“So, what are you doing for the
holidays?”
People who've never worked in retail at
any level simply do not realize the horror and depression this
innocent question invokes in members of my trade. I have worked as a
supermarket meat-cutter for 32 years—that's 32 Christmases, and I
can tell you honestly I have not had a peaceful, relaxing, fun
holiday since 1984. Christmas is go, go, go time. It's massive over
time. It's get your head straight and focus time. It's going to work
in the dark. And coming home in the dark. Its dealing with a non-stop
barrage of questions, requests, orders complaints, and phone calls.
Oh my god, the phone calls. All the while trying to increase your
production 100 percent or more.
Everybody thinks I exaggerate. I
promise you that I, personally, don't. Now, some out-going,
gregarious people-persons can handle all of this a little
easier than me: though, I can assure you, even the most out-going,
friendly people in the world are starting to twitch by the time
January 2nd rolls around. But myself, being naturally
quiet, reserved and introverted, the constant customer interaction
takes an even heavier toll. Add to the equation a seasonal attitude
depression (I hate the dark and cold) and the extreme physical
punishment and it's an introvert's worst nightmare scenario.
Of course some years are worse than
others. One of the first holidays I worked we had a 25 cent a pound
turkey sale that caused a community feeding frenzy. We ended up
running out (the guy who went to flag to pick up another truckload
lost his brakes on the grade back down and crashed) and I was the low
man on the totem pole. I was sent out front to explain to livid
customers that we had no turkeys... Cannon fodder, they called
me. That was a fun holiday. Then there was the year I was an
inexperienced cutter and they sent me to the busiest store in Phoenix
the week before Christmas to help out. And I had the flu. And there
was a snowstorm coming home on Christmas Eve. And did I mention I had
a new baby having his first Christmas? Good times!
Yes, I've had some rough holidays.
Nothing, however, can quite compare to this year. It all started in
September when meat manager (who has a background in refrigeration)
finally received the transfer to HVAC he'd been fighting for. Brain
was an old friend, the only reason I transferred back to the Sedona
store, and I think he felt bad about leaving me. A little bad, but he
still had a skip in his step when he walked out the door. With all my
years of experience I was expected to take over, but if I've learned
one thing, I know myself. I am not a type A, take command Alpha male.
I hate being in charge. I hate disciplining people. I hate
problem-solving other people's personal shit. I knew the job would
make me miserable so I turned it down repeatedly and emphatically.
Naturally the job of retail meat
manager is so attractive and appealing that no one applied for the
job. The job had been posted for months and the only two people that
had applied for the position were our two clean-up/meat helpers. By
default one of them got the job. The store director made one last
appeal to me. “Don't come complain to me when the place starts
falling apart.” The comment kind of made me angry. First, I never,
ever complain (maybe I grumble a little) but I take whatever they
throw at me and deal with it. As lead meat cutter I have to run the
shop when the manger's off, sick, on vacation, in a meeting, or
otherwise indisposed and I don't get paid one cent extra. And I hate
being in charge, But I shut my mouth and do it. And second, isn't it
the store director's job to find someone qualified to run his store?
Why is it on me?
Anyway, having a complete rookie as my
boss was just the beginning. The long time wrapper got an opportunity
for a promotion to cutter by transferring to another store. So he
left. Our long time counter person (excuse me—service case manager)
transferred to another store to be closer to her boyfriend. Suddenly
I was the only person in the shop who could cut or wrap. Now, to be
fair, the new manager was trying to play catch-up. He was learning to
cut and learning to wrap but in the old days he would barely be
considered an apprentice in either craft. And as hard as it was on me
on the days he was off, I can only imagine how hard it was him to do
everything when I was off. He was trying. I was trying----working my
ass off-- but the shop was quite understandably beginning to go
downhill.
But don't worry. We have a team of top
flight supervisors who were incredibly helpful and understanding.
They worked tirelessly to get us the experienced and competent help
we desperately needed. And if you believe that, I got some beachfront
property to sell you in Arizona. No, they came in on their increasing
visits and ripped us a new one continually. “The meat
department is a train wreck,” they said the day after senior
discount day. “The department lacks readiness by 9 am.” No
mention was ever made of the under-staffing other than we should get
some more people in there and “train them up.”
But they did manage to hire another
counter person (67 years old going on 77) and, even better, an
experienced meat-cutter. Having another cutter in the shop helped.
Suddenly I could get some other stuff done, little details that
needed doing. Of course that lasted exactly four weeks. The week
before Thanksgiving, one of the supervisors came up for a couple days
to “work with us.” I don't remember him doing a lot of work, but
he sure had a lot of criticisms. The new meat-cutter put up with it
for half a day then took off his name badge and walked out.
Back to square one. We hired another
counter person. A 70-year old. And somehow we managed to make it
through Thanksgiving which is actually one the easier holidays. Just
a lot of heavy lifting, throwing turkeys around, keeping it all
stacked and sorted, and keeping the fresh turkey orders straight. The
new manager did an excellent job of ordering and we came through the
holiday with a very good gross and a clean inventory.
Then came Christmas. The Christmas ad
broke: $4.77 for standing rib, trimmed, boned and tied—more than a
dollar cheaper than our nearest competitor who was selling them
whole, untrimmed in the bag. And the warehouse plussed us out three
pallets of ribs that were frozen solid. What a nightmare. Every case
of ribs had to be unpacked, racked and placed in the warmer cutting
room to thaw, then rotated back into the cooler while the next batch
of frozen ribs was brought out. Meanwhile they are leaking
everywhere. Everything is covered in wet bloody water. And we have
one person in the whole shop that was proficient at cutting and tying
whole ribs. Yours truly. It was horrible. The new manager had his
hands full just trying to keep the case semi-full, the phone answered
and the supervisors off our back.
It was a community feeding frenzy all
over again. I cut like a mad man. I have no idea how many ribs I cut
and tied in the ten days before Christmas but it ran into the
hundreds. Besides all the other cutting. Meanwhile the shop is full
of inexperienced people and strangers. People I've only worked with
for a couple weeks. With a brand new manager, we had very little
training going on and no system in place. Everybody was running
around like chickens doing their own thing the best they could.
Orders were coming in and were all over the shop written on wax
paper, soaker pads, scraps of paper, Styrofoam trays. The walls were
covered with orders, they were taped to the pillars, they covered
the managers desk. The phone rang continually with yet more orders,
more special requests, and more questions. So, so many questions. “So
tell me about your standing rib roasts,” a typical call would
begin,” Is that at all like prime rib?”
I like hard work. I do. I discovered
early on, there is a purity-- a zen-- to hard physical work. It gets
you out of your head. It keeps you focused. But there comes a point
when it's too much. And I am not as young as I used to be. I could
feel my body quickly wearing down. And physical exhaustion is one
thing (its okay to go home at the end of a long day tired) but the
mental stress was taking an even larger toll. Just being constantly
behind, being pulled in multiple directions at all time, being
criticized, being asked to answer questions above and beyond your
areas of expertise. Working in a constant atmosphere of chaos and
panic was nothing less than miserable..
I think the manager realized I was
beginning to lose it. He scheduled me off two days in a row to begin
Christmas week. It was really nice of him—except I walked into the
shop after my two days off (his day off) and the place was completely
destroyed. He'd hired a new cutter, it was his second day on the job,
my first time meeting him, and we had an entire department to put
back together. And it was busy. I cut as fast as I could cut while
trying to break in the new guy but we couldn't keep up. The new guy
was keeping up the wrapping, but we still couldn't get the case full.
It was the kind of day when you're just forced to work too hard and
too fast. The kind of day that accidents happen. Hands get sliced.
Fingers get taken off and people slip and fall. In my case it was my
@#$%ing back. Wrestling with one of those cases of frozen ribs off
the bottom of the stack, I felt that terrible jolt of electricity go
up my spine. I knew immediately I'd @#$%ed up. It was a thoracic back
sprain (I knew cause I've injured the same muscle at least a half
dozen times before) and suddenly I could no longer or lift anything.
The slightest deviation from a perfectly upright posture send jolts
of pain down my entire back.
I should've went to urgent care and
called it, right? No, I borrowed a pain killer from one of the crew
and soldiered on. As bad as it was, I couldn't bring myself to leave
the shop. Not during Christmas week. Not in the heat of battle. Not
that anyone was encouraging me to do so. The store director suggested
I take some ibuprofen and if I needed to lift anything heavy to call
him on the intercom.
 |
| Happier holidays when we had more than one cutter on the block. |
I'll spare the gory details and the
whining (which you're probably already sick of) but the rest of of
the week was some kind of nightmare. My back hurt worse every day.
Business increased exponentially everyday. The Friday before
Christmas we did $14,000 (our average day was 4,000). The crew was
beginning to fray, eyes were turning glassy. We were starting to snap
at each other. On Christmas Eve the rookie manager scheduled one
counter person (the 70 year old woman) him, me and a one legged
clean-up. It began to snow. Everybody knows a Christmas Eve snow is
magical, right? Well I can tell you, it magically drove people to
jump in their SUVs and go shopping...
It was a blood bath. Several times the
jolts of pain to my back drove me to my knees. And just when we
thought the snow was going to slow things down, another wave of
customers would rush in. By the time I got home, I wanted to crawl
into a corner and weep. But I couldn't curl anything. My back was so
trashed I couldn't take off my shoes. Christmas Eve I slept on the
floor of the bedroom. I spent X-mas lying on the floor next to the
tree, alternately staring at the ceiling and dozing. In other words,
it wasn't a whole lot different than any another Christmas.
Oh, and before I left work Christmas
Eve, I looked at next week's schedule. We have a super hot three day
ad scheduled for New Year's Eve weekend. And the new manger is taking
it off...
Happy New Years to me.
