09/26/2005 Entry: "Been a long time gone"

Boredom leads me here. 4am classic hits of the 70s boredom. Going to bed at 12 turned into too short of a nap to feel awake enough to work on finishing Paper Mario before it has to go back to Blockbuster and too long of a nap to go back to sleep just yet.

Work sucks. I can't get caught up on keeping two stores full of employees. When I try to schedule myself enough coverage to actually have time to train the new hires I catch hell for our labor costs, then the "I don't know enough about running a xxxx xxx to be the manager but I know more than you about scheduling for a xxxx xxx" owner's sister/accountant/franchise "leader" comes in on my "day off" (worked three hours at the less troubled store) and turns my schedule into a conflicted schizophrenic nightmare. Then on my other "day off" (worked on fixing the nightmare schedule - which included running one 17-y/o 13 days straight with split shifts and double-back 10-hour days, prepared payrolls, went in from 6:45 to 8:00am waiting for the food delivery that never came - called them when the service desk opened, and was told our delivery time was changed, again, without notice, is this a long enough parenthetical thingamajig? I don't f-ing care at this point.) she hires two new servers when we already have too many and desperately need cooks, demotes my final remaining shift manager for no good reason, really.

My "assistant" at the not-as-bad store really could do a lot better. I can't seem to convince him that it's not about knowing how to do everything, but about knowing how to find out how to do it. He's the sort of guy that will call me with a question like "The computer is locked up and the main terminal has a message saying to call Help Desk, should we call Help Desk?"

I keep telling myself I only need to put up with this crap for 6 more months, but then the car breaks down and the next month it's 6 more months again instead of 5. Then there's the whole issue of leaving if I ever do get the financial junk taken care of. I don't want to be a jerk and leave them with two stores with no managers, especially since my best option for a decent part-time, flexibly scheduled job if/when I do go back to school is with the same company, but with no training budget, no job advertising budget, and no time to even train cooks, how am I supposed to find, hire, and train two managers to work for $10 an hour unsalaried with no benefits?

I am tired of this subject.