For the past couple weeks Corporate has been coming into the deli doing their reviews and what have you. So accordingly we’ve been under a lot of pressure to get everything up to snuff. Last week National came into our deli making notes and asking questions. I came in for that morning shift still under the effects of the Advil PM Dad had given me so I was a zombie for that. Also losing my voice due to recovering from sickness didn’t really help my situation out much.

But we survived and the deli looks much better because of it. Unfortunately we still understaffed and orders just aren’t coming in or going out or whatever so we don’t have product. Corporate National is expected to come in again tomorrow and all the regional level Corporate are just swarming all over the place in an attempt to please their superiors. Which is really, really frustrating.

Yesterday Judith and I were the only deli clerks managing the deli save a Russian lady who barely understands English and can perform only minor tasks let alone help with customers. I’d like to think I’m pretty good at training new people as I’ve been able to successfully do so with several but my ability to convey what needs to be done is severely limited when I can’t even communicate with the person. Anyways, needless to say, yesterday was really hectic.

Judith and I were rushing around all over the deli trying to serve the swarm of customers that never seemed to end all the while the ever so thoughtful people from Corporate Regional would micromanage. Help this customer! Make me these sandwiches! When are the chickens going to come out?! Do you have any of “x”? And generally issuing as many mandates as they could as quickly as they could within a limited span of time.

In the midst of trying to keep up with normal day to day operations, we were also trying to prepare for ahead and get our “grab’n'go” product out. I love how managers love to issue mandates that are even feasibly possible… “Uh… sure… I -could- do that. But then I’d have to stop helping customers… Or close early which I know you’ve already specifically forbade. What’s your real priority here?” Ugh… You really need to get more people in here but no, Corporate has deemed that we weren’t worth allocating the required hours to do so.

And then at the end of the day they had the audacity to say, out of our ears of course, to our local deli manager that he “hoped she would have a better crew tomorrow.” Oh wow… I was mad when I found that out… Really mad… To be perfectly honest, Judith and I -are- the best (there are two others at our level but unfortunately the subpar employees outnumber us) night crew employees. I almost laughed at the thought of having our employees who are less inclined to work as hard as we do perform under such abuse. I can just image Corporate Regional’s reaction there!

It’s one thing to analyze and criticize something. It’s another thing to completely demean people who are doing the best with the cards dealt to them. It’s not like they offered to help but merely added to the confusion and problems.

I just about had it. Briefly I sunk back into my depression. Why again am I at this crappy place? Safeway is only a means to an end and perhaps that means shall find its end… I am also rather disappointed with this entire process of working into management. I understand that these visits are demanding of my immediate managers as well and I’ve been promised more indepth training afterwards but even then I suspect my empowerment to perform to the responsibilities that I’m assuming will be rather limited. My manager has never had an assistant before and loves to micromanage things as well. Well that’s one thing I need to work out if I decide to continue on this route.

My school load is already becoming to be a pain and the school year is only beginning to ramp up. I may just have to cut my losses and cut ties with Safeway. Between my education at UWB and my so-called “career” at Safeway, one holds a bright future for me which is worth fighting for and it certainly isn’t the one that involves me wasting away my time in a starter job.

Anyways, I have some reassessing to do. I was planning on getting a decent internship while I was still at UWB which would involve me leaving Safeway’s employment anyways but I wasn’t intending to do so so soon. And I was kinda hoping to see what Safeway had to offer in their management training as that was supposed to be a one-on-one mentorship.

» You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.