up some meds for my one cat (insulin) and they allowed me to pay cash, because my cellphone currently doesn't "do" curbside payments (I'm in the process of fixing that; waiting for the SIM chip for the new program to arrive in the mail).

You're right about the cleaning, though. This is something else again. We now have a bleach mix that we use to wipe down the belts on a regular basis. And the keypad, of course.