Legitimately though, every time my store manager with ZERO framing experience fills in to take a framing order… there’s always something wrong with it. She will get measurements entirely wrong — I don’t think there’s ever been a time I haven’t had to correct her measurements. Gods help us if she ordered the frame pieces already to “get ahead of schedule” — they will be wrong, they will need to be re-ordered, the customer will wait even longer for their framing.
She will accept orders that legitimately cannot be mounted. From pre-stretched cheap or withered canvases, to sloppy collage pieces with glue everywhere but the correct places, to mold-riddled documents that are better off classified as garbage and thrown out in their rotted and ill-preserved state.
She will say “yes” just to get the customer done and out of the store. In a way I get it — she has no experience and therefore has next to no idea what can or cannot be mounted and framed — or perhaps I should say mounted and framed WELL, because good lord, the orders I’ve had to flub that looked like sloppy garbage because THEY WERE NOT GOOD CANDIDATES FOR FRAMING have been downright embarrassing. At least the WOULD be, if I cared about my performance here, but that went out the window ages ago.
Still, it’s made OUR job in framing harder and makes US look bad. Never mind the fact it seems Michael’s WANTS US to fail anyway — we literally have to make the executive decision to close Framing for an entire day if no one in framing is scheduled. Our equipment every single order relies on for completion is dulled or falling apart. We have a whopping two— yes, JUST TWO drill bits dedicated our department, to give you a little taste of how seemingly bleak and barren things have gotten for Framing.
Unfortunately, even with closing the department for the day, that doesn’t stop my “Yes woman” of a manager from taking orders anyway. I can’t even begin to tell you how many “OOPS!” frames have filled our shop racks now.
Have I mentioned how much I hate working here? The knowledge of framing is the only takeaway I’m getting — and even THAT is barebones bullshit, but hey, I’ll keep at it until a position at a respectable small business framer opens up or something.
Get something of a real apprenticeship going so I can finally flip a middle finger to this “business” that keeps trying to sabotage its own employees.
TL;DR: If you know nothing of framing, you shouldn’t be accepting framing orders. Leave it to the people who actually frame — or try to learn framing yourself first. (Spoilers: My manager makes no effort to learn framing. I think Michael’s siphoned out her ability to care about doing things correctly — and you know what? That’s not even her fault.)