I did that when I worked part-time at the click & collect at a grocery store. The department was busiest on the weekend (as you would imagine, most people do their grocery shopping when they don’t go to work). The weekends were always SUPER busy; it’s essentially a weekly 2 day black Friday but at 50% capacity of a full black Friday mob.
The big problem with the weekend shifts though was that we were always understaffed because of coworkers calling in sick (essentially my departments version of the Retail comics Courtney) which meant me and my 1-2 coworkers that should actually be 4 coworkers need to pick up 30-50 customers’ orders with half the man power.
On top of that, our department’s POS (point of sale) system always kept breaking down. We’d always fall behind on orders and have half a dozen angry customers yelling at us why they’ve been waiting for 20-30 minutes for their order. I’ve constantly told my manager about the POS issues and we should get a replacement, but unfortunately, Norm really knows retail because my manager would always say “we don’t have the budget for that, payroll is tight enough as it is”.
To add even more, I was a part-time employee, not even full time (worked that job when I was in college for extra cash). Usually I would have to end up staying and doing a double shift (there were a few times I had to pull a triple shift) and stay for 2-3 times the amount of hours I usually worked (I usually did a 4 hour shift but sometimes I did 8-12).
And then even MORE on the list, my manager was never in the store on the weekend so there was no one to give any direction to all the employees there which is why the department was in such disarray whenever the weekend came along. Since I usually worked the weekend shifts, I ended up taking the helm and becoming a pseudo department manager (no one else was going to); I would tell everyone what needed to get done by what time, what needed to be prioritized, what needs to be cleaned, etc. Essentially I was doing my managers job but for minimum wage, no benefits, etc.
One day on a weekend shift (as per usual), the POS system broke again and the IT guys where their, trying to fix it. I was sitting next to them contemplating my life choices, but then it hit me:
– I’m a college student who’s only doing this job for “extra” cash
– I have a good amount of savings and don’t really need this job anymore
– *quickly did mental math of my tuition fees, food, transportation, rent, etc
– My savings would last me at least a full year if I live super frugally
Once I thought of all that, I stood up and just walked away saying “I quit!”. I distinctly remember my coworker ask “are you serious???” and I just looked at her and went “yup!” and just walked away.
I at least had the common courtesy to give a 2 weeks notice.
Sorry for the long comment. All those horrible memories just flooded back into my head and I had to rant about it for a couple minutes.
The two week notice is just a courtesy.
I did that when I worked part-time at the click & collect at a grocery store. The department was busiest on the weekend (as you would imagine, most people do their grocery shopping when they don’t go to work). The weekends were always SUPER busy; it’s essentially a weekly 2 day black Friday but at 50% capacity of a full black Friday mob.
The big problem with the weekend shifts though was that we were always understaffed because of coworkers calling in sick (essentially my departments version of the Retail comics Courtney) which meant me and my 1-2 coworkers that should actually be 4 coworkers need to pick up 30-50 customers’ orders with half the man power.
On top of that, our department’s POS (point of sale) system always kept breaking down. We’d always fall behind on orders and have half a dozen angry customers yelling at us why they’ve been waiting for 20-30 minutes for their order. I’ve constantly told my manager about the POS issues and we should get a replacement, but unfortunately, Norm really knows retail because my manager would always say “we don’t have the budget for that, payroll is tight enough as it is”.
To add even more, I was a part-time employee, not even full time (worked that job when I was in college for extra cash). Usually I would have to end up staying and doing a double shift (there were a few times I had to pull a triple shift) and stay for 2-3 times the amount of hours I usually worked (I usually did a 4 hour shift but sometimes I did 8-12).
And then even MORE on the list, my manager was never in the store on the weekend so there was no one to give any direction to all the employees there which is why the department was in such disarray whenever the weekend came along. Since I usually worked the weekend shifts, I ended up taking the helm and becoming a pseudo department manager (no one else was going to); I would tell everyone what needed to get done by what time, what needed to be prioritized, what needs to be cleaned, etc. Essentially I was doing my managers job but for minimum wage, no benefits, etc.
One day on a weekend shift (as per usual), the POS system broke again and the IT guys where their, trying to fix it. I was sitting next to them contemplating my life choices, but then it hit me:
– I’m a college student who’s only doing this job for “extra” cash
– I have a good amount of savings and don’t really need this job anymore
– *quickly did mental math of my tuition fees, food, transportation, rent, etc
– My savings would last me at least a full year if I live super frugally
Once I thought of all that, I stood up and just walked away saying “I quit!”. I distinctly remember my coworker ask “are you serious???” and I just looked at her and went “yup!” and just walked away.
I at least had the common courtesy to give a 2 weeks notice.
Sorry for the long comment. All those horrible memories just flooded back into my head and I had to rant about it for a couple minutes.
Understood. All of us who have worked these kinds of jobs empathize with you since we’ve been there, done that.