Throw in the Towel

A little while ago I talked about how the company I worked for was going under. I talked about the cut backs I saw occurring, the desperate attempt to bring in money by pushing high gross items and changing store policies, and generally making all our lives hell. In that article I mentioned that I was mad at the people up top, corporate, for our current predicament, but I can't say I'm mad anymore. I can't say I'm mad anymore because it just doesn't convey the message anymore, I am now utterly furious with these people, and it's because they haven't given up yet.

There's something noble about going against the current, about fighting against the odds, about not giving up even when everyone says there's no chance. These are the stories that make up our fiction, the lone hero standing against the impossible. It's these stories that inspire us, these stories that make us smile and remind us that we can do anything if we have the will. But this is not that story, this is a company long since overdue of it's death, actively hurting it's employees in attempt to stay open a few feeble months longer. This is a company that hemorrhages money every day and refuses to simply cut it's losses and care for it's own. This is a company that isn't fighting a hopeless battle, the battles done, it's lost, and is now milking it's tragic and tiresome death scene for all it's worth.

This company is stomping on it's employees. It's our responsibility, they say, to keep the company afloat. We are held accountable for the companies success or failure, not it's archaic business practices. They cut our labor hours more and more as the months go by, I was once battling to get sales so that I may have the favor of gaining hours, now with this recent cut I will be battling to get sales so that I may have the favor of not losing hours. Put simply, I was once selling for a bonus, now I am selling to avoid punishment. My manager is being driven to madness, forced to work extra shifts if we do not meet goals, being berated over and over for the smallest transgression, watching in horror as every week a new and worse idea comes down the corporate pipeline on how to sell, what to sell, how the store should look.

The customers become worse and worse as the honest and good customers leave the company that is failing, leaving behind only the belligerent and wild, those who seek to scam or undercut us. Oh and they'll succeed, the company cannot afford to lose them after all. Every day I work I stare at the walls in the closing hours in disbelief. Strewn about, out of order, intentional messes. I stare and I feel my anger growing, because I know there is an impossible choice. We can stay late and clean up the disaster that is the store and be yelled at for going over hours, or we can leave on time as we're supposed to and be yelled at for the state we left the store in. With closing an hour earlier than we used to, and CSR shifts being rearranged to start at 6pm instead of 5pm, we are given a seven hour work load to be done in five hours.

This company does not give me any reason to work for it. It does not respect me, it does not care for me, it does not benefit me. There is no reward for doing especially well at my job and it does not give me enough hours I need to support my rather meager needs. The people up top are cutting costs to save themselves, they are cutting costs to keep their own status quot without even considering their employee's. They should have ended it by now, put up the going out of business sign and turned whatever money they had left to make sure the people who served them were taken care of. Instead they continue on and hurt their employees. I feel myself almost grateful for the little I work at this company, despite my need and pleads for more hours. I find myself happy knowing that I don't have to go back there for four more days because I'm just so filled with rage after every shift. I'm no slouch, I have been the top seller in my store for three straight weeks now, but they give me nothing to show for it, they give me no money, benefits, no perks. They simply give me no respect.

Now excuse me, I need to go fill out a few applications.