Off a cliff.

Okay. We're back, I guess. Little choice in the matter, as always, but we may as well enjoy it.

Why'd it stop? Well, I always just say I'm lazy—it's always easier to not write things than to write things. But for as much giddy fun as it was to start, this blog in particular was a fragile thing, and it pretty much got derailed by events. That store, you know, it just kept going, in spite of all the disasters. Day after ridiculous freakin' day. But it was hard for me, your chronicler, to imagine that I was the Representative of any kind of Noble Resistance once most of you loyal Resisters out there had, you know, quit in disgust. (No hard feelings, of course—and one of you, I note, has now come back. Heh. God help you.) And none of y'all seemed too inclined to post comments, now did you? That was my original vision, you'll recall, although I recognize this kind of thing isn't for everybody. (Really, I was just humbled that I had "fans" at all.)

But after the Great Supervisor Massacre of the summer months, when the last of the old senior staff and the more promising new members had sprinted for the exits, it was sorta hard not to feel like it was all a bit pointless, or pathetic, even. Who was I, after all? Just some snarky malcontent guy who's too lazy and socially anxious to devote any energy to getting a better job. And I felt something like Survivor Guilt, I guess. The guilt of the collaborator. Because I'd been co-opted, after all. I'd let them give me more hours, and let them start to depend on my presence, and I'd let myself enjoy it, for whatever it was worth. Sales Manager and I had silently reached an understanding of sorts. He needed me to get things done, and I needed him to keep the situation tolerable. General Manager, of course, only showered me with more love, creepy and artificial as his approval always is. This was relaxing, though, which made me feel more guilty about pretending to be a Rebel. I was more than polite to The Man, after all. I'm a friendly guy, and not stupid; I'm the sort who's going to instinctively be decent to the boss, and then feel bad about it.

But of course that couldn't last forever. And, well, those of you who are still around know what happened. (Some of you may know more than me, and I'm quite curious to hear it.) Either our Special Friend had been reading some half-baked "management" book, or he was starting to feel some heat from above, regarding our personnel and morale situation. I did hear rumours that Former Merch Supervisor had done at least something to try to blow the whistle on him with the Higher Ups, but I never heard anything more about it. Word was maybe getting around, at least a little bit. Because this past week we were all asked, by means of a form in our mailboxes, to evaluate the man's performance. Seriously. Yeah, I laughed out loud, too. Is he mad? I thought. How could that possibly do him any good? But here he was, at least pretending to ask all us Regular Folks what he's doing right and wrong.

Naturally, my Satirist Instincts blazed back into life, and all sorts of delightfully sarcastic rants just started writing themselves. This was going to be awesome. I went so far as to copy some extra evaluation forms, in case I needed them.

Then, of course, I got cold feet, or at least got embarrassed. Maybe it was immature enough to mock the guy behind his back while still keeping him happy, and to anonymously and gratuitously insult him to his face, in writing, would just be childish. Better just to imagine it, as it almost always is in these cases.

Couldn't resist, though, finally. They made me do it. You all understand. I was walking into work today, when I passed New Ops Manager. She was telling someone, a bit uncomfortably, that she needed some people to turn in those feedback sheets. I've only got four so far, she said. And looked at me, where I'd stopped to listen, curious. I'd thought it was too late already. Did you fill out yours? she asked me, a bit hopeful. Uh, really? I said. You want me to? You sure? I knew I was being given another opportunity to have the courage of my convictions, so to speak, and my vicious streak was leaping at the chance.

Yeah! she said. Do it! So first I clocked in, because I wasn't gonna do it for free, and then I wrote what I could remember of what I'd been composing in my head. I don't know if Ops Manager understood what she was urging me to do, but I think she does now. She's a Team Player, but she's starting to understand the real situation. We'll see what she does with that.

I took the high road, as much as I possibly could stand. Nothing actually personally insulting or played just for laughs. But not really what you'd call constructive criticism, either. It ain't gonna go over well, if he really gets to see any part of it.

Here's what I can reconstruct from memory:

[If you've seen this form, you'll know it's basically blank, but divided into DO, DON'T, and CONTINUE, or something like that.]

DO
Manage the store. I.e. hire and support competent and knowledgeable staff and stay the heck out of their way. [Yes, I said "heck." This is business, people! I'm a professional! And Gov. Palin has made euphemistic swearing hip again, for gosh sakes!]

STOP
…saying things like "UPT" and "OSAT" This is absurd. Nothing we do has more than a tiny, marginal effect on sales. Trying to "drive" sales is like primitive tribespeople trying to "drive" precipitation by dancing in circles. I realize this renders much of what you do as a manager irrelevant. Deal with it. It's anybody's guess whether this industry even survives. Let's try to have some dignity.

Uh, yeah. And I put in on Ops Manager's desk before I could talk myself out of it. Then I got to the floor and thought furiously that there was so much stuff I could have said and forgot to say! So I went back into the office, got another form, and added the most important thing.

…and, it goes without saying, STOP making good supervisors quit in appalled disgust. It makes things very stressful for the rest of us. Thanks.

And I was done. Giddy, but a little shocked. Now what was gonna happen?

Oh, but they made me. They did. You all know. And usually I feel terrible after I do something like that. Satire, I can convince myself, is an actual art form—real aggression always just makes me feel sick and criminal. But this time I felt pretty peaceful, really. I hadn't just kept quiet, and I wasn't wrong about any of it. I hadn't been vulgar or over-the-top, not really. And I had nothing left to prove about my worth to the company, really—if anybody felt like confronting me about my Attitude, well, that would just be more entertainment.

Of course, there's the matter of my source of income. And the matter of the worst employment market in a good long time. We all know about this. It gave me a little chill to think that I was gambling an almost-full-time job on my self-righteousness, basically.

But, you know, Whatever, as the kids say. Because I wasn't lying about the Big Picture. The New York Times agrees: we are all So Screwed:

Retailers Report a Sales Collapse

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Published: November 6, 2008

Sales at the nation’s largest retailers fell off a cliff in October, casting fresh doubt on the survival of some chains and signaling that this will probably be the weakest Christmas shopping season in decades.

So, you know, Blaze of Glory it is, I guess. It's Armageddon For the Book People. Ragnarok! Gotterdammerung! Any other scary Heavy Metal Apocalypse terms you can think of! Rains of fire and blood and anemic sales figures and vanishing revenue streams!

Like I told the boss, let's do it with some dignity. And hopefully the new president puts us all to work building dams, or big statues of himself, or something. I'm flexible.

Pointed.

Sorry. Took a couple of weeks off. I actually have another blog, if you can believe it, and about twenty other time-wasting hobbies. And, hey, it's sort of dispiriting when large sections of my intended audience just vanish in a cloud of Turnover. But I know some of y'all are still checking, so I'll keep it going.

I'm officially part of the problem, aren't I? They're starting to depend on me more, because they're getting desperate and I know how to read a merch chart. And I smile and cooperate--there's no use pretending I'm some kinda subversive. I'll take their money.

Still, I keep the passive aggression coming, when I can. A dialogue:

(The multimedia cage. Me, learning. Harried-and-Frantic Sales Manager trying to teach me in little bursts, in between running around the store putting out completely meaningless fires.)

SM: ...and make sure you look at this. (Points at list on the wall of absurdly specific Loss Prevention Policies regarding keepers and chiclets and whatnot.) We really got dinged on this in that LP audit.

Me: (Still cooperating. But sarcastic cruelty stirring.) Dinged?

SM: Yeah. All that keepering stuff cost us twenty points.

Me: (Politely amused.) Points?

SM: Yeah, twenty points we would've had, otherwise.

Me: What would we have done with these "points," had we hung on to them?

(Silence, for a moment. Then he gives up, ignores it, and moves on. He knows my uses, but he also knows when I'm mocking him. We're both trying to believe we're getting the better end of this deal.)

But seriously, man. Please, by all means, tell me what to do. Somebody's got to. I will absolutely follow Loss Prevention policy to the best of my ability. But please don't try to explain why we're doing anything, because the reasons are invariably idiotic and I'm just going to laugh at you. I do the job right because it's my job, not because I give a damn.

Points. Saints preserve us.

From Beyond The Grave!

People in general have such a weird, distorted view of the sorts of things they're going to find in a store like ours, don't they? Righteously indignant when there aren't any children's books about Millard Fillmore. (The report is due TOMORROW!) Overwhelmed with gratitude when it turns out we actually have a copy of The Iliad or Tuesdays With Morrie. There's no predicting it.

But here's a funny one. I approached a forty-something white woman, all help and concern. She seemed thoughtful and a little spacey. Well, I'm looking for this philosophy book, she said. You probably won't have it.

I tried to play it at my most soothing. Just tell me what the problem is, and we'll make it okay...

Well, it's by Ayn Rand, she said. Ah, I said, nodding. The situation became clear. Rand fans are a Special breed--convinced that they're on to something, that they've found the Secret. They all read Atlas Shrugged at age sixteen, or whatever, and were overwhelmed to learn the truth--that people just like them are really the Good people, the ones who should be running the world, instead of the whiners and do-gooders and commies.

But of course, these folks are an awful long way from being any kind of Underground. Those books are really popular; they've never been out of print. They tell wannabe self-made millionaires exactly what they want to hear. So I just started taking this woman to the Philosophy section, pretty much without comment.

I don't know, she said. It's kind of old. She's dead, you know.

Huh. Didn't quite know what to say to that, but I know I couldn't help smiling as we walked. Yes, I said, she certainly is, isn't she? What I didn't say was how could we fail to stock the complete works of somebody who has a plausible claim to be the Worst Writer of the Twentieth Century? I mean, Hitler was pretty lousy, but he was far less prolific! Instead, I handed her Philosophy: Who Needs It? and moved on.

But you know, actually we carry quite a surprising number of books by people who are No Longer With Us! Sidney Sheldon! St. Augustine of Hippo! Kurt Cobain! Bill Shakspeare! Death absolutely doesn't make you commercially unviable!

Can you imagine if that actually was some sort of Inventory Guideline? For God's sake, get out there with a V-Cart and get Norman Mailer's books off of the shelves! Don't you read the papers? We're clearly in Non-Compliance with the Living People First Act!

"O, heavens! Die two months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's a hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half a year!"
(Some sarcastic guy.)

Finally, Some Action!

Commenter Dave is a veteran of the Competition, as well as the independent bookstore world that I came out of. So he knows what he's talking about:

Judging by the perpetual state of understaffing and inventory problems at every major retail store...this is the way they like it. It maximizes profit and employee turnover. Yes, you're being pushed to quit, of course. An entire staff of part-time, no-benefit college kids is what they want. With maybe a couple weary, 55-hour-a-week managers at the top on the verge of suicide.

This is, of course, absolutely true. This is the model honed to ruthless perfection by Wal-Mart, but it's the basic system now in any big retail operation. It's the only way to make any money in a business like this. Full time, minimally competent staff are a luxury that they don't think they can afford. So Dave tells us, basically, not to expect any help or sympathy from anyone at any level of the company--As far as they're concerned, the System is Working!

But of course, it's not. They're getting increasingly desperate, hoping they can wait out this rough period by cutting every possible corner. (How long does it take us to re-order bags? Or hand soap?) But even if the economy and the industry turn around, there won't be anyone left who cares. Every store will be run by part-time twenty-year-olds, and no one will ever know where anything is.

I still, for my own part, hold out some hope that there are still some people somewhere Above us who have some institutional memory of the way things used to work, and that these people have done what they've had to do to get along, but they secretly feel horrible guilt. And when they see the startling trend at our store, they'll be sympathetic to us--because we'll be saying what they've been afraid to say.

Barring that, hopefully we can collect enough personally damning material on Our Particular Problem to insure that he won't be able to just run the store into the ground and walk away from it. He'll go down with it.

But if Dave's right, and no one who cares about the sorts of things we care about can possibly have lasted this long at the corporate level where they could make any difference, well, that just means that We're It. We're the Institutional Memory. All the enthusiastic kids coming in to replace the old and bitter people being driven out, well, they're gonna assume that this is just how things are. They're obviously going to be aware that their boss is a hideous grotesque, but they'll assume that anybody who runs a store is like that. Right up until we sit them down and explain it to them. Then we'll see.

And finally, an insider speaks. Anonymous assures us from experience that even our company can't keep things like this all of the time--we're in a uniquely inconvenient location and have uniquely awful bosses. And gives us eyewitness testimony suggesting that the war on our old store culture was and is completely intentional. Read the whole thing.

Rumbling

Morale continues its merry little Death Spiral. Merch Supervisor called off today--for, like, the second Sunday in a month. And, hey, good for him. I pretty much respect anybody's sovereign right to not go to work. You've gotta do what you've gotta do. But gee, that can't be a good sign, can it? Clearly, he's "not feelin' it," as the kids say. Who would be?

But of course, it started a chain reaction, since that left the Sales Manager in command for the entire day, with three (three!) clerks and one cashier, for most of it. We were all running around like crazy, of course. This no longer particularly bothers me, really, which is sad in its own way, but Work is Work, you know? Our poor Second Banana, though, seemed even more frazzled than usual. And that's pretty frazzled. Usually he can keep up the manic good cheer no matter what, but the cracks were beginning to show by closing time, when we still had numerous customers floating around. Café seller was watching the door for us, and asked over the radio if the store was clear. No, it's not, Our Boy said in a mournful voice. Oh, okay, the helpful cafe person chirped back, ready to keep waiting. No, he said, even gloomier. It's NOT okay. I went for my own radio.

We're losing him, I said. Somebody get the dart gun.

We got through it, of course; we always do. But he wasn't any happier--he was convinced, I could tell, that he was gonna be blamed for the condition of the store tomorrow. Rather than, you know, thanked for getting through a difficult day. Of course, he's almost certainly right. He should just learn not to care so much. But won't, we know.

I'll see you next week, the regular Sunday cashier said politely to the Sales Manager, as we all walked out.

Maybe, he said. We all laughed darkly.

Well, I'll see you tomorrow, anyway, I said.

Maybe, he said. Then laughed again. (Just Kidding!)

But this is getting some momentum, though, isn't it? People bailing, supervisors calling in sick, managers making ominous jokes about quitting. Metaphors about rats and sinking ships come to mind, but we should avoid clichés. Also, we should not compare our colleagues to rats. You are all nice people, even those of you who have Already Abandoned Us.

Seriously, though. The writing is on the wall, considering who left us this week. That's a cliché, too, of course, but it works because what's so telling is that this time the writing isn't on the wall. Even the outgoing Ops Manager observed the Institutional Protocol, cheerfully signing the drywall in the stockroom with a sharpie, like so many before her. The Training Supervisor Emeritus just quit. Unceremoniously. Didn't come back. Nobody was shocked.

You know who I mean--the single most beloved member of the staff, the person who'd worked for this company longer than any of us. The guy who's better at making new hires feel comfortable than anybody else, ever. The guy who made me feel comfortable when I got in this business twelve years ago. Well, he's doing something else, now, and good for him. And what's the point in a sentimental ritual like signing the wall, he must've thought, when there's no reason to think that anybody who'd remember him will be around in six months?

No reason to think that's a bad assumption, either, but it doesn't have to be true. This could go in a lot of different directions. Sure, we're watching the store disintegrate around us, but there's no reason we can't be the last ones standing. That was my idea behind forming this Community of the Like-minded, so that we can all be Grimly Amused together, and maybe just possibly salvage something out of this.

Squawk?

OMG this is precious. I was in the stockroom this afternoon, unpacking next week's new releases and organizing them on carts. This is a soothing, relatively mindless task of the sort I really actually like doing. I mean, sure, that leaves the Previous GM on the bookselling frontlines while I'm comfortably tucked away in back, but hey, I'm not in charge! If somebody thinks that's a wise idea, great.

Anyway, it's fun to see the new books as they appear, even if they're almost uniformly terrible. This is why all you poor IPT folks keep doing your horrible, dusty jobs--you really do get a kick out of taking stuff out of boxes and seeing it before anybody else. Anybody who's worked in any store, or been a little kid at Christmas, knows about this. But sometimes...boy, sometimes you get a gem:



Huh. That's...well, that's a bird on a desk. Wearing a tie. In any sane world, this would be completely baffling, or terrifyingly surreal--something out of a booze-and-codeine fueled nightmare. And that title--a primitive, pre-linguistic screech, a howl from the collective unconscious, a Barbaric Yawp! But, really, this world ain't particularly sane, and really it was perfectly obvious what sort of book I was dealing with. Small hardcover, maybe six by eight? White? About 150 pages, maybe less? About five words on a page, maybe less? Weird, strained animal symbolism? Yeah! It's one of those staggeringly cynical and putrid little Inspirational Business Fables! Who Moved My Cheese? F.I.S.H. Our Iceberg Is Melting. And so on. Books for people who don't Have Time to read books, because they're important, but who find this sort of drivel inexplicably cute. This particular book seems a couple of years behind the curve, but that doesn't mean it won't be a hit.

But check this out. I had to read the jacket copy, of course, and look at the lessons I learned:

Unfortunately, we've all seen it happen. When faced with a problem, rather than working cooperatively to come up with a solution, your manager or colleagues come swooping in, squawking loudly, dump orders riddled with formulaic advice, and then take off, leaving you and everyone else to clean up the mess. Or—let's be honest: there may have been a time (or three) when you have been guilty of doing that very thing yourself.

While this happens in every workplace worldwide more frequently than ever, it doesn't have to. Through the story of Charlie, a seagull who doesn't understand how his management actions are holding back his flock, Travis Bradberry, Ph.D., reveals the three virtues of great leadership that he has used to help thousands of people and organizations deal with seagull managers in the workplace and, just as important, to avoid being one themselves.

Charlie the seagull is a well-intentioned manager who, when faced with new challenges after previously leading his flock to success, fails to understand how his management style is holding back, rather than helping, his team. Through our bird's-eye view of Charlie, overconfident Scott, quiet Maya, practical Yufan, and skinny, shy Alfred, we see them and the rest of the flock struggle to solve their problems while absorbing the three virtues of great leadership and teamwork along the way. This entertaining and illuminating fable will help make us all more productive, less prone to depositing messes on the heads of those around us, and more able to work effectively with those who continue to squawk at us every day.

See? It's all clear now! Our problem is that we are dealing not with a human being, but with some sort of Metaphorical Sea Bird. Or something. He just Fails to Understand how his Style is holding back his Team. (That's us.)

Notice how Charlie the Seagull is "well-intentioned," though? Of course! Why wouldn't he be? Everybody thinks they're well-intentioned, and this book is clearly aimed at the Charlies of the world. They want to think they're the Real Good Guys.

But how'd you end up in that position, Charlie, squawking your stupid meaningless orders at people? Were all your intentions "good?"

Maybe. But if you press me, I'll tell you that I think telling anybody else what to do at any time is suspect, and enjoying it is, for lack of a better word, evil. What you're calling "management" is an act of violence, and it's inherently polluting, like any other form of violence. I'm not naive, and I'm not some kinda anarchist. I understand that we need people who are willing to do that, or nothing will ever get accomplished, just like we need good cops who are willing to hurt people if they have to in order to get their difficult job done. But the sorts of people who are eager to do any of those things aren't my people. That's all.

Discomfort

Objectively speaking, it may be a good thing, but it creeps me out that he likes me so much. I'm not your friend! I want to say. Stop being friendly! Don't ask me politely to do things if you're going to bark orders at people whom I like! But would I rather he made me as miserable as he makes some of you? These are uncomfortable sorts of questions to ask yourself.

But of course, all of this is what I find terribly fascinating, and why I find it so damned entertaining to write about. All the weird, unfathomable stuff that somebody like that brings out in ordinary people like us. We're not used to it; we don't know how to deal with it. My intuition, much of the time, is that the world is full of people like that and we just haven't had to deal with them this closely before, either because we're young, or like me, have worked in bookstores our whole lives. Because I'm learning that it's really really easy for us to conclude that he's something Horrifyingly Unique, a Perfect Monster, a sociopath. And that's a bit dramatic, isn't it? A bit "over the top," as the District Manager might say?

Then, a certain amount of the rest of the time, I think oh my god it's all true. Because this feeling is pretty universal, isn't it? I've seen it growing in the past month or two, as everybody's private disgust has slowly combined into a critical mass. It can't just be mass hysteria, can it? It can't just be Resentment of Change, or the Clash of Cultures between a corporate retail guy and some wacky bohemian bookstore types. This person is uniquely repellent, and everyone knows it after five minutes. Maybe there really is something seriously wrong, something we're all picking up on.

Because it's not like he really likes me, right? He's aware that I'm good and could quit if I wanted, and he knows how to approximate human emotion in my presence, right? I have to think that.

Tragic Farce

A quiet evening at That Place. Not a crew designed for excitement. One new cashier whom nobody knows, one clerk whom nobody talks to, one manager whom nobody likes. Me. A few other quiet people. It passed without incident.

He had one tense exchange with a customer at the register, which I was happy just to watch in grim amusement. Because as near as I could tell, they were both attempting to maintain their dignity, both just came off as jackasses, and both were completely wrong on the merits. Customer seemed to think he was entitled to something free because he had an email in his hand about the infamous Seven Day Promise. But of course his book had actually arrived in two days--he just hadn't heard about it, and he knew that nobody had tried to notify him, since he sits by the phone twenty-four hours a day waiting for it to ring, or something. Dude! We sent you a postcard! Look over there! Under the cable bill! Which is what Our Leader should've said, but he tried to fall back on a policy that no longer exists, as far as I know. He thinks we've still got those Seven Day Promise forms in the store that we have to sign off on before the Promise really exists. But we haven't used those in forever. All people get is those emails. No one in the stores ever mentions any kind of Promise any more, with good reason. Who needs that kind of heartache?

Of course he went over to the laser printer to try to find one of these nonexistent forms to show the customer what they should have. Of course they weren't there. Heh. I didn't stick around to see how he explained that one.

Cutting Edge Marketing

Driving out of town, just now. A handwritten sign alongside the highway, near someone's driveway. Free Kittens. Well, that's traditional and adorable. Of course you should spay or neuter your pet, but if you're gonna let 'em breed, absolutely you should give the offspring away to strangers. It's like the Kitty Lottery. One of your kittens could hit the jackpot and end up living with a millionaire, or a rock star.

But the reason I'm posting it here is that beneath those words, in smaller letters, the sign cheerfully urged us to "Reserve Yours Today!" They want you to pre-order! The kittens aren't even available yet! They're trying to create a "buzz!"

This is the sort of thing that's supposed to be depressing--sterile advertising-speak and retail hucksterism infiltrating everyday life. What, are the kids gonna give out Rewards Cards at their lemonade stands, now? Where does it all end?

But on the other hand, it's just so cute. Kittens!

Recommended Reading

It's frustrating for the Professional Smart-ass such as myself, but there really is a point where satire just stops working--where the people you're humorously exaggerating about are just too absurd. There's nothing you can do with it. They're immune. It's like beating a dead horse to death, or something.

But, still. We've got to try. Check this out:

Our SATR Will Put Our OSAT.....
OVER THE TOP

Sound familiar? Maybe you've had to read it, too. The people who wrote that are the people in charge. And not just here. Everywhere. The emperor isn't just naked, he's drooling and incontinent.

For the record, I assume that's the prose (I use the term loosely) of the District Manager, whom I'm fortunate enough to be relatively unfamiliar with--because all of y'all who've had to work with him seem traumatized. (And of course, he's ultimately to blame for all this, right?) I took that passage from the PowerPoint slideshow I had to watch today, as I'm sure a lot of you also had to. Because we all are gonna need some more training.

The problem, you see, is with our Staff Ability To Recommend. It's low. It's the lowest in the district. Did you know that? I didn't. But why would we? Staff Ability To Recommend isn't actually a real thing; it's not something you can know about. It means precisely as much as if I told you that your Personal Waffle Sock Index (PWSI) had dropped by ten percent. It's another number that somebody was paid to come up with. Specifically, it comes from our infamous CSI scores--though it doesn't seem like they're using that term anymore. (They finally got tired of getting confused with six different TV shows.) These are the numbers painfully crunched from those Customer Survey Coupons that you've seen a million times. Anybody bored or pathetic enough to sit through a survey and press the appropriate buttons will get--wait for it--FIFTEEN PERCENT OFF! One item. Try to picture with me the people who are excited to do this. And then picture the subset of them that actually go through with it. These are the people who are evaluating us.

Then picture the people who were paid to come up with the questions. And the people who were paid to run the machines that operate the recordings. And the people who were paid to write the software that crunches the utterly meaningless numbers.

Then picture the District Manager who was paid way, way more to decide what to do about this data. (I use the term loosely.) Picture him deciding that the solution was to--Yes!--make a PowerPoint. (Or more likely pay someone else to do it.) That all of us would then be required to sit down at a desk and read. And which Powerpoint would essentially be a crime against the English Language that should bar the writer from human society forever. But won't.

Anyway, translating for the innocent:

Our SATR Will Put Our OSAT.....
OVER THE TOP

SATR, of course, is Staff Ability To Recommend. But you could only ever really pronounce it "satyr," which is a mythical beast, half man, half goat, fond of "riotous merriment and lechery," according to my dictionary. Doesn't sound so bad.

OSAT, I believe, is Overall Satisfaction, but you can say it way quicker. (Try it! Oh-Sat! See?) But if I'm not mistaken, this is pretty much nothing less than some kind of average of all the meaningless numbers generated by the stupid surveys, and is supposed to be some indication of how good our customer service is. Yeah, that's as brilliant as it sounds.

The five dots after "OSAT?" I dunno. My best guess is that that was supposed to be an ellipsis, a punctuation mark that is usually written as three dots, and which should be used really, really sparingly except to point out elisions in a direct quotation. Here it seems to be trying to build suspense.

"Over the top" is a phrase from popular slang that's passed into cliché; it can mean a lot of things. Usually it means something like "too much; in poor taste." But in the blasted linguistic wasteland that is business writing, and in the jock-speak that it was derived from, it's supposed to indicate something good, the achievement of a goal. You've made it "over the top" of the hill, I guess, and now you can relax.

Why's it in all caps? No clue. Anybody who's ever so much as sent an email knows that that's the height of gauchérie, the equivalent of standing on the corner screaming in people's faces. But there it is.

We are dealing with the kinds of guys--notice they're pretty much all guys?--who like this sort of thing. Never forget that.

Smile!

Hey, did I freak people out with all of that Fight Club nonsense? You're allowed to mention this stuff in my presence; nobody's taken a Vow of Secrecy. Just don't talk about it in front of the (very few) people who'd have any problem with it. Sneaking around is fun! Give in to it! And this is still more Art Project than Uprising, anyway. So far. Heh.

But, for the record, we won't be blowing up any buildings. Though you may be required to shave your heads.

To My Public

Notes for our customers:

You know, I've been doing this a good while, if you can believe it. Working at this store. Working at stores like this one. Working with computers in general. I really have acquired a certain basic competence with the tools of my trade.

Please, please, please don't give me suggestions. If you're looking for some book on...I dunno, trout fishing, that you're pretty sure you saw this one time, well, gosh, I'll do my best. But please don't suggest to me that maybe if you looked under "trout..." What does that even mean? How do you look "under" something, anyway? You think we're using index cards or something here, don't you? You know what I'm doing is happening on a computer screen, you're not blind, but you assume what I'm working with must be something like the Public Library Card Catalog that you dimly remember from whatever town you grew up in in 1957. The only time in your life you did anything remotely like that. Well, things have advanced a bit. They have. We know what we're doing. Give me two lousy words, not including "the," and I'll find your stupid book. But stop looking over my shoulder.

No! I did not just mis-type the title you gave me! I did not leave a word out! This is a "keyword" search. This is what people do, who, you know, use the internet. We know which words to include. The interesting words, basically. Not "the." Or "John."

Look, honestly, you probably don't have the title right. I don't judge you for that. Why the hell should you remember the title of a book you haven't read yet, or even of one you have? But it's my job to figure out what actual title you probably heard, and I'm pretty good at that. Just let me do it.

Some Numbers

Okay, folks, right now we're at about three million dollars for the day, that's seven hundred percent of goal, so not too bad. Units Per Transaction 1.7, a bit low, let's see if can't get that up a little bit. Only twelve sign-ups, not like yesterday, so let's just remember to keep pushing that. And be sure you're looking around, engaging every customer, really paying close attention to them. Really "gettin' right up in their grill," as the kids say. I know you're all being a little bit annoying and phony, even those of you who don't really like it, so I appreciate that. But we could all be just a bit more annoying. The world is a miserable place, but we could always make it worse.

Unrewarding

Yeah, "accountablity." He likes that word, doesn't he? And of course it sounds like a good thing. People are expected to live up their responsibilities, and if they don't, someone will call them on it. This is how the Real World is supposed to work, in theory. And it suits him to think that somehow that is what he is doing; it suits his view of himself as the Real Grown-Up and of people who care about things other than retail as undisciplined children.

But that little exchange I was writing about yesterday is perfect illustration of how that's an absurd fiction, how the sorts of things he does have nothing to do with "accountablity" and everything to do with his worst impulses. Because what do you think began that conversation? What do you think he was holding the Training Supervisor accountable for? I think maybe you've guessed already. Sign-ups! Yes! During a recent shift that she had supervised, our staff had persuaded fewer people to sign up for our fantastic customer loyalty card than had done so during one of his shifts. And as anybody reading this knows by now, this number, the number of "Sign-Ups," is the Most Important Number of All, the single most important indicator of just how well everybody is doing their job.

Well, that's bullshit. Obviously. You know it, I know it. The customers know it, by and large. Those cards...well, what can you say? They are what they are. They were a gimmick that caught on, and now any store that sells anything has to have one. Of course, that's diminished their effectiveness--we all know that everybody's wallets and keychains are so full of the things that nobody can find the one they need. (And they have to hold up the line until they find it, because they'd feel like an idiot if they had a card and didn't use it.) And how is it building loyalty, since everybody just puts our card right next to the ones from the competition? The kind of people who really like Coupons and Great Deals will do what they have to do to get them.

I'm not saying those cards are useless. They don't work on me--the only one I have is ours, because I was literally required to get one when they started the program--but they work on some people. What I'm saying is: don't pretend it's actually all that important. Don't make it the focus of everybody's day. Don't be Proud if that one particular meaningless number is high and Disappointed when it's low. And for god's sake, don't pretend you had anything to do with it either way.

I Can Think Of Several Words For It

[Housekeeping note. Just checked my Blogger settings, and discovered that even though I thought I'd allowed anonymous comments, well, I hadn't. And that sort of defeats the purpose of the Supersecret Underground Employee Disgruntlement Blog. So, anyway, I fixed it. You don't have to give any sort of name at all, just click Comments. Though of course it's easy and fun to make as many Google or Yahoo accounts as you can think of email addresses for. Try it!]

This afternoon he was doing his usual Happy-Go-Lucky Bully thing with his underlings, needling the Training Supervisor over the radio. Yeah, I'm just joking around because we're all pals here, but I'm gonna joke around in front of everybody about how much you suck. This is how I will make you Better. And it makes me feel warm and comfortable inside. Remember that about bullies, people--they're having a good time. Did you ever run into somebody who bullied you when you were a kid? Like, in the grocery store or something, as an adult? Invariably, they're really friendly! They light up! Because you're a happy memory for them. Think about that. You know how Friendly he can be when he wants--that's because in his own way, he really honestly likes each and every one of you, because you're required to take his shit. He couldn't live without you. He'd be sad.

And I give the Training Supervisor credit. She fights back, over the radio. She asserts herself. It's nice to hear. It's not necessarily a good thing if she thinks she has that kind of relationship with him, that she can Speak Openly, but it shows some spark. I'm cautious. But many of you probably know her much better than I do, by now, and you can tell me if she's Safe.

Right at this second, my fear is that she honestly believes she can get through to him, somehow, get him to change his behavior. And we all know that that's madness. It's not going to happen. But at least it means that today she publicly gave him a hard time about "blaming" people for things that no sane person would think they have control over. And he liked that, of course, because he cheerfully snapped back that blaming was just another word for "holding people accountable." And I slipped; I did. I hopped right on the radio and said "but that's just another word for blaming." And he immediately agreed--"exactly!"--and we both felt like we'd made our point. And it's probably okay, since I have an established persona as a Guy Who Makes Smartass Comments Over the Radio. But who is harmless. Harmless! I have to start watching that stuff, though. To rein myself in. Because of course, that was how I was able to sleep at night, by tweaking them over the radio. Behind their backs, or, in the case of the Sales Manager, right to his face. (We have a long professional relationship, so he can't do very much to me.) Now that we have this, though, I have to be more discreet. You will all be perfectly aware, of course, that I haven't Gone Soft.

The radio, though. It's your friend. Remember that. It's the kind of thing that freaks people out, that did freak people out when they sprung the walkie-talkies on us a few years back. It's an instrument of Social Control! It lets them Watch you, keep tabs on you! And it does, but that's only half the story. In the end, things that let you talk to other people are Good. There are still people who are freaked out by the internet, remember. The Government and the Corporations are Watching Everything I Do! Well, sure they are. But we're watching Them, too. Technological novelties like cheap walkie-talkies and cheap computers don't oppress us--they level the playing field. A little bit. In our store, we've got an established culture of joking over the radio--I like to think I did my part to establish that culture, but it's probably the same everywhere. It's fun. Certain people will always make jokes if you give them a microphone, and I'm one of those people. But because we have this "easygoing" culture, every once and a while you can make a joke--in everybody's earpiece--that throws all the bullshit back in their face. And they have to know you're doing it, at some level. But if you're the boss, you have to allow jokes. Once you start cracking down on that, your days are seriously numbered. (Which is not to say that he won't try, eventually, but it'll be far too late by then.) So--I have to train myself to be more cautious, since I've apparently decided to be a Public Figure of some sort, but if you think you've got a knack for showbiz, if you like talking and are a bit reckless, please go for it. Give them shit. And then laugh, because you were just kidding, and they have to laugh too. But everybody heard it, which is the point.

See how that's exactly what he does? It works both ways. A lot of things are like that.

(Okay, it's not exactly what he does. Because he tries really hard to be funny, but just...isn't. Not a shred of skill or timing, and the phoniness tragically obvious. It made me sorry for him, at first, but then I learned better.)

Elitist Posturing

This blog won't be all outrage and mutiny. Our jobs are hilarious, which is why we have them.

Walked onto the sales floor a day or two ago, and saw the Merch Supervisor helpfully providing customer service to a young couple at the info desk. Spectacularly trashy looking skinny white dude--shiny track suit, facial piercings, ballcap, tattoos. Sorta draped around his Special Lady, an equally sketchy and even skinnier girl. And I'd never seen these particular kids before, but I knew immediately, and you would've too. I thought Insane Clown Posse! It was like they had a big sign around their necks saying 43605. And sure enough, I walked around to peek at the computer screen, and our colleague was diligently trying to locate Behind the Paint, the riveting tell-all by the one and only Violent J. Which is actually a hard-to-find collector's item, I happen to know. I get asked about it once a month or so by sullen, poorly dressed young men. It's the Unholy Toledo of the white ghetto. I laughed out loud when I saw it, pleased as punch with my own snobbery and keen eye for detail. I sincerely hope my man the ICP fan didn't hear, because he hates guys like me. Any true Juggalo would cheerfully murder any effete bookstore types whom he encounters. As he should.

Megalomania, etc.

Of course there was lots of talk today about the incipient Power Vacuum at Our Superstore, now that we've learned the Truth about the outgoing Inventory Manager: she lacked the proper fanatical devotion to the retail world, and just really didn't have the passion for Operations that you'd expect somebody in that position to have. (Or so she heard. More of that, later. She should really be the one to write it, if she wants.) Anyway, people love talking about that stuff, and why wouldn't they? Who's gonna get that job? Who could possibly want it? It's fun! But one of you finally said to me, well, we should probably give YOU that job. And I laughed out loud--nothing had been further from my mind. I mean, I'd flirted with the idea of becoming a Merch Supervisor of some sort, until it occurred to me that no sane person would actually choose to work directly under that guy. But today, you know, I went a bit insane.

I thought, suddenly, wow. I could actually make that happen. Are they seriously gonna tell me no, you can't be a manager? And it's one thing to do some snarky subversive workblogging, but it's another thing entirely to do it from the top. To work hand-in-hand (metaphorically!) with the Enemy, but secretly lead the Entire Store in rebellion against him. Even the inevitable Showdown, followed by the tragic downfall of Him or Me or Both, would be glorious! We're talking six-figure book deal to tell my riveting tale! And I'd be a Hero! I'd be executing an amazingly diabolical and entertaining scheme, entirely for the benefit of my fellow downtrodden employees!

Well, that's a pretty intoxicating notion, isn't it? If you could pull that one off, you'd be the coolest guy on the planet!

Luckily for everybody, I have no pretensions to being the coolest guy on the planet. And, quite frankly, there's no way my wife would put up with me being a manager at that place, since of course I'd essentially disappear from home for a few years. Don't get me wrong--she knows about all of this and loves that I'm Sticking It to the Man. She never liked that place to begin with. But if I really, truly told her that I was essentially Going Undercover in order to defeat my Arch-Nemesis, well... that probably wouldn't fly. Thank Christ. Because I'm an idiot, as you know, and would totally try to do it. This is why I got married. :-)

Anyway, the Sales Manager already sent up a trial balloon, seeing if I'd be interested. I didn't lead him on, exactly, but I didn't say no. So let's just let them think what they want, for now. But for all of you--well, I know you're disappointed, but I kinda doubt that'll happen. Nothing's impossible, of course. :-) But I've got other little projects too--I don't know if I can afford to devote my life to this one, exactly, as much fun as it is. And everybody who's been there assures me that there's no way I want to put up with the things that would be involved in that kind of Career Move. They're almost certainly right.

August 12

So, we're losing the Inventory Manager, but you already knew that. None of us would do any different in her situation. And she assures me that she'll be full of interesting information once she's safely away from That Guy. That could be good; could be fun. We can hope.

Inventory Weekend itself is over with, thankfully. If you do this for a living, you have to secretly love the Idea of an actual Physical Inventory. Wouldn't it be great if we Really Knew exactly what we had in this building, and where? We'd be unstoppable. But you also can't help but be appalled whenever it really happens. What a monstrous, dehumanizing thing, making anybody number and catalogue Everything in some particular space! And on the other hand, who are these people they get to do it? Ex-cons? Carnies? They're alarming!

Also, worked with the Old GM tonight, which was weird as always. She doesn't talk to me anymore, which is perfectly fine with me, but odd. (In what possible world am I part of her problem?) But mostly it's just depressing. She's this living, breathing, whining example of what happened to the whole idea of a Bookstore.

We Can Do This

"How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
--Captain Ahab

Well, I've found my White Whale. (Guess who?) How many writers can say that? Is it blasphemous to seek vengeance on a dumb animal, like Starbuck says? Don't care. I've been waiting my whole life for the right blasphemy. He'll do. He tasks me.

Okay, maybe you guys aren't heavily into Moby-Dick. That's probably a good thing. :-) But you wanna know what I heard the other day? Why I'm starting this now? I heard the General Manager of Our Superstore, #653, talking to his henchman, the Sales Manager. Our GM talks a lot; he talks all the time. We know this. He loves to talk to the people he thinks of as his underlings, his Inner Circle. He loves that giddy, conspiratorial little tone that he can adopt when he's talking to people who have enough to lose that they can't just ignore him. But at this particular moment it was twenty minutes past close, and Our Leaders were carefully organizing the Recovery of the Store. (Funny way to put it. Had the store been ill? Hmmm.) It happened that one of my colleagues (you know who you are!) somehow hadn't made it in to work that afternoon, which was not a particularly big deal--but this time it gave our GM his chance to talk like a Big Shot. And I know what he said. Here:

Well, [Truant Colleague Name] called off, so at least we can keep them another twenty minutes.

Or words to that effect. Yeah. Think about that. If you, the Management, suddenly have Payroll Hours unused, well, that means you have Absolute Power. There's no reason on earth that you would actually allow the staff to go home to their actual lives at the time that it says on the printed schedule, except that to keep them working indefinitely would cost the company more money. Or, more precisely, it would make some number on some spreadsheet slightly too high, and therefore eventually some equally despicable person would give Our GM a hard time about it. This is literally the only consideration. This is the world we live in.

Also, think about what it shows about just how bad this person is at what is supposedly his job, his excuse for existing. "Managing." "Leadership." The essence of "leadership" is getting people to do what you want them to do, but making them think that it's what they want to do. If everyone beneath you despises you desperately, you aren't a leader, you're incompetent. If you can't quite resist saying sneeringly contemptuous things about the people working for you, well, okay, that's human nature. But shouldn't you look around, first? Shouldn't you see who might be listening? Yeah, he probably should've, but didn't. Because he's not just smug; he's smug and stupid, just like most of the people who run the world. Stop for a second and think about who's been our president for eight years, and think about why our store's "leadership" seemed vaguely familiar. This is also the world we live in.

I don't like it. Do you?

We're the people who work for this company, the people who make it exist. This is not twentieth-century Marxist bullshit, this is the truth. We, you and I, are the people who make something as complicated and ridiculous as a Superstore possible, but our merely human concerns are simply not an issue. Our dignity, such as it is, is not an issue. Because, in theory, there are always more of us waiting to do our jobs if we don't want them. This is pretty much true. This is true everywhere and all the time, and in particular it's true in our industry, which more more and more people in our country depend on for a living. I don't like it. Do you?

I'm not saying we can necessarily change it, really. This is the nature of the world. But so is complaining about it. And this is a new and exciting way to complain about it, relatively speaking. There was no such thing as a "blog" in 1999, say. Anything could happen.

And if nothing else, we can seriously talk some serious shit about that guy. You know who I mean. Our GM. It's so perfect--the whole problem with trying to change the nature of The System, of any system, is that the people in charge are almost always decent people, people just trying to do their jobs, and nobody wants to actually hurt them. But if you're reading this, you know this guy. He's not a decent person. I don't feel any kind of ethical obligation to be Evenhanded and Fair. I've never known anyone who deserved this kind of treatment quite so much. I've never known anyone who was so much the perfect example of what was Wrong With Everything. We can get him. Who's with me?

Mission Statement:
We will point out and discuss the absurdity of the following things, in widening order:
1 Our Boss
2 Our Store
3 Our Company
4 Our Industry
5 Life In General
6 Existence Itself

Disclaimer:
This site is an act of satire and of protest. It is not incitement to criminal behavior. In reference to our leaders, I mean "get" and "hurt" in a strictly figurative sense. We are conspiring to poke fun at and undermine the authority of our masters, just like people have always done. Nothing violent or illegal will ever be suggested or condoned by the management of this site, except in a satirical or humorous way. If anybody can't tell the difference and one or more of us ends up sued or in jail, well, what the hell. I could make a pretty awesome courtroom speech.

Probably it says somewhere in the Employee Handbook that we aren't allowed to do this. But I haven't read that shit. Have you?

Other Disclaimer:
Obviously, management is not responsible for content of comments. I'll delete anything out-and-out offensive, but beyond that, we're all adults. If it's on the internet, it's on the internet, and we're all responsible for whatever we write or say.

Ground Rules:

Well, no names, obviously, not yet. Anybody paying any attention at all knows who I am. That's fine. I'm honestly in an enviable position; I could easily sacrifice this job if I had to. A lot of people don't have that luxury. Think Fight Club, and its famous first two rules. We know who we are. Nobody rat anybody out, nobody use anybody's real name. (Not even the Sales Manager, not at this point. We couldn't trust him with any of this, obviously, but I've known him too long; I've met his kids. I'm a human being. So is he, even if he's dealt with the devil.) We probably shouldn't even use the actual name of the company, just in case. Make yourself a cool alias, like me. (Mine's pretty transparent, anyway.) I don't need to say this. We're all grown-ups, even if they treat us like children. Don't mess up anybody's life who doesn't richly deserve it. Don't attack anybody personally here unless they're definitely the Enemy.

(And if you're reading this, you know who that is. )

Otherwise, please comment, as much as you can. I need stories. We all do. Tell everybody what he's doing, or has done to you. Tell us what's absurd, or revolting, or humiliating about your job. It doesn't even have to involve You-Know-Who. (Though you know as well as I do that if it's revolting or humiliating, he's probably involved.) Some of what we do is just gonna be tantrums and venting, I know, and that's fine--work is work, and To Complain is Human. But there are people like you who think, and have always thought, that "work" doesn't have to be what it's turned into--what you and I have seen it turn into before our eyes. You are not alone--you are the Loyal Opposition. And none of Them--the People in Charge, the People in Offices, the People Who've Never Worked For a Living--planned on anybody doing this. They all just think Retail is Retail. You sell stuff and you get money, and the people doing the work are interchangeable monkeys. (Our GM used to sell freakin' toys.) But that's not really true; it never has been. Bookstores have always attracted a certain sort of person, and we've got, shall we say, strong opinions. We don't suffer in silence, or suffer fools gladly. We know who we are. We'll see what we can do.

For starters, read this. We have to keep it funny, or what's the point?