A Venting Rant about ASDA/WAL-MART and another reason to boycott such places.

To find myself in a situation where I must take on a second job in which I find unbearably depressing, irrelevant, tedious and depreciating has been bad enough to deal with this last month. The random bout of insomnia made 9 hour shifts in the hell hole even worse, sometimes having not actually managed to even grab 5 mins sleep since the previous days shift. However, I'm only in it for the money which I need, and I had decided to grind down and bare it for the time being as the current economic climate has made finding a job painfully hard. I must always remind myself of how depressing it was enduring unemployment before this.

However, the scales have suddenly tipped. The balance has been offset. Up until now I was trying to mind my own business and just work through my shifts regardless of how soul destroying it is. However, how do I find anymore motivation when whilst already dealing with this bullshit I have a confrontation with an out of line manager who blatantly calls me a liar and a slacker?!

Whilst working my ass off on Friday morning, the start of another gruelling 9 hour shift, I kept my spirits up by reminding myself that I had finally reached the end of the full-time week which I had ignorantly agreed to work (9-6 five days that week). Lingering in the back of my mind was the thought that it would be just my luck for something completely shit to fall my way now that I was so close to the finish line. I was right to think that.

I completed the mornings usual laborious tasks with a speed that only reflected my desire to get it done and dusted as soon as humanly possible as prolonging the monotonous tasks would only further piss me off. Upon finishing what needed done, I took my usual route to the chiller to pull out the first of todays stock that needed shelving (another glorious duty). While maneuvering a huge wheeled cage of goods towards the doorway of the chiller, I was confronted by the massive, obtuse, walrus-like shape of my very flustered looking manager. His large, bulging face red and sweating with rage. "What is going on in the department?!" He shouted.

Hmm, whats going on in the department. It was something I really didn't compute. "I dunno?!"

"Its an absolute disgrace! What have you been doing all morning?!"

This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the lecture. "Well first I done this..." I would say, to which he would reply "Ok, so thats 10mins, what then?". This exchange of evidence and denial went on until he estimated an hour was accounted for. Doing everything I had done within an hour was humanly impossible.

After being questioned about my activities and accused of somehow wasting time doing something else, I was then called a liar.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you, I've been working as hard and fast as I can since I've got here today" I proclaimed. To which he stated...

"No, no you haven't".

To which I stated... "Yes, Yes I Have".

Then he came up with "No, no you haven't..." and while scanning me up and down with a condescending, sarcastic smirk "Look at you, I can tell just to look at you that you aren't working hard".

At this stage I was getting very irritated with having to repeat "I don't know what you want me to tell you, I have been working hard".

Finally he said "Well if that is you working hard maybe this isn't going to work out", to which I was left to reply "Maybe your right".

At that precise moment I have never been closer to walking out of a job on the spot in my life. As I stood there in the chiller, shaking with rage instead of cold, I knew that had that argument went on for a matter of seconds more, I'd have thrown my gloves at him and walked out.

It is not the first time I have had a confrontation with him after the canteen incident where he came running in looking for me, questioning me on why I took a break so late.

As I stormed out, back to work, I spoke to my colleague. Only him, and myself are working in that department all week. I asked if he also had a confrontation. "Oh he just told me to keep it up as he walked past".

I would have came to the conclusion that this particular manager has developed a disliking for me had it not been for another nasty incident I witnessed on the shop floor. While already furious at the ordeal I went through, I stormed through my work duties thinking up all those things I should have said. Whilst storming my way down one particular isle some hours later, he was standing there with the same red, sweating face, yelling at some very timid looking female colleague. As I past all I could hear was "... AND THAT TOOK 25 MINUTES?!"

Feeling sorry for her, I went out of my way to walk back that way several minutes later and asked her was she ok. As she looked around at me to answer, her lip quivered and her eyes began to fill up with tears. "Its ok! He was a bigger asshole to me earlier!" I quickly interjected, more as a means to stop the seemingly impending waterworks from causing a spectacle than to consolidate, admittedly. She was quite shook up though, I did feel sorry for her as she reminded me of myself several years ago when I would have been too timid to stand up for myself.

The only other time I spoke to him that day was while stacking a shelf he ushered me over to a front-of-shop display of produce. "See this is what I am talking about, it looks disgraceful, its a terrible first impression upon coming into the store", he said as he pointing to a solitary, empty crate going completely unnoticed by the hoards of shoppers bustling by.

People skills matter more than that empty crate. He is not going to lose a single shopper over that, I can guarantee him that. He will however lose more money over disgruntled ex-employees subsequently boycotting the store along with their families. He didn't loose any shoppers that day at all. His tone and ignorance at dealing with me lost him my weekly shopping there, my parents weekly shopping there, and both my sister's families weekly shopping there. Consider yourself a grand a week down for being an asshole in how you treat staff.

The reason I know I have a valid point which allows me to rant about this being out of order - is because I know I am a non-biased person who is brutally honest to myself. Had I not been working hard this would have been another story. For the fact that I was working much harder than I can understand why for a job I despise to deeply, it was infuriating to be accused otherwise.

As a 'Manager', I am perfectly aware of his rights, and I am perfectly aware of his duties and roles and the various red tapped crap he must highlight as his duty. I am perfectly fine with receiving angry lectures - this is life, this is what happens. I am fine with someone angrily shouting at me about how something needs to be rectified immediately, how something just isn't being done right. That is all fine and above board.

You cross a line when you start accusations, when you start calling workers liars, when you start looking down at them, when you laugh in their face, when you humiliate and condescend. There is a boundary that can not be crossed. There should always be a mutual understanding between worker and manager that each has an equal amount of rights within the workplace. They are above you in job description but they are not a member of authority - as a worker you have the power to bring them down if they are out of line. With this in light, upon leaving I plan to put the problems into writing, people are beginning to talk, people are beginning to think about leaving. If more than myself leave without stating a reason, a problem will never be brought to light by other fellow managers within the building.

I have decided to take this weekend to think about whether to return to work or not since that day. Instead of walking out - I decided I would simply wait until the shift was over and at least get my pay for the day I'd already half finished. However, my only concern now is that if I decide to not go back, perhaps I wont receive my pay for that hellish week I just endured. This is the downside of a 'monthly' payslip.

I am now considering working my 4 remaining shifts over the next fortnight until the month is at an end and I have the money in my account, then leave. I am not handing in any form of notice. I am not writing a letter to say I will be leaving in a number of weeks. I will simply not return and the problems caused by a sudden lack of staff and undesignated shifts can be a small punishment for poor managerial people-skills.

I will however, write a letter putting my thoughts on the mounting situation on paper.

I have read up on several ex-employee stories on the internet similar to this. There are a lot of horror stories out there. ASDA, Wal-Mart, Tesco... all the massive companies are developing a very unhealthy image for being market bullies, using brute force tactics to power their way to staying on top by means of the massive amount of money behind them and a top level committee of greedy, filthy capitalists. Support the local corner shop.

This blog was originally supposed to be wrote to put aspects of my life that actually matter into writing, but instead I am depressed that it has become a collection of rants on meaningless events that happen in meaningless places by meaningless people carrying out meaningless jobs.

This is not a way to live, dreading the next shift to such an extent that the days off in between are ruined. There is more to life than making money, before this it seemed to be the main goal on my mind - an income. Now its back to my happiness.

There is job seekers allowance actually...

Bureaucracy Grinds Me Down

Massive corporate conglomeration sometimes feels like it has the same effect on me as being positioned at the centre of the CERN particle accelerator so that my face is at the centre of a massive proton collision leaving my soul obliterated into shear anti-matter.

Quite the over exaggeration to some - not really to me! Having trudged through another 9 hour shitstorm of total and utter bureaucratic monotony, I find myself returning home completely spent of life with a measly couple of hours to myself, doing things more important to my wellbeing than supplying the demand of the ravenous consumer on behalf of the bastard son of Wal-Mart.

Today, I sat in the grey sludge filtered world of the canteen. I sat there with a pounding headache brought on from retinas burnt through the artificial, fluorescent strip lighting that sears overhead from morning to evening, the constant burn of tiered refrigeration units combined with dry and cold air-con, hoards of screaming kids and nattering imbeciles and the never ending ritual of stacking the never replenished towers of banana and potato crates.

I often sit back on the sofa panning the canteen; dubbing the sound of tumble weed and fluttering shutters over the scene in my head. Generally, it is very fitting. A lifeless, sterile and baron wilderness sparsely populated by withered and enervated members of staff who have taken on the chameleonic shade of beige as their backgrounds.

However, today, as I pan the landscape, something sticks out. Protruding from the normally immutable scene. From amongst the tables of grazing staff drones, a sternly faced manager marches directly towards me with an air of importance. This is a man on a mission. He is now pulling up his sleeve to reveal his watch. He doesn't look at it, but its obviously the opening gesture to his announcement.

"I have been informed that you are due back?" He says, as though it were a question.

"Nope, started the hour break at quarter past, its only 3 - got 15 mins still"

"3:15 ?? 3:15??" He says twice, trying to comprehend the unusual addition of 15 minutes.

"I started at 2:15, so my break ends at 3:15", I respond.

"Oh! Hmm... well why did you take your break so late?!", as he struggles to understand.

"Ugh, because thats when the guy before me finished his break - doesn't matter it's just 15 mins, I'll just go back to work now" I say, finally getting frustrated at the enormity this mundane event seems to have taken on.

"Oh no, finish your hour if thats when its over" he says while fidgeting and slightly mumbling as though his brain is quickly trying to conjure up a something more to say.

He doesn't need to say more, I realise what he is getting at. I realise what he is doing is trying to enforce some kind of regulations that are supposed to be in place. I realise this added 15mins has loosened his preferred tight working schedule up.

Its only been a few seconds since his last words, but the fact he has not started to walk away combined with the fumbling means he feels I actually do not realise and he needs to hammer the point home by saying something a little more. I help him by giving him a line to respond to - either that or I just want him to hurry up and end the stupid bureaucratic showcase.

"Sorry, I didn't realise we had to finish our lunch break by 3 on the hour", I said politely.

"Oh yes, certainly... certainly" He finally says whilst walking away and pretending to look at his watch repetitively in quick succession.

I realise I took what seems like a very long winded route to describing that altercation which in real-time actually only lasted about 30 seconds - but it at least reflects how much my brain made of such a seemingly small situation, allowing me to manage to stew and fester over it in my thoughts for the rest of the day. Getting through a shift in that subhuman world of subhuman costumers and subhuman co-workers is depressing enough to make that one hour lunch break the one thing to anticipate and subsequently feels like the one lousy 'hiding-place' I have. That event more or less obliterated the idea of the hiding place, the untouchable zone, the hour of rest, the 'leave me the fuck alone' part of the day.

Yea - I let these little things grind me down too much, but at least I can feel a bit better resting assured I am not that managerial figure who seems to have an almighty abundance of meaningless things to worry about for each second of the day.

Goodnight corporate world - sleep tight making sure all emergency exits are clearly lit, free from obstruction with hi-vis vests and hard hats worn at all times - and not forgetting to SMILE :P

The "5 Year Plan" is a pointless exercise

'Always Wear Sunscreen'... its far from the work of a poetic master or musical genius. If anything it mildly reeks of sanctimonious pretension and a well matured brie rather than the dusty pages of a wise wordsmith. For whatever reason (for now we'll call it nostalgia), the informative rantings which form the enlightening lyrics have stuck by me since I heard it so many years ago.

As the neurotic mess I have allowed myself to grow into, with the help of this fertile soil of anxiety and worry, I find it soothing to remind myself of a few quirky but never-the-less true lines found in the song:

"Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum."

"Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life... the most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don't"

These days in particular, I find myself incessantly repeating those excerpts in my head. This is not to say I have allowed the neurotic development of my being to expand into an iconic Woody Allen stature, but much more to do with the fact that those lines are probably more relevant than ever before in my life. I mainly say the first quoted section to myself when I start thinking about the latter quote.

Worrying about what to do with your life is probably something everybody does. However, I am in a particularly good position to do so. Having completely finished with education after successfully completing a diploma and a degree, I am left with the task of what to do with the rest of my life - the majority of it (one would hope). Ironically, I have the ideal job. I probably couldn't have asked for much better. Even more ironic perhaps is that they have completely stopped giving me any hours to work. I don't think I've been in the place for a few months now. As I heard a comedian once say while talking about Alanis Morissette's song 'Ironic', "Thats not ironic, thats just really shit luck". Yep, pretty much.

So is it ironic that while I have this well paid, dream job, I don't get any hours to make use of it - instead finding myself a new job carrying out monkey-tasks with spotty 17 year olds stacking shelves in a monotonous, tedious routine that destroys my soul? I can tell you, I am quoting those lyrics over and over in my head when I am working there, trying my very best to search for the silver lining around a cloud thats lost in a pitch black night sky.

The inner-bureaucracy of your run of the mill shit hole workplace is starting to make itself obvious now, in my second week there. I haven't worked in a place before that doesn't have any of that staff drama, so I had been waiting for signs of it since I started. Your general bullshit hierarchy of various members of staff displaying the immense power behind their magnificently over zealous job titles i.e "Head Line Duty Manager", as apposed to the regular 'Duty Manager' who will have to walk two steps behind the Head one and only get to tell half the people he does what isle needs urgent mopping. I always find, people with such positions in a workplace feel the necessity to randomly remind themselves and others what their job roles require them to do or say. For example, I could go into that place with my shirt not tucked in for weeks (such a crime), but one day will arise when said 'Line Manager' has nothing much else to do, he has already completed his incomprehensibly complicated daily chores of talking on two phones at once. He will then take the opportunity to tell me to tuck my shirt in. Rules are out there, I'm past my teenage angst driven rebellious phase long ago and know that you just gotta run with some rules to get through a day without an almighty scene arising, but I do despise rules which are enforced out of boredom, or someone randomly remembering they have to say these things.

Another interesting event has started to come up during my lunch breaks. I say interesting, I mean as amazing as it gets in a mind numbing grey hellhole. I tend to find that in that canteen, I am the only person who brings a book to read while the others look at the Page 3 boobs on the tabloid papers and catch up on which lower division soccer team swapped a player with some other club no one cares about either. Thats fine, what do I care who reads what, or who doesn't at all. However, I'd appreciate if everyone else felt the same and didn't feel it necessary to point out that I am reading a book, to me, the person who is clearly reading it and therefore should be very self aware of the observation.

An ex-marine works as security guard and I find myself coincidentally sharing lunch breaks with him. Some people feel it necessary to make conversation if only you and one other are sharing a small space. Personally, I don't suffer from such awkwardness and can very easily not feel the need to waste energy on pretending to care about how their day is. This guy finds that he not only has to make conversation and pretend to care how my day is, but also demand my amusement at his god-aweful jokes, farts and anecdotes. I can only 'fake-laugh' for so long before I just get very tired and irritated. Now I just look as deeply into the pages of my book as I can, and hope that if I refuse to crack a smile at his first few farts and terrible jokes that he will get the message. A very awkward event occurred while I practiced this new social prevention technique. He has cracked a few jokes, then cracked a few farts, then cracked a few jokes about the farts... then I cracked a window, but refused to laugh as planned. I could feel as I read that he was just looking over at me desperate for some kind of response. So, he looked at the tv for a bit, took note of a particularly idiotic character on screen then insisted on yelling to me "you know what I hate, stupid assholes maaaan! Yea haha, stupid assholes who like wouldn't know what a book was man. You could like throw a book at this guys face and he would be like, hey!? what is this maaan hahaha".

The very obvious attempt to try to find something to connect with me over was crushingly cringeworthy and I felt my toes curl and dig into my insoles as I held the book with a sheepish grin that reflected how sorry I felt for how much he is unwittingly embarrassing himself rather than the context of the statement itself. I actually almost felt like putting the book down because it was so obvious that the book I held seemed to be the prop for this whole unfortunate social disaster this guy had clumsily deployed in the room.

I used to worry I was becoming arrogant, snobbish or condescending. However, there is a line between being that, and just being observant about true idiocy and stupidity unleashed to the public through peoples ability to constantly out do themselves by bringing down the entire race.

Tomorrow I will work on the idea of happiness and being positive - maybe then I will write a blog that doesn't sound so angry. "SUNSHINE, LOLLIPOPS AND RAAAINBOWS LALALA!"

A Little Introductory Summary

I will never be able to summarise the shape and content of my blog. I can tell you what kind of person I am, and as a result, what general tone it may take. The subject spectrum will be broad, varied and unspecific, and I am sure, quite inconsistent.

I am a moderately neurotic individual; I worry, I stress and I generally spend a lot of my procrastination over-anaylizing seemingly irrelevant aspects of my life that I can blow out of proportion to become unnecessary obstacles in my pursuit to happiness and wellbeing.

I find, that I often loose grip of who I think I am, again, this is probably a direct result of over-analyses of my thoughts and actions, and probably a leading factor into writing this blog as a way to write out my thoughts and untangle this ball of muddled up feelings and opinions floating around in the abyss of my brain. What I am trying to say here (I think), is that I probably perform some kind of amateur psychology on myself to the extent that I am confused as to the truth behind what my opinion of myself is.

Being in a turbulent relationship, I often become confronted, in the heat of an argument, with my beloved girlfriend convincing me I am bullshitting her. 'That is rubbish and you know it" she would say, "Don't try to tell me thats how you feel because I don't believe it for one second". This will result in me convincing her that I stand by my opinion, my stubbornness not giving in to defeat. I summons all my most fiendish debating techniques to win the day, to come out as victor and to highlight just exactly how much I am being honest and just how wrong she is that I am bullshitting about whatever supposed flaw of my personality is in question.

Of course, as the blood switches from boil to a slow simmer, and we have went our separate ways to cool off; I find myself sitting by myself thinking of all those golden lines I could have said, and eventually, questioning my own argument. "Yea, wait a sec... was she right? Actually, wasn't I in the wrong and knew it, have I allowed my stubbornness and eagerness to prove her wrong actually inadvertently convince me she is wrong too!?"

This is a very hard concept to follow so the above paragraph may have made little to no sense. One thing is for sure, It certainly sounds to me like the rantings of a schizophrenic lunatic. And this may be what this blog takes the form off. Perhaps I should have called it "The Insane Musings of A Confused Schizophrenic"?

Well, that is why I have decided to write this blog. A means for me to read over my own train of thought, having it all laid out in front of me in a clear easy to understand format that even a dimwit like myself should be able to understand. Thats the theory, instead I am sure it will just become similar to the hoards of irrelevant, sanctimonious blogs of pretension that engulfs the online blogging universe.

I guess, to simplify things, I sometimes become confused as to if I am indeed correct about all those things I start out so surely about. Im a two sided coin perhaps. I could describe myself as a fairly confident, outgoing person - sure and ready to back up any of my opinions on anything. On the other hand, I could think about other aspects of my life, and describe myself as having a self esteem, and self confidence that has withered itself away in recent years to the point that I think of myself as an absolute nonentity. Maybe my brain is a microclimate that changes spontaneously. Depending on my fragile mood I can one minute decide I want to be confident, then the next minute dwell on growing negativities of my life and retreat into a shell of self pity before kicking myself in the ass to not become one of the angst ridden youth that has taken on some sort of fashionability in today's society.

Theres another two sided coin for you, I hate those who outspokenly wallow in fabricated self pity - while I find myself writing a blog about how many things piss me off and irritate me.

Yea, see, am I now convincing myself that this blog is somehow going to be more than just another bitch and rant forum like every other individual on here who has no one else to listen to them as they struggle to come to terms with the meaninglessness of their life?

This is all getting very emo, yikes. I'll come back soon when the next specific topic troubling my feeble mind pops up. Until then...