Heavy subject

Sorry to hit you with this subject not too long after Thanksgiving and I’m also sorry that this will likely be the last post for this month. However, I feel as if in light of what has been discussed on this blog over the years this subject was worth sharing here.

First off what you see above is a reporter talking about a suicide manifesto by a Walmart night mgr who fired into a break room before turning the gun onto himself. Basically his note is an apology for his actions and yet it justifies his inexcusable actions. He’s killed some people in a fit of rage!

I believe something at work triggered him. At the same time I also recognize that this man was probably disturbed long before this incident and perhaps long before he accepted a job at Walmart. I suppose I’m having it both ways, however, other than the news reports there isn’t much for me to go on here so perhaps this is a form of spitballing here.

To start I can’t really address the suspect’s targets in that shooting. It’s not clear to me who they are were they the employees or were they his bosses. It’s clear reading that note that there is some animosity towards those he worked with. Now perhaps it was created in his head or perhaps there were people who were hostile to him. With that note I find him more disturbed.

With this said, you have to treat people with respect. And respect goes both ways to receive it you have to give it. Sometimes your actions contributes to the hostility and believe it or not that’s one lesson I had to learn. I wrote about it this month in fact. Do you meet negativity with hostility. And especially for those who seem to want a negative reaction from you to justify their own behavior.

With that said, that’s how I do try to conduct myself now. I want to treat people with respect. The lesson of the last decade for me is that if I’m not wanted somewhere find somewhere else to go. Don’t hang onto people who don’t respect you. And don’t engage in the disrespect you found objectionable.

A lot of this is easy to say, what I try to keep in mind these days is that I’m at work. And the last thing I want to do is contribute to a hostile environment and depending on the individuals involved the last thing anyone wants is a violent episode. Besides what are we doing at work, we’re earning a living to put food on the table.

September 2012 – The Streak Era

You know I’ve been trying to figure out how to really discuss this part of the last decade. And I do want to lead into some current updates although I will shave that for another posting. 2012 seems like a world away, and thankfully it’s in the distant past.

Most this takes place at my former employer The Show or $h!tplace. And going into this month I found out that my ticket out of The Show – well one could call it The $h!tshow – was torn up. I’m talking about my mgmt interview with the neighborhood cinema. The payoff that would allow me to flip The $h!tshow the bird, now The Show was flipping me the bird as it seemed during 2012.

I had a really strange past year from 2011 to 2012 up to that point and unfortunately I had a knack for really having issues with people. From my end, there were people going around and just starting something. You correct them and then they just dig in.

Anthony aka The Fiend or The Hustler was trying very hard to sink his teeth into yours truly and it was starting to work. How did he do it? Well by being a ‘disappointed father”. Some elements of that persona came out and soon it would be further exposed, however, I believe he wanted to put me into his confidence. Of course it still let to him exposing his programming i.e. the begging.

There was a character you might have heard about on this blog occasionally that I often refer to as D.B. For him I put him in about the same category as The Fiend. Deranged Barney however exposed himself far quicker than Anthony had. And of course Barney just had no idea how to just back off and to correct him only seemed to encourage him.

There were the meangirls of $h!tplace or the meangirls of the $h!tshow and as I’ve generally described them, I view them as a collective. Those types of women feed off each other if one is upset with someone then they’re all upset with someone. The same mentality, roughly the same age, and often the same ethnicity.

The situation with mgmt at The Show was starting to turn and it helps that some new blood was being promoted and that leads to the start of the Streak Era. I was interested in mgmt, however, it seemed like a small cabal of people were getting the positions. I won’t call that a tight knit group because some of them didn’t work out in the long run. However, perhaps they knew how to play the game and mgmt wanted to bring them up. And this frustrated me of course perhaps I needed to do the work myself and whatever I tried to do to get their attention wasn’t working. Perhaps blinders on their part and perhaps just not knowing what they wanted.

Anyway, this is why I did pursue the mgmt gig at the neighborhood cinema. And I know that you’ve seen this story on the blog often so no need to rehash the story. Just say that until I finally left The $h!tshow this was a great let down. You know come to think of it, I almost didn’t go for it.

The job posting on the neighborhood cinema’s website at the time was very vague. What kinds of managers were they looking for? Are they looking for someone to manage certain aspects of the business, where they looking for someone who could run the whole operation, or perhaps they were looking for mere supervisors to be present with the associates on the floor? Well I didn’t have a real idea what they were looking for other than experienced managers with experience in utilizing PC speadsheets. Well my spreadsheet skills were not that great so I cancelled myself out of this.

To Anthony’s credit – and perhaps to his programming which was his need to pull yours truly in – he thought this was a good opportunity for me with the idea that I got the experience. He knew I had the interest and was a customer at that cinema. He claimed to know the principals up there including the ownership. I depended upon him to put in a good word for yours truly. So perhaps earlier that summer I sent in a resume and cover letter via email and waited most of that odd summer. That summer was set up in shorthand, soooooo I won’t go over it again. At the same time yours truly was ready to get that show on the road, and meanwhile the cinema owner whom I would be interviewing with was taking her time….

In short order I did get an interview, went on said interview, and after waiting no more than two weeks for an update – and with Ant’s insistence on any updates from me – I didn’t get the job. And this was a blow which at the time meant that I was stuck at The Show awhile longer. Sadly I got myself into hairy situations with mgmt it seemed like they were trying to build a case against me.

There was a senior mgr I like to refer to as the Head B!tch in Charge. I call her that because I was being counted down in box one shift and she and her fellow mgr were talking about how she can be a b!tch. Her response is I am a b!tch. And over the years she absolutely exposed that attitude towards a number of coworkers. I witnessed one incident firsthand.

So anyway I had a few incidents of her increasing b!tchiness up until I finally left The Sh!tshow. And of course she was trying to be a bit more conversant than confrontational on my way out the door. In fact she left at roughly the same time as I did two years later. I didn’t entirely understand the about face, but let’s just say my read of our interactions was that she didn’t mind taking out her own frustrations on yours truly. Perhaps I’ll write about it someday.

Of course this period where I started to clash with the House Manager, he was the right hand man of the General Manager. I won’t say much about how we interacted, however, the worst interaction we had was something written on this blog entitled “Petty“.

The Teletubby is back!

Also I want to add that in the case of DB in the previous month we had our final falling out and it helped get him out. Of course what I will say for my part is that I fell to his level. It seems to me that he wanted problems and from my observation he wasn’t going to slow down. He was just incapable, however, I attribute that to the fact that he’s troubled and me I wanted to correct him. Problem is that there is no correcting someone like him, and especially if he doesn’t respect you in the first place. Perhaps one day you’ll see more about that rather odd workplace conflict.

One thing I will say about mgmt is that with DB, they did the right thing. It was strange that they didn’t also get rid of me, and Anthony in one of the more correct statements he’s ever made to yours truly they likely didn’t do that to stick up for me. Mgmts behavior towards me after that showed it.

Anthony was tired me of continuing to take shots at Barney, however, years later he’d turn around and use it against me.  Stories of me going at it with DB was evidence for him that I had “lost all control” and he started mentioning it at a time when I relieved believed the “sky was the limit”. For Anthony’s statements with regards to this era is that if I had learned from these experiences, then I shouldn’t have to continue to answer for them. One has to take these experiences and become a better worker or a better person.

Of course his attitude towards me, five years later, was 180° from what I allowed myself to believe it was during this period. Overtime, he just became less of a friend who I thought was behind me to more of a disappointed father figure as time went on. Perhaps there was a period where this went back and forth on his end until there was a point where he just turned very negative.

Still, 10 years later some changes made. Changed jobs, cut some ties to bad people, learning the lessons of the past, perhaps handling certain situations better than I had then, perhaps learning to defuse conflicts, avoiding as best as possible others whose only purpose is to cause disruptions, and don’t fall onto others more negative levels. I think going through that period has led me to a better place today.

Oh yeah I promise in the next post I will tell you what’s going on 10 years later in Sept. 2022. I didn’t get a “payoff” them. Is it possible to get a “payoff” now…

Epilogue

To be honest, I wanted to write about the era known as the “Reign of Error”. My storytelling on that has gone as far as I can take it. I’ve had the benefit of experience during my second stint with Fresh Foods and of course the words of others in the last few years. It’s really time to let this go.

There were a lot of things that have occurred that I view as a setback. The Reign of Error was a setback, and while it’s very easy to point fingers at others I have to take some responsibility. This has been stated on this blog in the past, complacency to taking things for granted. In late 2017 business as usual didn’t happen.

I could talk about Roger’s “quirks” which included being set up to fail. However, I had to mind my own issues. Some things became bizarre once he became my boss. However, when I went to my current assignment things again became bizarre. Perhaps schedule, perhaps Rog’s (or Creepy the Clown’s) behavior, or perhaps even store leadership. And then of course in trying to take care of my own business at the time I failed or more accurately it didn’t matter if someone had made up their mind.

My favorite saying is because of what I learned happened to Ruthless Rog – at the very least I learned that he at least stepped down from dept. mgr. to take on a supervisor role at another store only to later leave the company – I can laugh about it. With the store mgr, Morley because of how he went out I could also laugh about it also.

I also consider the last four years I didn’t have the payoff that I would’ve liked to assume the role that I began to take on during that summer. The role he decided to pull me away from, and my thinking is this was something he wanted to do anyway. Perhaps he was just petty, perhaps he didn’t like the way I worked and was very unwilling communicate that to yours truly. He already found things to complain about even rather petty weird things to pick at. Of course consider the attendance situation especially after I got hit with that probation.

Things started getting very weird during that summer and one thing I have to accept now is that some of my actions got me there. Especially where the state of my attendance was once Rog took control of my dept. It’s safe to say things took care of itself after that with a few missteps on my end. So if that was used to get me out of there then perhaps the one thing I didn’t want to hear – that I put myself in that situation – is very correct. It just sucks because there were some unfairness in this but no one was going to recognize this.

So anyway, I suppose this is the closure I need. Things didn’t work out the way I wanted it to back in 2017 and when I tried to come back to the Hole it didn’t work out the way I wanted it to in the new year 2018. And I also know for a few of the parties involved in this – externally from yours truly – things didn’t entirely work out for neither of them. I know where Rog is today and not quite to where he made it during the summer of 2017. I don’t know what happened with Morley once I have recently heard a regional executive – not his direct boss exactly – was said to have let him go on the spot.

All one can say is everyone is where they are supposed to be at the moment, now!

In any event it’s unknown where Morley is at this point. And I found out that Rog is back with the company as a buyer in the liquor dept at another store in another state – he’s left that suburban small business pharmacy. Who knows if that as$holery is still within him and from what I know from people who worked with him he had that cockiness that arrogance which surely got humbled once he was bounced from being dept. mgr. after about six months. I’d like to think people change, however, sometimes old bad habits are hard to break especially the issue of just being an outright @s$hole.

All I can do is say that there is a good chance he hasn’t thought much of me or anyone else he had affected in some adverse way in many years. Perhaps he’s convinced that he’s done what he was supposed to do and by the book – since that was his orientation. The way I see it through his behavior and through his actions, it just didn’t work out for him the way he expected it to. Anyone who was able to observe him likely knows it, and here’s hoping Rog actually has thought about it and realizes it.

Meanwhile on my end some lessons learned.

Current

Recently at work a bus driver asked me at random, “How long have you worked here?” I thought about it and stated four years. At first I was thinking he was asking me about possibly working for the transit authority he’s with now. Instead he asked by name whether or not I’m familiar with a person there, I said no.

And there it is this month in 2018 is my four year milestone with my current location at Fresh Foods. It was an interesting start of this yet another era which essentially ended the Reign of Error. And got a few accomplishments along the way Associate of the Week, two perfect secret shops, and almost got promoted. Changed departments, witnessed the start and aftereffects of a worldwide pandemic.

Been an interesting four years.

Let me start with one thing here, the two men who hired me in 2018. Well they’re both no longer with the company. In fact one of them the store manager who spoke with me on a wet and rainy Saturday in 2018 got fired for reasons unknown. I feel like near the end I was $h!t to him although we hardly really interacted as time moved forward before his somewhat unexpected departure.

There was one odd incident where he came up to me very strongly and let me know of a customer complaint against me claiming I didn’t serve them and just went to the back. It wasn’t too long after I got back from a 15 min break. All I could say was I didn’t notice or paid no attention, he said OK sounds good and the last shot was “And next time be MORE HELPFUL!”

A colleague then connected that exchange with a young lady who worked with us in that period. I saw her when I came back to the dept she came to the store mgr seemingly upset. Little did I know that it had something to do with me. According to the colleague when I went on break things got busy and she got very frustrated by that so perhaps there was a complaint from a customer or perhaps she exaggerated things. Either way she decided to behave in an erratic way and I say this because it came out later that she didn’t mind announcing that she came to work high to other coworkers.

Hmm don’t know how I feel about that you’re high and you work with knives. Anyway I wasn’t too happy with her once I found out, she pretended not to notice or even said much about whatever got her upset to me. She chose to be a snake in that instance and about a week later she was no longer there. Her shifts were up for people to pick up, I also learned that she had a difficult time coming into work calling out once too often. One colleague later said, she just shot herself in the foot.

My primary report our dept mgr well mixed bag. I won’t say much about him because he gave me an opportunity. I feel as if things went downhill with him and it’s what sent me to another dept once the pandemic was in full swing. For one thing yeah sales weren’t what they needed to be to keep everyone where they were. Of course since it seems I couldn’t come back from lunch without a lecture on how I need to talk to leadership if there is a staggering of lunches during peak periods and perhaps some other issues. It took me some time to realize it probably wasn’t working anymore. I was stuck!

Feedback I got from former colleagues about our former dept mgr talked about not very good rapport, they butted heads, he was sort of a my way type, he was fake, another colleague told me that his ability to make more money to take on more shifts were curtailed by that dept mgr – even referred to him as an @$$hole although he wanted to like him as a person. And I do remember that he had a recognition, a positive one being the nicest guy at the store, however, I’ve seen the stern side and hear that he displayed that with others.

Another piece of feedback was from someone who actually worked in the mgmt office with him and stated that while he seemed like a nice guy he had difficulty even having tough conversations with people. Even noted a very passive aggressive streak in him. My only comment to the passive aggressive thing was to say that’s not a good trait for a manager which he agreed.

With that said whatever was going on with both, they’re no longer with the company. And possibly with the store mgr whatever got him separated it probably won’t ever allow him to return to the company. Though I do know he’s got an electronics degree so perhaps he can still use that with his extensive mgmt experience.

As for yours truly I got another raise and very close to realizing my goal of lasting somewhere as long as I had at The Show – almost five years. So the deal is, I’m not sure I’ll stay about my current location for another year. Perhaps for a bit longer I may remain with Fresh Foods, however, this is the time for me to be a bit restless. It’s very easy to just sit still and remain complacent however there are other milestones yet for me to accomplish. Perhaps I can still accomplish them at Fresh or try something else at some point though there is no better time than the present.

Another Fresh store is opening soon, well actually it’s a relocation. That store is actually moving to much larger digs in the near future. Hopefully there will be some opportunities there for me in the future, and as I still hope for some opportunities at the Hole as stated a few months ago it’s just time for me to let them go for now.

I met my mother’s accountant for the first time. Whenever the door rang my mother decided to start using the bathroom. And I find myself answering the door, especially when my mother lets me know she’s expecting the tax man.

He started mentioning that he has a grandchild who’s in law school and gave me info on a local institution that accepts on a rolling basis and told me that I need to take an LSAT. Well OK, not I can put my college degree to use although in this case go back to school. It’s something I’ve been thinking about and who cares if I work at a grocery store. This could springboard me to where I needed to be.

Something I will look into as I attempt to look towards the future.

Earlier this month I said it was time to move on from the Fiend and yet it seems I can’t help but vent. So I may have something later just want to write something that’s readable. Perhaps go back to last month’s post about respecting my body and dating and even children. I still have thoughts to share on that.

Beyond that I hope you’ve had a fantastic spring.

Valentine’s Day 2012

A decade ago I had to work the evening of Valentine’s Day. The movie everyone came out to see on that occasion was this Denzel Washington picture Safe House. Perhaps a lot of the people who came out thought it was just like American Gangster which came out the previous decade but no it’s actually an espionage thriller. Regardless a lot of folks came out on Valentine’s Day to watch the latest Denzel pic.

I’m going to share with you the craziest part of the night and it happened near the end of my shift. This shift was on a weekday and it was just busier than usual. I seem to remember that it was so busy that it felt like a typical weekend. The business we were doing would normally be seen on a Friday or a Saturday.

Eventually whatever other pictures were scheduled for that evening gave way to Safe House and by the end of the night the only movie we had was Safe House. Every screen available by the time it was time to close up The Show was playing Safe House. That leads to one of my last customers on that given evening.

There was a lady and she was with a party and I forget how many with her. My manager was standing off in the background ready to count me down. Our digital screen over box office still had those other pictures that we were showing during the day although they were no longer playing by the end of the night. This lady started asking about those movies all of them. Just one question “what’s this about?”  about all of those pictures before she finally asked for the only show we had left playing.

It got to the point that the next thing I knew my manager counted someone else down as the customer went down the list of all the movies she wasn’t going to see. I was already overdue as far as getting off for the night and did some extra time because of the business we were doing, on request of mgmt.

Eventually she finally asked for Safe House as I knew she would. She had a smirk on her face when she was finally ready to buy her movie tix. It’s almost as if she knew exactly what she was doing when she was doing it. She asked about all those other movies that weren’t playing just to hold me up or perhaps my manager standing back. Who knows what she was thinking, however, if there was no real reason other than some people are just quirky. Quirky to the point they just meander until they get to the point.

So anyway I finally did get off work, and I recall there was some drama in one of the auditoriums that Henry and his crew had to address. I forget what it was, perhaps there was a fight or a lost wallet. Whatever it was my night was over and I got ready to get back out in the cold of that evening. Actually I don’t really remember how the weather was that day.

However, it was an interesting shift.

New update

Perhaps another recently post? Yes let’s do it!

My former dept is going through another mgmt change and I would dare say it’s akin to what happened at The Hole years ago except I’m not there to witness it. I’m as far away as I can be as it unfolds.

I was shocked to see on Fresh’s social network that the dept mgr position is up. Found out from one of my former colleagues that the dept mgr was leaving to go to another store. I won’t speculate as far as whether or not she couldn’t handle the position she just ascended to over six months ago. This period of time when it’s hard to find good help and a pandemic surely has been difficult and stressful.

I actually spoke with the assistant mgr who said he was stepping down also and he wasn’t going to stay in that dept. We both agreed how stressful the kitchen could be I almost got consumed by it before getting transferred out. Part of me wishes I could get back on course there but let’s not forget the assistant mgr asked if I wanted to come back and I was like eh, been there done that. Depends upon position such as that team receiver which has recently been taken down.

As a bit of a joke I reached out to my former trainer from the Hole. He’s moved on to run his own dept at another store. He was curious though it’s unknown if he’s interested. He was shocked by the revelations.

You know it occurs to me that we’re approaching an anniversary of sorts. Four years ago I’d find out that a man I have referred to as Ruthless Roger had vacated his position as dept mgr at the Hole. From the information I received from people who worked with him back then it seems as if it just didn’t work out for him. No matter what his ego insisted. BTW, newsflash I found out he’s back with the company this time as a liquor dept buyer however he moved out of the Chicago area. Interesting I just hope he doesn’t try to be a dept mgr again…

Anyway, speaking with the assistant mgr – who was formerly the dept buyer – gave me some insight into mgmt. It’s stressful full of accountability and responsibility. I understand more than I would’ve having to enter the job market after getting out of college. He may be missing an opportunity, however, perhaps you have to be smart enough to recognize when something just isn’t for you. To be honest I faced that with the bank, I realized this wasn’t working for me and made some moves before the inevitable happened.

With that said I go back to the Reign of Error and had decided one thing to come back from that disappointment, that calamity was to come back stronger. Well I haven’t quite done that so far to be honest. Of course there are other opportunities for that however after almost four years to return to the company after the calamity I failed to come back strong.

One way to come back strong is: What if I was able to get Rog’s job as dept mgr and proved to be far more successful than he was? I think about that sometimes and I also consider there is a possibility that I could crash and burn as he had in my humble opinion. If it worked out well for yours truly perhaps I could rub it in if that day comes, then again who knows perhaps that’s a bad idea.

Either way I’m seeing how the workplace is moving right along in a time of a pandemic. Of course as I seek my path for a greater return I always hope for the best. Perhaps I can see how things shake down for my former dept from afar. I’ve already seen up close one direction it could go, especially with someone who is just unsettled in their new role.

Outcomes

The basic outline of what lead to the Climax of the Reign of Error was as a result of a delayed train going to work on a Saturday in 2017. The train just sat for a few minutes at a stop on the way to work and as a result I was twenty mins late on that morning and it was a very early morning too. First order of business I went to get a delay slip from a ticket agent at a stop closest to the Hole.

I later gave that slip to Gary an assistant mgr who said he’ll give it to Ruthless Roger and get that last tardy excused. As you know we saw how that turned out. He snuck up on me and spoke in his nerdy baritone and sent me to the store mgmt offices where Morley found every way he could to justify why I was getting dismissed from the company. In my mind it was unfair, but I had to accept because they weren’t changing their minds that this was a legit call.

Their primary justification was that corporate hadn’t said anything about any delays and no one else was affected by it. They claimed they waited a couple or so days before they made that decision, could be bull$h!t but who knows. So for them and probably Rog who walked right back out of the office without a word I just don’t know how they arrived at this awful call. One can only assume that he just wanted me gone for reasons only he really knew.

Another justification was according to the fact that I was already on an attendance probation. And it was justified that these delays were covered by the point system and thus if you have enough points, if they don’t want to accept a delay slip from public transit then you go bye-bye.

I was given differing explanations for the attendance probation. Morley in that instance said for approximately six months if I’m not tardy again and all my points clear off then I’m officially off the probation. However, yet another store mgr who had actually left about a month prior had told me when I got served with that during the summer that I couldn’t be late at all for the next six months. So they didn’t entirely understand this either, no clarity…

So either way I was out of the picture and anyone involved with this right or wrong were just viewed as @$$holes!

Let’s fast forward about four years later. This past summer I was late in almost a similar fashion, except I was just about an hour late due to yet another delay. In ’17 I learned through social media that there was a sick passenger no announcement was made on the train by our motorman beyond our train was going express which helped make up some time.

On the other hand all I knew in ’21 was there was a track condition near the next stop as announced by our motorman. At that point I was on the outskirts of downtown Chicago. As we continued waiting I decided it was time to just do something else so I went to a very friendly and helpful ticket agent in the station house for a delay slip and decided to walk to the nearest elevated train line.

The difference between ’17 & ’21 was the personalities and the lessons learned. When I got to work I made sure this time to go to my store mgr told him the situation. Of course he told me he had to see if anyone else was affected by it, which I realize by experience. He said he was going to get back to me by the end of the day which he hadn’t and I didn’t follow-up right away until…

One of the assistant mgrs was about to write me up for it. I told her the situation and at least this time I was carrying my delay slip in my wallet as my store mgr had taken a copy of it. He was going to kick it up the chain of command and I still got the original slip. She threw the write up away as taking away that last tardy brought me back down to where a write-up wasn’t necessary.

And it had to be reiterated again when my boss was about to serve me again for that tardy. I told him the situation and the store mgr was in mgmt offices so we asked him. Store mgr said I was good and thus still wasn’t held accountable for that tardy. For the record I still have that slip at home…

A few lessons learned in both of those instances is just follow-up and if necessary escalate. Perhaps I could’ve done much better in the more recent example, though I did hold it as something of a wild-card successfully. However, I could’ve been a tad more forceful.

This second stint I’ve been much better about my timeliness yeah I’ve been late though I do work with people who are much better with being on time. They don’t even like to do grace periods, where I was told I likely won’t get marked down for grace periods however the company doesn’t want that abused either.

Regardless as a worker or even a job seeker there were situations where there were managers who were just sticklers for time. They don’t like for anyone to be even one second late and will hold it against you forever. In those cases, I was somewhat glad to get away from those types because it was going to be a problem no matter what.

In the case of ’17 I was up against a boss who may not have been a strict stickler for time just a stickler for the rule book and was very willing to follow it to the letter. Today I can just laugh at that because we now see how that worked out for him…

Also to be stated in ’17 I was on the brink fell right over the edge. In ’21 there was no brink to fall over just wanted to avoid getting marked for a tardy which really wasn’t my fault.

The Hole

I found out last month that Larry was going into IT and was leaving the Hole thus his job was posted and unfortunately he was replaced by….Rayna. I haven’t maintained much contact with her since I’ve left the Hole, in fact when I’m in the store or in the neighborhood I’ve avoided her. Just felt that there was nothing there for me to even think we’d have a decent relationship.

She was the one who delivered the paperwork for the attendance probation along with an assistant store mgr. It was a weird affair when they tried to give me a “pep talk” I just tried to show hardly any reaction, the worst reaction was going to come a bit later at the climax. The assistant store mgr was more worried about me being upset at the time. What does he care unless he wanted a reaction?

Anyway I can’t believe I see her as the dept mgr for my old team at the Hole. She finally got what she wanted, as she was over there in 2017 to get the role and was deemed not ready. I wonder how much has changed since she transferred to the Hole and became another assistant mgr here. If she wasn’t ready four years ago how is she ready now?

Anyway I used to say it was more likely that I would return to the Hole. I don’t know about that now, perhaps it’s just time to move on from that fantasy. So many changes and so many people who I’ve worked with have finally moved on either to other companies within the store or within the company or whatever. Perhaps my plan to say it’s not that easy to get rid of me isn’t going to happen so easily.

Another fantasy I’ve had was to show up the people who were characters within the “Reign of Error” people like Morley or Roger or even since he’s still with the company as of now Mr. Boastful. If Rog ever thought of me any further beyond sending me to store leadership with the knowledge that on that day I was let go how upset would he be that I got his old job instead? And proved far more successful in that role than he was?

Would I ever be ready for that possibility? Is thinking that way a mistake?

Anyway as for Rayna who knows what the future might hold for her. She’s got what she wanted finally the question I might have to ask is whether or not she’ll be successful. Part of me thinks it will last six months and she’ll have to step down. I heard too many things about her past or what witnessed some issues to think that this will be a successful endeavor.

Meanwhile as a continuation of the most recent post, where do I go from here? Still working on it!

Domino revisited

Before I get into this post let me do a bit of housekeeping.

I had been trying to write another post about the Fiend and find myself deleting and rewriting posts. Not sure what else to say about that situation. Anything written will largely just be a reinterpretation of the same story. As stated often I’m still collecting the data however also stated what new will come of it as there is really nothing new to discuss. I’ve not heard from him since 2019 and from that there is nothing new to discuss.

I feel as if the next post about him might be it with him. Yeah it’s been said before but that also means it’s just time to come up with some more material to share on this blog. With that said let me get to the main event of this post.

Another thing to close the loop on is the drama from my former store the Hole. Four years ago next month I was unceremoniously dumped from the Hole based on attendance. In fact Ruthless Roger had snuck up on me in my dept to quietly usher me to store mgmt offices and walked right back out before our store mgr Morley relayed to me the bad news.

Oh let me add I do have a story to tell with regards to a later tardy which I will tell at a later date. It will somewhat explain the sequence of events that led to my separation from Fresh Foods during the Reign of Error/Calamity of 2017.

Either way, I’ve revealed to you all that there were at least three people whom I still have contact with who expressed some “relief” that Morley had gotten let go. One of them even referred to him as a d!ckhead. Another said there is a God. And another still just said they wanted to see the look on his face when he got the bad news.

I don’t have the same anger towards him. If there is they’re directed towards Rog based upon his behavior not long after he arrived in our dept. Morley is part of the story of the Reign of Error because he had to relay the bad news. Morley compared to the other store mgr in the office at the time (he was the one I had unsuccessfully interviewed with to return to the Hole) was less than helpful. This was true when I tried to figure out the “red-tape” about getting a buy/receive position as he was also less than helpful and to be fair I wasn’t that forceful either.

Anyway I get the feeling that Morley wasn’t a very popular boss among many. And I’ve told some statements about some statements he had made towards our dept. For example how are you going to make a statement threatening us with our jobs and do so with a very playful attitude. That seems very insensitive and unprofessional.

With that said a supervisor in my current dept over the summer told me that Morley got let go in 2019 because he had failed a corporate walk and was under investigation for harassment. I don’t know what to say about walks other than I have no idea what a corporate executive – usually from Fresh’s regional HQ – is looking for on their visits. Whatever happened on whatever day that walk occurred it turned into the “green mile” for store mgr Morley. So evidently that walk didn’t go well and possibly that investigation wasn’t found to be in Morley’s favor.

Part of me wanted to really ask how he came across this info, I just decided not to push this any further. This was mind blowing information that I told only one of the three colleagues who had issues with him. That person simply said “fcuk that guy!”

I just told him the story about how yours truly found out Morley was let go and my response and he just told me. I’ve told him of some of my interactions with him though I didn’t tell him about my interactions with him when I was let go.

What I did reference when talking about Morley was not only the story I relayed to you all about what he said to us before a store meeting one morning. Also Morley’s justification for my termination which was as far as that final tardy “no one else was affected by it and corporate never said anything”. This was where that supervisor gave me some advice on this, that I should’ve actually escalated this further.

Well now we can close the book on this for this blog.

Embargo

A few weeks ago I learned something about the store mgr who fired me just about four years ago, Morley. You may have seen a quick post about that just about two years ago entitled Domino. Right now my plan is to share that information a bit later in a post to revisit that episode.

This information is regarding Morley’s removal from the company in 2019 and was received from a supervisor at work. I don’t know how he knows this information as I opted not to ask any further questions. Just know that this supervisor knows about what was going on up there about some of the managers. The first time we spoke about Morley I made sure to note that he got let go and the supervisor used his thumb to say out! Sort of like an umpire in baseball.

We went further to talk about another guy we knew Ruthless Roger. I’ve told him what I knew although what was omitted was how rough my relationship became with /goofball. Hearing this supervisor, the idea seemed to have been no one liked him. His personality was the type where he needed to come back down to earth and we generally agree that whatever happened at the Hole sent Rog crashing back down to the ground. Another thing is that as a manager he just wasn’t that good and a lot of people picked up on it.

I even told this supervisor that when our store receiver arrived from the Hole she saw me in my dept at the time and wondered “How did you wind up here?” My answer was it wasn’t my choice and her next question “Was it Roger?” My answer to that is yes & no, as yours truly were having some issues and Rog just didn’t give a $h!t. The supervisor just responded everyone knew as in knew something was up.

I even told the supervisor that a supervisor I worked with at the Hole offered not long before getting rehired that Roger was definitely on the verge of getting fired. Basically just a guess, anyone who worked with him knew that becoming a dept mgr wasn’t going to work out well for him. This is why we could call him Ruthless, however, how ruthless was he if he crashed and burned.

Which leads to the next part of this dialogue, I promised this supervisor to tell him why yours truly left the Hole (that promise was ultimately fulfilled). This promise was made because it was recognized by both of us had said more than enough about “Ruthless”. In this supervisor’s words we shouldn’t give him the glory by talking about him. Even if his attempt at moving up blew up in his face, he already has enough of a massive ego that perhaps he shouldn’t even be thought about anymore.

Perhaps this is one way of closing the loop on ’17. It wasn’t until recently that I recognize is as a year of calamity. A friendship that never should’ve happened started to get strained to the point of no return. The job that seemed to have gone very well just turned 180 degree got me dismissed in part due to the mgmt change with my team. My mother still having health challenges eventually retired because she lost her job at a bank that failed. Some unusual turn of events made worse that I eventually lost my job near the end of that year. It was a calamity and a slow burn.

I’ve written about the whole Reign of Error in various iterations since learning Rog was no longer the dept mgr at the Hole. And as far as the more recent series of Reign of Error posts my feeling is there hasn’t been a very adequate ending to that. Perhaps there isn’t a need, the ending is that yours truly returned to Fresh Foods and found out that /goofball got demoted from dept mgr to supervisor and eventually left the company.

Since that time yours truly received a number of accolades in addition to making over 10K associate hours and was made associate of the week this month. If my time at the Hole ushered in for my the so-called big money years, my second stint is even more so and I’m still not done. And another thing is that yours truly cut out the deadweight that only served to eat both positive energy and finances because he had none.

And the deadweight – well he’s been mentioned enough on this blog to be honest – yours truly still has his thoughts about him. Perhaps this has been said enough times, however, it will soon be time to close the loop on that individual as well. Meanwhile I’ll warn you, there is another post coming about the deadweight in the future.

Oh yeah the “embargoed’ information about Morley expect to see that in October which would be the two year point of his dismissal from the Hole. In fact this is what I had told the supervisor. Yours truly was looking up jobs on Fresh’s social network saw Morley’s store mgr job was up for bid. A colleague who was still there had sent a meme-like msg to me and I replied back that the store mgr at the Hole was open. The colleague responded “Uh yeah. Morley got fired on Tuesday for reasons unknown”. This was when the supervisor at my current assignment told me what he knew. It still blew me away, however, you will know in the next few months.