was headed down mulford last night around 9 pm and this light for newburg was completely blocked off by cops, fire trucks, etc. tried looking on news sites for what happened but didn’t find anything, call me nosey but what was up with that?
I’m so burnt out and I feel like a crybaby. I work retail like many people do, and scheduling has been a nightmare. I’ve worked a lot of retail jobs in my time, but none of them have truly run me as ragged as this. I work every single Sunday, and it is RARE that I’m not the open to close manager. The amount of Sunday’s I’ve had off for reasons that weren’t needed are probably less than 50 in the two years I’ve been at this store. I also get scheduled 6 days in a row often, and it’s split between two weeks so I don’t even see any benefits from it even if there were any. A few weeks ago I was made to work EIGHT days in a row because, what do you know, putting me on for six days really screws everyone over when a neighboring store suddenly needs help for coverage and I’m the only one off and available to do it. Six days at my store, one working at the other one, then back to my own. One of my coworkers was sweet and kind enough to offer me that Saturday off so I could have two days in a row to clean my goddamn house and spend some time with my cat. I don’t want to blame my mental illnesses for anything cause that tweet of “god you people can’t do ANYTHING” haunts me, but I struggle more than some do with having the drive to work all day with your average customer, then come home and take care of myself. I barely scrounge up enough for food, make sure my cat has everything she needs and is happy, then zone out in bed while trying to do any of my laptop hobbies. And I don’t know what’s worse, the busy days where I have to drain my social battery dry customer servicing, or the slow days where I’m literally just wandering around the floor trying to find ANYTHING to do for 7-8 hours. By my day off, I’m exhausted with an apartment to clean and dishes and shopping to do and barely any energy to do it and jack shit for money, really.
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and I’m her only kid who doesn’t live at home so I don’t get to just be like “yeah I’m spending time with you Ma! That’s your gift!” I actually have to make an effort to go and see her, and since I’m very close with my Mom I wanted to take her out to lunch or something this year. SO because I know I’m ALWAYS going to be scheduled on Sundays (not a requirement btw and there’s four of us managers,) I came to my SM and asked if I could be off that day. After she QUESTIONED WHY? I watched her with my own two contact lensed eyes change the schedule and take me off. A few days later, one of the other managers who does the schedule was like, “hey look dude, I have you the Sundays for the 17th and 24th off! Yay!” because it is a KNOWN thing around my store that I’m tired of this. Then, they flip back to the schedule for next week, and wouldn’t you fucking know, I’m BACK on for mother’s day. I was confused and slightly pissed and made a comment that I had already made plans with my mom that day, already thinking in my head about how I could push them back to after I got off work and blah blah but no, the other manager calls my SM over and is like “why did you do that? They asked you for Mother’s Day directly.” SM tries to claim they forgot, I called them out and said “no, I watched you change me and another manager, you changed it back afterwards.”
All of this leads up to just today. SM sends a text in our managers group, “how did I end up with four Sundays/weekends in a row?” Give me a fucking break. I do this EVERY week when SM does the schedule!! It’s only when the other manager does it do I ever get scheduled fairly! And I know that if I tried doing it myself (which I am fully capable of even though SM keeps saying she wants me to “learn how”,) my shit would get changed and revised anyway.
I’d like to stress that I CAN do the work. I come in, I put my mask on, I get what needs to be done completed. My work ethic is something my dad has always been proudest of, which means a lot to me because he’s been a hard worker all his life. But I just don’t want to have to do this every fucking week. It makes me want to be less of a hard worker and make myself less valuable. I want to have a life outside of my store and enjoy things. In the three months my boyfriend and I have been together, we have had ONE full day where we were both off and free and we tried cramming basically everything we’ve wanted to experience together into one day. I don’t think I’d be able to do this mentally without his support, he helps me clean up when he comes over and walks the trash out for me and is generally a great addition to my support system. I also had to tug his leash a little when SM started getting way too comfortable with her “jokes” about me. She’s called me a whore and said I looked like shit before and when I vented to him, he didn’t take it very lightly. That turned into something else all in itself, resulting in SM crying to me about how “I don’t see you as lesser than me because you’re younger than me, our generations have different senses of humor” and me basically trying to make HER feel better for insulting me.
If anything, at least I haven’t fully cried about it. Yeah I feel like a cry baby and like I’m overreacting about all of this, but I am still feeling very angry and frustrated especially after today. My whole day off is now going to be spent ruminating on this. Everyone has their own limits and I’ve talked to some family/friends about it and they agree with me that mine are getting stretched a bit thin. I’ve been wanting to maybe discuss these things with my district manager, but she’s a bit of a corporate snake type and a little untrustworthy so I’m not sure how that would go. It’s just a bunch of little issues that are adding up fast and bringing me to my boiling point, I guess. But I know because I am how I am, and my mother raised a complainer and not a quitter, I’ll keep going in and doing my little tasks and managing my little associates to try and pay my rent, bills, etc. no matter how burnt out I am cause that’s just life and the world doesn’t stop spinning because you’re having a rough patch.