u/AccomplishedEagle720

Did anyone else get this email? The first time I got it, I thought it was spam or a fishing attempt. But I got it again today, and it boldly told me I could access a whole $4.25 of my paycheck early, before payday!

Like is this a real thing Michaels is doing now? I didn't get paid today yet and my bank always gets my paycheck on Thursdays, but I did get a reminder email that I could use Chime to get my paycheck. What is going on?

Also, WTF am I going to do with $4.25?? That doesn't even get a soda at a restaurant where I work after tax is applied! This job is such an effing joke. Can't wait to go to the interview I have lined up today. Still retail, but they pay seasonal hires $2 more than what I'm making here.

Does anyone else with disabilities feel like they are being squeezed out of working here? The more tasks get piled onto roles with the same or even less staffing, it seems like it's getting harder and harder for people with disabilities to get accommodated. And because of that, people with disabilities are getting fewer and fewer hours from the payroll pool or getting pushed out in general. Just my district's experience? Or are others seeing it too?

Like, if you used to be a cashier and then they added the credit card and protection plans, okay cool, you're still a cashier, but you're also a sales person pushing these added financial services. Then, they added making balloon arrangements, managing self-checkouts, getting customers their BOPIS orders, and anything else that might be done in the area of the registers. Now you're an FEA and if you can't do any 1 of these tasks for an entire shift, suddenly you can't be an FEA because you don't meet the job requirements. Doesn't matter that you were good at 5/6 of the usual tasks and only needed accommodation for 1 of those things.

Same for other roles in the store, like managers under the restructuring. If you need accommodations on availability, suddenly, bam, you're done. You can't have open availability because of a real doctor-certified condition? You're done being a manager, but hey, you can be a minimum wage part-time employee again, but you'll get like 4 hours a week because you have a disability and someone else does not. WTF is even the point of ADA then?

Most of the people I've worked with in retail (myself included) have some kind of mental or physical handicap that has specifically kept them from having more successful careers. That's the whole point of a minimum wage job. Limited money, limited responsibility. This is literally the bottom of the barrel. Part-time. Minimum wage. Retail. Where else are people with disabilities supposed to work??? Has this company completely lost touch with the reality of who their employee base is??

Supporting people with disabilities is not that hard. Sometimes it's just having an extra person on the floor or scheduling them differently, but with the same number of hours they got before disclosure, so that the people with disabilities can still do their part of the job and be a part of the team. Usually they just have 1 part of their job that gets affected and they can still be really good employees that contribute. Like, this isn't that hard to understand, right? Am I stupid or something?

Okay, hear me out. WARNING: this is going to be an essay.

I think I figured out why the Jonathan Adler collection was such a flop at so many of our stores. Forget about the prices. It's not about the prices. It's about the fact that the people making decisions at this company fundamentally did not (and maybe still do not) understand our customer base.

People who really, really love something in this store will fork out the money for it. Working on the register I've seen people pay full price ($150) for some of those large wonky looking reindeer at Christmas. I've seen people try to charge $250 to their debit card for the giant Easter bunnies, only to go "Oops, not enough in that account. Guess our auto bill pay hit already. Here use this credit card instead."

Our customers are bizarre creatives and people who love the adrenaline hit of seeing tons of cutesy, weird stuff all cluttered together. They love COLOR. They love cute and noisy. Or soft and cuddly and calm. They are toddlers. They are 5 year olds with credit cards looking for the same sugar rush they used to get in a candy store, but instead in a craft store as a mental adrenaline rush from tons of colors and cutesy faces on bunnies, hearts, ghosts, and gingerbread boys and girls. They want stuff with soft, squishable textures to quiet the noise from the outside world. They want the whimsy and freewheeling love of childhood, colors, cute, and sometimes even sheer crazy (yeah, that's why anything sitting on a toilet sells; toilets are funny when you're 5).

What is JA? The exact opposite. It's a boring, bland, grown-up, who-is-your-financial-planner, drab coastal beach house or office where childhood fun goes to die. What about the Safari collection? That half flops every year too. We sell the fake plants after many many months when it goes 60% off. We sell the dorky weird animals and unique colorful trinket stuff early. The drab, boring wall art and ugly pillows? That would always wind up in the DA, overflowing for at least 1-2 months after going 60% off. Same situation. At least we were smart enough to hide that stuff on a sidecounter near the front, but still out of the way of the main attraction.

I've been watching our happy-go-lucky shoppers actively avoid the FMA pad. This stuff is depression fodder for our color-crazed weirdos who love us. It's creepy faces, ugly lines, and unpainted boring ceramic surfaces. Boring. BORING. I cannot stress this enough. This is the exact opposite of a dopamine hit for the people who are attracted to craft stores and the crafting lifestyle. This is a collection for people with cookie-cutter lives, who enjoy soulless recreation because their brains contain vapid-nothingness when they're at home "relaxing." You know what our customer base does to relax? Turn on the tv, multiple podcasts, music, start 5 different colorful projects at the same time and think about 47 different things in their minds. JA is not fun. It is not engaging. It's blah. It's the signal to shut down and tune out. And our customers' brains shut off when they come in here and see that in the most prominent marketing area of our store.

Even color theory points out that darker tones of blue can bring up feelings of sadness, emptiness, or loneliness. Throw in gray for gloom and black for feelings of grief, fear, and finality. There aren't enough pops of color to offset all of that in this collection overall. https://www.colorpsychology.org/blog/sad-colors-which-colors-makes-people-feel-the-saddest/

And what color is most of the JA collection? The color of sadness.

Am I wrong?

(Sorry Jonathan. Our customers are not your customers. Our executives might be, but our day-to-day people across the entire US & Canada? The people actually walking into our stores? Not your people. Different niche.)

It's really cool to see who finds which section "the best." I probably hate sections people love and the opposite is also true, but everyone keeps complaining about fabric and I want to secretly admit that I love fabric!

I love clipping it. I love the way it feels when I smooth it out. I love the way the bolts slide into place next to each other. I know, not a popular opinion. It might make it better if we could use the 3 quilter's pins method they used to do at Joanns and still use at HL and independent quilt shops, but our customers might not be, um, safe, with pins. So I get it. Yes, the table isn't great and it feels like the cutting groove is on the wrong side, but I love folding it up after it's cut and handing a stack of folded fabric and the little checkout slip to the customers. It's so satisfying!

Other favorites: candles, the real ones, in SBA with color striping and all the pretty pretty colors in the party packaging section.