💾 Archived View for sud0nim.smol.pub › hardware-store-hijiks captured on 2024-02-05 at 09:21:05. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-03-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So I've been working at the local small-scale hardware store for the past few months.
This was my first standard job; I've done a number of things for work over the past few years since I've stopped living with my parents. One of those jobs was working for my parents as a general laborer, but I also was a doordash driver and a courier boy for a tech liquidation company. Roomie has been working at the hardware store for about 6 months, and had put in a good word for me before my interview, so I wasn't too surprised I got the job last November.
That first week was fun, still learning the ropes made time fly while I was there. That's one thing about the store, I was never really given any true training until far after it would be useful. My first day, after my brief tour of the store, consisted of following around my coworker Tonya and learning how to operate the register. She let me know that things were always a bit less than organized and to ask to be shown how to do something because I never would be shown otherwise. This was good advice to say the least. I got along great with most of my coworkers right off the bat since they already knew about me through Roomie. I think it was my second day where we worked a shift together and that was truly fun, just helping out customers and asking one another about a given item at the store. I was given the Christmas section as what I kept stocked and organized, and since I started working a week before black Friday, I was going back and forth from overstock getting spare lights all day. I quickly learned Mary was my friend, she is one of the assistant managers, but she's far closer to the rest of us than management, Mike and June and the owners, Greg and Brett. She's a sweet middle-aged lady who likes to talk about drama, smoking weed, and cooking. Then there's Tom, the funny and knowledgeable hardware store guy who's been working in the business for longer than I've been alive. There's Chuck, who despite being only a supervisor, acts like he owns the place and is a generally unpleasant person to be around, but he likes me so I try to be sympathetic to him.
The job at the store kinda killed my boundless free time though. Of the days I get off, one of them goes to helping out my parents, or more days if necessary like during the winter storms that hit California hard in January. My hobbies have been taking the majority toll, even finding the time to work out is a struggle. I've tried writing at work while I'm manning the register when the store isn't busy, but I get too worried that someone is going to come up and ask what I'm doing, or tear off a sheet that I had written on the back of and accidentally give it to a customer or coworker. Plus I don't even feel like writing if I don't post it anywhere, and I don't particularly want to digitize my notepad for my entries.
I think I'm going to be leaving the store somewhat soon. I feel like I needed to work a retail job to understand what it is like to be in that position and that it has taught me a great deal of things and strengthened my social skills. It taught me how to defend my self and my interests when they conflict with management. Never before has an adult asked me to work against my own interest and it was a bit unnerving when it first happened. I was given both the closing shift on Monday and the offloading shift on Tuesday, meaning I would leave work at 19:30 at night and have to be back there at 05:00 in the morning, pretty much guaranteeing that I would get less than eight hours of rest. When I brought this up with Mike, he just said that when he was my age that he wouldn't even sleep for that and he would go out for a night of partying before. Basically just saying "tough shit". Roomie ended up taking that closing shift for me so it all worked out but nevertheless Mike is a jackass. No wonder his kids won't let him stay at their house when he goes to visit them. Pretty much everyone at work resents him, even other people in management, but it gives us something to bond over. He keeps tacking on extra shifts once I find an equilibrium between school, work, and family. We're barely adequately staffed so as soon as 1 person is out it becomes a bit of a nightmare. So when Mary was out of the store following an injury, that the owners and Mike tried their hardest to not give her workman's comp for, we were left scrambling for the past almost two months. When Mary left that's when the random rules started showing up. Most of the staff wore beanies because it was cold and at least in my case made me not have to worry about my hair, but Greg randomly announced one day that only branded beanies, either for our store or one of our brand partners were allowed. Also we had to wear our uniform vests as the outermost layer of what we were wearing so now we either have to be cold or feel like a sausage with the vests squeezing down on your other layers. I almost quit that day he announced it. Greg is also a jackass who will yell at you if you appear to be having any joy while not helping a customer.
Plus it's not like there's much for me going forward, since I'm younger they aren't going to give me any supervisor position and even then I do not plan to be in the hardware store business for very long. I've got tech skills so maybe finding a job where I can use those and not have my time wasted for hours on end standing at a cash register would be better. I'm just gonna keep my eyes open and look around to see what's available in Sac.