Boldly Going Nowhere......

"DAMMIT, JIM! I'M A DOCTOR, NOT A BRICKLAYER!"

For some reason, why I don't know, people think that just because I'm working the electronics department I have an encyclopedic knowledge of every single gadget and device sold in America.

I am there to cashier. Period, nothing more. I am not a technical support engineer. Nowhere does it state on the counter that I am one, or that we offer tech support.

Yet every time they send me back there, I get some joke-wad on the phone crying that their X-box won't work, demanding I tell them how to fix it. Or I'll get some air-headed Sierra-Club Ex-Granola Hippy Caddy-driving Soccer Mom who just bought a digital camera from us the day before, and she doesn't know how to use them (or computers of any kind) and she wants me to give her complete lessons over the phone.

C'mon lady -- do you honestly think that if I had any engineering training I would be wasting my time working here?

"IT'S WORSE THAN THAT -- HE'S DEAD, JIM!"

Every day I find out another person is gone from the store. It's really starting to creep me out. The other day, my buddy "J" from Asset Protection left, as well, to focus on his day job for the government. Now I have no one to talk to. The girl who used to bake the cookies at the snack counter just perfectly, the way I liked them, left this Spring for Florida. The Bodacious Blonde team leader I had a chippie for left last Spring to move back to California with her boyfriend. I found out about more people gone this week -- I am really bummed out.

There is one good thing however -- the Equal Opportunity Token team leader who thought she was "all that and a bag of chips," who chapped me for getting more product out for the guests who were asking for it, is also gone. I won't miss her shrieking over the walkie just because we don't answer her calls the split micro-second she releases the button.

"SENSORS INDICATE THAT IT'S LIFE, JIM, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT."

Right now I'm just laying low, watching things in the shop develop as they go. All sorts of people are getting promoted around me, I saw another announcement just today. I decided I'm not going to submit myself to another humiliating and embarrassing round of hoop-jumping for a position just to find out through the grapevine after the fact that I'm not wanted. I'm going to go where I AM wanted. At the very least, if I stay, I'm not going to beg for anything. I've had enough of that baloney. So....I'm just going to watch, observe, take notes, keep a secret C.Y.A. file, and bide my time until I know for certain what to do next.

"DAMAGE CONTROL IS EASY, JIM -- READING KLINGON, NOW THAT'S HARD..."

The card-board baler was left full by the back room team when they left today. The evening L.O.D. asked over the walkie if anyone knew how to empty it and make a bale. Having worked with all sorts of balers in the retail business since I was 15, I offered to help. She asked me if I had been properly "certified." I told her no, but I knew full well how to press the up and down buttons. Not good enough. She said leave it for the morning crew.

Words cannot express how unhappy it makes me feel when these people patronize me and treat me like I'm stupid. If the company thinks I'm too stupid to handle pressing a button, then I'm too stupid to do anything else for them.

Whenever I quote philosophy or the arts to my coworkers, they all tell me I'm too smart to be working there. I usually reply that management thinks I'm too stupid to do anything else.

"YA CANNAUGH CHANGE THE LAWS O' PHYSICS, JIM."

My coworker "D" was telling me how he had come up with some ideas to improve the zoning process we go through in the evenings recovering the store. I think his ideas are excellent -- they really would improve things, in my opinion. "D" told me how he had tried to discuss them with management. They just listened to him, smiled, and said "that's nice." Nothing changed. I told "D" that in this company, there's three ways of doing things: the right way, the wrong way, and the "company way." Trying to change "the company way" is like trying to tell the Earth to stop spinning or the sun to stand still.

Not gonna happen.