True Porn Clerk Stories - Ali Davis [43]
The New Overlords Are Neither Merciful Nor Just
I had this Monday off.
I walked in on Tuesday morning to find that Megan had been fired.
Well, technically she'd been "downsized," but the net effect was still the same.
It was incredibly weird -- she'd put up one last note about busting holiday shoplifters before getting the news, and then she was gone.
Jeremy, once our assistant manager, is now the manager. He's a good guy and will handle it very well, but it isn't the way he'd wanted to get promoted.
Megan, by the way, will be fine. She's a writer and this might just be the shove from Fate that she needs to get going on the life she really wants. On the other hand, she'd been at the store for four years and had worked her way up from clerking. It would have been nice if the New Masters had taken that into consideration.
My understanding is that Megan, having been given a bunch of new responsibilities what with upper management gone and all, had asked for some more money. Instead she was told that we'd be getting a new software system that would eliminate many of her duties and she would no longer be needed.
The decision came from Nick, the new owner, so nobody can quite decide how to treat Gary. Gary has been friendly but extremely and understandably nervous all week.
More changes are, reportedly, on the way.
The new software system will usher in a new way of doing things. Some of them, like the addition of a drop box, will make our customers happy, but I don't think most of them will.
We will no longer allow customers to take IOUs, and we will no longer allow customers to sign up for memberships without a credit card.
In other words, we will be doing our best to prune off our customers with lower incomes.
The credit card thing is especially harsh. I do realize that the ones who sign up without cards are statistically a little more likely to be a problem down the road, but I always liked the fact that we didn't tar everyone who didn't have a credit card with that same brush.
We have people come in from all over town, incredibly far away in some cases, because we're the only store that will give them a membership. Most of them are good customers. What are they supposed to do now?
Even though it means that most of our bigger pains will be eliminated, most of the clerks don't like it, and we're all fairly shaken about Megan getting yanked, and yanked so suddenly.
I spent much of Tuesday ratting out the Overlords to our customers and indeed, I'm continuing to do so.
It's been a weird, sad week. More to come.
I Am Still Not Fired
…But I did quit.
I'd been looking for work for a while. As freelancing work gradually dwindled I was getting more and more dependent on my video store income, which just wasn't cutting it. One of the main reasons I'd been staying at the store was the flexibility that allowed me to take on freelance assignments, which was starting to lose its point. The New Store Order wasn't helping matters either. One of the other main reasons I'd been staying was a fondness for my managers (one down) and fellow clerks, who were starting to do some nervous looking around. The pleasures of working for a funky little neighborhood store looked to be hurtling towards an end as well.
There were more prosaic hardships too. The New Overlords let the general managers go when they took over. In addition to being swell guys, the general managers ordered the store supplies. Suddenly we were doing without incidentals like fresh punch cards and crucial necessities like toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Jeremy would have been more than capable of running out and picking up a few things until supply lines were back in place had the Overlords not also taken away the petty cash. The shift when the sanitizer ran out reduced David and me to jittery wrecks. So many matinee specials came in that day… Eugh.
So, yeah, it was increasingly time to go, if indeed it hadn't been long before.
It had been a long time since I'd had a truly humiliating