February 2014 - Page 4 of 27 - I Hate Working In Retail

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Here’s Why Amazon Is Just As Bad (If Not Worse) Than Walmart

Bezos (Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)

Excerpted from “Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans”

When I first did research on Walmart’s workplace practices in the early 2000s, I came away convinced that Walmart was the most egregiously ruthless corporation in America. However, ten years later, there is a strong challenger for this dubious distinction—Amazon Corporation. Within the corporate world, Amazon now ranks with Apple as among the United States’ most esteemed businesses. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, came in second in the Harvard Business Review’s 2012 world rankings of admired CEOs, and Amazon was third in CNN’s 2012 list of the world’s most admired companies. Amazon is now a leading global seller not only of books but also of music and movie DVDs, video games, gift cards, cell phones, and magazine subscriptions. Like Walmart itself, Amazon combines state-of-the-art CBSs with human resource practices reminiscent of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Amazon equals Walmart in the use of monitoring technologies to track the minute-by-minute movements and performance of employees and in settings that go beyond the assembly line to include their movement between loading and unloading docks, between packing and unpacking stations, and to and from the miles of shelving at what Amazon calls its “fulfillment centers”—gigantic warehouses where goods ordered by Amazon’s online customers are sent by manufacturers and wholesalers, there to be shelved, packaged, and sent out again to the Amazon customer.

Amazon’s shop-floor processes are an extreme variant of Taylorism that Frederick Winslow Taylor himself, a near century after his death, would have no trouble recognizing. With this twenty-first-century Taylorism, management experts, scientific managers, take the basic workplace tasks at Amazon, such as the movement, shelving, and packaging of goods, and break down these tasks into their subtasks, usually measured in seconds; then rely on time and motion studies to find the fastest way to perform each subtask; and then reassemble the subtasks and make this “one best way” the process that employees must follow.

Amazon is also a truly global corporation in a way that Walmart has never been, and this globalism provides insights into how Amazon responds to workplaces beyond the United States that can follow different rules. In the past three years, the harsh side of Amazon has come to light in the United Kingdom and Germany as well as the United States, and Amazon’s contrasting conduct in America and Britain, on one side, and in Germany, on the other, reveals how the political economy of Germany is employee friendly in a way that those of the other two countries no longer are.

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This Insane Burger King Receipt Left A Grandmother In Tears

Way to go, Burger King. You made a grandma cry.

A receipt allegedly given to a Virginia grandmother and her daughter-in-law at the drive-thru of a Richmond, Va., Burger King on Saturday called the pair “b***h a** hoes,” according to photos published by CBS affiliate WTVR-TV. A manager on duty apologized when he heard of the vulgar note, but he didn’t refund the meal, said the distraught grandmother, who was in tears over the incident.


A Burger King representative said the company was looking into the incident.

“At Burger King Corp., we have great respect for all of our guests and customer service is a top priority every day at BURGER KING® restaurants,” a spokesman for the company told The Huffington Post in an email. “BKC has recently been made aware of a photo that shows an alleged receipt from a franchisee-owned and operated restaurant that does not comply with our customer service policy. We are working with the franchisee, who is investigating the matter, to determine the origins of this photo.”
This isn’t the first time Burger King has been in hot water over an obscene receipt. Two employees were fired from a California Burger King for printing “f**k you” on a receipt back in 2010.
Yet, not all receipt stories in the news turn out to be legit: A waitress in New Jersey who said a couple had left her an anti-gay note on a meal receipt was suspended from her job after it was revealed that she might have made the whole thing up.

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MANAGER FROM HELL TEARS INTO BURGER BITCH, GOOD MANAGER OFFERS SUPPORT

Burger bitch greenFrom: RHU Facebook, Burger Bitch
It’s official. I was Hitler in my last life. There’s no other explanation for all of the shit that life shoves in my face. 
Sorry for all of the posts recently, but my job is just getting worse and worse and you guys are the only ones who totally understand.
These are the stories from today.
First of all, I trained another new girl today, but she was the dumbest person I’ve ever met. So that went fairly well, except not at all. She’s not catching on whatsoever. The girl I trained last night was only on her third shift ever and she was doing fine, this girl has been there for almost 2 weeks and she still doesn’t know how to COUNT MONEY. Oh God.
Anyways, here’s the first asshole and the start of the story about how the asshole manager screamed at me in front of customers. 
I was on one cash and the dumb new girl was on the other. I was helping a customer when the new girl came over and asked me “If someone paid with a gift card and they want to return something, what do I do?” I told her that it always has to go on to the method they paid with. I also said that there are gift cards in the drawer and that she just has to scan it once she gets to the Total screen.
That’s how I was trained, that’s how I’ve been doing it, nobody has ever told me otherwise. Anyways, the customer starts flipping out, so once I’m done with my customer, I go over to see what the problem is. The customer starts SCREAMING at me saying that she’s never had it done like that and they’ve always credited to her Sears account… But she didn’t fucking pay with her Sears card! I explained that it always has to go onto the method that she paid with, which means that it will go onto a gift card. Then she said “I’m going to go to a cashier who knows what they’re doing, because you’re obviously a fucking idiot.” I just looked at her and said, in my cheeriest voice “ALRIGHT. HAVE A WOOONDERFUL DAY.” and walked away.
BloodsuckercheckoutI’m absolutely done with this fucking job. About 10 minutes later, I get a call from the same cunt manager that I had to deal with last night (I never got that talking to, by the way) saying that she’ll be down to talk to us in a few minutes. I just said “Ok” because what the fuck are they going to do? Yell at me for telling her to have a wonderful day? Fuck off.
She came down about 20 minutes later and explained to the dumb New Girl that what I told her to do was wrong (It wasn’t, this manager doesn’t even know HOW TO WORK ON CASH), but she was extremely polite to the new girl. Then she turned to me and this occurred.
Her: “Ok. First of all, the return DOES NOT EVER go onto a gift card, unless they don’t have a receipt. That’s the ONLY time it gets put onto a gift card! So YOU were wrong from the get go!”
Me: “I was trained to put it on whichever method they paid with.”
Her: “No. That’s not how it works! You need to learn to listen to the customers because they’ve been shopping here longer than you’ve been working here! THEY know what they’re doing!”
Me: “Beg pardon!? So you’re saying that I should listen to the customers all the time? So if they want a refund in my blood, I should just grab the scissors and go to town on my jugular?”
Her: “Don’t give me attitude! YOU need to sign this void.”
Me: “Why? It’s not even my transaction, it doesn’t have my employee number on it. It’s not my void.”
Her: “Because YOU told her what to do, and YOU told her wrong.”
I signed it and the second she walked away, I text my cash supervisor and told her to call me at work when she had the chance. Not 30 seconds later, the phone at my cash rings and before I can even say “Hello, Julie speaking,” my cash supervisor shouts, “WHAT’S WRONG? WHAT HAPPENED!?
Me: “Well, here’s a question. If someone pays with a gift card and they want to return something, what do you do?”
Cash Sup: “You put it on a gift card. Why?”
Me: “Nope. You don’t. I just got in shit for telling Dumb Girl to do it. AssManager yelled at me at my cash, in front of customers.”
Cash Sup: “WHAT!? No, you put it on a fucking gift card. She doesn’t even know cash, how the fuck would she know!?”
Carolanne heft crossMe: “And apparently, I have to ONLY listen to customers, because they know my job better than I do. She literally just told me that.”
Cash Sup: “I’m talking to GoodManager tomorrow. That’s fucking ridiculous. She’s not allowed to yell at you AT ALL let alone in front of customers. And what the fuck were you supposed to do? You have to put it in a gift card!”
We talked for a bit longer and she’s just as livid as I am. I might not even go into work on Saturday. I’m fucking done. I hate it so much there.
And now, for the second story, about the woman who complained about me being rude to her… ON MY DAY OFF.
Shortly after this fucking shitshow, a woman comes in and stomps up to my cash. I went to greet her, but she cut me off, saying that I fucked up her transaction on Tuesday, and she called head office AND the store to complain about me. I check out the receipt and see that it was dated 02/18/14 which was Tuesday… Which was my day off. I wasn’t fucking there! I pointed out that I wasn’t here that day and the employee number on the receipt isn’t mine.
She flips out and tries to tell me that I’m wrong and she wants this to be fixed immediately. However, I look at the receipt and see nothing wrong. I ask her what she wanted fixed and I would try to help her with it, and she shouted “I WANTED TO USE A COUPON.”
Me: “Ok..? Did you give the cashier your coupon?”
Crazy Buttshart: “NO. THE COUPON WAS AT HOME.”
Me: “Well, then they couldn’t have used it anyways..”
Crazy Buttshart: “WHY NOT!?”
Me: “Because you didn’t have the coupon…”
She demanded to talk to a manager, so I told her to head back to Catalog, because I knew that the crazy cunt manager that just yelled at me was back there.
And about 20 minutes later, Manager came back to lecture me about how I should have just given her the extra percentage off on Tuesday. I grabbed the receipt from her hand, pointed to the date and employee number and said “I. WASN’T.HERE. THAT WAS MY DAY OFF AND THAT’S NOT EVEN MY EMPLOYEE NUMBER. I WILL NOT GET IN SHIT FOR SOMETHING ELSE THAT ISN’T MY FAULT.” She just looked at me and said “Well, even so.”
FUCK YOU. SERIOUSLY. YOU SHOULD GET CANCER.
–Burger Bitch