Thursday, August 31, 2006
Have A Good One! (Any One Will Do)
Sorry but there will be no new post this Saturday. I'm taking this holiday weekend off, and I don't plan on going anywhere near a computer for the next couple of days. Well, okay maybe tomorrow, but that's it I swear! So if anyone leaves comments for this blog during the weekend, they probably won't get published until Tuesday at the earliest. Sorry if this inconveniences anyone. Everyone, have a great Labor Day weekend, please drive safely and all that jazz. See you here next week!
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Curse Of The Fat Man
I have a few more little bits of Mondo-related nonsense to share with you. These are just some small incidents involving blimp Mondo; they occurred over several years in several different places. They have been divided into three different categories: Fat, Feeble and Foul. Of course, all three are perfect descriptions of Mondo.
Fat: One night during some nameless and faceless inventory (read: I did so many of these fucking inventories that I can't remember in which one I overhead this conversation) bloated Team Leader Mondo was telling several of us auditors all about one drunken night at a local bar. He said that at one point he had tossed back so many drinks that he lost his balance and fell right off a bar stool. This must have been quite embarassing for Mondo (not to mention quite destructive to the floor. Imagine the damage a two-ton oily behemoth hitting the floor would cause) but as in many other incidents involving Mondo and something humiliating he tried to make a joke of it. "I don't know how I got up off the floor," Mondo quipped. "By a forklift?" wisecracked Gerry. Everyone laughed except Mondo. He might occasionally make fun of his morbidly obese condition but couldn't stand someone else doing it.
Feeble: Mondo ran quite a few stores as a TL, and had problems in every one of his inventories. His most spectacular failure occurred at a Cala Foods/Bell Markets inventory in Novato. Fleshy Mondo had all veteran auditors in this inventory but that didn't matter as most of us were dead tired from doing so many back to back stores. Every single one of us (including paunchy Mondo) made several mistakes while counting in that grocery store that night. Most of the errors were ones made by putting items in wrong categories: Liquor in Grocery, Grocery in General Merchandise, etc. Elephant Mondo missed a lot of these mistakes when printing out the areas, and simply handed over the error-laden printouts to the store manager, most without checking them first.
The store manager all night had received printout after printout filled with mistakes. With each muddled printout he got a little angrier and a little angrier. Finally he had had enough and confronted two-ton Mondo. He got right in Mondo's face (eeuuww) and verbally let him have it. The store manager went on at length about what a lousy job we RGIS auditors had done that night, and how he was not getting the quality inventory he had paid for. The guy was really pissed off and who could blame him? He had a bunch of burgundy-shirted zombies counting his store that night. We had done a lousy job in that Cala Foods store, and all of us realized it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we cared. All of us were worn out from so many back-to-backers and just wanted to go home and sleep. However, as lowly auditors we didn't have to experience the wrath of the store manager. No, TL Mondo, who ran the inventory, got the full blast of shit from the store manager. We peons merely stood around and enjoyed the spectacle. What fun it was to witness Mondo getting scolded and yelled at. Hurrah!
Finally, the store manager calmed down and stopped shouting at gargantuan Mondo. During the customer's tirade Mondo had not said a word. He was totally intimidated and cowed. At one point, while the customer was giving him a tongue lashing Mondo actually leaned his head against a post and stared at the floor. It was a totally unprofessional thing to do, and looked really bad, but that was Mondo.
The store manager was quite upset with Mondo and said to him, "So, as a representative from RGIS, what do you have to say for yourself, in regards to the job that you and your people have done?" Corpulent Mondo's response? He never said a word and merely shrugged his shoulders and continued to stare at the floor. Wow, a true leader. Disgusted, the store manager told Mondo, "This inventory is over," and we RGIS people quietly slunk out of the store and drove away. In front of the customer we had to appear chastened and a little sorry over the poor job we had done but secretly I was elated and relished the verbal clobbering that rotund Mondo had received.
Foul: When rumor had it in our district that malodorous Mondo was to be made the new Associate Area Manager, most of us didn't believe it. We couldn't imagine Mondo ever being able to scrub enough gunk off his huge moldy body in order to appear halfway decent as a dress-shirt-and-necktie-clad AAM. After all, it was Mondo who claimed that the reason he smelled so bad was because he was too fat to fit into his bathtub at home. That's why he never ever bathed, and that's why he smelled like a two-week old corpse on a hot summer day. How on earth would he be able to wash the funk off his carcass, if he couldn't take a bath? Helpful auditor Anna thought she had the solution. She offered to buy Mondo a shower attachment that he could hook up to the bathtub spigot. I guess she figured mammoth Mondo could sit on the edge of his tub and sprinkle himself with water, and thus wash some of the goo off himself that way.
Anna should have known better. Nauseating Mondo wasn't the least bit interested in improving himself in any way; not even if it meant moving his bulk up the corporate RGIS ladder. He was totally illogical and more than a little retarded in thinking that he could be both filthy and an AAM. Mondo said, "No thanks" to the shower attachment, and continued on his greasy way. He was eventually made an AAM, but that only lasted a few weeks, natch.
Fat: Jumbo Mondo used to have a terrible time during our summer inventories. We might be closeted in a stuffy Mervyn's back room for hours, scanning boxes of socks and racks of shirts. The atmosphere would be quite uncomfortable, as we usually did most of these inventories after hours, when the store's air-conditioning system had already been automatically shut off for the night. Most of us human-sized auditors were a bit uncomfortable, but for someone as massive as Mondo it was torture. He would be standing there, pawing through cartons of tube socks while the sweat just poured down his body in oily rivulets. TL Eric noticed the sweat gushing from Mondo's king size carcass and told him that he (Mondo) was going to melt into a puddle. "No, a puddle's too small," Eric corrected himself. "You're going to melt into a pond. We should call you Pondo." Mondo Pondo was not amused. Again, he could make fun of himself but he hated it when anyone else did it.
Feeble: Once a bunch of us were meeting at the office to commute to an early morning, out of town Long's Drugs inventory. This was during the time that half-witted District Manager Kevin was still having us park our cars in the tiny parking lot that surrounded our RGIS district office and a few other retail businesses. Kevin stood in the parking lot and directed auditors to park their cars at the other end of the lot, near Burger King. When Mondo pulled into the lot Kevin pointed towards Burger King. Mondo never stopped his Jeep. He drove to the other end of the parking lot and out the exit near Burger King, and disappeared into the early morning darkness.
It was so funny to see simpleton Kevin standing there in the middle of the parking lot with his mouth hanging open. He had no idea where Mondo had gone. In a panic he called Mondo's house but no one was there. He asked Mondo's hateful brother TL Luis where he thought Mondo might have gone, but Luis hadn't a clue. Finally DM Kevin had no choice but to leave for the inventory, minus his bloated TL Mondo.
When we reached the San Anselmo Long's Drugs about 45 minutes later, there was Mondo parked in front of the store. When questioned about his disappearance Mondo told us that when he saw Kevin pointing to the other end of the parking lot he thought Kevin wanted him to drive to the store himself. What a moron! But typical Mondo.
Foul: After we had finished an inventory in neighboring district Vallejo one night Mondo drove a company van full of us Santa Rosa auditors back to the Park-N-Ride. Riding with Mondo as a driver was always an adventure in terror, as he was both a horrible driver and a smelly one. You most definitely did not want to be sitting downwind of him, as one whiff of his gaseous fumes and you were a goner. Plus, as though his foul stench wasn't bad enough, he had a tendency to take every turn on two wheels. So one way or another you thought you were gonna die with Mondo driving.
One newbie riding in the van was already wise to the ways of repugnant Mondo. This became apparent when she told Mondo, "Hey Mondo, guess what? I had my shoe in your pants pocket." (This was not as difficult as it sounds. Two-ton Mondo flattened the driver's seat when he sat in it; his gargantuan ass was mere inches from the floor of the van) The newbie, sitting in the middle of the first bench seat, could by stretching her legs place a shoe tip in Mondo's pants pocket. One guy told her, "I'm surprised your shoe didn't melt." The newbie replied, "I'm surprised I got a shoe back." Once again, everyone laughed except for odious Mondo. Score one for the newbie.
Fat: As you may have already guessed, beefy Mondo had an enormous appetite. I once had the displeasure of riding with him to another out of town inventory. I had to ride sitting next to him in his stinky Jeep. Mondo couldn't even make it out of the office parking lot without getting something to eat. He stopped at the Burger King a few doors down from the RGIS office and ordered a double Whopper and a vat of Coca-Cola from the drive-up window. I watched in horror as he unwrapped the burger (I'm surprised he didn't just eat right through the paper) and took one, two, three, four bites without stopping or breathing and bam! the burger was gone. I mean that fat slob downed that enormous double cheeseburger in less than a minute. It was a most terrifying and disgusting sight. After seeing that nightmare I lost my own appetite for a couple of days. And after that ride with him I took care to keep my arms and legs safely away from Mondo's vicinity. Who knew when he might be hungry and need to feed again? What if we were doing a late night inventory and all the Burger Kings were closed? I didn't want to lose a limb.
Some stores that we inventoried would provide us with snacks if we took a break, and pizza or sandwiches if we took a lunch. Most of the Long's Drugs stores would give us coffee and doughnuts for our one and only break. We started counting at Long's around 5:30 am, and three hours later when we took our break the thought of a cup of hot coffee and a jelly doughnut was most appealing. Most of the auditors would take just one doughnut but then, we were human beings and not farm animals. Mondo, on the other hand, was like a pig at a trough during these Long's breaks. He saw nothing wrong in barrelling right into the store's break room and grabbing four or five doughnuts, all before any of us had even had one. He had his snout right into those pink bakery boxes, rooting around for the choicest pastries. Again, you had to be careful and not get your hands close to his mouth, lest you lose a finger.
Even foggy DM Kevin was aware of Mondo's greedy ways. Whenever we did a Kmart inventory in Santa Rosa the store was nice enough to provide us with pizzas and sodas for our half-hour lunch (This Kmart had a Little Caesar's pizza restaurant inside the store. I wouldn't touch the pizza after I'd heard that one customer recently vomited blood in the restaurant after eating the pizza. A special cleaning crew had to be called in, and thereafter I referred to the Little Caesar's pizza as "Haz-Mat pizza"). When Kevin called a lunch break he made sure to tell The Foul One, "Remember, only two pieces, Mondo." Kevin wanted to make sure that Mondo didn't inhale all of the pizza. Which he was perfectly capable of doing.
Gluttonous Mondo and pizza had quite a love affair going. While Mondo was known to consume anything (burgers, doughnuts, candy bars, possibly a small child or two) he held a special place in his oily heart for pizza. I don't think that he or his brother Luis (who lived with Mondo) knew how to cook. I believe they mostly ordered in food. I think Mondo would order a couple of pizzas at a time, and eat one immediately and save the second one for later. He wouldn't refrigerate the second pizza but instead would park it in his cold oven. He claimed it tasted better a day or two or a week later. Mondo called this "fermented" pizza. Puke!
Fat: If you had 450 lb. sweaty, greasy, smelly man asking you for a ride in your car, would give him one? Of course not. You would take pity on your poor vehicle and never think to transport something as foul as Mondo in it. Which is why Mondo could never catch a ride with anyone except his brother Luis, or maybe the company van; it was large and sturdy enough to withstand his enormous bulk. Luis' car, like everyone else's , was of average size and not really meant to cart around a hippopotamus, but Luis was Mondo's brother and couldn't refuse him a ride.
Which is why one morning several of us were treated to a most amusing sight. Me and a couple of auditors were in a car right behind Luis' car on the freeway. Even if you hadn't seen Mondo a few minutes earlier climbing into Luis' car, you would know immediately upon seeing the car that Mondo was riding in it as the car appeared to be driving along on two wheels. It was really funny to see this car tipping precariously to one side as it traveled slowly down the freeway. I mean, you almost expected to see it stop suddenly and about 30 clowns come piling out of it. But no, there was only one clown inside the car, the sad, pitiful, bloated, oily clown known as Mondo.
Fat: One night during some nameless and faceless inventory (read: I did so many of these fucking inventories that I can't remember in which one I overhead this conversation) bloated Team Leader Mondo was telling several of us auditors all about one drunken night at a local bar. He said that at one point he had tossed back so many drinks that he lost his balance and fell right off a bar stool. This must have been quite embarassing for Mondo (not to mention quite destructive to the floor. Imagine the damage a two-ton oily behemoth hitting the floor would cause) but as in many other incidents involving Mondo and something humiliating he tried to make a joke of it. "I don't know how I got up off the floor," Mondo quipped. "By a forklift?" wisecracked Gerry. Everyone laughed except Mondo. He might occasionally make fun of his morbidly obese condition but couldn't stand someone else doing it.
Feeble: Mondo ran quite a few stores as a TL, and had problems in every one of his inventories. His most spectacular failure occurred at a Cala Foods/Bell Markets inventory in Novato. Fleshy Mondo had all veteran auditors in this inventory but that didn't matter as most of us were dead tired from doing so many back to back stores. Every single one of us (including paunchy Mondo) made several mistakes while counting in that grocery store that night. Most of the errors were ones made by putting items in wrong categories: Liquor in Grocery, Grocery in General Merchandise, etc. Elephant Mondo missed a lot of these mistakes when printing out the areas, and simply handed over the error-laden printouts to the store manager, most without checking them first.
The store manager all night had received printout after printout filled with mistakes. With each muddled printout he got a little angrier and a little angrier. Finally he had had enough and confronted two-ton Mondo. He got right in Mondo's face (eeuuww) and verbally let him have it. The store manager went on at length about what a lousy job we RGIS auditors had done that night, and how he was not getting the quality inventory he had paid for. The guy was really pissed off and who could blame him? He had a bunch of burgundy-shirted zombies counting his store that night. We had done a lousy job in that Cala Foods store, and all of us realized it. Of course, that doesn't mean that we cared. All of us were worn out from so many back-to-backers and just wanted to go home and sleep. However, as lowly auditors we didn't have to experience the wrath of the store manager. No, TL Mondo, who ran the inventory, got the full blast of shit from the store manager. We peons merely stood around and enjoyed the spectacle. What fun it was to witness Mondo getting scolded and yelled at. Hurrah!
Finally, the store manager calmed down and stopped shouting at gargantuan Mondo. During the customer's tirade Mondo had not said a word. He was totally intimidated and cowed. At one point, while the customer was giving him a tongue lashing Mondo actually leaned his head against a post and stared at the floor. It was a totally unprofessional thing to do, and looked really bad, but that was Mondo.
The store manager was quite upset with Mondo and said to him, "So, as a representative from RGIS, what do you have to say for yourself, in regards to the job that you and your people have done?" Corpulent Mondo's response? He never said a word and merely shrugged his shoulders and continued to stare at the floor. Wow, a true leader. Disgusted, the store manager told Mondo, "This inventory is over," and we RGIS people quietly slunk out of the store and drove away. In front of the customer we had to appear chastened and a little sorry over the poor job we had done but secretly I was elated and relished the verbal clobbering that rotund Mondo had received.
Foul: When rumor had it in our district that malodorous Mondo was to be made the new Associate Area Manager, most of us didn't believe it. We couldn't imagine Mondo ever being able to scrub enough gunk off his huge moldy body in order to appear halfway decent as a dress-shirt-and-necktie-clad AAM. After all, it was Mondo who claimed that the reason he smelled so bad was because he was too fat to fit into his bathtub at home. That's why he never ever bathed, and that's why he smelled like a two-week old corpse on a hot summer day. How on earth would he be able to wash the funk off his carcass, if he couldn't take a bath? Helpful auditor Anna thought she had the solution. She offered to buy Mondo a shower attachment that he could hook up to the bathtub spigot. I guess she figured mammoth Mondo could sit on the edge of his tub and sprinkle himself with water, and thus wash some of the goo off himself that way.
Anna should have known better. Nauseating Mondo wasn't the least bit interested in improving himself in any way; not even if it meant moving his bulk up the corporate RGIS ladder. He was totally illogical and more than a little retarded in thinking that he could be both filthy and an AAM. Mondo said, "No thanks" to the shower attachment, and continued on his greasy way. He was eventually made an AAM, but that only lasted a few weeks, natch.
Fat: Jumbo Mondo used to have a terrible time during our summer inventories. We might be closeted in a stuffy Mervyn's back room for hours, scanning boxes of socks and racks of shirts. The atmosphere would be quite uncomfortable, as we usually did most of these inventories after hours, when the store's air-conditioning system had already been automatically shut off for the night. Most of us human-sized auditors were a bit uncomfortable, but for someone as massive as Mondo it was torture. He would be standing there, pawing through cartons of tube socks while the sweat just poured down his body in oily rivulets. TL Eric noticed the sweat gushing from Mondo's king size carcass and told him that he (Mondo) was going to melt into a puddle. "No, a puddle's too small," Eric corrected himself. "You're going to melt into a pond. We should call you Pondo." Mondo Pondo was not amused. Again, he could make fun of himself but he hated it when anyone else did it.
Feeble: Once a bunch of us were meeting at the office to commute to an early morning, out of town Long's Drugs inventory. This was during the time that half-witted District Manager Kevin was still having us park our cars in the tiny parking lot that surrounded our RGIS district office and a few other retail businesses. Kevin stood in the parking lot and directed auditors to park their cars at the other end of the lot, near Burger King. When Mondo pulled into the lot Kevin pointed towards Burger King. Mondo never stopped his Jeep. He drove to the other end of the parking lot and out the exit near Burger King, and disappeared into the early morning darkness.
It was so funny to see simpleton Kevin standing there in the middle of the parking lot with his mouth hanging open. He had no idea where Mondo had gone. In a panic he called Mondo's house but no one was there. He asked Mondo's hateful brother TL Luis where he thought Mondo might have gone, but Luis hadn't a clue. Finally DM Kevin had no choice but to leave for the inventory, minus his bloated TL Mondo.
When we reached the San Anselmo Long's Drugs about 45 minutes later, there was Mondo parked in front of the store. When questioned about his disappearance Mondo told us that when he saw Kevin pointing to the other end of the parking lot he thought Kevin wanted him to drive to the store himself. What a moron! But typical Mondo.
Foul: After we had finished an inventory in neighboring district Vallejo one night Mondo drove a company van full of us Santa Rosa auditors back to the Park-N-Ride. Riding with Mondo as a driver was always an adventure in terror, as he was both a horrible driver and a smelly one. You most definitely did not want to be sitting downwind of him, as one whiff of his gaseous fumes and you were a goner. Plus, as though his foul stench wasn't bad enough, he had a tendency to take every turn on two wheels. So one way or another you thought you were gonna die with Mondo driving.
One newbie riding in the van was already wise to the ways of repugnant Mondo. This became apparent when she told Mondo, "Hey Mondo, guess what? I had my shoe in your pants pocket." (This was not as difficult as it sounds. Two-ton Mondo flattened the driver's seat when he sat in it; his gargantuan ass was mere inches from the floor of the van) The newbie, sitting in the middle of the first bench seat, could by stretching her legs place a shoe tip in Mondo's pants pocket. One guy told her, "I'm surprised your shoe didn't melt." The newbie replied, "I'm surprised I got a shoe back." Once again, everyone laughed except for odious Mondo. Score one for the newbie.
Fat: As you may have already guessed, beefy Mondo had an enormous appetite. I once had the displeasure of riding with him to another out of town inventory. I had to ride sitting next to him in his stinky Jeep. Mondo couldn't even make it out of the office parking lot without getting something to eat. He stopped at the Burger King a few doors down from the RGIS office and ordered a double Whopper and a vat of Coca-Cola from the drive-up window. I watched in horror as he unwrapped the burger (I'm surprised he didn't just eat right through the paper) and took one, two, three, four bites without stopping or breathing and bam! the burger was gone. I mean that fat slob downed that enormous double cheeseburger in less than a minute. It was a most terrifying and disgusting sight. After seeing that nightmare I lost my own appetite for a couple of days. And after that ride with him I took care to keep my arms and legs safely away from Mondo's vicinity. Who knew when he might be hungry and need to feed again? What if we were doing a late night inventory and all the Burger Kings were closed? I didn't want to lose a limb.
Some stores that we inventoried would provide us with snacks if we took a break, and pizza or sandwiches if we took a lunch. Most of the Long's Drugs stores would give us coffee and doughnuts for our one and only break. We started counting at Long's around 5:30 am, and three hours later when we took our break the thought of a cup of hot coffee and a jelly doughnut was most appealing. Most of the auditors would take just one doughnut but then, we were human beings and not farm animals. Mondo, on the other hand, was like a pig at a trough during these Long's breaks. He saw nothing wrong in barrelling right into the store's break room and grabbing four or five doughnuts, all before any of us had even had one. He had his snout right into those pink bakery boxes, rooting around for the choicest pastries. Again, you had to be careful and not get your hands close to his mouth, lest you lose a finger.
Even foggy DM Kevin was aware of Mondo's greedy ways. Whenever we did a Kmart inventory in Santa Rosa the store was nice enough to provide us with pizzas and sodas for our half-hour lunch (This Kmart had a Little Caesar's pizza restaurant inside the store. I wouldn't touch the pizza after I'd heard that one customer recently vomited blood in the restaurant after eating the pizza. A special cleaning crew had to be called in, and thereafter I referred to the Little Caesar's pizza as "Haz-Mat pizza"). When Kevin called a lunch break he made sure to tell The Foul One, "Remember, only two pieces, Mondo." Kevin wanted to make sure that Mondo didn't inhale all of the pizza. Which he was perfectly capable of doing.
Gluttonous Mondo and pizza had quite a love affair going. While Mondo was known to consume anything (burgers, doughnuts, candy bars, possibly a small child or two) he held a special place in his oily heart for pizza. I don't think that he or his brother Luis (who lived with Mondo) knew how to cook. I believe they mostly ordered in food. I think Mondo would order a couple of pizzas at a time, and eat one immediately and save the second one for later. He wouldn't refrigerate the second pizza but instead would park it in his cold oven. He claimed it tasted better a day or two or a week later. Mondo called this "fermented" pizza. Puke!
Fat: If you had 450 lb. sweaty, greasy, smelly man asking you for a ride in your car, would give him one? Of course not. You would take pity on your poor vehicle and never think to transport something as foul as Mondo in it. Which is why Mondo could never catch a ride with anyone except his brother Luis, or maybe the company van; it was large and sturdy enough to withstand his enormous bulk. Luis' car, like everyone else's , was of average size and not really meant to cart around a hippopotamus, but Luis was Mondo's brother and couldn't refuse him a ride.
Which is why one morning several of us were treated to a most amusing sight. Me and a couple of auditors were in a car right behind Luis' car on the freeway. Even if you hadn't seen Mondo a few minutes earlier climbing into Luis' car, you would know immediately upon seeing the car that Mondo was riding in it as the car appeared to be driving along on two wheels. It was really funny to see this car tipping precariously to one side as it traveled slowly down the freeway. I mean, you almost expected to see it stop suddenly and about 30 clowns come piling out of it. But no, there was only one clown inside the car, the sad, pitiful, bloated, oily clown known as Mondo.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
The Road Warriors?
Here's another little memo that was sent out to all the auditors in my district. It was written by our then District Manager, Kevin. If you can read between the lines (and with my help you will be able to do just that), it gives you a perfect example of just how phony and lame and retarded Kevin was. The memo is reprinted here verbatim (that includes its incredibly stupid title). All comments in bold and italics are mine.
THE SANTA ROSA ROAD WARRIORS
DISTRICT 414
To the best RGIS Inventory Specialists I have ever worked with (this week. What a phony, smarmy little suckup). During the past few weeks, you have all shown me why I became an RGIS Manager (because Santa Rosa was hard up and desperate for managers). You all display the attitude and desire necessary for a team to be the best it can be (Okay, now this is just outright lying here. How did Kevin write this without his pants catching on fire?) As the teamwork improves (it didn't), you must all continue to strive to be the best (dream on). The new auditors that have recently joined us seem to possess the same attributes that many of you offer (you mean they suffer from apathy, cynicism and distrust too?), make sure you embrace these individuals (okay, sure, I'll just run right over and give a newbie a great big hug and sloppy kiss).
You must all lead by example by strictly adhering to the dress code and all other policies (oh, I guess that means Erin can't wear her bedroom slippers to inventories anymore). More team members does not mean less work (unless of course the district hires some young chicks that Area Manager Joe wants to bang and so therefore said girls get screwed and get more work and the rest of us get screwed over and get less work). A larger team will ensure we can continue to minimize the slow time (not with the retards that this district hires). We are improving in Albertson's (translation: We didn't fuck up the inventory in this store too badly this time) and get ready because now we are taking on Home Depot (poor Home Depot). We have been selected to be the core team for all Northern California Home Depot's (and again, poor Home Depot). I will be looking for the most professional, accurate and efficient (I guess that means you won't be looking in our district). These are the same characteristics I look at when writing the schedule (What are you talking about? You don't even write the schedule, idiot. AM Joe does). I look forward to working toward the future with all of you (that is, until you wig out and have to enter rehab, right Kevin?).
Now in order for us to enter the future (oh, good, we're entering the future, because I thought we were going to step into Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine and travel to ancient Greece and inventory the Parthenon), we must establish some rules that will not affect most of you (then why send us this retarded memo?). You have all received an Attendance Policy Acknowledgement form. This is going to eliminate the problem we have all experienced (oh, somehow I doubt that, since most people ignored the Attendance Policy form and didn't even bother to sign and return it), when a four-hour job turns into eight (and Kevin loses his bonus for fucking up yet another Long's Drugs run). That may be OK for some people when we are slow, you get the extra hours (and this will make up for the times when AM Joe screws us over and gives our stores to another one of the girls he's chasing after). But what about when we have Sears or Long's the next morning (and only five people show up for a 25 person inventory). These are the times when the entire team feels the pain (er, not the entire team. Just the ones who actually work. The F.O.J.'s {Friends of Joe} will I'm sure feel no pain as they probably won't even show up at Sears or Long's the next morning. And if they do show up, I'm sure their 2 dozen self-called smoke breaks will help to ease their "pain").
This also impacts our ability to supply the quality service RGIS Inventory Specialists is known for (quality service? Are you kidding me? This has got to be a joke). This attendance policy will be enforced (don't make me laugh. Nothing was ever "enforced" in this district). Do not test the water (gross Mondo may have sat in it first). This will improve our ability to function as a team (oh man, what was Kevin on when he wrote this? When did Santa Rosa ever function as a team? Never with Kevin and Joe as managers). Let's improve the quality of life for everyone involved (okay, how about we start with getting rid of you, Kevin?).
We must have the Attendance Policy, the back page of the Handbook and your schedules confirmed by Wednesday July 12 (or else we will nag you and nag you until you turn them in or we forget all about it, whichever happens first). Be sure to call the office if any of this will be a problem (Ring! Ring!). Lack of response will result in termination (a flat out lie. More than half the crew refused to sign the Attendance Policy and still remained with the district).
Thank You,
Kevin *****
District Manager
Santa Rosa
July 7, 2000
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Fear And Loathing In District 414 (Part 2)
Once we arrived at the Penney's store in Fairfield our district was assigned an entire floor to ourselves. AM Joe seemed flustered and more than a little upset as he attempted to unload and set up audit machines, lasers and rays, and to place auditors in various departments. Joe would be supervising a few of the Santa Rosa people in the housewares department, while two-ton Mondo would be supervising the rest of the crew in children's clothing. Normally I would be immediately placed in the housewares area, where a lot of the merchandise (towels, sheets, etc.) was quantity counted. But I was so ticked off at Joe that I wanted to be as far away from him as possible, so instead of waiting to be placed in a specific area, I just went over to infant's sleepwear and started scanning away.
In addition to the whole pervert AM Dave/asshole AM Joe debacle, there was an unintentionally hilarious subplot going on involving blob Mondo. In light of Dave being fired that very day and thus causing our district to be dangerously short of managers, Ops Manager Sai had done the unthinkable and promoted putrid Mondo to the Associate Area Manager position. Of course this was an absolutely horrendous idea, as anyone who has been reading this blog (and is by now familiar with Hindenburg Mondo) knows. Given that Mondo's revolting hygiene problem was such that it has caused more than one RGIS customer to ban him from their stores, and of course had caused many an RGIS auditor to want to vomit, it would seem absolutely ridiculous that Sai would give Mondo the AAM spot. But much to everyone's shock and disbelief, there was Mondo in J.C. Penney's, beaming from ear to greasy ear as he proudly informed everyone that he was our new AAM. Would this nightmare never end?
Of course, Mondo could never fit into the dress shirt and necktie that is required of all male RGIS managers. I couldn't for the life of me picture his massive oily bulk squeezing into any human-size dress shirt. And I was right, as Mondo showed up in Penney's wearing a surprisingly clean (and humongous) grey and black pullover sweater. This was his rather pitiful attempt at adhering to the manager's dress code. It also was apparently his only article of halfway decent clothing as he wore that same sweater in every inventory he attended for the next three weeks. And without any laundering of the sweater too (natch), so that with each subsequent inventory the sweater got a little more grimier and a little more funkier smelling. Barf.
And too, his lone pair of khaki pants, which he had laundered right before the Penney's inventory (I'm surprised they didn't disintegrate in the wash) began to once again sport those old familiar stains in all the old familiar places. And yes, in case you were wondering, of course foul Mondo never bathed his massive oily carcass during that time either, so after 3 weeks the green biohazard fumes were once again rising in thick waves from his reeking body. Despite Mondo's fervent wishes and desires for that coveted AAM job, that fat loser couldn't even manage to keep himself clean for a scant 3 weeks. Even Ops Manager Sai, desperate for a new AAM to take his place so he could split from Santa Rosa, realized that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and the whole "Mondo as an AAM" fiasco quietly faded away.
But before gross Mondo's AAM dreams were shattered, he still had an opportunity to make a good impression in his first inventory as an Associate Area Manager. That night at J.C. Penney's in Fairfield saw Mondo start off somewhat clean and resplendent in his new pullover sweater that tented his half-ton body. He was so proud of himself: after 10+ years as an oily auditor and even oilier Team Leader, he was finally being given a chance to prove that he could be a manager. He was full of goodwill and cheer, and all smiles. At the beginning of the inventory that is. Thirty minutes later Mondo was sweating like a hog and had already screamed at three people for miscounting. So much for good intentions.
In the meantime I was still smarting about the whole Joe-and-the-parking-favoritism thing. With every rack of toddler's pajamas that I scanned I got angrier and angrier (Mondo used to say that it was a TL or Manager's goal to get an auditor angry, but not too angry, and then he would be at just the right amount of outrage to start counting at a furious pace. That auditor would finish an area twice as fast as he normally would have, having been pushed just to the brink of furiousness, but not over the edge). For the past several years I had watched AM Joe allow his pet auditors to do as they pleased at work. The F.O.J.'s (Friends Of Joe) exercised lax attendance at inventories and stepped outside for numerous smoke breaks, all with tacit permission form Joe. And now Joe was blatantly allowing Gerry and Romy to park at the office when he had just told the entire district that no one was to park there. After a while I felt like a volcano about to erupt. I had to talk to someone about this or the top of my head was going to pop off.
I turned and spoke to the person scanning next to me. That person happened to be Anna, and I realized later that that might not have been the best decision to make on my part. Anna was hardly objective when it came to crises at work, especially ones involving managers. But all the hot, resentful lava bubbling inside me sort of muddled my thinking and I sought Anna's opinion on the matter. I asked her, "If you were upset at someone for something they did, would you tell them, or would you just forget about it?" Anna, ever a fan of confrontations and showdowns, said promptly, "Tell them about it. It won't do you any good to keep it inside. It'll just get worse and worse until you speak to the person who ticked you off. Who was it?" When I told her it was Joe she was ecstatic. Anna had a crush/hate relationship with Joe, with heavy leaning to the hate side, when the crush part of it yielded no results from Joe. She could scarcely contain her glee as she told me, "You have to tell him! Right now! You have to tell Joe that you're mad at him, and why! Right now! Go!" And she practically pushed me halfway across the store.
I went looking for AM Joe and found him standing next to a section filled with curtain rods. I asked Joe if I could speak with him for a minute and he said yes. We walked over to the luggage section, which had already been counted earlier in the evening and was now quiet and devoid of auditors. I told Joe what had been bothering me all night. "Why is it that you let Gerry and Romy park at the office? I thought no one was supposed to part there anymore." Joe immediately replied, "Well, Gerry drives that really old Blazer and he was afraid it wouldn't make it to the Park-N-Ride, so I told him it would be okay to park at the office." And Romy? "Well, Romy was hanging out with me earlier, so it just made sense for him to park at the office too." And of course all of this was said by Joe while wearing his customary bullshitting mask: an innocent expression and bland smile.
Now normally right here is where I would have just backed down and mumbled something very meekly like, "Oh okay I see, I understand thanks", and then scurried away quietly with my tail between my legs. But fired up with extra anger, resentment and generous egging on by Anna I said, "Joe, I don't feel like those are very good reasons for allowing those guys to park there. For one thing, in case you didn't notice, I drive an old car too. In fact, most of the other auditors here tonight do as well. I'm sure most of us would find it would be easier on our cars to park at the office. What makes Gerry so special that he can park there and we can't? And also, it's just not fair to let a few people park there when no one is supposed to, for any reason, you know? It's just not right."
For a few seconds AM Joe had this expression on his face of complete bewilderment. It was as though he'd been smacked in the head with a 2x4 (Well, I can dream, can't I?). He seemed stunned that someone, especially a pushover like myself, would be confronting and challenging him on something, anything, even something as minor as parking regulations. But the amazed expression on his face didn't last as anger began to take over. Remember, with all of the turmoil regarding AM Dave's firing from RGIS earlier that day, combined DM Dan getting fired shortly before that and then Ops Manager Sai having Joe jumping through hoops, this probably was not the best time to be trying Joe's patience. Joe turned red as a tomato, scowled, and began to shout at me.
And I mean he really let 'er rip. He yelled that he really didn't need this right now, that he had his hands full, what with Dan and Dave both getting fired, and he was at the office all by himself (what about Sai?). Joe continued ranting, going on an on about how no one had told him about AM Dave's Roman hands and Russian fingers (in addition to being a child molester Dave was also accused by auditors Anna and Tina of some inappropriate touching), someone should have said something to him, blah blah blah. Yeah, like that would have done any good. Had Joe been informed of this or anything else it would have caused him to pull his ostrich act and just bury his head in the ground. His specialty was ignoring problems and pretending they didn't exist.
AM Joe was really warmed up now and he showed no signs of slowing down. He continued to shout at me, saying that Gerry had come to him with genuine car troubles (sob), and so to be a nice guy (!) he had said sure, go ahead and park at the office...and then Joe told me, "You know, if you had wanted to park there (at the office) you could have said something to me (no I couldn't. The difference between me and the F.O.J.'s was that I wouldn't try to obtain special privileges that others didn't have. If no one could park at the office, then all of us should have abided by that). If you knew what was going on with Dave you should have said something to me (what?), someone should have said something." Um, someone did, remember? Anna had documentation from the sheriff's department regarding Dave's criminal record and you still did nothing, asshole. But I couldn't say this to Joe at this point because he was out of control and I wasn't about to risk losing an eye or something saying anything more. I just let him continue to bellow. Which he did. "Because you know I have an open door policy (total horseshit. Yeah sure, technically the door to AM Joe's office was open, but that didn't matter as Joe's mind was firmly closed) and you or anyone can talk to me anytime, but nobody said a word and now I have all this shit going on and I'm about this close (thumb and forefinger pressed tightly together) to quitting! I've done it before and I can do it again! I quit once before, did you know that? I don't need this right now!"
Wow. That was the first time I had ever seen AM Joe display that much emotion. Usually his countenance was about as expressive as a rock. He was really out of control and I was genuinely afraid to press my arguments further, so with all my righteous-driven courage completely dissipated I backed down and slunk away, having accomplished nothing. Joe really scared the crap out of me that night. I felt as though if I had pushed just one more of his buttons he might have really gone berserk and then popped me one. Now that would have been interesting. Two managers from the same district fired in the same day.
My guess as to why Joe reacted in that totally irrational way was not just due to all of the district shenanigans going on recently. I think it mainly had to do with the fact that he hated being criticized, just hated it. Joe believed wholeheartedly in his image as Mr. Wonderful and wanted "his" auditors to think so too. And most of us did when we first started in the district. "Joe Cool" would seem to be efficient and busy in inventories, and he would take a few of us into his confidence sometimes, telling us about how weak and lame former District Manager Kevin and AM Dave were at their jobs. He would make you feel "in the loop" about district goings-on, in that he could share his private opinions of his fellow managers with you, as though he valued your thoughts and opinions on the same subject. Of course, later on we would find out that he would then turn around and make disparaging remarks about us too, to others. And then too, his blatant favoritism regarding the F.O.J.'s really began to spin out of control once DM Dan left.
So the Mr. Perfect image of Joe's didn't last for very long. Bit by bit his facade of being this great guy began to fade, and as it did so too did his power and hold over the Santa Rosa district. My confrontation with him, as ineffective as it seemed to be at the time, turned out to be one of the first cracks in Joe's long smooth run as the King of District 414. No longer did one of his formerly faithful (read fooled) subjects believe in him and blindly accept whatever bullshit he tried to feed us. I was now as determined as Anna to set things right and this meant shedding the district of that louse AM Joe. Game on.
In addition to the whole pervert AM Dave/asshole AM Joe debacle, there was an unintentionally hilarious subplot going on involving blob Mondo. In light of Dave being fired that very day and thus causing our district to be dangerously short of managers, Ops Manager Sai had done the unthinkable and promoted putrid Mondo to the Associate Area Manager position. Of course this was an absolutely horrendous idea, as anyone who has been reading this blog (and is by now familiar with Hindenburg Mondo) knows. Given that Mondo's revolting hygiene problem was such that it has caused more than one RGIS customer to ban him from their stores, and of course had caused many an RGIS auditor to want to vomit, it would seem absolutely ridiculous that Sai would give Mondo the AAM spot. But much to everyone's shock and disbelief, there was Mondo in J.C. Penney's, beaming from ear to greasy ear as he proudly informed everyone that he was our new AAM. Would this nightmare never end?
Of course, Mondo could never fit into the dress shirt and necktie that is required of all male RGIS managers. I couldn't for the life of me picture his massive oily bulk squeezing into any human-size dress shirt. And I was right, as Mondo showed up in Penney's wearing a surprisingly clean (and humongous) grey and black pullover sweater. This was his rather pitiful attempt at adhering to the manager's dress code. It also was apparently his only article of halfway decent clothing as he wore that same sweater in every inventory he attended for the next three weeks. And without any laundering of the sweater too (natch), so that with each subsequent inventory the sweater got a little more grimier and a little more funkier smelling. Barf.
And too, his lone pair of khaki pants, which he had laundered right before the Penney's inventory (I'm surprised they didn't disintegrate in the wash) began to once again sport those old familiar stains in all the old familiar places. And yes, in case you were wondering, of course foul Mondo never bathed his massive oily carcass during that time either, so after 3 weeks the green biohazard fumes were once again rising in thick waves from his reeking body. Despite Mondo's fervent wishes and desires for that coveted AAM job, that fat loser couldn't even manage to keep himself clean for a scant 3 weeks. Even Ops Manager Sai, desperate for a new AAM to take his place so he could split from Santa Rosa, realized that you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and the whole "Mondo as an AAM" fiasco quietly faded away.
But before gross Mondo's AAM dreams were shattered, he still had an opportunity to make a good impression in his first inventory as an Associate Area Manager. That night at J.C. Penney's in Fairfield saw Mondo start off somewhat clean and resplendent in his new pullover sweater that tented his half-ton body. He was so proud of himself: after 10+ years as an oily auditor and even oilier Team Leader, he was finally being given a chance to prove that he could be a manager. He was full of goodwill and cheer, and all smiles. At the beginning of the inventory that is. Thirty minutes later Mondo was sweating like a hog and had already screamed at three people for miscounting. So much for good intentions.
In the meantime I was still smarting about the whole Joe-and-the-parking-favoritism thing. With every rack of toddler's pajamas that I scanned I got angrier and angrier (Mondo used to say that it was a TL or Manager's goal to get an auditor angry, but not too angry, and then he would be at just the right amount of outrage to start counting at a furious pace. That auditor would finish an area twice as fast as he normally would have, having been pushed just to the brink of furiousness, but not over the edge). For the past several years I had watched AM Joe allow his pet auditors to do as they pleased at work. The F.O.J.'s (Friends Of Joe) exercised lax attendance at inventories and stepped outside for numerous smoke breaks, all with tacit permission form Joe. And now Joe was blatantly allowing Gerry and Romy to park at the office when he had just told the entire district that no one was to park there. After a while I felt like a volcano about to erupt. I had to talk to someone about this or the top of my head was going to pop off.
I turned and spoke to the person scanning next to me. That person happened to be Anna, and I realized later that that might not have been the best decision to make on my part. Anna was hardly objective when it came to crises at work, especially ones involving managers. But all the hot, resentful lava bubbling inside me sort of muddled my thinking and I sought Anna's opinion on the matter. I asked her, "If you were upset at someone for something they did, would you tell them, or would you just forget about it?" Anna, ever a fan of confrontations and showdowns, said promptly, "Tell them about it. It won't do you any good to keep it inside. It'll just get worse and worse until you speak to the person who ticked you off. Who was it?" When I told her it was Joe she was ecstatic. Anna had a crush/hate relationship with Joe, with heavy leaning to the hate side, when the crush part of it yielded no results from Joe. She could scarcely contain her glee as she told me, "You have to tell him! Right now! You have to tell Joe that you're mad at him, and why! Right now! Go!" And she practically pushed me halfway across the store.
I went looking for AM Joe and found him standing next to a section filled with curtain rods. I asked Joe if I could speak with him for a minute and he said yes. We walked over to the luggage section, which had already been counted earlier in the evening and was now quiet and devoid of auditors. I told Joe what had been bothering me all night. "Why is it that you let Gerry and Romy park at the office? I thought no one was supposed to part there anymore." Joe immediately replied, "Well, Gerry drives that really old Blazer and he was afraid it wouldn't make it to the Park-N-Ride, so I told him it would be okay to park at the office." And Romy? "Well, Romy was hanging out with me earlier, so it just made sense for him to park at the office too." And of course all of this was said by Joe while wearing his customary bullshitting mask: an innocent expression and bland smile.
Now normally right here is where I would have just backed down and mumbled something very meekly like, "Oh okay I see, I understand thanks", and then scurried away quietly with my tail between my legs. But fired up with extra anger, resentment and generous egging on by Anna I said, "Joe, I don't feel like those are very good reasons for allowing those guys to park there. For one thing, in case you didn't notice, I drive an old car too. In fact, most of the other auditors here tonight do as well. I'm sure most of us would find it would be easier on our cars to park at the office. What makes Gerry so special that he can park there and we can't? And also, it's just not fair to let a few people park there when no one is supposed to, for any reason, you know? It's just not right."
For a few seconds AM Joe had this expression on his face of complete bewilderment. It was as though he'd been smacked in the head with a 2x4 (Well, I can dream, can't I?). He seemed stunned that someone, especially a pushover like myself, would be confronting and challenging him on something, anything, even something as minor as parking regulations. But the amazed expression on his face didn't last as anger began to take over. Remember, with all of the turmoil regarding AM Dave's firing from RGIS earlier that day, combined DM Dan getting fired shortly before that and then Ops Manager Sai having Joe jumping through hoops, this probably was not the best time to be trying Joe's patience. Joe turned red as a tomato, scowled, and began to shout at me.
And I mean he really let 'er rip. He yelled that he really didn't need this right now, that he had his hands full, what with Dan and Dave both getting fired, and he was at the office all by himself (what about Sai?). Joe continued ranting, going on an on about how no one had told him about AM Dave's Roman hands and Russian fingers (in addition to being a child molester Dave was also accused by auditors Anna and Tina of some inappropriate touching), someone should have said something to him, blah blah blah. Yeah, like that would have done any good. Had Joe been informed of this or anything else it would have caused him to pull his ostrich act and just bury his head in the ground. His specialty was ignoring problems and pretending they didn't exist.
AM Joe was really warmed up now and he showed no signs of slowing down. He continued to shout at me, saying that Gerry had come to him with genuine car troubles (sob), and so to be a nice guy (!) he had said sure, go ahead and park at the office...and then Joe told me, "You know, if you had wanted to park there (at the office) you could have said something to me (no I couldn't. The difference between me and the F.O.J.'s was that I wouldn't try to obtain special privileges that others didn't have. If no one could park at the office, then all of us should have abided by that). If you knew what was going on with Dave you should have said something to me (what?), someone should have said something." Um, someone did, remember? Anna had documentation from the sheriff's department regarding Dave's criminal record and you still did nothing, asshole. But I couldn't say this to Joe at this point because he was out of control and I wasn't about to risk losing an eye or something saying anything more. I just let him continue to bellow. Which he did. "Because you know I have an open door policy (total horseshit. Yeah sure, technically the door to AM Joe's office was open, but that didn't matter as Joe's mind was firmly closed) and you or anyone can talk to me anytime, but nobody said a word and now I have all this shit going on and I'm about this close (thumb and forefinger pressed tightly together) to quitting! I've done it before and I can do it again! I quit once before, did you know that? I don't need this right now!"
Wow. That was the first time I had ever seen AM Joe display that much emotion. Usually his countenance was about as expressive as a rock. He was really out of control and I was genuinely afraid to press my arguments further, so with all my righteous-driven courage completely dissipated I backed down and slunk away, having accomplished nothing. Joe really scared the crap out of me that night. I felt as though if I had pushed just one more of his buttons he might have really gone berserk and then popped me one. Now that would have been interesting. Two managers from the same district fired in the same day.
My guess as to why Joe reacted in that totally irrational way was not just due to all of the district shenanigans going on recently. I think it mainly had to do with the fact that he hated being criticized, just hated it. Joe believed wholeheartedly in his image as Mr. Wonderful and wanted "his" auditors to think so too. And most of us did when we first started in the district. "Joe Cool" would seem to be efficient and busy in inventories, and he would take a few of us into his confidence sometimes, telling us about how weak and lame former District Manager Kevin and AM Dave were at their jobs. He would make you feel "in the loop" about district goings-on, in that he could share his private opinions of his fellow managers with you, as though he valued your thoughts and opinions on the same subject. Of course, later on we would find out that he would then turn around and make disparaging remarks about us too, to others. And then too, his blatant favoritism regarding the F.O.J.'s really began to spin out of control once DM Dan left.
So the Mr. Perfect image of Joe's didn't last for very long. Bit by bit his facade of being this great guy began to fade, and as it did so too did his power and hold over the Santa Rosa district. My confrontation with him, as ineffective as it seemed to be at the time, turned out to be one of the first cracks in Joe's long smooth run as the King of District 414. No longer did one of his formerly faithful (read fooled) subjects believe in him and blindly accept whatever bullshit he tried to feed us. I was now as determined as Anna to set things right and this meant shedding the district of that louse AM Joe. Game on.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
Fear And Loathing In District 414 (Part 1)
With Dan having been let go by RGIS that left Santa Rosa without a District Manager. Oh sure, we had two Area Managers, Joe and Dave, but both were incapable of running a district, albeit for different reasons. Joe was simply too immature to handle the responsibility of heading up an entire RGIS district, and Dave was too slow-witted. He could barely handle his scant duties as an AM. It was ludicrous to think that he could ever be a DM.
So while the search for a new DM for us began, one of our Northwest Division's Operations Managers, a man named Sai, stepped in to temporarily fill in the DM's shoes. I say "stepped in", but it was more like he was pushed in to the job by his bosses, as Sai was lukewarm to the idea of having to be a DM, temporarily or otherwise. The long drive he had to make every day from his home in Pleasanton to Santa Rosa and back again probably had something to do with it, but I like to think that the prospect of having to deal with a district filled with fuckups who couldn't count worth shit and malcontents who could care less about anything inventory-related must have filled Sai with dread. He probably wished that he could have avoided his new position as our temporary DM like the plague, but no such luck for him. He was stuck with us.
And as it turned out, he was stranded in District 414 for a good while. Apparently the search for a new DM for our happy little district was experiencing some difficulties. For some strange reason no one was leaping at the chance to head up the Santa Rosa district. Hmmm, how odd. Could our reputation have preceded us?
There was only one person apparently who had shown any inclination or desire to be our new DM, and horrors, it was our Area Manager Joe. Despite his declarations of the past, that he had wanted no part of becoming a DM, something apparently had happened in the interim to cause Joe to (foolishly) believe that he was finally ready to handle the duties of being a DM. Maybe it was the unpleasant (for Joe, delightful for the rest of us) experience of having had former DM Dan step into our district and take over the reins, leaving Joe impotent and powerless. He probably wanted no more interference in "his" district and decided once and for all to run the whole district his way. But Sai and the other Ops Managers wisely had some doubts as to whether or not Joe would be suitable for the DM spot, and held back on promoting him for AM to DM.
So during the period of time that Sai was in my district as the temporary DM, it was a sort of long term audition for Joe. Being in the Santa Rosa RGIS office every day gave Sai a great opportunity to observe first hand how Joe handled things like the almighty master schedule, and crises like inventories running long, auditor no shows, etc. Joe was unused to being so closely watched and it was driving him crazy. I think he would have pulled his hair out, had said hair been allowed to grow longer than his customary buzz cut. He was clearly frustrated at not being given the DM job immediately, and having Sai watching him like a hawk was driving him to the point of distraction. During the time that Sai was in Santa Rosa we had several of our Long's Drugs inventories to do. Usually each Long's inventory would be run by one manager like Joe. But of course, since Sai was having Joe go through his DM tryouts he was right there in the Long's stores as well, much to Joe's consternation. For Sai wasn't only observing Joe, he was also interfering in the inventories as well. Joe would tell an auditor to count in this aisle, then Sai would come along and tell the auditor to go count somewhere else. Joe would tell his crew to start at this end of the store and count, and Sai would tell everyone to start at the other end. Joe would say this, and Sai would say that. It was driving everyone nuts, not just Joe. Pretty soon all the auditors started wishing Sai would leave the district and go back to the Ops office.
But Sai wasn't going anywhere soon because a major crisis was about to erupt in my district. For some time auditor Anna had been at odds with AM Dave. I wasn't sure how it began, but at some point Anna began to develop and nourish a personal hatred and vendetta against Dave. She diverted her time and interests from getting rid of Joe and turned it on full blast towards Dave.
From what I gathered (thanks to Anna's inability to keep a confidence), Dave's daughter Kim had intimated to Anna that Dave had a checkered past. According to Anna, Kim told her that Dave was a registered sex offender. Several years earlier, Dave had been charged with one count of unlawful sexual misconduct with a minor under the age of 14. He had pled no contest to this charge, and as a part of the whole deal, he had to register as a sex offender and agree to not work in any job that would allow him to come in contact with anyone under the age of 21. Our district had several people in their late teens working for RGIS, usually during their summer vacation months, so of course this was quite a problem.
The part about AM Dave being a registered sex offender was bad enough, but what happened after AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai found out was even worse. Anna, wanting to verify this information that Kim gave her, went to the local sheriff's office where the Megan's Law database for the State of California was on file (this database file wasn't online at that time, as it is now). If you're not familiar with it, Megan's Law gives people the opportunity to research whether there are any registered sex offenders living in their neighborhood. A person can search through this database by entering in someone's name. They can also search by using a city, county or zip code. Anna had Dave's name of course, and his home address as well. She printed out all the unsavory facts on AM Dave and took a copy to our RGIS office. She handed over the printout to AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai. I think she expected them to fire Dave on the spot. Well, that didn't exactly happen.
According to Anna, she went home upon leaving the district office, but she had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. She said that the rather casual manner in which Joe and Sai had received the disturbing information regarding Dave bothered her, so later that same day she placed a call to RGIS' head office to find out if Joe and/or Sai contacted them. Anna was told that no, they hadn't heard a thing from our district office, and indeed the representative she spoke with sounded upset about the matter. She asked Anna to fax her a copy of Dave's info from the Megan's Law database. Anna did so immediately, and then and only then was Dave fired (Anna said that Dave had also lied on his original RGIS application, concerning the question "Have you ever been convicted?").
It was quite obvious to everyone in the district what had happened. We were right in the middle of the most busiest of times for any inventory service, January through February. Our district, stretched thin as it was, with auditors being hired and then quitting left and right, with scant Team Leaders being able to run stores and us still without a proper DM, all had caused AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai to panic at the thought of losing an AM, even one who was a registered sex offender. It was everyone's belief that Joe and Sai fully intended to hang onto AM Dave until after the busy season, and then let him go. But by Anna going behind their backs and contacting RGIS' head office, she foiled their nefarious plans and they had to fire Dave that day.
So now District 414 was down to one AM, an Ops Manager who most definitely did not want to be there and a couple of Team Leaders. The Santa Rosa district was imploding before our eyes. I myself took a rather sadistic delight in watching it crash and burn. I was enjoying it wholeheartedly, so much so that I decided to get in on the fun.
The very day that pervy AM Dave was let go was also a day when most of us Santa Rosa auditors had to go and bail out the Vallejo district in their J.C. Penney's store. Due to former DM Kevin's screwups and failures in choosing a proper new district office, we could no longer park at our RGIS office but instead had to park at a commuter lot 8 miles away in another city. This was inconvenient to most of us, but AM Joe was adamant about no one parking at the office. So imagine my surprise when a bunch of us were standing in the commuter parking lot waiting for the company vans, and AM Joe pulled into the lot in his car. Inside his car were his girlfriend Muong and best pals Gerry and Romy.
Now Muong being in the car I could understand, as she was Joe's live-in girlfriend and of course rode to the office with him. But Gerry and Romy? What made them so damned special that they could park at the office when the rest of us couldn't? Oh...right. They were F.O.J.'s (Friends Of Joe). They could do as they pleased.
I did a slow burn all the way to Fairfield. It pissed me off to no end that this favoritism of Joe's went on and on and never seemed to end. I had stood by and watched and said nothing as time and time again that asshole Joe let Gerry and Romy and TL Eric practically get away with murder. I watched Joe let his pals take breaks whenever they wanted to, show up late and leave early, not show up at all, and all without so much as a peep from Joe. But this was the last straw. After Joe and Sai had made it absolutely clear to us that no one was to park at the office, two of his favored pets blatantly parked there. Shit! I didn't give a rat's ass if Joe was stressed out from the whole pervy Dave mess. I was going to confront him on his favoritism tonight.
(Coming up: Part 2.)
So while the search for a new DM for us began, one of our Northwest Division's Operations Managers, a man named Sai, stepped in to temporarily fill in the DM's shoes. I say "stepped in", but it was more like he was pushed in to the job by his bosses, as Sai was lukewarm to the idea of having to be a DM, temporarily or otherwise. The long drive he had to make every day from his home in Pleasanton to Santa Rosa and back again probably had something to do with it, but I like to think that the prospect of having to deal with a district filled with fuckups who couldn't count worth shit and malcontents who could care less about anything inventory-related must have filled Sai with dread. He probably wished that he could have avoided his new position as our temporary DM like the plague, but no such luck for him. He was stuck with us.
And as it turned out, he was stranded in District 414 for a good while. Apparently the search for a new DM for our happy little district was experiencing some difficulties. For some strange reason no one was leaping at the chance to head up the Santa Rosa district. Hmmm, how odd. Could our reputation have preceded us?
There was only one person apparently who had shown any inclination or desire to be our new DM, and horrors, it was our Area Manager Joe. Despite his declarations of the past, that he had wanted no part of becoming a DM, something apparently had happened in the interim to cause Joe to (foolishly) believe that he was finally ready to handle the duties of being a DM. Maybe it was the unpleasant (for Joe, delightful for the rest of us) experience of having had former DM Dan step into our district and take over the reins, leaving Joe impotent and powerless. He probably wanted no more interference in "his" district and decided once and for all to run the whole district his way. But Sai and the other Ops Managers wisely had some doubts as to whether or not Joe would be suitable for the DM spot, and held back on promoting him for AM to DM.
So during the period of time that Sai was in my district as the temporary DM, it was a sort of long term audition for Joe. Being in the Santa Rosa RGIS office every day gave Sai a great opportunity to observe first hand how Joe handled things like the almighty master schedule, and crises like inventories running long, auditor no shows, etc. Joe was unused to being so closely watched and it was driving him crazy. I think he would have pulled his hair out, had said hair been allowed to grow longer than his customary buzz cut. He was clearly frustrated at not being given the DM job immediately, and having Sai watching him like a hawk was driving him to the point of distraction. During the time that Sai was in Santa Rosa we had several of our Long's Drugs inventories to do. Usually each Long's inventory would be run by one manager like Joe. But of course, since Sai was having Joe go through his DM tryouts he was right there in the Long's stores as well, much to Joe's consternation. For Sai wasn't only observing Joe, he was also interfering in the inventories as well. Joe would tell an auditor to count in this aisle, then Sai would come along and tell the auditor to go count somewhere else. Joe would tell his crew to start at this end of the store and count, and Sai would tell everyone to start at the other end. Joe would say this, and Sai would say that. It was driving everyone nuts, not just Joe. Pretty soon all the auditors started wishing Sai would leave the district and go back to the Ops office.
But Sai wasn't going anywhere soon because a major crisis was about to erupt in my district. For some time auditor Anna had been at odds with AM Dave. I wasn't sure how it began, but at some point Anna began to develop and nourish a personal hatred and vendetta against Dave. She diverted her time and interests from getting rid of Joe and turned it on full blast towards Dave.
From what I gathered (thanks to Anna's inability to keep a confidence), Dave's daughter Kim had intimated to Anna that Dave had a checkered past. According to Anna, Kim told her that Dave was a registered sex offender. Several years earlier, Dave had been charged with one count of unlawful sexual misconduct with a minor under the age of 14. He had pled no contest to this charge, and as a part of the whole deal, he had to register as a sex offender and agree to not work in any job that would allow him to come in contact with anyone under the age of 21. Our district had several people in their late teens working for RGIS, usually during their summer vacation months, so of course this was quite a problem.
The part about AM Dave being a registered sex offender was bad enough, but what happened after AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai found out was even worse. Anna, wanting to verify this information that Kim gave her, went to the local sheriff's office where the Megan's Law database for the State of California was on file (this database file wasn't online at that time, as it is now). If you're not familiar with it, Megan's Law gives people the opportunity to research whether there are any registered sex offenders living in their neighborhood. A person can search through this database by entering in someone's name. They can also search by using a city, county or zip code. Anna had Dave's name of course, and his home address as well. She printed out all the unsavory facts on AM Dave and took a copy to our RGIS office. She handed over the printout to AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai. I think she expected them to fire Dave on the spot. Well, that didn't exactly happen.
According to Anna, she went home upon leaving the district office, but she had an uneasy feeling about the whole thing. She said that the rather casual manner in which Joe and Sai had received the disturbing information regarding Dave bothered her, so later that same day she placed a call to RGIS' head office to find out if Joe and/or Sai contacted them. Anna was told that no, they hadn't heard a thing from our district office, and indeed the representative she spoke with sounded upset about the matter. She asked Anna to fax her a copy of Dave's info from the Megan's Law database. Anna did so immediately, and then and only then was Dave fired (Anna said that Dave had also lied on his original RGIS application, concerning the question "Have you ever been convicted?").
It was quite obvious to everyone in the district what had happened. We were right in the middle of the most busiest of times for any inventory service, January through February. Our district, stretched thin as it was, with auditors being hired and then quitting left and right, with scant Team Leaders being able to run stores and us still without a proper DM, all had caused AM Joe and Ops Manager Sai to panic at the thought of losing an AM, even one who was a registered sex offender. It was everyone's belief that Joe and Sai fully intended to hang onto AM Dave until after the busy season, and then let him go. But by Anna going behind their backs and contacting RGIS' head office, she foiled their nefarious plans and they had to fire Dave that day.
So now District 414 was down to one AM, an Ops Manager who most definitely did not want to be there and a couple of Team Leaders. The Santa Rosa district was imploding before our eyes. I myself took a rather sadistic delight in watching it crash and burn. I was enjoying it wholeheartedly, so much so that I decided to get in on the fun.
The very day that pervy AM Dave was let go was also a day when most of us Santa Rosa auditors had to go and bail out the Vallejo district in their J.C. Penney's store. Due to former DM Kevin's screwups and failures in choosing a proper new district office, we could no longer park at our RGIS office but instead had to park at a commuter lot 8 miles away in another city. This was inconvenient to most of us, but AM Joe was adamant about no one parking at the office. So imagine my surprise when a bunch of us were standing in the commuter parking lot waiting for the company vans, and AM Joe pulled into the lot in his car. Inside his car were his girlfriend Muong and best pals Gerry and Romy.
Now Muong being in the car I could understand, as she was Joe's live-in girlfriend and of course rode to the office with him. But Gerry and Romy? What made them so damned special that they could park at the office when the rest of us couldn't? Oh...right. They were F.O.J.'s (Friends Of Joe). They could do as they pleased.
I did a slow burn all the way to Fairfield. It pissed me off to no end that this favoritism of Joe's went on and on and never seemed to end. I had stood by and watched and said nothing as time and time again that asshole Joe let Gerry and Romy and TL Eric practically get away with murder. I watched Joe let his pals take breaks whenever they wanted to, show up late and leave early, not show up at all, and all without so much as a peep from Joe. But this was the last straw. After Joe and Sai had made it absolutely clear to us that no one was to park at the office, two of his favored pets blatantly parked there. Shit! I didn't give a rat's ass if Joe was stressed out from the whole pervy Dave mess. I was going to confront him on his favoritism tonight.
(Coming up: Part 2.)
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