Please Do Not Queue Here

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Consumerism

2010-03-02T07:35:00.000-08:00

The months whizzed by, and it can only be said that Entertainment picked up. There were no more days where I was able to scoot around to Manchester and help Claire with something, no more opportunities to have a lazy day chatting and networking with everyone I possibly could – including the reps. Now I haven’t said much about reps so far into this tale, so I think it’s time that I did.

Lesson 1 for soundbar is what I like to call rep-working. (Like networking – aren’t I hilarious?!) This is the process of unashamedly sucking up to your reps in order to build up a good relationship with them, and it’s something that I am fantastic at. In most stores, the reps will rock up to find piles and piles of their stock, unprocessed and gathering dust down on the back dock. Not at my store, oh no! The reps would come in to find all their stock processed and waiting their attention on their respective stands. It suited me, as I was in a better position to process the stock, and it freed up more of their time to actually merchandise, which made by department look awesome, but more importantly, sell awesome.

As time trundled on, however, everything picked up, including my impatience with standing idly around chatting. The reps were getting testy, I was getting testy, and let’s just say the months between October and December were a wholesale rep fail. I knew it would all correct itself come the 4th of January (that magical Target date), so I tried not to worry too much about it.

We were all feeling the pinch, and then came the wrath of the Seasonal Departments. Promotional areas were something of a novelty at Target, and I always found them full of boundless excitement. Needless to say, when I found out that Christmas Confec was traditionally Entertainment’s responsibility, I jumped about ten feet in the air. Soundbar will always be Soundbar, and I will always hold it in high regard, but it was beginning to wear me down. I needed a change – desperately. Looking back, I know that this is the real reason I started ‘helping out’ in Toys after July – not because it actually needed it as badly as I was making it out.

So Christmas confec was mine, utterly and completely. Joseph chose the end of September to go on holidays for two weeks, and while I was suitably horrified at the thought of two weeks of utter boredom, the fact that I could take over Seasonal and make it fucking awesome was the redeeming factor of that time. So I grabbed the floorplan (Kerry had already drawn it up…) and set to work.

And yes, as I had come from a Soundbar background (where the key is to make everything look breathtakingly awesome), Christmas Confec looked, for the first time in a long time, fucking awesome. I was literally cocking my leg and peeing all over it – so much so that when Joseph came back he was a) astonished and b) intimidated enough to not want to fill in there – so it continued to be mine. One of the most defining moments of that time was when Jayne and Kerry were powerwalking around, standing in between my masterpiece and the slowly arising Decs (Christmas decorations) department, which was being manned by Claire and Ally.

“So,” Jayne was saying. “I’m going to get Adam in next week during the day, so we can continue to use Katherine in here, because she’s quick and fast.”

I shit you not, that is exactly what she said. Not just quick, not just fast, but quick and fast. Of course my head nearly exploded with this insanely rare praise from our Head of State and I endeavoured to be even quicker and faster than I had been before.

So the seasonal departments sprung up, and so did the Hardgoods Team’s sense of, well, team. Never before had the four of us (Ally, Claire, Joseph and myself) been so allied, and I was loving every second of it. Claire and I bonded over our departments. We had both come to find kindred spirits in the other one – we had a very similar work ethic and got a lot of joy out of doing what we did. That, and the fact that we both had this niggling knowledge that we weren’t supposed to be toiling away at Target when we were both much better than it, cleaved us together.

Then, Chantelle left. It was a blow, a big blow, for everyone. For starters, it meant that all chances of management were completely blown away, at least until the 4th of January. Jayne said as much when I was working on Seasonal one day, after the interview I’d had the previous week.

“How was it?” she’d asked.

I regarded her, and shrugged. “You can never really tell,” I said, to which she nodded and said that I was right. She paused for a minute.

“You know that I told them I would prefer not to lose you before Christmas,” she said tentatively. I nodded calmly, having already surmised as much.

“Especially with all this business,” I said, waving my hand at Toys. Jayne looked very relieved that I apparently understood, and also exasperated that I should know the all of it. Chantelle had only given in her resignation that morning, and no one but Jayne (and I) knew. She should have known by then that I was notoriously nosy, and had a penchant for knowing things before even management knew.

It was awful to see her go, even though I knew she was doing the right thing for herself. The conversations we had were second to none; she seemed to have this unending source of Target wisdom, which could not have been more appreciated. The worst thing though, in my opinion, was the effect it would have on Joseph.

Ever since Chantelle entered the family, she and I made it our mission to buck him up, make him more confident, and strangely enough it was actually working. I think back fondly on our conversations, which were mostly about him, and the mothering tone we’d both take on. We both grew fond of him, and of each other. We were a very close knit little team. Of course, all things must die, and this, too, did so.

It's What You Make It

2009-11-26T03:20:00.000-08:00

On Monday, it was all back to normal. The children had all gone back to school and the aisles of Toys were once again clear, leaving one lonely staff member on the floor making a start on the debris with an oversized broom; a sad look in her eyes. The knowledge of failure hung over all the three of us, Jesus, Chantelle and I, as we plodded around trying to summon up some kind of motivation. The other two found it gradually, but surely; the pace started again to quicken and the smiles became more frequent. But there was no improvement in the Soundbar ranks. I kept my eyes on the ground, worked methodically but horribly slowly, and brooded.

The logic I was using seemed sound to me at the time. The huge effort that went into Toy Sale, worrying myself sick night after night about it, I embedded that catalogue into my memory forever. And for it to fail so significantly was a blow I was not going to recover from quickly. There was so much mopping up to do after the sale, shit was everywhere; my normal self would have been in a fluster, running around like a headless chook, but the work that took me three weeks to finish would have been achieved in three days.

I was seriously considering packing it in. It would never change, it wouldn’t be the same. Some things are different. Some jobs, you can work your arse off and your returns would increase exponentially. But in this job, there is a set level one must work at in order to gain returns, and beyond that you’re working harder for the same gain. I had achieved that level before I even started. (Remember the high standards I was interviewed by? What a joke.) There was nothing left for me to achieve.

My mind switched off over the next couple of weeks, and I have no memory of what went on, suffice it to say that whatever it was went on very slowly. The first thing I recall, my ‘waking up’ to put it one way, was being in Reception one afternoon at about 4 on a Thursday.

Jesus and I were printing clearance signs for the bulky items left over. Usually this would only take the, ahem, skill of one individual, but Jesus was notoriously bad with computers and thus did not know how to use Microsoft Word properly. Jayne was in her office, and usually when this is the case, we wouldn’t be talking. But it was Thursday afternoon, and Jesus was due to go home any minute. So we talked; it was as if we knew we had to, because we wouldn’t get another chance for four days or so. I don’t remember what we were saying (though it was all said in low voices and with as many euphemisms as possible, it would never do to have Jayne listening in) but it ended with me sighing.

“I dunno what’s wrong with everything lately,” I said, sinking further into the abyss I was creating for myself.

“It’s what you make it,” he said.

A shiver overtook my whole being and my head snapped up to stare fiercely at him. Oblivious to my regard (or perhaps because of it), he turned a stony gaze upon me. Such a simple declaration, but one which hit home something chronic. I have since analysed it, and decided that because I tend to overthink, I often miss these self evident truths that are so obvious to others. And he was right, I thought as I looked at him, we create our own reality.

Only time would tell if we were doing it right.

A Wholesale Fail

2009-11-13T07:32:00.000-08:00

It was dark and cold in the morning, the dampness hanging about Fremantle like a shroud. The inside of the store was, for once, alive, and you could almost smell the atmosphere of apprehension. Busy... busy... busy... was the whisper. At Soundbar alone there was Katy, Adam and I, all there soley to serve people. Toys was full of Toy Sale t-shirted staff armed with catalogues and portaphones, scurrying about in the pre-opening witching hour, their eyes darting nervously about. Toy Sale - more lengthily called Australia's Biggest Toy Sale by our marketing guys, was Target's biggest event of the year, and an annual ritual for all involved - the three principal involvees of course being Jesus, Chantelle and I. We were in our element.

8:30 rolled around and I cursed myself for forgetting to find some urgent errand to run at checkouts, for the sole purpose of spying on the idiot morons who, if it wasn't so socially unacceptable, would have probably camped outside in the freezing July air for the entire night beforehand, and who make it point every year to make all haste (i.e. run into the store in a terribly undignified manner) in getting to their desired items. And they wonder why we hold them in such contempt.

So the first floor burst into life; the sounds of childrenn whining mingled with their parents whining at us because we didn't have exactly what they wanted at exactly the time they wanted it (blaming us individually and personally for this, to them, deliberate slight upon their person). I was having a ball; despite my record of having terrible customer service (only because I'm so fucking BUSY all the time I don't have time to spend half an hour on an idiot who wants to know if they can transfer their casette tapes (I shit you not) onto their MP3 player!) I am actually quite good at it when I have the day set aside for such a purpose, as had happened on the 23rd of July. I was selling things left, right and centre; upselling people's Wii purchases, bullshitting about the 'designer lenses' on certain cameras (God they're idiots - CAMERAS FROM TARGET ARE ALL THE SAME, MORONS!) and co-ordinating the activities of my staff.

We slowly realised, as the first people trickled away, that we were dead. Considering we had considered crowd control mechanisms (ie me fixing the sound on the big plasma above the counter so people had something to listen to while waiting in line), we were all a little bit disappointed. But I was not to take it to heart too much - it was early days yet. Come ten o'clock and we'll be beating customers away with Wii Golf Clubs, I thought to myself.

Ten o'clock came and went and my worry levels shot up. Where were the fucking customers?! I took the time we had spare to do constant 'fixing' - moving game boxes back to their homes, moving things that weren't selling around to make room to try selling something else, anything I could to boost sales.

"Upsell, upsell, upsell," I impressed upon the staff I had working in Sounbar. "Seriously, do some seriously aggressive sales here." My tone was so grim that they did not argue.

Jesus came over.

"Phew," he said, leaning on the door of the counter. "It's a rat race down there."

I looked down at Toys. Sure, the aisle was full but people could still move with trolleys, and no one was getting trampled. This was not a good sign. Jesus caught my grim look and surveyed Katy, who was wrapping a layby, and Adam who, for lack of anything else to do, was cutting up Game Box Stickers at my instruction.

"Not looking good, is it?"

"No, it's not. And you know who will be blamed. Us. Not the changing economic circumstances, but you, and me, and Chantelle."

He frowned. "It is not our fault," he began, but I shook my head.

"Doesn't matter how illogical it is, it's how they're going to see it. Even if they don't admit it. And maybe they're right. Anyway, we'll worry about it when we get the sales figures."

"You can bet your life Janine's hitting "refresh" on the damned things every five seconds," he said, before giving me a look and sweeping away.

Later on, a ripple of panic ran through the Drone ranks. I felt it even before Jesus stalked grimly down to the counter.

"Ashley's just walked into the store," he said in a carefully measured tone.

My eyes widened. What was the district manager doing in the store, now of all times? Stupid time to have a visit... unless...

"Yep," Jesus said, following the train of my thought as it made itself obvious on my face. "We're doing so badly, the district manager had to come in and intervene." His face was stormy and mine was no better. Katy, laughing, came over.

"What's up with you two?" She was distracted by a customer and Jesus and I turned identical expressions back upon one another.

"Well, things will unfold as they will," I said, steeling myself. "Just keep my informed, okay?"

By the time I said this last, he'd already walked away. I was no longer surprised at things like this.

Worry continued mounting, and wasn't helped by the sight of Janine and Ashley, both of whom cut imposing figures on their own, striding directly towards me. Janine looked as panicked as I felt, and the look of fury on Ashley's face cowed me, but I stood tall.

They surveyed my department from the front. Critical eyes swept over my work, what I had done, what we had decided, and I for one knew they could not come up wanting. How could they? I worked my arse off in here to prepare for this sale. Suddenly, Ashley addressed me. I was uncomfortably aware of Jesus hovering around in the background, trying and failing to be unobtrusive.

"Are these games moving?"

I frowned, and thought about it. Every year the catalogue had a featured game that was cheap - this year Rayman Raving Rabids 2 on DS was going out the door for $9.95. I'd dedicated a whole front end to them and ticketed the shit out of them, but the fact was, we'd hardly sold any.

"No, they're not," I admitted, and felt it was a personal failure.

"Do you think they would sell better from downstairs?"

My eyes flashed and narrowed as I regarded him. Was the little bastard actually testing me at a time like this? Or did he genuinley want my opinion?

"These games are an add-on item," I said surely. "People aren't coming in specifically to buy them, they see the price point and make the decision in store. So yes, I think they will move much better downstairs."

It was as though Ashley blinked the distraction from his eyes and looked at me properly, and with interest. "That's right," he said gruffly. "Do it."

I gave him a sharp nod and went to move off, but he hadn't finished. "What else can we do?"

I cocked my head, so he continued. "Is there anything else you can move downstairs to push sales?"

I thought furiously, my whole catalogue flicking through my head. Finally, I shook it. "No. Not that I can think of. But I can grab a catalogue and go through it with a comb."

Ashley's face closed over again and, again, the taste of bitter failure coursed through my. He and Janine walked off, not before giving me a directive to work on the problem and see what I could come up with. I hung my head for a second, summoning up the werewithal to avoid the surmounting sense of embarrassment at my lack of ability to think of anything, and the anger that I could feel following. Despite my efforts, however, I was muttering furiously to myself as I put together a table for the games that were to be moved and shifted it down to checkouts, where hopefully, true to my word, they would start to move.

The day wore on, and was finally over. Most people left in glee, glad to be out of there for the day. But Jesus and I could not find even a wry grin for one another. For my part, I was bitterly disappointed. All that work, all that effort; all the stress and worry and extra hours spent pouring over catalogues, drawing up catalogue action-plans, trying to match up complementary items... just plain working my arse off - all for nothing. We were still blasted by the district manager, our store manager... it was the lowest criticism.

Jesus only had one bit of parting wisdom as we left for the day. "I'm not owning this," he said, his head held at an almost defiant tilt that I had never seen before. "And I don't think you should either."

And with that, he was gone. I stood for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then I sighed deeply, pulled my jacket on, and went home.

Kindred Spirits

2009-09-27T08:16:00.000-07:00

The power of the human mind is nothing if not amazing. If we’re bored; if the capacity of an individual conscious mind is not used to its fullest, it will automatically engage itself in ways that, if we’re not careful, we will not even notice. We can convince ourselves into or out of anything, we can from nothing create rich and diverse environments for thought. Surrounded by a bunch of boring Target morons? No worries, the powerful mind says with a lopsided grin and a twinkle in its eye. I’ll make it interesting for you.

It is no secret that the default state of people in general is ‘boring’. That goes for you, me, and everyone else. We’re inherently boring. And for people who have overactive imaginations, it is easy to deliberately mistake dull signs for their polar opposites. A blank stare can become brooding silence, a conversation turns into an elaborately concocted trap, or the neutrality following an accidental brushing of hands becomes electrically tense.

Like I have said, we can talk ourselves into or out of anything, and I’d managed to somehow talk myself into the idea that Target was interesting. The people I worked with were boring, however, I’d managed to attribute these wonderful and deep characteristics to them. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I viewed them all as melancholy geniuses when really they were just blank slates. For some, I saw them as conniving. I would watch what I said around them, because I just knew they would immediately rush to the relevant authorities the minute I said anything unorthadox. Previous staff members took on an almost legendary personality as my mind created thousands of possibilities as to why they were gone (secret firings, management-wide conspiracies, Target-witness protection…)

Every conversation from then on seemed to have some kind of meaning, every glance hid a whole conversation, every odd action by a member of the Elite Three (Janine, Kellie and Kris) was the key to one of the conspiracies, every note that went missing was a plot to turn my casuals against me. It was full on, it was tiring, but it sure as hell made me get up in the morning to trek it into work. And what harm was it, I wondered at the beginning? Why did it matter? I knew somewhere deep down that it was all a farce and that these people were disappointingly boring. But if I could convince myself on the surface that there was an interesting undercurrent then it could only help, right?

The thing is, it just doesn’t work like that.

I don’t think I fully realised how deep I had gone until Toy Sale prep, a good five months after I started at the new store. Traditionally, for Toy Sale Prep (let’s give it a capital for posterity’s sakes), Toys and Soundbar are given helpers. Casuals who, under the guidance of the relevant part-timer, would scurry around like ants and smooth the process. At New Target, this seemed to be different. I was alone, completely alone, until the eve of Toy Sale where even these stingy bastards had to agree that one person was not enough. Anyway, the point was that I had to deal with bucketloads of stock on my own, not to mention the added stress of making all the decisions, decisions usually made by the entertainment manager. As we have already discovered, however, this particular ‘entertainment’ manager was a little too attached to Toys, so he spent all his effort in there. Fine by me, I didn’t want him fucking up my areas, but I was still justifiably bitter about the whole deal.

One morning, Claire from Manchester offered her assistance. I blinked in surprise before thanking her profusely and setting her to work. Shrewdly I appraised her. What did I know of her? Not much. She was a hard worker and was short with the customers, and in that we were kindred spirits. She was also, I had gradually discovered, intelligent. Now I’m sure you can understand the rarity of such an occurrence by now, and understand why I was happy to have her around.

“So, what are you in for?”

Her head snapped up from where she pressed down on one of the clear safers with the heels of her palms and she regarded me calmly.

“Because it’s easy.”

Such a simple answer, with such a ringing truth to it. She went on to describe a situation not unlike my own… she was working there as a casual when she finished school, and she couldn’t decide what to do… and there she still was, three years down the track.

Then Jesus came over.

“Ah, just the manager I want to see,” I said. I always had to try and be upbeat when he was around, because I was rather dependent on his moods for my own moods, and he was constantly morose, causing me to have to make a concerted effort to fight off the moroseness. “These games, on the Kitchenware front ends. I don’t have enough bookshelves to shelve them properly.”

He seemed to explode.

“God I am so sick of hearing about these bookshelves!”

I gave him a withering look. “And you think I’m not? Difference is, you’re being paid to deal with the problem of the bookshelves. I’m not. So deal with it.”

I was rather harsh, but it was a necessary harshness. He needed to be pushed, no shoved, to get him to do his job.

We exchanged a long look (as was our custom) and he stormed off, me staring stonily after him. Then I remembered Claire was there. She was watching me, with a look of high amusement on her face.

“God he makes me so mad!” I exclaimed, still caught in the scene.

“You guys are always arguing,” she said. “I have never seen you interact normally.”

“That’s ‘cause we’ve never interacted normally,” I answered with a wry grin. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Are they arguing again?” Chantelle called, coming over to the counter as I walked away. I saw her and Claire laughing and smiled lightly to myself. Doin' it all for the entertainment.

I went out to the fixtures reserves, to do one last check. Allison happened to be out there, rummaging around, so I asked her if she’d seen any of the brackets that I needed. Manchester used bookshelves for their sheets. She was helping me look when Jesus happened to walk into the fixtures reserves.

I stopped and stared at him. He was rigid, taking in what was happening instantly. I cursed inwardly when I realised what it looked like. He was insecure and paranoid at the best of times, so Allison and I looking for shelves would be like the ultimate betrayal. Ally was oblivious of our turmoil.

“Doesn’t look like there’s any here,” she said as we continued to eyeball one another. “I’ll have a look at the pallet listing and see what I can find. I have a feeling there’s some on pallet 10.”

“Just use the smaller ones, then,” Jesus decreed, before turning on his heel and walking away. I followed him hurriedly, determined not to let this fester as I knew it would. Ally was behind me.

“So do you think it will matter if some of the shelves are of different length?”

He was at the plastic doors when he stopped and turned.

“What?”

I was uncomfortably aware of Allison’s presence, but I soldiered on.

“If, like you said, I use the smaller ones for the other two front ends that I haven’t done yet, won’t it look out of place?”

He glared at me and I glared back.

“Well, why don’t you just ask Allison?”

There was a silence, oh, such a long silence! It was heavy, filled with electricity, and I went cold.

“What?” I whispered hoarsely.

He turned, pushed the plastic door open, and marched away. I was gaping after him when Allison said something.

“What was that all about?” I asked, round-eyed.

“What?” she asked distractedly. “Anyway I’ll look at the pallet listing.”

She left and I immediately ran to the counter. Claire, noticing my tension (was it the trembling? The wide eyes? The pinched-white face? The pacing?), asked me what had happened and I told her. She grinned, and I wasn’t sure whether it was at the animation of my storytelling or the story itself.

“There’s been something funny going on with the managers for quite some time now,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get it out of Ally but she won’t let on.”

I regarded her and frowned, my sense of ‘storyline’ almost going crazy at this declaration. Next thing, I ran to Chantelle and told her the whole story. She shivered along with me when I got to the end and was amazed. “Weird,” she said.

So I went back to the counter and safered some more games for about a half hour before I saw him in the Toys promo area. “OMG,” I said to Claire. “I should totally go ask him what that was all about.”

“Er…”

“No, ‘cause normally when stuff like this happens we both just ignore it and it festers and we hate each other until we eventually forget it and go back to normal. But what if I confront it?”

She shook her head, exasperated, and I grabbed a grey tote trolley (to make it look like I had a purpose) and walked past, stopping when I reached him.

“So what was all that about?”

“What?”

“The ‘ask Allison’ business?”

“Oh, I just meant because it’s in her area so she’d know if it would be okay or not.”

I could see Chantelle watching out of the corner of my eye as I said triumphantly, “HA! If it really was no big deal you wouldn’t even know what I was talking about! As it is, you know exactly what I’m referring to! Which means it IS what I thought it was! You were annoyed because you thought I was asking her about the shelves, which I wasn’t. I was simply asking if she’d seen any, because she uses them in her areas!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but Chantelle had come closer and was now in on the conversation, so I shook my head and gripped my trolley.

“Whatever,” I said dismissively, and walked on. Chantelle then asked Jesus what was going on (I found this out later).

When I had filled up my tote, he was still there. I walked on by, nose in air, and I met his eyes. Not being able to help myself, my face broke into the biggest grin, and he grinned back, our eyes communicating something clumsy words could not. That we were both in on the joke. For the benefit of Chantelle and Claire, who had been following the domestic all morning, we’d both completely put on a massive charade. The two in question were completely baffled as we grinned stupidly at one another for not more than a second as we walked past one another, but a second that felt like an age.

My web of kindred spirits was growing.

Looks

2009-09-09T22:41:00.000-07:00

And so it continued like this for the next few months. The more progress I made, the more barriers they put up. The ideas I had were shot down in flames. My staff weren’t doing the right thing, and every time I tried to bring it up with Jesus, or even Kellie, they did the equivalent of patting my head and telling me not to worry about it. Well yes, I was worried about it, because I spent the entire Monday cleaning up after the idiot weekend staff who wouldn’t know merchandising if it jumped up with a duster and a shelf bracket and beat them over the head a few thousand times. Various other problems arose, all of which I dealt with the best I could, using the pushy, never-back-down techniques I had learned from Lordship.

As for Jesus, I developed a rather shocking level of contempt for him. Yeah, he’s a trainee. He’s still learning. That’s what I was being told from all angles, to which I responded ‘so what?’ Lordship had never managed Soundbar before and he came into it guns blazing and was an excellent manager. All I ever saw Jesus doing was fill in Toys. Toys, toys, freaking toys. The weirdo even answered his own portaphone “Hello, Toys…” when every other manager would state their name. I mean, what was all that about? I wrinkled my retail nose at him, it was all wrong. He was like a staff member who was paid slightly better than the rest of us and had a desk. Yeah, he did rosters. Big deal. And it’s not like he managed half his areas anyway, seeing as I did it all for my own. All he had to do was worry about Toys.

It wasn’t until I had finished getting my area up to scratch that I changed my attitude somewhat. I knew that I would have trouble enough managing the area without any support or training, let alone adding the training of a manager into the mix. For that is what I thought I needed to do, train him up, as much as a staff member could anyway.

It is strange, looking back on it now, seeing how my thought process matured as I watched more closely. I realised that he was used quite badly by everyone in the store. Background checks on him revealed that he’d been working at the same store for his whole career; had started as a staff member when he was younger than I am now. That, coupled with the fact he was one of three males who worked full-time there amongst a harem of mostly retarded women saw his phone ringing every five seconds with someone who wanted something moved, or something lifted, or something fixed. I got the feeling that one of the things he appreciated about me was that I was so pig headed I would do everything myself. I would break my back pushing a cabinet, or lifting a boxed trampoline before I would ever ask for help. Need a module built? Where everyone else would just ring him, I would inspect currently built modules and learn painstakingly how to do it, and do it I would.

“You need to transfer,” I told him one day. The look he gave me was an odd one, one I couldn’t interpret.

“I’m permanent,” he said. “Can’t get transferred.”

That explained a lot.

“Do you know why they like to randomly transfer managers?” I asked condescendingly. He raised an eyebrow. I, blindly, took that as a no. “So they can learn. To improve them. So they don’t get taken advantage of like what’s happening here.”

I don’t remember his response, but knowing him, he probably just walked away. He liked to do that, walk away in the middle of a conversation if it was getting just that little bit to hard for him. Frustrating, for me, as I operate in words. I can talk rings around people if I need to, but when you’re faced with just looks, it makes all the words in the world obsolete. It was a hard lesson for me to learn, but learn I did, until I began to communicate with him better.

It wasn’t until after Chantelle made her entrance into this little tale that things started to improve in the Toys/Soundbar family. There had been three Toys staff members since I started in Soundbar (and I thought Old Target had a high turnover rate) who all left for various reasons. When Allison, the homewares manager, introduced me to Chantelle, something about her told me she was the one they’d been looking for. She smiled at me with easy confidence, and I returned the grin. Later on, I sought her out.

Doing away with all thoughts of polite small talk, I launched right into it.

“You’ve come from another Target, haven’t you?”

She eyed me with interest and I met her appraisal calmly. After a time she acknowledged that I was right.

“Midland,” she told me. “But how did you know?”

I smiled and tapped my nose. “Call it Target intuition.” She laughed. “Just so you don’t feel completely swamped in old school crap, I’ll let you know that I’m relatively new here too. I came from Perth a couple of months ago.

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Perth! I opened that store!”

I gaped, shocked. “No way!”

I have always been a stickler for history and legend, and with a store like Target Perth legend was paramount. And for me, a staunch Target Perth devotee, to meet one of the proverbial founding fathers of the store was like meeting a celebrity. I grinned at my own silliness and proceeded to find out that she’d been to heaps of stores and had been with Target almost longer than she cared to remember.

And the main thing for me was, she was intelligent. So, a Target veteran who wasn’t a moron. Then it could be done. I felt like there was hope yet.

“What’s our manager like?” He wasn’t in that day, so she hadn’t met him yet.
I stopped in my tracks and frowned slightly. There was some pretty obvious hesitation as I weighed it all up. What should I tell her? Should I warn her? Or will I sound bitchy? Will I be bitchy? Will I be undercutting him?

I shook my head. He’s got no one to blame but himself, and I was within my rights to tell it how it was. We needed to stick together, anyway. That was how it was at Target. Each department had its little ‘family’ happening. Toys and Soundbar were connected, so the staff of those two departments were bound to be loyal to each other. Same with Manchester and Kitchenware, Mens and Kids, and Ladies and TCF. And of course you had the greater loyalties to your floor. Ground floor versus first floor staff, hardgoods versus softgoods, floor staff versus checkouts, and finally staff versus management. It seems confusing to read, but there is so much powerplay, so many hidden alliances and connections, it becomes fascinating to master them all.

There was one more alliance that I had yet to learn, and that was old school versus new school, probably the most sinister and tangible of all the alliances. Those who had been at a store for millennia stuck together, regardless of whether they were checkouts, floor, or management. They were suspicious, unwelcoming and downright dangerous. I, who had experienced none of this at Old Target due to the high turnover, was unprepared.

However, every cloud has its silver lining, and the disturbing nature of the cliques at New Target would be tempered in time, as my own little ring of alliance would grow. More about that later on.

Life plodded on for a couple of months, in which nothing of note actually happened. But, thankfully, the boring and mediocre times don’t last forever.

It was a Monday, and there was no one in the lunch room at my allocated 12 o’clock lunch hour, which was a rarity. I remember I was buttering toast when Janine walked in. We exchanged light (albeit strained) pleasantries, and she asked:

“How’s the house hunting going?”

I frowned momentarily and furiously tried to figure out what she was talking about. Then it came to me. When I was corresponding with her in the last week at Old Target over the phone, I told her I couldn’t start at 7:30 because I couldn’t get in that early, but that I was looking at moving closer to the store. As it was, I already lived on the complete opposite side of the city, and it took me an hour and a half to get in every day. Point being, she assumed I was serious about the moving thing.

“It’s not,” I answered. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to give up with the whole thing. It’s just too hard for young people to rent on their own, no one trusts you.”

She gave me a look and I suppressed the annoyance I always felt when I spoke to her. I hated talking to big managers. You always felt like you were being set up, or trapped.

“I guess it would be hard with uni and all as well.”

“I’m actually in the process of de-enrolling in uni,” I said. “It’s too hard to keep up with, with 36 hours, and I’m not ready to commit to it yet.”

The look on her face was one of shrewd opportunism. “So what are you going to do?”

I felt a thrill as I realised what she was talking about. This was it! I screamed to myself. Exactly the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! For, management was an idea that I had been coveting even before I transferred.

I knew that I had to measure what I said carefully. I shrugged my shoulders and put my hands out in a gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know,” I replied.

She looked around, obviously thinking hard. “Have you ever thought about making this your career?”

I met her gaze calmly and replied, “Yes.”

She inclined her head, obviously having suspected as much. Truth being told, I never wanted management so it could be my career. I wanted management primarily because it would be SO much fun to tell people what to do, and secondarily for the significant pay rise, to fund going back to uni.

“Of course you could definitely do it,” she said. “Although there are a couple of things you’d need to look at.” She shook her head, as if not wanting to open that particular can of worms. “One comment I’ve had about you is that you tend to take criticism personally and not constructively.” She looked at me sharply, as if half expecting me to be taking this personally. The part of me that wasn’t caught up in the scenario was highly amused. If I was a manager, I’d want my staff to take criticism personally, because it would mean that they cared enough about what they were doing to warrant it.

However, caught up in the scenario I was, and I bowed my head. “That is probably true,” I said. “A vice that comes from youth, I expect.”

I should have known Janine enough by then to have known she doesn't appreciate big speeches like that. A flicker of annoyance crossed her face and I moved on.

“How would I get the ball rolling if I wanted to follow this up?” I asked. She regarded me with her impenetrable gaze.

“Think about it,” she replied. “Think hard, then come and see me.”

And she swept out of the room.

Shrinkage

2009-09-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

When Jesus came in, the department had been taken apart. There were shelves on the floor, brackets everywhere, stock in cages… the look on his face was one I will never forget. And I don’t blame him. Where in Management for Dummies does it tell you how to deal with staff that are too keen? Well, nowhere, because it would be as useful as a whole chapter dedicated to the procedures involved when a crazed elephant rampages through your store. A highly unlikely improbability.

I ploughed through, resolutely, ripping the stock off the shelf and meticulously placing it back on, where it was supposed to go, using the correct merchandising principles. It was a cleansing process, one that took about a week to finish. I think I redefined the colloquialism “busting your gut” in that week, but my effort definitely paid off. I was relatively oblivious to this, as I wasn’t expecting accolades for what I had done. At Old Target, you could literally work your skin to the bone and your brain to frying point and they’d still fire you. Here, it seemed, all you had to do was turn up for work on a regular(ish) basis and you’d be inundated with praise.

That was something I could probably learn to handle, as odd as it was in the very beginning. I remember during my first week an older lady (checkouts, obviously) approached me.

“You’re Katherine from Perth, aren’t you?”

Notoriety, too. Sweet. I think, however, the finest moment of this burgeoning knowledge of how awesome they thought I was, was the Thursday that I showed up to work two hours late, with no explanation, the second week in a row. First time, they’ll usually understand, give you the benefit of the doubt, that kind of thing. But the second time, your arse is definitely in for a reaming.

I was given an excellence card that very day.

As with everything, it wasn’t to last long. For the upper echelons of New Target, the novelty that was a decent staff member was wearing off gradually, as I was coming to realise.

Once I had scraped browngoods together from a horribly parody of a department into a respectable sales area, I turned my attention to interactive.

Interactive, to a Soundbar staff member, is like the cherished, feature part of a front garden. It’s our major selling point, and the most volatile of all the areas. One could never know how a game was going to sell. But sell they did, most of them anyway, and they remain one of the highest shrinkage points in the store.

Ah, Shrinkage! The capital in that word is entirely deliberate. For a retail drone, Shrinkage is one of those concepts that keeps coming back to haunt you. It means, simply, theft. Theft, and having to mark items down due to damage and such. But mainly theft. Every year, after stocktake, the signs would start to go up on the backs of toilet doors and wed be inundated with suspicion. Especially if you work in Soundbar. Once, I happened to find the minutes from a regional Asset Protection meeting, and there was not a single department more focussed on than mine, to the point of making sure that the staff were of the right “age bracket”. I smiled at that, seeing as most, if not all, the Soundbar staff I knew were definitely in the wrong age bracket.

Point being, Interactive at New Target was a high shrinkage area. And again, it is due only to the incompetence of the previous staff/management. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but when you go into the DVD bit of a Target store, some of the DVDs are in hard plastic cases (called safers) to prevent people stealing them. Back before interactive was such a problem, this used to occur with the games, too. Since then, however, a ‘library system’ was developed, in which staff take each game out of its case and file it away alphabetically in the drawers, putting the empty box out on display for customers to peruse. Game shrinkage = 0.

Not at New Target, oh no. I think I nearly cried when I saw the entire department ‘safered’ (the term for stock which is in the hard plastic cases) and watched the mounds of work that I’d have ahead of me to fix it up. I didn’t, however, count on being opposed.

It happened during one of the Power Walks. Janine, the store manager, has this little routine whereby she powers around the store sparks flying out of her eyes, criticism seeming to emit from all orifices. If you got the ‘stop… hands on hips… right foot forward… squint…’ while she walked through your department you knew you were for it. Anyway, one afternoon she and Kellie, the Merchandise Manager, happened to be doing the rounds of my slowly improving department, and I brought it up.

They looked at first shocked and then suspicious. I could almost hear their thoughts… What did she say? She is opting for a huge amount of work for herself, so that we have less shrinkage? Are we hearing right? I can understand, the whole concept is unorthadox. However, if I was faced with the same situation I’d cover my shock and immediately approve the activity, giving all the support I could in the hope of encouraging further independent thought like this.

I definitely wouldn’t frown, and exchange a glance, and ask where on earth you got such an idea… and I certainly wouldn’t belittle the staff member by whipping out my portaphone and calling the sister-store to find out what they were doing.

I was fuming the next day, as they still hadn’t got back to me, so again I decided to jump the gun and just start doing what I knew needed to be done. I felt a twinge of unease. This was the second time an almost identical situation had happened, and I suddenly had a new understanding of what it must have been like for the previous staff member, who, untrained and much less pushy than I, must have felt like he was drowning in a bog.

But, I knew there was two roads I could take at this point. I could acknowledge that they were idiots, shrug, and work by the creed that they should do their own jobs and I’d do mine, keep my nose down and make it easy for myself.

Or, I could narrow my eyes, square my shoulders and allow a small tendril of indignation to snake up through my mind, giving me the required strength to fight. Fight with every ounce of false confidence, hard-won knowledge and political tactics that I had, and whip this department into shape.

Most people, not the idiots that I was, would have chosen the first option. Easier, oh, so much easier. But I simply could not do that. It has never been in my nature to go with a preordained flow. I had to make the flow, and if I couldn’t do that, I’d struggle and fight it with all my strength.

A couple of days after I decided to bull ahead with my gaming idea, I was half way through de-safering the games. Kellie happened to be walking around, and she came up to the counter.

“Katherine,” she said. “We’ve decided that you should go about transferring the games into a library system.”

A dry smile came into my eyes as she walked away, and I turned my back and continued what I was doing.

“I’m so glad,” I muttered sardonically.

Homework

2009-08-29T22:50:00.000-07:00

I had never been more constantly frustrated in all my life.

It was a huge adjustment. To go from a store where I had 20hrs a week, a casual position, with all that I did closely monitored by Dude and His Lordship, to a store where the merchandise manager walked around, asking “how you were going”, and that was about it. I barely saw Joseph for the first two weeks or so. Nothing I did was questioned, and it appeared for a time that I could literally do no wrong in the eyes of the powers-that-were of Fremantle.

Of course, with me, no anomaly can go unanswered for very long and I resolved at once to find out what the hell was up with this place. But who to ask? Should I go and find some obscure staff member who would be candid about it? No. Something like that would only waste time. I was done with skirting around things, my newfound confidence would not allow it.

So I asked Jesus directly. Most managers, if you asked them how their department got so utterly horrific, would bristle, get offended, make excuses. All of these scenarios I was prepared for.

Dejected acceptance, however, I was not.

We were standing in browngoods, (or an awful parody of browngoods, I should say) staring at the stock which looked, I’m sorry to say, as if it had been used for a game like ring toss. Ten points if you get it on the shelf! Twenty if by some miracle it’s facing the right way!

“How could something like this happen?” I asked him. I had a copy of the consumer electronics Presentation Instruction and was staring at it helplessly. In my mind, I was panicking. I’d never even seen one of these before let alone used it. The floor plans were always, always drawn up by the managers of the area and approved by the merch manager before getting to the staff. Even then, the staff would only move things at the bidding of the BM, who would oversee the whole relay operation.

“The guy before you, Mike, was useless,” Jesus replied. “He knew his stuff, but he wasn’t prepared to do any work. He seemed to think that Soundbar was about getting a pile of Wiis in the morning and standing behind the counter selling them all day.”

I took this in. Fair enough. As a manager, you identify this problem with staff. That’s the first step. Then, you’re usually supposed to fix it.

“So what did you do?”

“In the end he told me to go fuck myself,” he replied, not really answering my question. I raised my eyebrows.

“And that’s why he got fired?”

The manager nodded.

“Well good,” I said, decisively. This conversation was going nowhere, it was only making me angry. “So what are we going to do about browngoods? It needs to be relayed.”

Jesus frowned at me. “It just needs some cleaning up, I think. I did go through and check off the points when the planogram was issued.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s all wrong, it needs a relay.”

We went on like this for a while, until he finally agreed to talk to Kellie about it. I smiled serenely as he walked away, it seemed I had won. Usually, when something goes to the MM, stuff gets done, and it was a small victory.

Little did I know.

Time went by and I did all that I thought I could do without support from the management. Every day I’d do the rounds of the department, and browngoods seemed to fester there like a wound. I grew more and more frustrated, until one day, I threw down my PI in anger.

“That’s it!” I screamed and got a couple of funny looks from customers. I gathered up my PI and some scrap paper, and made a rudimentary mud map of the department, before being relieved to go on lunch.

Sitting in the staff room, I poured over my floor plan. It was coming together slowly, but I was flying blind, I had no idea what I was doing.

“Are you doing homework?”

Checkout staff will always be checkout staff wherever you go, and by this I was comforted. I frowned at this particular specimen, weighing my answer carefully because Janine happened to be in the room. And what was all THAT about? At Old Target, the managers invariably ate in their office. You’d never see one in the staffroom.

“It’s a floor plan,” Janine said, before I could answer. I met her eyes and we exchanged a long look, with me meeting her questioning, concerned glance with cool, utterly feigned, confidence. I agreed with her, for the sake of the audience we’d attracted, before gathering up the paper and stalking out of the room.

I was a little worried. Staff were not supposed to be drawing up floor plans. It was not even one of those grey areas that are sometimes apparent. It was a definite no-go zone. We weren’t trained enough, we couldn’t be trusted to draw them up. I was expecting, for the entire remainder of the day, to be getting a visit from one of them. But I didn’t. So, to avoid waiting any longer, the very next morning at 8am, I started my relay.

Making and Breaking - At Least it Rhymes

2009-08-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

It was an eerie kind of limbo, the one in which I lived in those last few weeks at the city store. Turning up to work half drunk most days (not that it mattered, I was in confec), sometimes not showing up at all, I shuffled around in a listless apathy. I don’t remember much from that time, just this general vibe of meaninglessness. Remember I had just given up uni for this place. I had nothing else, had not wanted anything else. And now I couldn’t even have this. It was a bitter end, but, as I learned, a necessary one.

For one day, I happened to glance up from my self induced stupor and spy on the noticeboard a Job Opportunity Bulletin (note the clever acronym – who says Target doesn’t have a sense of humour?) advertising a 36hr Soundbar position at another Target store.

Had I been in my right mind I wouldn’t even have looked twice at it. But my right mind was nowhere to be found, it had fled utterly. I had been squashed into the ground by external events that I had no control over, so it was only natural that my first instinct would be to initiate something that I could control.

And so it was that I found myself, one cold and bitingly windy morning, on the shores of Fremantle, squinting through the fog at the unmistakable red rondell, flashing and blinking like some kind of beacon, pulling my tattered spirit towards it.

Now the only problem was, while not as mystical as a beckoned spirit, was how on earth I was supposed to get in! I waited awkwardly around the corner a little out of the way, until I saw a girl stride purposefully towards the doors. She had an odd look on her face, one of rigid determination crossed with a kind of reluctant acceptance and a twinge of permanent exasperation. Not your average retail drone, I assessed. I studied her in the brief time I had and made a mental note to investigate further when my time was my own. I watched her simply pull aside the sliding doors and berated myself for not having tried this in the first place.

It is always hard, that first footstep over the threshold of something new. So many uncertainties, so much that was unknown… I took a deep breath, as I had done many a time before on occasions like this, and savoured my last moment on the outside, before putting my hands on the sliding doors and pulling them apart.

My eyes flickered all around, trying to take everything in as efficiently as possible, as I’d just worked out I had no idea where the staff area was and that I would have to follow the girl from the door. I closed the doors tentatively behind me and hurried to catch up.

She walked with the purposeful drive of someone who knew what they were doing, and I felt a large wave of sorrow inexplicably wash over me, for what I had lost. Swallowing this lump and cursing my weakness, I followed the girl into the locker room. I’d reached a conclusion, in that short walk. I was thoroughly sick of not knowing what was going on, and I refused, refused to feel that vulnerable ever again in connection with that place. It did not deserve it. So I must make myself hard, impenetrable. Immediately let a façade of knowledge and confidence fall over my uncertainty, to cover my inadequacy, until eventually the inadequacy ceased to exist at all. Steeling myself in the face of my new resolve, I let myself drop into the old Soundbar Swagger mode, and promptly threw my bag into the most convenient locker, banging it shut behind me. I was from Perth, team #51 – I wouldn’t let a measly C-grade store get the better of me. I’d show them what real retail drones were made of. They could all eat my dust. Or better still, choke on my dust.

When all else fails, it seems that I resort to wanton violent thoughts. Awesome.

I was checking out the BMs office (less than half the size of Perth’s, I noted with a hint of derision) when I ran into a short, plump woman with a crop of 90s style blonde hair. Her name appeared to be Ivy, and she was a manager. She looked momentarily confused, until she saw my badge.

“Ah, you must be our new Soundbar girl!” she said, smiling kindly at me.

“I must be,” I said, imitating her tone in what I though was an ingratiating way. As always, it probably just turned out pretentious. Speaking of, I was suddenly uncomfortably aware of the dicky Wii lanyard I had haphazardly tossed around my neck.

“Have you seen Jesus* yet?”

I shook my head. “Is he the entertainment manager?” I knew full well that he was, having thoroughly scouted out the management beforehand, but it never hurt to play dumb in regards to some matters.

She narrowed her eyes as if she’d never considered this possibility before. “Yes, he is,” she finally said. I was amused. It appeared that what I had heard about this entertainment manager was closer to the truth than I’d thought. “Come with me and I’ll go and find him, get him to show you around.”

She led me into the staff room (again, less than half the size…) and bid me wait while she found this enigmatic manager.

I immediately went to the Safety wall, where one could usually find all sorts of information. I was studiously committing to memory the names of the managers, admin, union dels and social club members, when someone walked into the room.

As soon as he did so, I immediately knew that this was my manager. I don’t know how I knew, as he wore no badge, but something about him screamed “significant”. It certainly wasn’t any physical thing. He had a boyish face surrounded by a receding hair line, and there was a hint of grey around his temples. I knew he was only in his mid-to-late twenties, so I wondered at this.

He gave me a shrewd, appraising look and I met his gaze steadily. He allowed his eyes to drop to his watch and opened his mouth.

“What time were you supposed to start?”

I gaped. No introductions, no half hour of small talk, no awkward breaking of ice. Just immediately into the nitty gritty of being five minutes late. My astonishment made my tone somewhat harsher than I intended.

“Perhaps if I hadn’t been cooling my heels in the staffroom waiting for you at someone else’s bidding, I would be right on time. I can assure you this is a one time occurrence. You only have first days once.”

Or a billion times, if you are a transient like me, but this add-on would have just confused him.

His stony expression did not change and I felt a flame of interest burst into life. Curious!

“I’m Jesus but I think you’ve already figured that out. Come with me and I’ll show you around and get you started.”

His voice was low he spoke each word as if it were carefully measured. I had yet to make up my mind whether he was clever, but a bit of a bastard, or just plain thick. I was leaning towards the latter.

I followed him out of the, er, cosy staff lounge and into the breezy, concrete walled upstairs reserve. The brownbuilt fixtures seemed to be mocking me and the window too high to see anything but clouds. I suppressed a sigh and looked up as someone called my name.

“Janine,” I replied. To one side, I saw Jesus start in surprise. I guess he’d forgotten. I almost had. For the current store manager of New Target was the old store manager of Old Target, and it appeared she remembered me. I was glad to see her, a familiar face in a sea of unfamiliarity.

“Have you lost weight?” she said, looking me up and down. I frowned slightly and shook my head.

“Not that I’m aware of but it’s not like I’m keeping track,” I replied, puzzled.

“Hmm,” she said, clearly not believing my answer (or simply not caring). We made more idle small talk before she departed with the promise to talk to me later, and Joseph continued on, beginning his guided tour. I noted, however, how disconcerted he was with my knowledge of Janine and Janine's knowledge of me. I understood, knowing Janine's style of management and knowing how it could put some people on edge. I played around with the glimmer of a grin – I could definitely make this interesting.

We went through the basic rounds, fire exits, receiving dock, my lock up reserves (an absolute joke, by the way, I remember actually believing that Jesus was joking when he showed it to me. It was literally a tenth of my reserve at Perth.)

For me, the tour really started when we visited my area. My excitement quickly turned to dust, as I came to realise exactly how bad the area was. Without boring you with the details, lets just say that my department was every merchandiser’s worst nightmare, every planner’s worst nightmare, every manager’s worst nightmare, and worse than anything I had prepared myself for. The literal mounds of work that would be required to fix the department I could see stretched out for miles in front of me, but instead of growing listless, my anger mounted and this fury etched out my cold tone as I stonily watched him show me my areas.

As we got to the very end, he turned to me, expectantly.

“So, do you have any questions?”

“No questions,” I replied evenly, meeting his eye. “Just a few statements.” I took a deep breath, because I knew that what I was about to say would be a make or break kind of thing. Little did I know at the time that it was not only a make or break for me, but for him as well. “A lot is going to change around here. There hasn’t been a PI implemented for a long time, and aside from that, the entire thing is a complete nightmare. It looks, I’m sorry to say, like a bomb has hit it. Now I don’t know why this is and I don’t care. But by the end of the day I want a copy of the current PIs for all my areas, as well as the current Music and Entertainment listings. Do you think that is a reasonable request?”

I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look as dumbfounded as he did right then before or since. He swallowed it quickly (although in my mind, the lapse had already occurred because I could see what he was thinking) and met my eyes with a very strange look on his face.

“It is good,” he said in his low, steady voice. “To finally have someone around here who knows what they are doing.” Then he abruptly turned on his heel and walked away.

Later on, Ivy sought me out.

“It is good to see him smile,” she said, nodding to where Jesus sat at his desk out of earshot. “He’s had a bad run of staff since he got into management. It’s been terrible for his confidence.” She shook her head, staring past me into the distance. She seemed to snap out of her reverie, as she looked at me indulgently. “I asked him what his new staff member was like, and at first he didn’t answer. I assumed the worst, but then he looked up at me and I saw hope in his face for the first time since he got management. He seemed kind of out of it, but answered dreamily, as if still in shock, ‘You know, she asked me for the current listings’.” Ivy chuckled and patted my arm. “Keep it up, kiddo.”

I watched her go and let my eyes flicker over to Jesus. I had been nothing but disappointed with my new manager since the day had begun, and I wasn’t sure if I was on the money or not. Only time would really tell.

And it seemed like it was going to be a much more interesting ride than I had ever given it credit for.

*Names have been changed. Oh, but if ONLY there was a manager called Jesus.

Another One Bites the Dust

2009-08-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

The very next day, they did it again.

Every so often, working at Target, you have these significant moments, the close-the-office-door, put-on-your-serious-face moments where every word spoken is burnt into your memory for a long time afterwards. They were generally rather sporadic though, maybe once every few months or so.

Never twice in as many days.

I was staring into space on my lunch break the next afternoon, when Cheryl came walking in. Remember, she was the Merch Manager who had offered me the Soundbar job to begin with (something I've never been able to shake my skepticism about) in the only other conversation I've had with her.

“Katherine,” she said. “Do you have a few minutes?” I nodded and followed her. She walked into the store manager's office, where he was sitting, and closed the door behind us.

“Have a seat.” This time, I complied. I was weary, so tired of feeling sad and angry and hurt. So, I did the only thing I could and retreated into apathy. I had a vague feeling that I should really have my wits about me for this meeting, as it was extremely rare for a lowly casual such as I was at the time to be summoned by the powers-that-be so directly.

“Ok,” the store manager, Aaron, began. “I’m not going to make any bones about it.” I raised an eyebrow at the phrase, and the fact that I didn't even want to burst out laughing told me that I had been seriously diminished by the events of the previous day more than anything else had. “Something has come up in the store, and we’d like to put it to you.” I waited for him to go on. He and Charmain exchanged a glance.

“We understand you have no plans for next year?”

I frowned. “Well,” I said carefully. “I’m going to uni.”

“Oh, right. What are you studying?” he asked.

“Journalism,” I replied steadily. Another glance was exchanged.

“This changes things slightly,” Cheryl said. “We have a full time position available in corsetry that we’d like to offer you.”

My heart sank as they began to work on me. They railroaded, they spoke harshly, they spoke kindly. My emotions were run haggard over that ten minute conversation. For someone already on the verge of homicide or suicide or a cide of some sort, it was not overly healthy.

It was lucky I was cluey, and knew what they were doing. Through my stupour, I felt a glimmer of anger at their tactics. The whole "you're such a good worker, we'd never entrust this esteemed position to just anyone" deal had been used on me at least twice before when managers try to talk you into doing something that suits them, so I was at least aware of it.

They finally stopped.

“So, what are you thinking?”

I weighed up my response. “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m thinking. What I’m thinking is that in the back of my mind there is a hope that something will come up in Soundbar. Mara said that as soon as the department gets hours back, I’ll have them.”

He laughed. Aaron actually laughed. It was harsh and bitter, but it was unmistakeably a laugh.

“Soundbar is not going to be getting any more hours,” he said with such a certainty that I actually believed him. The knife in my chest twisted violently and I very nearly lost it with the pain.

“That may be true,” I said, using great effort in keeping calm. “But so many people have been talking of quitting. If I were to take such a position as you are offering, I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of that if someone does.”

This is when they got angry. It wasn’t directed at me, but there was a lot of talk about how they’d worked in retail for years, and people never quitted, and if they were going to do it they’d do it rather than just talking about it… I groaned silently in pain as they went on and on.

The end came and I left the office, having pretty much convinced them that I couldn’t do the hours due to university commitments. I left the office feeling deflated and thoroughly used. I wanted to work, I really did, but I knew that accepting this offer would be the worst thing I could do. I don't know how I knew; call it intuition if you will.

Lordship was standing there, in reception. I noticed him first thing, his pale blue shirt untucked, his stupid white sunglasses casually hanging out of his collar. In reception also was a giant line of first floor casuals and the supervisor, Amy (consequently the old Soundbar manager who’d hired me in the beginning) chiding them about something. Not an ounce of heed did I pay them. My attention was wholly directed elsewhere.

Lordship looked at me. “Are you ok?” he said, noting my round eyes and pale, drawn face. I shook my head. “What happened in there?” he asked with an intensity that made me wonder if he’d been waiting here to find out what was going on behind the closed store manager's office door, as he was supposed to have finished work an hour and a half previously.

I lowered my voice, as Aaron had made it perfectly clear that I was not to tell anyone about the corsetry offer, and told him everything. His response was perfect and appropriate. He was completely on my side and I started to feel slightly better. Aaron and Cheryl had me believing there was no hope, they’d said it was either their 40hr offer or a 0hr offer. But Lordship allowed me hope, and I knew that I would rather, a million times over, put my faith in him and Mara than Aaron and Cheryl, neither of whom I would trust as far as I could throw them.

Still, I could not quell the unease I felt at having refused the powers-that-be something so important. I can't quite explain it, but I'm sure anyone who's every experienced such a heiracrhy can understand. Big managers like that tend to hold grudges, and they tend to think that everything they offer is covered in sunshine and liquid gold, the likes of which should not be turned down lest ye bring down all the powers of hell unto your soul! Sound familiar? My instinct was 100 percent on the money, but I did not learn this until much later.

The next week (remember I was still working in my beloved Soundbar for another month, and oh the bitterness at going home at the end of my shift! Every time a shift ended another little pa of me died.) I happened to be working in the basement when Lordship came in. Since the beach party, the strained nature of our relations dissipated and we pretty much assumed our old cameraderie. We were just chatting, when suddenly he said:

“You’re really cut by this whole thing, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” I exclaimed in a strangled voice, my throat constricting. “I love this place, this department. I have the most retardedly severe emotional attachment to it. You should see my corkboard. It’s full of Soundbar paraphernalia. Lanyards, SPLs…”

He was looking at me strangely, but I refused to break the stare. I wanted him to know. I wanted him to know everything.

“I need to know what to do,” I said finally, softly. “Should I hang around here? Is there ANY chance that I will be back? Because it is not healthy for me to be hanging around here, because I will have constant reminders of everything I’ve lost.” I’ll have to watch you talk to other staff members, do relays with them, joke with them, fight with them. I just can’t handle it. I’m not strong enough.

He swallowed, still looking at me. “Let me put it this way,” he began, trying to get some semblance of professionalism going. “I’ve complained to Aaron enough that the first department to get hours back is us. And the first person to be getting them back is you.”

I stared at him, my eyes prickling. “What’s the time frame?” I asked desperately.

He hesitated. “We have to make the budget back,” he said. “But even failing that, we’ll have to get more people come Toy Sale, when the summer half starts again.”

I stared at him a moment longer. Toy Sale was seven months away. The figure reverberated around in my head. Seven months...

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t give me those sad eyes.”*

I choked and had to swallow very hard, clenching my fists. “Seven months,” I said. “So it’s worth sticking around till then?”

He nodded decisively. “Do it. Stick around.”

My throat was clamping like it was a uterus during its courses. “How do I know it will be me?” I asked. “What happens if…”

He cut me off. “It will be you. I will make sure of it. And if I’m not there…”

It won't matter, I said to myself, then cursed at my lack of inner control.

When I finished my shift, I went into the locker room and found the box of Roses that still lay where they had fallen on the day that I was fired. I picked them up and gazed at them sadly for a moment, REM's "Losing My Religion" playing over the PA. (To this day I can't listen to that song without shivering violently and feeling slightly queasy.) Shoving them in my bag, I left my store for another day.

As I walked down Hay Street, a tiny slice of my misery left me, and grim determination began to blossom. I narrowed my eyes and stared fiercely around me. Alright, I reasoned. Bring it on. You arseholes are not going to get the better of me. I'll pinch all the hours I possibly can (anywhere but checkouts, I would actually rather have died than that) and hang around, like he said. I'll show them they can't get rid of me.

Pathetic, now that I look back on it. Better I had just moved on immediatley, instead of hanging on like a bulldog in a fight. But hang on I did, and I suffered for it, but in some ways I grew stronger for that suffering. Awfully cliched, but 'cliches are cliches for a reason', as the cliche goes.

Still, fate had other ideas, and it seemed that it had thought I would be easily moves along by just getting fired. It should know by know that I don't give up easily. Anyway, it learnt, and soon to occur were events that would see me put the Perth store behind me once and for all.

*Awful linguistics, I know, but this is a word for word account of what went on and I had to write what he actually said, as lame as it may have been. :)

The End of All Things

2009-08-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

It sucks you in, it really does. In the months that followed my elevation to Soundbar and all that it stood for, I came to possess an unflinching, almost zealous love for my job. So much so that I would spend hours of my own time there, working, not getting paid for it. Yes, it was probably an overcompensation for the rest of my mediocre life, but even though my insight allowed this knowledge, it did not diminish its effect in any way. I loved it, and could not get enough of it. Wonderfully enriching working relationships were developed with a number of my co-workers, His Lordship in particular, and I came to get such a sense of family from them all that my heart would be fit to bursting point whenever I left for the day.

I guess, having said that, I brought it all on myself. Pessimistic, I know, but life has this uncanny knack for giving meaning to the phrase "too good to last".

It was a Wednesday morning. I delighted, on Wednesdays, to get in at 7 (ode to a store with no customers!) Flake (a five year Soundbar veteran with whom I was friends) was filling over in books and I made a direct beeline towards him, forever a fan of our early morning conversations.

“Good morning Katherine,” Flake said cheerily before I had even gotten to books. Then, from behind:

“Good morning, Katherine.” It was His Lordship.

“Ah,” I said lightly, although I was surprised to see him there, “we have an echo!”

We all exchanged some light banter and somehow got to talking about Lordship's voting preferences.

“I voted Greens in the Federal Election.”

I scoffed. “You so did not. You’re a Liberal through and through.”

He tried arguing, but Flake and I both agreed. He finally folded and admitted that yes, he usually does vote liberal.

“Fucking fascist,” I said as I was walking away.

“I love you too!” he called.

I grinned.

Later on, after Lordship had continued to prove he was in an excellent mood (he was notoriously moody), Luke the new Layby supervisor and I had gone down to the basement to chat, but His Lordship was already in the reserve.

“So that TV,” Luke said hastily, at which point I cracked up. One of our favourite past times was chatting in Soundbar's locked reserve, with the TV-layby our preprepared excuse if we were to be caught.

“Yes, that damn TV. I wish its problems would just go away, it seems like we’re ALWAYS here about this one TV!”

I looked over to Lordship but he didn’t seem to be overly amused by this exchange. In fact he seemed to be quite preoccupied. I shrugged inwardly, used to his moods.

I listened happily as the two of them, Luke and Lordship, talked briefly. The talk ended up with Luke borrowing Lordship's keys and Lordship himself leaving the reserve. As Luke finished up with what he was doing, I plucked the keys out of his hands and put them in my pocket, mischievous grin on my face. We were walking back around past the main lift to the Layby lift when Lordship called out to Luke.

“Got my keys?”

Luke snorted softly and called back, “They’re on the bench.”

Then we bolted, and didn’t hear from Lordship for about 20 minutes, when he called Luke, who immediately blamed me. I gave a mock scowl and listened as Luke assented to something and hung up.

“He wants you to go upstairs and give him the keys.” I shrugged. That’s an easy task. Glancing at my watch I noted it was about 3:20. Ten minutes before I was due to sign off. I trooped upstairs and knocked on the open door, six or so managerial faces registering irritation as I did so. Lordship’s head snapped up and a strange expression passed over his face. I handed him the keys, grinning, but he did not respond with even a companionable look.

He swallowed and I was irritated, fucking mood swings!

“Katherine,” he began. I was uncomfortably aware of all the managers listening. “This is for you for all your hard work this year.” He had picked up a box of roses from a pile of them on his desk (for his other staff members) and I blinked, surprised. Managers giving Christmas presents?

“Aw, thanks!” I said, then frowned. “Why are you being so nice today?” He kinda smiled flatly in response and I wondered what was eating him. Then Mara, the first floor MM, hailed me.

“Oh, Katherine. Do you mind if I have a word with you? Won’t take long.”

I grimaced. “Ut oh,” I said.

She grinned in return. “Hang on…” she walked out of the office and I quickly sought out Lordship. He didn’t look at me, had his back turned. I shrugged to myself. I’d find out soon enough. I was not oblvious enough to avoid the twinge of unease that I felt at his reticence. We were usually quite chummy, and definitley more allied than this.

“Do I have to come?” he called suddenly when Mara came back. She looked at him strangely and narrowed her eyes.

“You don’t have to,” she said carefully.

At this point, I started becoming concerned. His Lordship did not want to come. And I didn’t think it was because he had something better to do. He usually thrives on being in on the action. He asked again, before Mara said rather impatiently “Come if you want.”

Not looking at me, we left the office and trooped into Branko’s empty one. Branko, to fill you in, was the current operations manager, the new "June". His Lordship sat behind Branko’s desk, and Mara took one of the chairs in front.

“Have a seat,” she said. I grinned.

“Nah, I’d rather stand. I always sink down into those things and it makes me feel vulnerable.” I laughed. They didn’t.

His Lordship was studying the floor very carefully. I paid him no mind and turned my full attention to Mara.

“Ok,” she said, without preamble. “What we need to say to you is that unfortunately you’ve been cut from Soundbar.”

Such a simple statement, with such a profound effect. For a moment I didn’t register, then when I did, I didn’t believe it. When it hit me, I physically rocked back.

The colour drained from my face and my mouth opened. I could not see, I could not hear, I could not feel anything. All I knew was the word no, repeating itself over and over in my mind, screaming, shouting, begging. The shock was terrible and my heart rate went through the roof. I started almost hyperventilating, and the sound began to waft back into my ears.

“… meets the 4% we need to, you’ll be back there. Soundbar’s hours were the first to go, but they’ll be the first to return most likely. I really did not want to do this, I am so sorry.”

I shook my head, absolutely dumbfounded. Mara continued, but I had eyes only for one black-shirted figure. He was not looking at me. I screamed at him mentally, look at me you spineless arsehole, but he wouldn’t. I could feel Mara's confusion, she was speaking directly to me and I could look at nothing but His Lordship. I finally dragged my eyes back to her and tried to hang on to what she was saying.

“… probably get you the same 16.5 hours on checkouts, or even Layby. Come January the 4th, you’ll be under Branko’s rule.”

My colour had returned in its full force and I finally spoke, though how I managed it with a mouth so dry and a head so blank and empty I will never know.

“So Guy is going to do 8-6 Monday to Friday then?” I suddenly felt something in my hand and with a start realised I was clutching the fucking box of Roses, my knuckles white. His Lordship was staring at my hand and I looked at him sharply. He looked away.

“No, Flake will be taking over your hours. He’s part time, and naturally we can’t just cut him. Because you’re casual, we had to cut you.”

It hit me like a physical blow when I realised fully, and completely, that I had no one, not a single SOUL to blame but my stupid, stupid stubborn self.

“Flake hates Soundbar,” I said with a desperate and consuming abandon.

“I really am sorry,” Mara said genuinely. “This is the last thing I wanted do.”

‘It’s not your fault,” I mumbled, my power of vision escaping me yet again. Then, at the exact height of the tension, my phone started ringing. I barked out a laugh, harsh and bitter.I grabbed for it, missing a few times.

“Hello, Soundbar,” I said with a strength I did not feel. Then in a moment of recklessness, I covered the mouthpiece. “But not for too much longer.”

I wheeled around, fumbled for the door handle and ejected myself from the room. I had propelled myself towards the door, intending on going back down to the shop floor, until I realised I was still clutching the box of Roses for dear life. So I did an about face, saw Mara and Lordship watching me with a faint expression of alarm on their faces, and whirled again before dashing to the locker room. The girl on the phone was asking about DS bundles. I explained what you get in such a bundle, but my voice cracked and I clearly sounded like I was bawling. I finished quickly and hung up.

Anger finally erupted and I stared in a blind fury at the Roses, the symbol of my pain, before hurling them at the wall, blinded by fury. I was breathing so fast, I could not calm down. I did not WANT to calm down. I stormed out of the locker room and punched my number into the machine, signing me off, before heading into the stairs.

Sobs escaped me then and I furiously tried to control myself. I didn’t know where I was heading, I was just on autopilot. I came out of the stairwell and ran straight into Nick and Clare, who were shopping.

“Woah,” said Nick. “What the hell?”

“Are you ok?” added Clare.

I stared at them wildly, not seeing anything. “I just got cut from Soundbar.” It was a voice not my own.

They gasped and looked utterly shocked.

“Oh my god,” I heard.

“I have to go,” I muttered and left them. To the counter I found my way, and Dude saw me.

“Woah,” he said, and looked at me searchingly.

“I just got cut from Soundbar,” I said.

“WHAT?!”

“I know,” I said. “I can’t believe it, how could they do that? It’s not fair, I can’t… I…” my voice wavered and I shook my head. “I can’t do this,” I said and hurried away.

Layby was next and Luke saw my face and reacted like the others. He undid me, I was at the end of my rope.

And so I ranted and raved and cried and begged and cursed, but most of all I brooded. The couple of weeks following that awful event will forver remain in my mind as a black hole, a cursed memory, filled with bitter regret. A kind of madness came over me for a time, and it was all I could do to wrench myself out of it.

The same day, not an hour after it happened, Luke was counting register 42, and Ellie and I were talking to him. Ellie, if you will recall, was the was the casual from TCF, who had since gained a position upstairs in confectionary. His Lordship was at the counter, serving. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. We hadn’t spoken since it happened. He was struggling with a digital photo frame, trying to get the little stand off.

He sees me, and walks over.

“Do you know how to get this off?”

I stared at him, stricken, unable to believe it. Ellie, who was also rather shocked at the whole thing, scowled at him, and stepped in front of me, pulling me away from him.

“She doesn’t have to know, she doesn’t work for you any more.”

He blanched and whirled around, going back to the customer. I gaped and we left the counter area.

“Oh shit he was totally pissed,” Ellie said. Pissed? I thought. I would have said hurt.

When I was walking past the office at one stage, Clarissa called out to me. (To provide an update, she'd been moved from managing TCF to managing Confec. How we shift around!)

“Hey,” I said, plastering an extremely false smile on my face. His Lordship and Mara were both in there, watching me. I did not even glance in their direction.

“I heard about what happened, it really sucks.” Her kindness was going to undo me, so I gritted my teeth and squared my shoulders. I would endure. “I’m going to see what I can do to get you into confec,” she said. “Ellie and Martin are both going on holidays soon, so you can cover for them.”

I looked at her, and I allowed myself a little bit of hope. “Thank you so much,” I said in a heartfelt tone. “That would be excellent.”

I saw him, Lordship, a little while later, going into the layby lift. I quickly followed him in and the doors shut. He looked at the floor. By this stage I was on the verge of either bawling or committing homicide.

“So,” I said with force.

He glanced up at me. “Yeah, it sucks balls.”

“Yeah,” I said loudly and pointedly, “it really does.”

He looked at me. “I didn’t know about it, I swear. They just told me today and I was like what the fuck.” I stared at him, unwilling to break the eye contact as I felt it a link to Soundbar that I had to cling to. I saw no trace of mockery or deception in his face, and I was inclined to believe it. The lift opened and the look was broken as he launched himself out, going towards the books reserve.

“I can’t believe it,” I said, following him. “It’s just ridiculous.”

“Tell me about it,” he agreed. “Now I have no one in books.”

I looked at him. Waaaay too soon for jokes kiddo.

“It’s not… it just doesn’t… I mean…” I sighed and blinked again, staring at him, willing him to help me. “I can’t go to checkouts!” This last came out in such a horrible, strangled tone that he looked up at me.

“I am not going to let you go on checkouts,” he said with more force than I’d ever heard him use before. I was taken aback, so much so I could not say a thing. I didn’t trust myself.

The next day, I felt awful. I hadn’t showered or changed or anything since I’d heard, and I stank and was utterly depressed the whole day. I went to lunch at about 5, and Lordship was standing next to the dump bins in front of the counter.

“You know everyone is talking about quitting,” I said. “Flake, Dude… both of them aren’t planning on being here for long.”

Lordship looked at me. “Well you know who’ll be getting a call,” he said quietly, but also fiercely. I was beginning to understand him better. Go figure, now, when it wouldn’t matter anymore.

“Even this one’s threatening to quit,” I said, gesturing to one of the Toys staff, who was distracted. Lordship's eyes glinted.

“Do you want a job in toys then?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine.

I nodded my head frantically, my eyes desperate. “Yes, yes, yes!”

He drew back slightly and frowned. “You just want to be in my department, don’t you?” It was said as a quip, but his tone of voice told me he was also being serious on a level.

I faltered for a second, and it finally hit me. Finally, I understood. It was true, he was right, that’s all I did want. If I found out he was moving to freaking ladieswear, that’s exactly where I would want to be.

“Yes,” I answered hoarsely, and he looked genuinely surprised, before he expertly covered it over.

What I did from that point on can only be described as scrounging. Managers who felt sorry for me (my attachment to my department was something of legend) would give me the hours they could, a day here, half a shift there, and for that I was grateful. But it was deeply unsatisfying. I knew that something needed to happen, and happen fast.

But what, was another question entirely.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

2008-12-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Merchandise galore
Take a look at the mounds of stock,
More than we’ll ever hock,
With toys and books and games and even more…

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon the cash will flow
And the thing that will make it ring
Is the wallets that you bring
Right into the store

Some extra hours for you and a whole lot of stress
Is the way for weeks to come,
Lunatic clients and whining kids
Make you wish for quarts of rum
And managers can hardly wait for profits to have come

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas
Soon they all shout ‘hey’
“There’s a tree by the exit door
I’m wondering where there’s more”
For ‘more’ is all that anyone can say

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the rush will start
And the thing that will help you live
Is the money that they give
For their shopping cart…

Well ACTUALLY...

2008-11-29T02:56:00.000-08:00

The first thing I did on Wednesday was tell Dude about the pink-haired chick and her less-than-sly crony. He nodded sagely (have I mentioned he's an excellent listener? Knows exactly where to interject the "aaaah"s and "oooh"s and knows exactly where to laugh, or even cluck in sympathy) and told me that he gets them all the time.

And every time, they have a credit voucher.

"From our store?" I asked. They were.

And it just so happened that, that very day, in they came again. Dude dealt with them, but they didn't try anything dodgy, they just used a credit voucher. When they left, Dude met my stony gaze and shrugged as if to say "what can we do?"

My temper snapped then. How dare they waste our time like this? I wasn't particularly morally outraged at the theft, just the blatant obviousness of it all, and the incessant stupidity of the checkout staff.

Have I slammed it home yet, how unbelievably strange checkout people are? Let me show you. You'll be crazily busy, serving five people at once, your arms moving so deftly that you'll swear blind you're an octopus. Then your portable phone will start ringing. Waiting for an opportune moment in the sea of sweaty customer faces, you answer it.

"Soundbar," you'll snap out.

"Um, hi." Pause. Silence. "I've got a photo album down here and it doesn't have a code."

"That's stationary, not Soundbar," you'll reply curtly.

"Uhm, yeah, but Toys aren't answering their phone." (Toys and Stationary were the one department.)

You'll groan loudly and leave the counter quickly, sending an apology to your line of waiting customers (because you can bet your life this'll be during the busy lunch period).

"Ok," you'll say. "What is it you've got?"

"A photo album."

Silence. Your fury is mounting as you storm towards the section, waiting for the checkout operator to continue.

"What does it look like?"

"It's browny black," they'll say. That's helpful, you think. I know exactly what you're talking about.

"Ok," you say, readying your spoon to feed it to them. "How big is it?"

"Well," the voice wll say dreamily. "It's not really big, but it's not small either."

OH MY GOD.

"Is it bigger or smaller than A4 size?"

"I'm not really sure."

"Are there any defining features about it?" you'll try in one last ditch effort.

"No, it's just a photo album."

Helplessly staring at the shelves and shelves of photo albums, you'll grit your teeth.

"What register are you at?"

"Number 15," they'll say brightly.

So then you'll troop all the way down to the damned checkouts only to find a photo album of exactly A4 size which is black with vertical rainbow stripes.

That's all they would have had to say. You'd know exactly what they're talking about.

And it's not just one, or maybe even two checkout operators. It is, to any reasonable statistician's satisfaction, a very vast majority of them.

Anyway, back to the problem at hand. I'm saying all this to attest to one of the reasons I was so mad about the credit voucher scenario. Clearly, the security lapse was the fault of the checkouts, who repeatedly issued these credit vouchers for what I expected were clearly dodgy refunds.

Anyway, as I said, my temper snapped. Dude and I hadn't really had too much to do with one another by this stage, so his surprise was understandable when I started ranting and raving in a slightly verbose manner.

"It's ridiculous that we have to put up with this," I finished, and Dude nodded sympathetically. "We have to speak to June."

Alarm registered on Dude's face then. I could understand it, as much as I wished he hadn't shown it. June had reached the lofty heights of management; her title was the Operations Manager. I wasn't sure just how she fitted into the management heirarchy, but she was certainly above the Business Managers (BMs); the ones in charge of the various sections and in turn the floor staff, us, who worked in them. Using the eternal wisdom of hindsight, we should probably have spoken to our BM, His Lordship, first. But we didn't know him, he hadn't even been our manager for a week by this stage. So June it would have to be.

"Do you think that will do anything?" Dude asked, not because he actually wanted to know the answer, but as a way of warning me against it. But I, stubborn and fired up, wouldn't listen, and convinced him to accompany me up into the staff area.

As we reached the office, I was deferring to him. He'd been here longest, he knew the drill, he was Soundbar. He inititated the conversation, speaking firstly about the credit vouchers and about how he suspected it was theft. I frowned at his lack of emphasis, though; we were trying to sell this, why wasn't he playing it up?

So I interjected, and told June the iPod story, emphasising in all the right places, finishing up with me looking the hero for saving the iPod from being stolen after all.

June regarded me coolly, and blinked slowly.

"Well actually," she said. "You do realise you're not supposed to hand customers the items out of the cabinet?"

Her words hit me like a bullet and I gaped, absolutely, incredibly, horrifyingly speechless.

Was she fucking serious?

"If there is a security breach this extensive," she said, her eyes on her paperwork instead of on us. "You should have reported it sooner."

I found my voice at this, though my disappointment was sharp. "If we had come any sooner," I said, struggling with the greatest of difficulty to keep my voice steady. "You would have said we had insufficient evidence."

June looked up at me then, surprised. Her face twisted into a frown of anger.

"Don't start getting disrespectful. The actual fact is that the security issues are in your control here. You're actually supposed to be going down to the checkouts, there was an email sent out regarding the new returns policy."

My eyes were blazing in the most palpable fury I had felt in a long time. I couldn't think straight; I could hardly even see I was so enraged. Her continual usage of the word "actually" angered me at first, but then I mellowed slightly and reminded myself that this person, this thing was clearly an uneducated moron.

"You're saying that we're responsible for being up to date on emails we have no way of knowing actually exist? Should we be making frequent trips down to the checkouts? How often, would you say? Once a week? Every fifteen minutes? Or wait! Perhaps we should develop telepathy and..." I stopped abruptly only because I was painfully aware of Dude standing next to me, an expression of intense dismay on his face. I was getting him in the shit as well as myself here.

I took a deep, visible breath here and closed my eyes for a minute.

June's voice cut through my calming session.

"Who is watching the counter if you're both here?" she asked, intense irritation in her voice.

I went cold. This was absolutely unbelievable.

"I've just finished," I managed to squeeze out.

"Well Dude should be at the counter," she replied mildly.

My eyes flashed. Oh, if only looks could kill, because I would have felt no remorse at this stage.

"I'm so glad we talked," I said scathingly. "It's been a great help."

Whirling around so fast I nearly lost my balance, I stormed out of her office and into the changerooms, where I gathered my belongings and signed out, before hurrying out to follow Dude back down to level one.

"That stupid - " Here is just me trying out all the swear words I have ever heard, and even making up some. None of them seemed adequate to describe what I was feeling. Dude closed his eyes and rested his head against the lift wall.

I regarded him, some (just SOME, mind) of my anger dwindling.

"Sorry if that's reflected badly on you."

I probably came across sounding gruff. I usually do when I'm apologising. Because I usually don't mean it. But whatever. I was too angry and insulted to care.

I was ranting to Dude at the counter (loudly, with overly colourful language) when His Lordship made a beeline for us.

"I just got a phone call from June," he said to us. I didn't say anything, but my eyes were telling him where to shove whatever he was about to say in reproach.

Dude looked at him with a pitiful expression on his face. "Sorry man," he said, and shrugged helplessly. But Lordship wasn't looking at him.

"Don't say sorry!" I said to Dude. "We don't have to apologise."

I wasn't done ranting, and now switched my focus, telling Lordship the whole story.

"So isn't that great," I said bitterly, when I'd finished. "We go up there, with the intention of informing them about checkout security breaches, and she turns the whole fucking thing around to be OUR fault! Ours!"

Lordship did not bat an eyelid, and even through my hazy state of utter, blinding, red fury I felt a twinge of curiosity. What manager listened that calmly to swearing staff members who were badmouthing a higher up manager like June?

He regarded me a moment longer, taking in my blazing eyes and determined stance, before turning to Dude, who was looking as serene as an angel next to his hostile colleague.

"They came today, right?"

"Yeah," he replied.

His Lordship grimaced and asked to see the credit voucher. I looked on, a small sliver of hope rekindled, as Dude wordlessly opened his till and fished out the voucher they'd used.

His Lordship took it, and I watched, mind awash with a million thoughts waging a war on one another, as he regarded it. Out of his pocket he pulled a small notepad and a pen. I grin now at the memory, but then I could only watch agape. He wrote down the number of the checkout operator and scrawled a few other notes before flipping it closed and handing the voucher back to Dude.

He took one last shrewd look at me before turning on his heel and walking to the layby lift.

I watched him go, my eyes wide.

In this hour of Target darkness, the sight of his retreating back (set rigid with the same determination I had felt, only I didn't recognise that at the time either) was the only concession, the slightest flicker of light.

I turned to Dude, my eyes round and now with an edge of sadness, and he shrugged, shaking his head as if to say 'I've been there, done that, and it never helps. Didn't I tell you so?'

Trepidation, determination, white hot fury, hope and then just sadness. That was going to be the way of it, every time we were met with this injustice. I had little siblings growing up, so I consider myself to be relatively tolerant. Annoyingness I can deal with. Anger, rudeness and scathing remarks I can handle with ease.

Injustice, it seemed, would never cease to strike me the hardest.

But in the face of such an ingrained institution, what can we do? The customers yell at us, the managers yell at us, and we work furiously hard trying to get everything done, and it still isn't good enough, ever. No wonder all the older retail workers have a familiar sense of bitterness around them constantly. I don't blame them. In fact, I sympathise with them with every fibre of my being.

It really is a most thankless task.

The Ambitious Derelicts

2008-11-26T02:20:00.000-08:00

And so it had begun.

One of the first things I remember learning in Soundbar (and I mean real learning, the stuff you have to learn through experience) was that auditing was quite lax. And I don't mean real, dead-set external auditing, which sees the entire contingency of staff madly print out Shelf Price Labels (SPLs) like they're going out of fashion. Just general, in-store 'checking up on you' auditing. It's actually rather frightening, what they do. I remember once my till was out, and they marched me down to the checkouts and showed me the "investigation" that they did into it, a whole tree's worth of paper.

Anyway, I digress. My point here is that we're no way near as regulated as checkout staff, not at Soundbar. If you're the unfortunate owner of a position at the checkouts, every time you have to price override something, you have to fill out a sheet and hand it in. We do this quite often, for example if something is ticketed wrong. But at Soundbar, we do it more. If someone buys a display model of a TV or camera, it's an automatic 10% off. Now, technically, we're supposed to ring our manager, who will then just say "10%", in a tone that implies we're a moron for even asking.

There were two daytime staff members in the area when I first started working there. Me, the untrained noob, and a guy who I thought for quite long enough must surely know everything about everything ever, such was the extent of his visible knowledge. His name was, for want of a better alias just in case this blog is ever read by the wrong people, Dude.

Dude was an interesting soul, with interesting friends. I say 'interesting' in a kind of "lack of a better word" way. He was bordering on those kind of alternative types, with the emo hair and the friends with over the chest satchel bags with button pins. I'm sure you know the ones. Sometimes they even wear brightly coloured pants. I really haven't figured out the why behind all this yet. But he was a kindred spirit, in the language of Anne of Green Gables, and we had fun talking about the various things that happen.

It just so happened, just to keep you up to speed, that our manager Amy left very soon after I arrived. I was indifferent about this. She'd always been comically nice to me, but I'd noticed her being rather annoying to Dude, who in turn hated her. And since, I've heard nothing but negatives about the way she ran the department. Anyway, we got a new manager, whose name is not important. Suffice to say that his ego was so all encompassing (I'm surprised it doesn't weigh him down more) that he was soon dubbed with the name His Lordship.

I'd never had much to do with him before, and didn't care about having much to do with him then. We'd barely even spoken before Dude and I dropped a rather annoying bombshell on his idyllic little Soundbar managerial existence.

You see, being the diligent workers we are, we care about the store's security. It had come to our attention that there was a couple, the woman short and stout with bright pink hair, and the man your typical derro-looking guy, both in their early middle age, who were without a shadow of a doubt stealing from us.

It was a Sunday. In the store where I work, Sundays are the most horrendous, godawful experience you will ever encounter. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. People are shouting at you from all directions, firing questions and giving you blank looks when you try and answer them. It's enough to know that Sundays at Target have the monopoly on the word 'busy'.

So they come over to me. They're already notorious, even with a noob such as myself. I groaned inwardly and smiled wanly as they asked me to tell them about the phones. I did what they asked. Then they wanted to look at the iPods.

I sighed inwardly and opened the cabinet. The man turned a silver 4GB over in his hand and enquired about the blue 8GB. Then the woman waved her hand at me, quite adamantly demanding to see a phone. I gestured helplessly at the iPod, but the man looked intent on reading the back and I closed my eyes momentarily before placing the blue 8GB back in the cabinet. I knew the bit where she distracted me, and giddy with my own stupidity I would turn away from the iPod and forget he had it.

They must have thought I was a moron.

My eye was trained onto his hand as I helped the woman with the phones, and he pretended to be listening. I saw him as he slipped the iPod into his pocket. A sharp spike of nerves prodded me and I breathed in deeply. The woman finished up asking about the phones and was prepared to buy one. I grabbed it out of the cabinet, not taking my eyes off the man, who hadn't noticed I was watching. We walked back towards the counter and I saw them exchange a glance out of the corner of their eye. "Idiot," the glance said gleefully. I grimaced.

Stopping abruptly at the iPod cabinet, I inserted my key into the lock.

"Did you want to get that silver one?"

"No," the man said, looking at me.

"I'll just put it back in the cabinet then."

I felt my hip automatically for where the portable phone was and cursed silently as I realised I didn't have it. I cast a quick, desperate glance over to where one of the weekenders, Andy, was engrossed in serving.

"You put it back already."

The man had taken a step towards me and was staring at me with a fierce intensity. If he thought this would scare me, he was partially correct, for I knew that he was far stronger than I and quite capable of a good decking. If, however, he thought I would back down, he was sorely mistaken.

"No," I said calmly. "You took it over there with you."

My tone was even and polite, as was the only tone you could really use in such a situation.

A spasm of anger flickered over the man's face before he masked it again, flexing his hands into balled fists. I stood up a little taller and squared my shoulders, staring at him long and hard. My hands moved surreptitiously towards my little remote, which would make a loud noise if I pressed the right button. It was a last resort, but at least I wasn't completely defenseless.

"Oh," the man said finally, the staring match which had seemed to go on forever broken as he walked back towards the phones, looking around quite unconvincingly for the missing iPod. He came around the other side of the iPod cabinet, down the next aisle, and made sure the cabinet obstructed my view of him as he reached into his pocket and grabbed the iPod, and brought his hand up behind a marketing sign on top of the cupboard.

"Here it is," he said gruffly, making out like we'd somehow managed to leave it behind the poster.

"That's a relief," I said pointedly, glaring at the man once again before turning and walking to the counter.

I was trembling slightly as I put through their sale for them, though more with exhilaration than fear. The thing that really cememted this event as one of the 'significant' events, though, was still to come.

To pay for their $199 phone, they pulled out a credit voucher.

Now, a credit voucher is what you get given if you return items to the store without your receipt. So, if I need to spell it out more, if you come into the store, steal items, then return them. And the one they handed me was for $468.

It was frustrating. I knew full well they'd obtained the voucher by illegitimate means, but I was legally required to process the sale for them. Once they'd made it through the returns desk, they couldn't be stopped. I gave them their voucher back and watched them leave the store.

Something would have to be done.

The Soundbar Swagger

2008-11-20T05:54:00.000-08:00

When someone's new, that's usually a good time to a) remember, and b) perhaps give them some kind of information as to what they're supposed to do. I mean, I was only in TCF for a few months but in that time I was given heaps of newbies to train up. So it seemed to me as though they have a system. You know, so no one would find themselves in a brand new department all alone with no idea as to how things work.

And that department would never have locked cabinets.

Or an alarm which screams every time you open one of the cabinets wrong.

And it definitley wouldn't have a counter with registers.

No, nothing like that would EVER happen at Target.

Unless, of course, it's me who is the noob.

My first shift at the elusive and sought after "Soundbar" area was one of great confusion for me. See, it turns out that Amy, the Soundbar manager,was on "lates" that night. This meant she didn't get in until 10 or so in the morning.

My shift started at 8. And the other Soundbar worker didn't start until 1pm. All this I figured out quite early. I breathed in deeply as I reached the counter (at least I had a vague idea where the department was) and clenched my fists as I felt a a prick of anger. My eyes roamed around the store. It was ten to eight and all was quiet.

I decided to explore. As I walked around the department my despair grew. There was so much crap! Browngoods (ie the TVs, DVD players, music systems etc) seemed annoying but not too difficult to understand. Apart from the digital set top boxes. I had NO idea what they were.

Then we had the games and the cabinets whic housed the various gaming consoles. My sighs grew more frequent. More stuff to remember. More stuff customers expect you to know. I could anticipate the questions... "Is this game good? What, you don't know? How could you not know? No, not having that particular game is not an excuse. You MUST know if this game is good. It is your job." Unfortunatley, my premature assumptions weren't that far from the truth.

As I surveyed the cabinets, something ocurred to me. These cabinets were locked, like the ones in TCF. Stands to reason there'd be a set of keys for the department. I nodded to myself and, more decisively than I felt, I headed off upstairs.

The cash office window, where the keys were kept, had a few sets still left. One set, I noted somewhat whimsically, was the TCF keys. I had a sudden urge to snatch them up and run back to my department, where I knew what was going on. As Istared longingly at them, Leah, who I knew to be from layby, walked past me and expertly flicked her keys up into her hands. She was about to walk away, when she did an amusing doubletake. My anger fled when I realised that layby was right across from Soundbar, and so she probably knew what to do.

"What's up?" She was measuring her words carefully, I could see, and I wondered if she knew that there was supposed to be someone new in Soundbar today, and that that someone was me.

"I'm supposed to start in Soundbar today," I began, and saw her eyes flash with recognition, confirming my suspicion. "And it looks like Amy isn't in."

"Oh," she said, and then paused. "O-oh." I saw her thinking quickly, before she grabbed another set of keys from the cash office window and tossed them to me.

"These ones are yours," she said. "It's the only set with the buttons."

And indeed, there was a small plastic remote control of some kind on there. I tried to commit the sight of them to memory as she walked briskly around the corner to where our portable scanners (RF guns, for future reference) were charging. She grabbed two, and gave one to me.

"You're number 6," she explained. "And your phone is 363."

Ah, I breathed to myself. Phones were something I new about. TCF had a phone. Every department had one. I grabbed 363 from its charging bay and clipped it onto my belt, as we went back down to the first floor.

"Now," Leah said as we reached our level. "The button second from the bottom is the one to turn off the alarm. You have to turn it off when you open a cabinet, so it doesn't scream."

My mind worked furiously as I tried to take this in. She must have seen my "concentrating" face (the toungue poking out is a dead giveaway) so she set her jaw a marched over to the nearest cabinet. "Watch."

She opened it, and a godawful screeching ensued. I jumped slightly, even though I was expecting it, and watched as she pressed a button to make it stop. I could here a constant beeping coming from the roof, the sign that the alarm had been disabled.

"And the top button turns it back on again." More screeching, followed by complete silence.

She paused, and frowned. "And that's pretty much all I can tell you. The rest you gotta learn the hard way."

I nodded. Then I remembered.

'The registers," I said. "Do I have to use them?"

Leah raised her eyebrow and gave me an "are you a moron?!" look. I explained before she could.

"In TCF we just walked people over to the checkouts."

She frowned. "You didn't have to serve?"

"I'm not checkout trained."

"WHAT?!"

I returned her frown. "What? Is it that important?"

"Yeah, it is," she said, clearly distressed. "All the stuff you guys have here is really expensive, and has to be purchased at your counter." She sighed and took off over to layby. I followed her.

"I know how to use the registers," I said. "I came from Target Country originally. But I jut don't have a sign on."

"Oh," she looked at me, looking slightly mollified. "We can probably do something about that."

I rember her ringing around for a few minutes (understatement of the year) and there was some one annoying at the other end who insisted that you couldn't have a sign on without being officially 'checkout trained' by a superviser. However Leah was able to persuade someone, on the proviso I would agree to come in on a Saturday to be "checkout trained". I agreed, of course, but I never ended up going and to this day I remain un-checkout trained. I regard it as one of my finest accomplishments. Small things entertain those who work in retail.

So that was my training. "Here are your keys, press the buttons to do stuff, and here's your checkout sign on. Have fun!" I was greatly indebted to Leah, however, who was under absolutely no obligation to do what she did, but did it anyway. If she hadn't, I would have been even more screwed than I was.

I fumbled through my first few customers, making all the obvious noob errors, and having to explin sheepishly why they were dealing with an exeptionally stupid operator. I discovered, to my dismay, that the checkouts weren't anything like Target Country's registers, so I had to completely figure everything out for myself, which added some slowness to the day.

It was a horrible, torturous few hours until Amy came in. The look on her face when she remembered that I was starting that day was almost, almost worth it. And the fact I was forever more able to say "I'm so cool, I taught myself Soundbar..."

I have heard it said since that Soundbar staff are set apart from the rest of the Target crew. It is said that they possess a certain way of carrying themselves, an arrogant kind of swagger.

I think I'd definitley managed to accomplish that by the end of that shift.

A Healthy Caution

2008-11-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

The tales from the land of TCF aren't overly riveting. I have forgotten pretty much most of what went on. Other than the constant stench of makeup and meeting my first 'rep' (more on reps later), there's really nothing left.

Until one night. It was a Thursday, I remember that. The horribly piercing cry of the TCF phone at the desk reached my ears and I ran to grab it. The reciever was warm in my hand as I held it.

"TCF," I said, the slightest tone of impatience in my voice. It was just going on six o'clock and I had only done half a cage of stock.

"Hi," came a voice I didn't recognise. "It's Amy."

Well, that helped with the recognition, but didn't do anything for my curiosity as to why I had been called.

"Do you mind coming upstairs? Cheryl and I want to talk to you."

I assented and hung up, a nervous feeling erupting in my gut. The previous night, Ellie (another TCF staff member) and I had spent in excess of an hour of our shift riding up and down in the staff lift. Now this might seem rather mundane to someone reading, but it was hilarious to us at the time. Our sides nearly split laughing as we waited for someone to notice that whenever they got into the lift, we were there. My point here is, I thought we'd somehow been found out, and I was about to be 'spoken to.' I couldn't for the life of me think of any other reason, among all the other indiscretions I'd committed recently which I hadn't thought were too serious, but in retail, who really knows?

I trooped upstairs and knocked tentatively on the door to the office shared by the BMs (Business Managers, such as Amy) and the two MMs (Merchandise Managers, such as Cheryl) who were the immediate 'bosses' of the BMs. (I was slowly figuring it out.) It was open, and Amy and Cheryl gestured me in.

"Just shut the door behind you," Cheryl said, eyeing me coolly. I swallowed. Shutting the door is never a good sign.

"Uh oh," I said jokingly, eager to start off the conversation and have it over with. Amy laughed.

"Don't worry, you're not in trouble," she said, and asked me to sit down opposite Cheryl's desk. Amy herself pulled up a chair from another desk and sat facing me. I regarded them with my best "well of course I'm not in trouble, I never do anything wrong" face. They seemed to buy it.

However, nothing would prepare me for what I was about to hear.

Cheryl was rather blunt about it. "We've been noticing lately that you're a very good worker."

I was contained enough not to burst out laughing at this, but only just. Was she serious? I was too astonished to take stringent mental notes on exactly what was said, but they both shovelled it on quite thick. I narrowed my eyes, and suddenly grinned as I realised what was going on. When they stopped, I cocked my head.

"You want me to go on a contract, don't you?"

I couldn't keep the wry smile out of my eyes as I looked at them. I should have known. Casual staff members get paid 20% more than part-time contracted staff members, and managers always looked for any way to get their casual staff to go part time.

Amy adopted a confused look, whereas the more shrewd Cheryl closed her eyes momentarily, perhaps surprised by my blunt assessment of the situation, perhaps not. You never knew with her.

"It probably would end up being part time," Amy said. I grew confused again.

"What would?" I asked. She made it seem inevitable. They couldn't force me into a contract, that much I knew. Cheryl and Amy exchanged a glance.

"One of our Soundbar guys just left," Amy explained. I knew this. What I hadn't been aware of was that Amy was the Soundbar manager. And what I equally wasn't aware of was how this concerned me.

"We want you to fill the position."

I gaped. "Wha... why?" My mind was a haze of confusion. What the hell was going on here? I'd barely had anything to do with either of these managers. They said things like "TCF and Soundbar are both high security areas" and other such strange reasons, but I didn't think any of them had much weight.

"It does mean that I lose you," Cheryl said. She was the MM of the ground floor, so I guessed this was what she was talking about. "Which is unfortunate. But it will be good for the area." Her response was cryptic and I grew more and more wary.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Have you spoken to Clarissa about it?"

Clarissa was my manager, as Samantha had left a couple of months previously. The new manager had been excellent and we got along well. She was also quite short staffed and was already getting me to pull extra hours. I didn't know that she'd readily agree to one of her staff getting taken off her. Cheryl paused and looked at me dangerously and I cursed myself. It was a strange request for staff to make, especially seeing as managers were told in no uncertain terms not to be "friends" with their staff members.

"We thought we'd find out if you were willing first," Amy said after a bout of silence when it appeared that Cheryl was not going to say anything.

"I wouldn't mind a contract," I started. "If I wasn't at uni. As it is, I need to be relatively flexible regarding working hours just in case things change."

They explained that contracts could be very flexible and went on to share with me the perks of a contract.

"You get sick pay," Amy started off. "Annual leave, holiday pay, and you'll get the respect of a day time staff member."

She stopped abruptly and her eyes flickered to Cheryl, whose face was blank and unreadable.

"Not to say that weekend staff and nightfillers don't get respect," she corrected hastily, before moving on. I felt a slight flicker of annoyance that the old "casual versus part time" war was thus referred to by a manager, who was supposed to be impartial.

I stuck to my guns, however.

"I don't get sick," I said, but tried to make my voice light so as not to offend. "And I don't go on holidays. And more importantly, it's difficult enough to pay the rent, bills etc on the wage I am on now, so I don't like to think how I'll manage on 20% less." And, I felt like saying, I don't really want your "respect".

Cheryl and Amy exchanged glances again as I regarded them. I didn't care. I was quite happy where I was. Clarissa had talked about making me her day time Fashion Accessories (a sub-department that was part of TCF) staff member, so I wasn't worried about having guaranteed hours. And I wasn't particularly fussed on this "Soundbar" business either.

"Well," Cheryl said, clearly keen to wrap it up. "We'll speak to Jayne about it and get back to you in the next couple of days. If you just want to write down your avaliability on this sheet here, and you can think over the whole thing yourself." Jayne was the store manager, by the way.

I nodded slowly and did as she bid, then left the office, my head awhirl with theories. Ellie and the manager on duty, Kelly, were standing by the TCF counter as I came out of the lift.

"What the hell was that all about?" Ellie asked, looking slightly worried. Kelly just looked slightly curious. I grinned at them, shaking my head.

"Trying to make me go on a contract," I said.

"That's all?" Kelly asked. I shook my head.

"They want me to do Soundbar."

Ellie and Kelly gaped. "What?"

"Yeah tell me about it," I agreed. "What the fuck's going on with that?"

I should probably explain why Kelly, as a manager, was eligible to have the fuck word said in front of her. She was another one of those managers who had to have the "don't be friends with staff" talks quite frequently. She was only a year older than Ellie and I and we all got along well.

The only thing I could think of was that Cheryl was specifically not happy with my performance on her floor, which is maybe why she was trying to get me off it and onto the first floor, where Soundbar was located. But it didn't make sense either, as I had not done anything that would cause her to do that (besides the lift thing, but they didn't know about that), AND, Soundbar was a high maintenance area, not one they give to the troublesome or the lazy. Plus, when a manager doesn't like you, you usually find yourself in the checkouts before you can ask what account that is in.

A couple of shifts later I got a call from Amy, who informed me that Jayne had given the thumbs up for the hours we'd decided (full days Wednesday and Thursday, as well as half a day on Friday) but also, had decided I was OK to remain casual for the time being.

My astonishment grew. So they actually DID want me for Soundbar, completely aside from the contract thing. I regarded the whole thing with suspicion, but I was intrigued now and couldn't go back. I said yes, and it was decided I'd move to Soundbar after stocktake, which was a couple of weeks away.

I felt that something quite interesting was brewing, and I was glad I'd found myself a part in it. Only time and the light at the end of the stocktake tunnel (high pitched beep after high pitched beep constantly for a whole week) would tell.

Onwards and Upwards

2008-11-11T06:37:00.000-08:00

Lets move on from Target Country. Don't get me wrong, there is no shortage of stories to tell, illicit webs of deception to reveal and moronic customers to laugh at. But that's just it. There's a bazillion excellent stories, all so perfect you sit there thinking, man, this is MADE to be retold. So I'm going to leave the Target Country sagas for another literary endeavour. Let me take you now into the folds of a city store... THE city store.

If I ever let it enter my mind that the mass of workplace politics was complicated at Target Country, may "all hell be on my soul, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." Or whatever the evangelicals say. Because it's about a billion times infinity more complicated and annoying at a Target (full stop). But we'll get to that in time.

When I trooped on into the city store after organising a transfer from my old store, I found myself facing that goddamned age old problem; where the hell is the best place for an uneducated noob to go? Customer service seemed as good a desk as any, so I approached with a healthy caution to explain my woes. I was directed upstairs to Reception, a word which caused my eyebrow to lift off into space. Ooh, I thought dryly. Reception, huh?

I jumped in the lift and waited the ten minutes or so while the door slowly closed, and was given orders to cool my heels in a waiting room while they got organised. I sat, looking bored, trying not to show my awe at the humungous staff area. Finally a woman came out of an office door marked "Operations Manager". I took this in as a mental note, determined not to take too long to work out the heirarchical system. We exchanged the usual pleasantries as she gestured for me to sit opposite her. Herr name seemed to be Clara, if her name badge was to be believed.

She shifted uncomfortably in the chair as the small talk tapered to an and, and I watched carefully.

"I'm just filling in for someone who is on leave," she explained unnecessarily. I nodded. Don't care.

"So I've got your file here," she said after a short pause, and glanced down at my moderatley slim file. She opened it almost absently and flipped through. "The one thing I couldn't get from it was what department you worked in."

I blinked confusedly at this.

"I worked in everything," I said frowning ever so slightly.

She looked at me. "What do you mean?"

I could have laughed at the seemingly glaring "cultural" differences.

"It's a small store," I explained. "Casual staff members worked on registers, at Lay by, they did refunds, back door deliveries, processing stock in the storeroom as well as the odd stint at dut managing. You name it, we can do it."

"Yes," she said, trying to swallow the morsel I'd given her, and, I think, failing. "But what department were you assigned to?"

I sighed. "No one department," I said, more slowly this time. "We do everything. One shift we might be at lay by, the next shift we'll be stripping pallets or sending things to BSR."

She literally had to shake her head at my mentioning of Target's offisite warehouse. I wasn't to know it at the time, but your average Target nightfiller doesn't know BSR from the Geelong headquarters.

She seemed to be at a loss as to where to put me. Picking up her phone, she dialled a number. Seeminly unable to get a hold of who she was after, she clucked and dialled again. I don't remember anything but her saying:

"No, it's not urgent, I just wanted to know if she needed any new ladieswear staff. But I might just send her down there anyway. There's always need for ladieswear."

Just at that moment, a woman popped her head around the door.

"Samantha," Clara said. "I'll be down in a sec. I'm just going to call someone in ladieswear to show Katherine around."

Samantha eyed me curiously.

"I didn't know we were hiring," she said.

"Transfer," Clara explained.

"Where from?" This was directed at me, and I answered.

"I need staff," Samantha said. "Transfers are usually pretty good."

I don't remember much after that. In fact, the only reason I remember that much at all is because now I can appreciate, and feel sick at, the extremely narrow escape I had. Being sentenced to ladieswear is pretty much life without parole. No one ever leaves ladieswear. Plenty go in, and none come out. At the time I was completely oblivious. I shudder every time I think of what a near miss is really was.

That was pretty much that. Samantha turned out to be the manager for TCF - a department I'd never heard of. It stood for Toiletries, Cosmetics and Fragrances, and it just happened to be the one department I had absolutely no experience in. Target Country didn't have one, and I didn't use makeup or anything myself.

Needless to say, I was pretty screwed.

In time I grew to enjoy the department. I think the best thing about it was the responsibility. No, I'm bullshitting. It's the keys. It's ALWAYS the keys, as I have found. TCF had cabinets that required keys, and a locked Reserve down in the Basement, where all the excess stock is kept.

The other mentionable thing about TCF was the fact that its sister department was Footwear. So TCF staff often got lumped with this department as well. Now footwear is THE worst department, probably barring ladieswear. On Friday nights especially (late night shopping for the city store) people come along, try on shoes, and leave them on the floor. It used to drive me to insanity. It would take these people less than thirty seconds to put their shoes back where they got them, and it takes me four hours to pick up after everyone. While trying to tend to customer queries, while trying to also man the TCF counter, as was the case on weekends when I was stuck with both departments.

Not to mention carrying a basket around with me for the sole purpose of putting the old, smelly shoes that people have left behind in favour of some brand new illicitly free ones. Yep, footwear was a barrel of laughs.

One last thing to mention before signing off. I just wanted to slam home the point about department heirarchy. There are some departments that are simply better than others. At the bottom, you have checkouts. (Don't deny it, the 'swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe' for hours on end routine is just the coolest thing you can do...) Then ladieswear, then footwear, then childrenswear, then menswear, then probably manchester and kitchenwear/electrical, then TCF and confectionary. Then, second from the top you have toys, books and stationary and then... right at the very top of the departmental ladder you have Soundbar - the department that practically creates its own capital letter.

You might scoff. You might think, bah - no one in their right mind would actually think like that, especially in practice. Well, I might tell you to shove, because you'd be wrong. It goes so far that people almost defer to people in the higher up departments. Ok, that's taking it a little far, I admit. But it's still THERE. In everyone's minds.

You know. Provided the definition of "everyone" could be loosened to mean "only me". Ah well, rules were made to be looped around, right?

Something in the Water

2008-11-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

A real author would probably do it quite subtly. You know, ease their readers into it, weave the context through in an entertaining bit of prose, not wasting a single word. They'd probably have some kind of discreet tactic; like an 'outsider looking in' character, who is new to the context, and through them, the reader would learn all they needed to know.

That's how a real author would go about it.

Then again, a real author probably wouldn't be working at Target.

So that was my interview. I'm not claiming that all retail interviews are like this. I can't judge, not really. I've only had one. Well, I suppose that isn't strictly true. Any situation where a manager, or someone in such a position, calls you into their office with a grim look on their face and asks you to shut the door behind you, is kind of an interview. I've had plenty of those, and unfortunatley, they're not quite as haphazard. (It's this digressing thing again, isn't it?)

I suppose, before I get into the more juicy bits about working at a Target in a city, I'll try and do a bit of easing. Cast your minds back to a dark and stormy (ok, it probably wasn't all that dark, or stormy, but for want of a better backdrop...) 2005, and I'll resurrect my first day...

It's ten to nine. It’s always good to be early for things. I had on a mildly fitted white polo shirt, my black three quarter cargos that I wore for school and white sneakers. At the time I thought it was quite acceptable. Now I cringe. So I’m standing out there, wondering how I get in. Do I knock on the front glass doors? No, it’s ages away from the staff area, they’ll never hear it. I’d made up my mind to just wait until the store opened (I guess I reasoned that the doors magically opened themselves upon 9am) when a figure emerged from the darkness of an unopened store, and opened the sliding doors. It was Joss, a guy who was in my year at school. We exchanged the normal pleasantries (my, what a [insert temperature here] morning it is! My, how inane social niceties are!) and then I followed him through the store.

“Usually you’ll ring the bell when you get here of a morning,” he said perfunctorily just as we passed the front registers – a shrine I later came to know as The Service Desk.

“Where’s the bell?”

“It’s where the deliveries come in.”

Great. That’s helpful. Thanks for that one. It didn’t surprise me that people were vague. I’d recently moved interstate, and, well, maybe it’s something in the water, but all their statements consist of information which you could only make sense of if you knew other things which no normal person could possibly expect you to know as a noob.

So we trooped on into the staffroom. All these new faces sitting there, craning to see the new chick (or chicks as I was to discover). The first thing I noticed was the fact that I felt much more uncomfortable than I ever had when I’d turned up for the first day at a new school. Here was the coveted workplace, the real world! I guess it was because they expected me to actually do stuff. Unlike school where you just sit there and try not to fall asleep.

The second thing I noticed was that there were quite a few names written up on the whiteboard in the little room. I squinted a little and saw my own. Lunch times. That was good. Structure. Like school. Ah, how much of a naiive little noob I was. In time, I would grow to hate the structure and rigidity of the workplace. But on with the first day.

It just so happened that I wasn’t the only one starting work that day, a fact that I was thankful for. Getting a hold of my discomfort, I allowed a shroud (hey, that rhymes) of remoteness to fall over me and grinned around at people in what I thought may possibly have been an endearing manner, but probably just turned out looking retarded. I got a few half arsed attempts in return before the manager who had interviewed me stepped into the room.

There weren’t any seats left around the table so I stood near the lockers, trying to blend in with the rusted metal and probably failing quite miserably, seeing as I wasn’t actually made of metal at that point in time. The atmosphere up until then had been one of apprehension, and I wondered at it. Surely these kids had dealt with her before? She was their manager after all. Unless there was some hierarchical system going on, where one manager reported to another in a convoluted mass of office politics... nah. It couldn’t happen. Politics? In retail?

So I brushed my wonderment at the apprehension of the kiddies aside and tried to listen to what this manager was saying. She had assigned two unlucky cohorts to train us noobs – Joss and another guy called Bill. So there were three of us starting – a girl called Aisha and a guy called Brent, both in the year below me at school. I’d never had much to do with them, but I’d seen them around. We did live in a small town.

When I heard that Joss had the job of training the other two, and Bill got me, my mind immediately flew back to that list the manager had made, and I had one of those light bulb moments, you know, like in the cartoons? Joss was one of the people that I had said that I knew. And it looked as if she’d deliberately put me with some other random. When she was making the list it crossed my mind, fleetingly, that she had done so for that purpose, but then the naivety took over and I convinced myself she was doing it for some other, benevolent reason. I was so blissfully innocent.

Yeah. That was about to change.

So Bill and I trotted up to layby. By this time it was 9am, and the store was opening. I watched with some trepidation as the customers (who had been lining up outside, to my incredulity) filed in and immediately started messing up the rather neat set up the staff had going. Bill caught my attention and we continued on our way back through the store.

“The air con doesn’t work up this end of the store,” Bill said, regarding his newest charge with the slightest hint of scorn.

The date was the 11th of December (yes, I know it’ slightly sad that I remember that) and in rural Western Australia it’s starting to get pretty hot by that time. So needless to say I was just stoked to hear this.

“Well,” he said, slapping his hands together with some degree of joviality. “You’re going to learn layby. I know casuals who’ve been working here for ages who don’t even know how to do this yet, so think yourself prestigious.”

I smiled lamely. All this meant nothing to me. I was too busy looking at the roof, and the fact that it looked like it was about to cave in. We’d just walked through the door into layby.

“Ah yes,” Bill said, following my line of sight. “That roof has been like that for a while. Apparently it’s water damaged.”

“Are they going to fix it?” I asked.

Bill grinned. “Don’t worry, it’s not that dangerous. Trust me; the company would rather fix a ceiling than face the litigation. For some reason, companies dislike litigation to the point of irrationality. Even if something hypothetically cost them more to fix, they’d fix it to avoid legal action.”

I accepted this, all the while wondering how the company, seeing as it’s based in Melbourne, is even going to know this to be able to weigh up these costs and benefits. Though, it’s not like I cared. I had more important things to worry about. Like the customer in front of me with a well worn plastic bag in her hand and a worried expression on her face.

She looked to me to be about sixty. She had greasy dark hair and a somewhat large hooked nose. Her eyes conveyed to me a degree of vacancy (to put it nicely) and she was quite overweight. Had I been able to view her feet from my vantage point, I was sure at the time I would see heels with cracks the size of [insert Aussie reference here, I’ve already decided we’re marketing offshore, we need as much vegemite in this thing as possible.] Then I received two pieces of information at once – a sickly, horrible smell wafting towards me and Bill whispering, “Watch out, it’s Muriel.”

I could tell, just with that one statement, that she was going to be trouble. If names of people didn’t already have capitals, this one would have one anyway. It was just laden with so much significance I almost shivered.

“Excuse me,” came a ghastly parody of a voice. I cringed inwardly, and deferred to Bill. He squared his shoulders quite visibly and opened his mouth.

“How can I help you?”

Muriel tossed the plastic bag on the counter. I fought the urge to step away. “I want to return this,” she said. Bill was looking at me expectantly and, seeing that I was the closest to the bag, I proceeded to open it. The smell was almost unbearable.

It was a skirt – or at least it had once been. I think. It was a grisly thing – all floral and horribly colour coordinated. And that was just the most amiable of its features. There were stains on it and I swear I even saw a rip in the hem.

“What’s wrong with it?” Bill asked as politely as he could. I didn’t know how he could keep a straight face. I was fighting for breath as it was.

“It doesn’t fit,” she said, moustache hairs moving in time with her lips.

Bill hesitated a moment before beginning. “Our refund policy states that goods must be in resaleable condition, and I don’t think we could resell this.”

That’s putting it mildly. I don’t think we could give this to a dog to sleep on. I don’t think we could give this to the garbage collectors for humanitarian reasons. I don’t even think we could give it back to Muriel for humanitarian reasons.

“Why not?” her already shrill voice rose higher, almost to the point of a screech.

“I... well there are a few stains...”

“That’s how I brought it!”

And that’s when my hatred for customers was first conceived. The smell I could handle. The annoyingness I could tolerate. But the grammar? It was the last straw.

“Look, I can’t authorise anything on my own, I’ll have to call my manager.”

Bill, the brave soul, turned around to the phone on the desk behind us and picked it up. Dialling a number, he closed his eyes momentarily, seemingly gathering strength.

“Hi, Tabby, it’s Bill. I have a customer here who wishes to return a skirt, but she doesn’t have her receipt and it is in a questionable condition.”

The manager must have just called him an idiot and told him to follow procedure, when he suggested quietly that she glance at the camera. I wasn’t sure at all what any of it meant, but I had noticed the camera pointed on the counter.

Bill promptly hung up and turned back to Muriel. “The manager is coming out now.”

“No,” the woman screeched. “I didn’t need to complain or anything I just want to return this skirt!”

“Yes,” Bill said. “But I’ll need authorisation from her to do so.”

The woman was blustering and blowing quite audibly. She shuffled on her feet and sniffed a bit, before she came out with it. Quote of the day. Quote of the century.

“You’re going to make cry!”

It’s lucky I used to take drama. We’d been taught all about the deadpan faces - that sometimes in life it was important that you did not laugh. This was one of those times.

Bill didn’t seem to be having trouble taking this new development on board. The manager chose that moment to walk around the corner. I listened, fascinated, as the manager attempted to reason with the... the... thing. But it just wouldn’t listen.

Finally, Tabby turned to Bill.

“Punch in the SKU, see how much it scans up as.”

Bill took the skirt (yes, he actually touched it. I hear he’s still recovering from gangrene.) and found an almost hidden tag on the inside and typed in an eight digit code.

“It’s $14.86,” he said.

She sighed. “Oh just return it. Store credit though.”

She walked off.

Even though I didn’t really understand any of it, I got the distinct air of disappointment. Not from Tabby or Bill, they were just relieved to get the problem solved. And it wasn’t from Muriel either. She was just oblivious. I think, looking back that it came from the secret reserve of retail prowess that only some are gifted with… yeah, ok. I just wanted to see a big showdown. A fist fight between petite Tabby and big, fat, smelly Muriel.

So, I was taught layby. I’m not going to lie and say that I picked it up in two seconds, but I wasn’t a dullard about it either. It was difficult, and all you non-retail workers who are probably pooh poohing this can just go jump, because it is. There is so much to remember at the one time, and as if remembering visually similar buttons isn’t enough, you also have to apply it to all sorts of different situations, Muriel crises included. And not only do you need to be able to use the registers, you also need unbounded product knowledge. And not only do you need to know about products in your own store, but you also need to know about products in other stores close to you, so that you can direct idiot customers elsewhere. It seemed neverending to a poor noob like myself. I learned how to wrap lay bys that day, how to ‘locate’ them and, probably most important of all, I learned that there was something fishy about the manager. I won't go into it here, the sordid tale of managers versus everyone else at this Target Country store are already being documented ina slightly-longer literary work, so watch for that one if you're interested.

Back on that day, I shovelled as much crap into my brain as possible, forgetting most of it and having to ask Bill heaps. Something about those expectant customer faces staring at you… the brisk yanking motion of a wrinkly hand grabbing a purse from a bag, those subtle nuances (loud sighs, rolls of the eyes, coughing) that tell you you’re not going fast enough… it is a lot of pressure for a kiddie on their first day.

Three o’clock comes and goes. As I was learning, you never get out on time if you work in retail. “Attention customers,” came the call at five to. “This store will be closing in approximately five minutes time. It would be appreciated if you could finalise your selections and make your way to the service desk. And thank you for shopping at Target Country Northam.”

No one listened.

At first I was surprised. I’m always out of shops by a good 10 minutes before they shut. And on the rare occasion where I am running a bit behind and I do hear the five minute closing call, I pretty much drop my stuff and scurry on out.

I definitely don’t take clothes into the change room and proceed to try them on.

And take a long time.

I mean, a really long time. Not “mm, this is nice, it fits, I’ll buy it, seeya” long. Not even “I don’t think I should buy it… maybe I should though….” Long. It was more “Doris! What do you think of this? I think it’s a little tight around my bust! Oh Doris, do be a dear and get me the next size up. Yes, yes, this one is better. Oh, but now it’s too big around the middle! I might just try that first one again…”

Yep. This would all be OK if Target Country had an electronic sign on system. I’d heard the others saying Coles up the road does. Where they punch in their ID number when they come to work, and punch it in again on their way out. It pays you exactly, to the minute. So if customers keep you for half an hour, you get paid for that half hour.

Not at Target Country Northam, though, oh no. We had a little file, with a tab on which is written each of our names. The sheet inside the tab has a column for each day of the week. We sign it, and write down the time we started. The catch is, we have to write down the time we were MEANT to finish. The manager would get titchy if you put anything over that time. Funnily enough, she’d also yell at you if you were late and wrote down the time you were MEANT to start. Isn’t that strange? *eyeroll*

So the Doris ladies finally troops out of the store after much deliberation, and we sign off. As we were trooping past the managers office on our way out, Tabby called out to me. I doubled back and looked in. She looked me up and down and I saw the faintest hint of derision on her face.
“Don’t have your arms crossed all the time like you did today. Makes it look like you’re doing no work.” She turned back to her desk and I nodded lamely, and walked out.

No ‘thanks for today, Schner Schner’ or ‘you did a good job’ or ‘how’d you go with everything?’ Just “don’t cross your arms”. Compelling advice. Thanks, Tabby. I’ll take that one with me wherever I go.

So that was my induction into the world of retail. I had high hopes for the years to come.

High, high hopes.

Welcome to Target

2008-11-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

The sight of a line of traffic just after dusk is, in the most single-minded sense, quite awe inspiring. The light streaming out from those shiny ducos, catching dust particles unawares, bouncing and refracting and reflecting on just about anything. In fact, as I’ve found, there’s a lot in this place that’s pretty awe inspiring. Even the most mundane things. But not in an annoying sappy way, or anything. I mean, finding the vacant faces of the citizens of a city’s dark underbelly (public transport) awe inspiring only for the fact that you know you’re more lively than at least twenty people in the world doesn’t venture too far into the much traversed realm of sap. But, I digress. You tend to do that, if you work in retail. Standing there, hour after hour, methodically tying little knots in scarves so they stay on their hangers, picking up the dirty, smelly tissues from the tester section in cosmetics, picking up people’s manky shoes that they’ve left in footwear in favour of some ‘heavily discounted’ new ones... you’ve got to have something to keep you occupied. To keep you sane. I’m speaking from experience when I assert that, if you don’t have a slightly eccentric personality, you’re going to quickly shrivel up and die.

My interview, back in December 2005, should have given me some sort of insight into life as a retail moron. Rushed, unorganised and unprofessional – and that was just my attempts at getting ready! Nah – it sums up the whole thing. First off I was uncertain as to what one wears to an interview for the local country department store. My interview was after school on a Monday, so of course my logical 16 year old mind jumped from the trussed up, high-heeled interviewees of American media culture to our crappy, rural high school uniform. So I’ve just walked the half a k or so from school and I head on into the store. It was about this time that I realised I didn’t know who I was asking for, or who I was supposed to see, or indeed what I was doing there in the first place. So, I went the only place an uneducated customer knows to go – lay by.

So there I am, having just followed the manager through the doors marked “staff only” (shivering as I did so – a sign? I obviously didn’t think so). My first impression was the size of it. The whole staff area, which included the staffroom, the manager’s office and male/female toilets, was about the size one would normally expect a lounge room to be. The office was quaint, I suppose, searching for a non-derogatory word. It housed both the store manager and the assistant manager.

“Sorry,” the manager said, pushing papers away from the desk space in front of her. I wasn’t sure what she was apologising for, so I made some kind of noncommittal noise and shuffled a bit. (Ah, the complexity of human interaction.) “Sit down.” This was something I could understand. I sat.

“Usually my assistant manager Kella would be here, but she’s on holidays.”

I wasn’t sure if I was going to be quizzed on this later. Usually when people in authority give you useless facts you’ll never need to know, they’re doing it so you’ll pass an exam. I had, of course, just spent the last eleven years of my life in the Australian education system. I gave my signature ‘noise’ again. I’d been practising.

“So,” the woman said, snapping into action. She looked to me to be around thirty or younger, with long, dark hair tied in a tail at her neck. “We’re looking for casuals.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I saw the sign out the front.”

“Useless,” she said. “No one we’ve called in for an interview has called from the sign.”

I nodded. Serious face.

“This is going to be pretty quick, because I’m rather busy.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said automatically. She grunted.

“What do you know about the store?”

I faltered. “Uhm... it’s a great store?” I cringed. You idiot!

She smiled wanly. “You don’t have to be nice. Do you shop here?”

“Sometimes Mum comes in...”

“Do you play any sports?”

Taken aback, I gaped.

“No-o...”

“Do you do anything after school?”

I blinked. “No...”

“Do you know anyone who works here?”

I rattled off a list of two or three people who I knew from school, and watched, interested, as she wrote them down. Yep, she actually wrote down a list of names of the people I’d said that I knew.

“Well,” she said, looking up. “You’ve got the job.”

“I... what?”

“We’re pretty desperate for casuals at the moment, so I’m taking anyone I can get.”

Self esteem going way up here. Isn’t she charming?

“You start on Saturday, 9am. Just wear a white shirt and black pants.”

“Uh... ok?”

“Great, see you then.”

With that, I somehow found myself on the pavement outside the store. Was it magic? Possibly. I was confused. I’d been mentally preparing for this interview all day, expecting questions like “how do you work under pressure” or scenarios where I’d have to pretend to be the perfect shop assistant answering the question of a particularly annoying customer, but no. Just “do you play sport, are you human, can you walk... great. Welcome to our prestigious company.”

I couldn’t wait.