"There's no point in spending your life in the pursuit of something that's easy." - Alice Kuipers

Monday, May 30, 2011

Unsupervised

I'm sick of my day job. I think I desperately need a vacation, you know one, two, maybe three months. That ought to do it. But seriously, I'm really having trouble being anything other than miserable at work lately. And by lately, I mean since January. The trouble is, it's too regimented. They recently put in a new computer system and now we have to clock in and out for every shift. We're timed down to the minute. We even have to clock in and out for our lunch breaks.
It doesn't end there. The management team watches us all like a collective hawk. We're not allowed to talk to each other on the sales floor, just the customers. We aren't allowed to leave the sales floor without letting a manager know and even then, we don't dare stay away long.
We are constantly reminded of our sales target, prodded and nagged into remaining "customer focused". They never let us forget. And it drives me insane. Maybe, if we were paid decent wages I'd feel more responsible for our sales numbers. But we're not. We're paid garbage wages and our bonuses are terrible. We don't receive extra money at Christmas. We receive store money. Money that we can only spend in the store. What?!
To make matters worse, they're now going to be installing security cameras every where in the store. Somehow I don't think it's going to be used to catch shoplifters. I'm more than a little sure it's going to be used to monitor us instead. As if we weren't being watched enough.
Recently we received 'merit increases' and reviews. You know how much of a merit increase I received? 3%. Hmmm. Thanks? We aren't even consulted in our reviews. I'm used to the system in which you sit down with your manager, discuss your review and debate over your raise. You demand high and then barter down to something that's reasonable for both of you. Not here. A review is left on the staff room table for you, letting you know what they think of you and your performance. There's no discussion, you don't get to weigh in on how much you think you deserve.
It's a weird system. Maybe these little irritations wouldn't stand out so much if I hadn't been there for so long. But I'm closing in on two years and I'm beginning to realize I need to get out, or work there a lot less. Because it's all getting to be too much. I make no money, I'm supervised like a two year old by a babysitter, and I'm still dealing with customers. It sucks. I think I need a job where I can work independently and for better money. I need to be unsupervised, but that's a tough one to find.

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