Apocalyptic

As some of you may or may not know, I'm a front end supervisor at my local K Mart. This means that I supervise the cashiers and do customer service. Every shift, there are typically two supervisors active so you're either supervising the cashiers or at the customer desk, with the exception of the times where you're alone because the other supervisor is on their break, half hour lunch, or hour lunch. In these cases, you're on your own and have to divide your time between supervising the cashiers and watching the service desk in case any customers go in for help.

I was recently promoted to front end supervisor after a year of working as a cashier. In retail, I've learned that there is just so much drama. It's ridiculous. I hate it so much. After a few months of working at K Mart, one of the associates that work in electronics had already crossed me several times. He was very rude to me at random times, and sometimes even in front of customers. I spoke with the front end lead (head of the supervisors), I spoke with several managers, the store manager, and with the Human Resources manager. The general response I got was that I should just ignore it or say something back to him so that he stops which I thought was very ridiculous since it's unprofessional for someone to yell at another associate in front of customers. Anyway, on one occasion, I was working as a cashier and a phone call came in for electronics. At the time, I was fairly new to K Mart. I believe I had been working there 5 months or so. I knew a lot about the front end, but wasn't familiar with the procedures of the electronics department. The associate that I'm talking about wasn't answering the call, so I decided to turn my light off and take the call for him so that the customer didn't have to keep waiting. I believe that the customer was asking for a gaming console. I'm not sure what it was; it may have been the x box. They were asking whether we had it in stock. I checked and saw that we were out of stock. When asked when we'd be getting more, I was stumped. I didn't know this then, but K Mart gets weekly trucks of products and no one knows what is in those trucks until they are unloaded. I didn't know this at the time, so I went over to this electronics associate and said "Excuse me." since he was helping a customer. The other customer had been waiting longer and I didn't want to keep them on hold for another long period of time. I told him the situation and asked him when we'd be getting more x box's. His answer was very rude. It was something along those lines of "Well, it's common sense that we get weekly truckloads and that we don't know what's in the trucks until we unload them. I'm surprised that you've made it here without knowing that. Now if you're done being rude, I have a customer that I was assisting before you interrupted." I said thank you and walked away. I seriously felt like yelling at him right then and there, but I didn't want to be unprofessional and do the same thing he had done. I told the customer on the phone the information that he needed, and hung up with them.

A few minutes later, when Scott (the electronics associate) was done helping the customer, I went over to him and said "Hey, I'm going to explain something to you. The next time that you talk to me that way in front of a customer, I am going to embarrass you. I don't care if you talk to me that way in front of just employees, because I don't give a damn what any of you here think of me. I come here to work, not to make friends, but in front of the customers, I can't blow you off because that would be as unprofessional as you were today when I was helping YOU out."

His response was, "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be an ass, it's just that's how my personality is. I've been told before that I come off as an butthole but I don't mean to sound that way. It's just how I am."

I was just tired with being degraded though, and I was letting my frustration out, so my response was "I don't care if that's how your personality is. You need to control it with me because I don't disrespect you, and you certainly aren't going to disrespect me."

Since then, Scott's been very careful about being that way with me. I don't really talk to many of the associates. I'm friendly with everyone, but as soon as my shift is over, I leave. Like I said before, I was recently promoted to front end supervisor. One of the other supervisors was running her mouth with a friend of mine about how I had stolen her hours and about how I was cocky because I didn't accept her friend request on Facebook.

My friend told me that same night and when I went in the next day, I was supervising with Holly, the supervisor that had said everything about me. For the record, Holly has a college degree. She is a teacher but hasn't found a permanent teaching job, so she's had long term substituting positions, but that's it. She's in her mid 20's. In addition to working as a long term substitute, she works at K Mart, Tj Max, and Waldenbooks. She's also married but lives with her husband's parents. She isn't in dire need of money. I don't get why she is the way she is. But anyway, I walked into work, and she was quick to greet me and try to hug me. I asked her if I could talk to her in the office, and we went in there very quick. I had to tell her exactly what I felt about her comments.
Here's the convo:

Me: Holly, I'm trying to understand your mental process. I really am. I am trying to understand why a college educated person would be upset by a teenager's decision to deny their friend request on a social networking web site. I also don't understand why you would feel comfortable talking about me when I'm not around, and then having the unabashed gull to try and greet me and hug me as if nothing had happened. It's ridiculous. Do you feel that because you work with high school students as a substitute, that you have to act like them? Is that what's going on?

Holly: No, Roberto, I don't understand - I didn't say anything about you.

Me: What you said was that I was stealing your hours and that I am cocky because I did deny your friend request on Facebook. I'm going to explain both parts to you. As far as stealing your hours goes, I was promoted to supervisor. I was not promoted to human resources manager. I do not do the scheduling. If you have a problem with the hours that you're getting, you don't need to talk to me or about me with other associates. You've been here long enough to know that you take it up with Bruce, who does the scheduling as one of the requirements of his job as our Human Resources Manager.

As far as not adding you on Facebook, YOU and I are NOT friends. We are co-workers. There is no reason for me to accept you on Facebook or try in any way to become intimate with you or any of my co-workers. It isn't personal, but I want to keep things professional. There are about 10 people in this entire store that I would even acknowledge if I saw them outside of work. You aren't my friends. I didn't come here to make friends. My life doesn't revolve around the drama of K mart. I come here, I do my job, and I leave. That is it. If this isn't your case, that's your problem, but be very careful about putting my name in your mouth and bringing me into your drama.

Holly: Roberto I am so sorry. I didn't mean to be offens-

Me: You don't have to apologize or explain yourself. You and I are on the same level. You don't owe me explanations. I was simply explaining to you (out of desire, because I don't owe you an explanation either) the reasons for my decision to deny your friend request and why I couldn't possibly "steal your hours" as you said to another associate. Now let's go and get to work, because that's what we should be doing.

As you can see, there is a lot of drama and tension at k mart. It's ridiculous. I just can't stand it. Everyone talks about everyone, and that's why I just try and keep the people I talk to there at a very minimum. I had a few employees as friends but I recently deleted them. I only have on there the people that I knew from outside of work and now I happen to work with them. I went to high school with a few of the employees, so that's the difference.

Anyway, sorry about this long blog on the drama at k mart, but I've been so pissed about it lately and I wanted to let it out here haha. Comments or questions are welcome

This post has been promoted to an article

Before I begin to rant about this, I need to explain that I'm a faithful Michael Jackson fan. I am, have always been, and will always be a fan of Michael Jackson. I'm a fan of his music, and I love and respect him because he spent a large portion of his life giving to the needy without expecting anything in return. People may question this, but what could he have expected from children in orphanages in Romania? Others may say that he wanted media attention, but the only attention that he got throughout about the second half of his career was negative attention.

The United States media did nothing but attack this man for every thing that he did. They blew up his molestation charges, his drug & substance abuse issues, his plastic surgeries, the loss of pigment in his skin, his children, and the list goes on. For the last several years, I don't remember seeing anything good about Michael Jackson on any news station. I wish I could say that it's an exaggeration, but it isn't. I haven't. Not until now, anyway.. that he's dead.

Now that the King of Pop is dead, the United States media wants to turn him into a God. That's ridiculous and the epitome of hypocrasy in my honest opinion. What the United States media needs to do is focus less on the private lives of our talented artists and focus more on actual news that affects the public. With the economy the way it is, you'd think that people would care very little about whether or not Michael Jackson had plastic surgery(ies) on his nose, but unfortunately, the media contradicts that thought, and that just says a lot about us as the public.

Now that he's gone, the media wants to pretend that none of that ever happened. They want to pretend that they didn't call him Wacko Jacko, and that they didn't focus in on the stupid molestation charges. They want to pretend that they didn't make fun of him for his dramatic changes over the years. It's ridiculous to me, and it angers me a great deal.

In most cases, when you're discussing discrimination in school, judging by the topic, you'd assume that we're speaking in regards to an issue pertaining to two students. In my case, this wasn't what occurred. In fact, something that should never be the case, but was.

I'm a student in a public high school in Puerto Rico. For those of you that don't know anything about Puerto Rico, it isn't a state of the US, however, it is a territory receiving all of it's benefits from the US. There are three political parties in Puerto Rico. One of which aspires to see Puerto Rico as an official US state, another which wants Puerto Rico to remain a territory, and another that aspires to see Puerto Rico as an independent republic similar to Cuba or the Dominican Republic.

My Spanish teacher was originally a very nice woman who unfortunately suffered a heart attack and was out of school for several months. There was a substitute during this time. He was a male teacher. He seemed to be a decent person, and was in the US army with my grandpa. Together they served in the Korean war. This will seem very ironic to you all when you finish reading this thread.

Apparently, this substitute supported the political party known as the PPI, which basically want Puerto Rico to become an independent republic. We were reading a novel in Spanish class pertaining to the oppression that some people on the island were made subject to. He alleged that the United States is responsible for all of the drastic changes in the Puerto Rican culture, and that the United States was in his perspective equivalent to Hell. Now, aside from myself, there are several other students in my class who speak English, and have lived in the United States most of their lives. We all sit together in class, and he looks at us, knowing that we all speak English, and he tells us that we should take the American flag that we love so much and shove it up our asses, that we're worthless, similar to our country.

The irony in all of this is as stated above, he served in the US army in the Korean war.

The other English speaking students and myself voiced our concern with the rest of the class, and they agreed with us, at which point we all went into the office to file a complaint against the teacher. He remained the substitute for some time, and we were basically fed the BS that he would be removed as soon as possible, but it took our parents to get involved for actual action to be taken against him. It turns out that he had never been reprimanded, and that there were no plans for that either. The next day after our parents went to the school, there was another substitute who was much nicer and even spoke English.

My point is.. this teacher really irritated me to the point of my blood boiling. What do you all think?

I was shown this picture recently and I've got no idea who it is, but regardless, I've had nightmares for the past three days. I'm posting this so that we can all share the misery.