got a job offer today. She’s still waiting for the official offer, but they called her and offered the job pending the background check. She won’t have a problem with that so it’s pretty much a done deal.

She anticipates leaving by August 6th. That leaves a bit of a dilemma for the rest of us. When she leave we will not have a GM. There’s already talk about the full time assistant promoting to GM. She asked me if she takes the job will I stay and promote to her full time assistant. I said yes, but we don’t actually know if the company will promote ANYONE to full time. They may tell us that we have to cover it between the 3 of us. There’s no way we can run the store with only 1 full time person. The other part time asst manager and I will both have to work between 30 and 32 hours a week and that will still make it difficult. We can’t work more than 32 hours a week for 3 weeks in a row or the company considers you full time. They won’t go for that because then they have to pay benefits, etc.

I told her if they aren’t willing to promote me, I can’t really stay. It’s not worth it to work so many hours and not get anything out of it. Its not even about the hourly pay. It has to do with the title and the bonuses that will go along with it. The title will look good on my resume. The retention bonus alone is a big deal. The full time assistant manager gets $200 more a month than the part time assistant managers for staying until the end. Also, I found out a week ago that I won’t be getting a severance because I’m part time. Only the full time managers get it. If I can promote then I will get the severance too. That’s 2 weeks pay for me.

Another problem is the other part time assistant manager is unlikely to work 30 hours a week. She barely works the 15 hours she’s scheduled now.

There are a lot of things up in the air right now. There’s even a possibility that the company will transfer in another GM from a store that is closing before our store. I’m not going to worry about it right now. Things will work themselves out. I’m going to continue with the job search in the meantime. 11 months ago

this one is for a Child Care position. It seems interesting. We’ll see how it goes. 11 months ago

I have an appointment to fill out more paperwork and do some testing at an employment agency. Wish I could go tomorrow but I have to work. I’m ready to get going at a different job. 11 months ago

I’m not crazy about applying for jobs online. It seems so impersonal. Not only that, I’m not sure where to find the best postings. It seems as though there’s not a lot of information about the postings either. I want to apply for jobs in my area. I don’t want to drive an hour to work.

Keeping a positive outlook though. 11 months ago

I worked on my resume today. I also e-mailed a company about a job posting. It’s a retail position so I’m not sure I really want it, but I figured it was good to at least inquire.

Its a start. 11 months ago

I will be out of a job by year’s end at the latest. My company has been sold. The decision has been made to close our chain of stores. There will be none of them left by the end of the year. My boss thinks we’ll be one of the last stores to close because we are a high volume store. I don’t see the new parent company stocking any of the store for the holidays and then closing all the stores right after.

Details are still sketchy, but it looks like I will get a small severance package and unemployment.

I need to decide if I should stick it out until the end and take the severance or should I look for a job before then. Since I’m still dealing with a work comp injury I can’t begin looking for a job yet.

I need to look into unemployment and see how much I’m entitled to as a part time employee. 12 months ago

found out yesterday

long story, but the short version is I may not have a job in 2 months

I will write more later. Just had to get this out. I’m extremely stressed out. I could use some prayers right now :) 13 months ago

At the end of the fiscal year, the top 50 stores make President’s Club. At the end of the third quarter, our store was number 48. We found out yesterday that we ended the year at number 31! Aside from the recognition, everyone in our store gets a raise!

I don’t know how much or how soon.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to find a new job. 15 months ago

Two women came into the store. One tried to distract us while the other took a bunch of clothes into the fitting room. She came out a few minutes later and tried to “return” the items. Said they were Christmas presents. The sensors had been removed. She didn’t have a receipt. We knew they weren’t Christmas gifts because they had been marked down with an orange clearance sticker. We just did those markdowns TODAY!!!!! There’s no way they could have been gifts with the orange sticker on them.

She caused a huge scene. My GM and I went to the fitting rooms and found several sensors hidden in a pocket of a pair of jeans. The GM went back to the cash wrap desk and tossed the sensors down and said “I’m not messing with this, I’m calling the police”. The woman got belligerent and asked if there was a problem. Melissa (another manager) said “yeah, there’s a problem. this is our merchandise. We just marked it down today so there’s no way you got these as gifts”. Meanwhile, Susan was on the phone with the police telling them the woman was still in the store.

The woman took off for the door. She left everything on the desk, but her purse was bulging. We think she had a purse full of our stuff. Melissa asked her “why don’t you empty your purse”. The woman said “touch my purse and I’ll break your back”. Melissa said “I won’t touch you but I will get your license plate number”.

The woman ran out the door and across the parking lot. A police car was driving through the lot to help someone who was locked out of their car. We tried to flag him down but he didn’t see us. If he had, he would have caught the woman driving away. He got the radio call and came right down, but at that point she and her companion had gotten away.

What a fun day at work. 17 months ago

I have a job currently, which is good enough nowadays, but I work only as an internship and it is a temporary position.

That’s why I would like to look for a new job in 2012. Of course, it depends mainly on chance, but my New Year’s resolution is trying to improve my chances as much as possible; for instance, sending resumés in a continuous way (I have been excesively disorganized about this matter in 2011) 17 months ago

last Saturday she made a negative comment to me about my work Friday evening. She said it in front of a customer. I was pissed. I have no problem being “reprimanded” for lack of a better word. If I’m doing something wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it. She wasn’t telling me I did something wrong. She was being bitchy. She should have asked to speak to me in the back room and we should have had a discussion. I almost walked out. I was sooooo close. Her lack of professional behavior was unbelievable.

Last night (another Saturday) was crazy busy. Retail during the holidays is NOT fun nor easy. I had to close. The store is supposed to close at 9. We hoped to be out at 10:00. At 10:15 customers were still coming in to shop. I couldn’t lock the door because I still had shoppers. I wasn’t permitted to turn them away. The last customer left at 10:40. The store was trashed. I had a huge sign change due to the new sale beginning today. I had to count the registers. All three of them were off. I didn’t leave the store until midnight. The store was still a mess. I didn’t get all of the signs changed. Old signs were down, but new signs weren’t up. This is the same situation that happened Friday causing her to bitch at me the previous Saturday. Last weekend I left at 10:40 and that was part of why I was reprimanded. I didn’t have permission to stay that late.

Here’s why my GM is crazy. She called me today. She was proud of how much I accomplished yesterday. She didn’t mind that we stayed so late. She was impressed with how much work was done considering how busy we were. It wasn’t a problem that we stayed as late as we did. Our DM (district manager) called her. She was proud of our hard work too. Our store had the top sales in our region for the day.

Things would be so much easier if there were hard and fast guidelines for staying late, kicking out customers at closing time, etc.

I don’t understand how yesterday was different from last Saturday. 18 months ago

Lots of retail stores are hiring for seasonal help right now. That’s not really what I’m looking for. I’d like to get out of retail, but I need flexibility right now since I’m taking classes.

I enrolled for 12 credit hours next semester. For the first 8 weeks of the semester I will have classes on Tuesday & Thursday. For the next 8 weeks, I will have classes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday. My Tuesday, Thursday classes that last the entire 18 weeks are from 8 a.m. to 10:50 a.m.

I will still be able to work my current job with no problem. The other classes are 8 weeks, the first 8 weeks are Tuesday/Thursday 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The last class is at a totally different time. It will be Monday/Wednesday 2 p.m. til 5:30 p.m. That might cause some problems with the current job, but they’re willing to work with me on my hours. I can’t expect to start a new job and ask them to work around my school schedule. Or can I? 19 months ago

I have to be at work at 8 a.m. for a meeting. Its supposed to last 90 minutes. I have to be back at 1:00 p.m. for my shift.

Can someone explain to me why my RETAIL job required 2 conference calls and a meeting in a 7 day period? None of these occurred during my regular shift. All three required me to get up early and then work my shift later in the day.

This is getting ridiculous. 19 months ago

My boss talked to me about something she thought I hadn’t done. I worked on Labor Day. We had a huge sale change for Tuesday. The person who closes is responsible for taking down the signs from the current sale and getting things ready for the new sale. We’re supposed to put up the new window signs too.

We’re not supposed to put up the new signs until after closing. However, we’re also supposed to have the store straightened and all of the try-ons put away as well as counting the registers, preparing the bank deposit and doing the paperwork for the night. All of this is supposed to be done in 30 minutes.

The sale for Tuesday was confusing. We got 2 different signs to use for the sale. It was difficult to determine which signs went where because the items were mixed in with other things. I’m not supposed to move things because we’re supposed to be set up per the visual sent down by corporate.

I pulled all of the old signs. I put up 1 window banner, but couldn’t find the other. I left a note for the opening manager. I put up about 75% of the new signs.

Today my GM talked to me about the sale set. She said she was told by the next day’s opening manager that I didn’t do much of anything. I was pissed. She said next time she would have to write me up. I told her that’s not fair because that wasn’t accurate. I told her the other manager was not being truthful (I didn’t say she lied). I reminded her that I always admit my mistakes and I always own up to things. If I’m doing something wrong I want to know so I can correct it.

She said she’ll bring both of us in so the 3 of us can talk about it. I told her that would be great. I don’t think she’ll do it.

Either way, I’m putting the job search into high gear. I don’t mind being corrected when I do something wrong, but I don’t appreciate being reprimanded when I didn’t do anything wrong. 21 months ago

My GM has been up to some weird stuff lately. She’s asking each of us about our co-workers. Its almost as if she’s trying to get us to rat each other out, trying to see if we’re doing anything wrong. She’s also telling us that the co-worker she’s asking about has been complaining about us to get us to talk. She’s making all of it up.

Its almost as though she doesn’t want any of us to get friendly with each other. I don’t understand why. But its annoying 22 months ago

I’ve mentioned I love most of my co-workers. However, there is one girl that is sooooo lazy that she’s driving us all crazy. Everyone except the GM, that is. They haven’t worked together lately so she doesn’t know how lazy this girl is.

We work in a women’s clothing store. We have a lot of try-ons to put away every evening. This girl is notorious for “sticking” items anywhere she wants. She wants to get them done, so she doesn’t worry about doing the job correctly.

She’s been lying to us about cleaning out the fitting rooms too. As a manager, its my job to tell the associates what to do. The associates are responsible for cleaning the fitting rooms and putting away the clothes. When I ask this girl if she’s staying on top of it, she lies and says its done. I’m too busy to check up on her. Besides, I shouldn’t have to. We’re adults. I should be able to give her a task and she should complete it, or at least be honest if it isn’t done.

She doesn’t ask for help. She just gives me a line about the work being done and continues to be lazy. She lies to me and another manager too.

When my GM gets back from vacation in a week, we’ll be having a talk. This is getting ridiculous. 23 months ago

so much so that I’m going in today and relieving someone. As a manager we’re required to work one Sunday a month. We have shorter hours on Sunday so we each have to work open to close. The manager working today is 2 months pregnant. She just called me. She’s spotting. I worry about the pregnancy so I’m going in at 3:00 so she can go home.

I also worked 8 hours Thursday for my GM. My only 2 days off this week and I’m working. I don’t do it for the store, I do it for the people. But its still hard on me.

I want a job in a larger business. I don’t want to get close to my co-workers like this again. I just want to go in, do my job and go home. 23 months ago

Even though I knew my DM is a bitch, she still surprised me this week. My GM’s grandmother passed away Tuesday morning. Instead of calling my GM to express her condolences, the DM called to ask when we would complete a job we got at the last minute.

She’s not shown any support. She was supposed to come back to our store Friday, after having written up my GM last week. Since my GM was gone for a few days for the funeral (that was out of town), she said she would come this coming week to make sure we’re up to par. What a sweetheart. She gave us 3 extra days because of the funeral. 23 months ago

I thought I would try retail positions first since that’s what I’m doing now. Since I’m a part-time assistant manager I hope that will give me a foot in the door.

I checked online at Target and Wal-Mart. Nothing available in my area. I don’t think I want to work in a small shop again. I hope there might be less drama at a larger chain.

Still going to check out Kohl’s and JCPenney since both of them are right here by my house.

I may have to look for an office job again. I liked working in offices in the past. It definitely pays more, but I don’t really want full-time again. 23 months ago

The DM who chewed me out last weekend came in today. My GM had talked to our regional manager about how the DM had handled last week’s situation. The regional manager then talked to the DM about it. Well, Lori, the DM, didn’t like being reprimanded for overstepping her boundaries and over reacting.

She decided to come to our store and take it out on Susan, my GM. She wrote her up for several BS things today. It was totally ridiculous. It really seems that Lori is trying to find a way to fire Susan. She doesn’t have a concrete reason so she’s beginning to make things up.

I’ve decided I don’t want to work for a company that employs someone like Lori.

Time to really start looking for a job. 23 months ago

I really like my job and the people I work with. Something happened this morning. It was my fault and I owned up to it. My GM was okay with it. She understood and knows it won’t happen again.

That didn’t prevent me getting my a$$ chewed out 3 times over it. First by a customer, then by my district manager and another time by my regional manager. I told my GM I was over it. I’m considering giving my 2 week notice. She was upset.

She’s going to call the DM & RM Monday and give them hell. She’s also going to call Human Resources about how overboard the DM & RM went.

I’m still thinking about looking for a job. 23 months ago