The Great 2023 Office Move

Some years ago, 15 to be exact, I started working from home for a then-rather-unusual company.  I got a laptop after I verified I did have a high-speed internet connection - a cable modem, which wasn't very common back then - and went to work for my last - as of now - IT Employer.

I'd managed to fall into a very lovely desk with typing return, I had built a table to sit behind me for my personal computer, and had a spot for a laptop or three on my desk.  It worked well.  Until that employer ceased to be, anyway, then it became my primary location to job hunt.  And I did that with a vengeance for a few years.  

Then I got out of IT, returned to retail - where one does not often work from home - and did that for six years.  I'm sure I was such a malcontent that my employer then was happy to see me go.  Or perhaps I was one of those people who was just darned reliable and consistent that they really missed me, they just didn't notice.  But who am I kidding.  Retail is one of those jobs that about 99.5% of the people who work there are, let's be honest, replaceable commodities.  That is, nearly anyone with the slightest work ethic, the least bit of personal responsibility, and ten percent of the average brain power possessed by, say, your average family dog, well, you can hang on to the job.  

Mind you, when I started out, I was one of those people - or so my employer believed.  Thus I was put to work.  In mere weeks, I went from 15-20 hours a week to 38-40.  Retail very rarely uses the words "overtime" and "approved" in the same sentence without including words like "God Forbid" or "be fired" or "serious consequences" or the far more common "are you joking?"  However, within a month I had been trained to do product ordering.  This, I thought, was a pretty big jump in responsibility.  Then I started rising in the opinions of my leadership - team leads and managers.  Not too far, though, but there was that week when both of my supervisors needed to take time off for family obligations, so I was ... the guy.  Responsible for doing orders five days that week, amongst other things, then I managed to make that mistake.

The mistake in question being that, during the previous week, I'd been razzing one of my coworkers who had managed, accidentally, to order some 70 cases of a rather slow-moving melon.  An item with a definite shelf life, and not particularly popular.  The week my usual supervisors were gone, I was doing the ordering and ordered 10 cases of the same item.  I, because I was absolutely terrified about screwing up, had gone into the office and printed out the order.  I reviewed it, as we're supposed to, and noticed that the order I'd just submitted for 10 cases had changed to 18.  

This was not horrifying, it happened when the warehouse was particularly overstocked.  It was one of those things where you did a Santa run - you asked for what the guide told you you needed, but then it was your responsibility to make sure you had the minimums, at least, to get through until the next order date.  Then, we got shipments 5 times a week.  No shipments on Thursday or Sunday.  Why, I dunno, because it sure as heck made Fridays and Saturdays brutal, and left the Sunday late-day shoppers at the mercy of the knucklehead who did the order Friday night.  That is, you ordered, then the next afternoon, they'd pack your order onto the truck, it would arrive the following morning - so Monday's order would not arrive until Wednesday.  Which meant a lot of planning.  We had a guide which showed us the average of what we'd sold the week before, and the yearly average, but when it comes to seasonal and trendy things, it's a crapshoot.

Which is exactly what happened when, out of the blue, my 10 cases order, 18 shown for delivery, turned into 108.  Of the same item my co-worker had ordered a few weeks before.  So the inevitable "you trying to out-do me?" jokes flew.

About two weeks later we found out that that item - Cantaloupe melons - had some sort of problem.  If we ordered fewer than 10 cases, we often got none.  If we ordered more than 10, the multiple of those was a random number between 2 and 12.  At least.  Randomly.

But after 9 months in the Produce department, where I'd managed to learn everything from stocking the shelves to producing rather large amounts of cut fruit, my then-scariest manager came up to me and asked if I had, indeed, had experience in fast food.  "Yes, I have.  I started as a grill closer at Wendys and ended up being promoted to management."

"Great" he said, "I need a closer over in the cafe."  Oh, joy.  A little dinky food stand that served hot dogs, pizza, cheese sticks, popcorn, soda, and did a hell of a lot of dishes - 95% manually.  Yeah.  Plus ordering, regularly.

So I headed over there and made it nearly a year, offending some pretty good people, all because the department had gone from fairly well-run and staffed to "down to two people" - two young ladies who were busting their butts to get the job done, getting maybe 2% of the credit for the jobs they did, and managing to keep the place running without half of the help they needed - not just in the behind-counter staff, but in places like "enough hours to clean".  There's an old cliche in the restaurant businesses I've worked in, which goes "time to lean, time to clean."  It completely overlooks the slight "breather break" most of us take after giving 100% for a length of time that pretty much exhausts us.  We lean on our elbows, take a deep breath, and then some manager says "AHA!  CLEAN!"  

So I don't suppose it was much of a shock that I took the first opportunity when the fellow running the meat department asked if I could use more hours, because he was not able to use more hours than I was getting.  My momma didn't raise no dummy, I jumped at the chance.  And spent the next two years in the Meat department, getting a heck of a work out with Turkey season, and a bit more intelligent about my retail career.  I learned that sometimes keeping my big fat mouth shut is helpful.  So I tried that.  

Then along came the opportunity I'd dreaded.  I was getting good hours, but another one of my supervisors asked if I'd be willing to shift departments again, this time, coming with a $2 an hour raise.  As noted previously, I'm no dummy, but the challenge in this move was quadrupled.  I'd move to the Deli, where some of the nastiest, grossest jobs in the building got planted - things like cleaning/prepping the roasting chickens, and etc., more dishes, which had become a problem in the Cafe, because I was allergic to the soap, and it also presented some challenges in working for people who were, to be kind, not the greatest teammates one might want.  

However, I was told by my new manager that, thanks to some flexibility which had come into their scheduling control, I would no longer be required to close at least one shift a week, and could work open, early, and mid shifts exclusively.  So of course I volunteered to assist with closing on things like Christmas Eve, and other holidays, because my children were no longer small, we could postpone our celebrations, as most of my family enjoyed sleeping in anyway.

So we did that shift, and things went well for a while.  Then along came the "hey, we're going to remodel the store" which meant the Deli would be shut down for several months as they rebuilt it, and it was then that another manager approached me, asking me if I'd be willing to be an adult.  Er, 'scuse me?  Well, they needed people who were not afraid to follow the rules.  Boy, did they know me - of course, they should have, since I'd been working there for over five years at that point.  

They had torn down the cafe, and filled it with booze.  That's right.  A Liquor store.  And I got to help open it.  And shortly thereafter, I happened to be the dumb bastard on duty when things got very busy and some fellow chose to place a bottle of Patreon Tequila (however that's spelled) in his pants and leave.

Funny thing the thief did not know - the cameras which had been installed in that part of the store were so high-resolution that the loss prevention team could read the labels of his underwear, he was so kind as to show them.  Mind you, these cameras were some ten feet above this fellow's head, but there were so many that I was told they were able to create a full-up video review of where everyone was at every minute in the store.

Intimidating?  A bit.  But when you're one employee in a room that's about 25x25 feet, one door, and fourteen people, your primary job becomes "get them checked out before we close."  And as that was also a significant part of the job description, it was what I did.  But too many closing shifts, not so many early part of the day shifts, and that was the beginning of the end for me there.

Which is how I was fortunate enough to have one of my part-time co-workers again tell me her employer was hiring, I could do the job, I tossed another resume their way, got the interview, and the job.  

Then came 2020 when I kept the job but lost the office, so started working from home.  Then there was 2022, when the job nearly left me, but I put my work ethic to work, and they decided they wanted to keep me after all.  

Which brings me back to the home office move.  I have to get my stuff from the basement up a flight and a half of stairs to the now-spare bedroom.  It began as my daughter's room, when she still lived with us, then became my son's, and his girlfriends, when her family moved across the continent (the north-to-south way), and she wanted to stay here.  So she stayed with us.  And now they're in their own apartment.  And I get to move into the penthouse office.  With a window.  And a yard view.  Which will remind me I need to mow the lawn.  Which is why my desk will have me facing into the corner.  So I don't get distracted.  

We hope. 

It probably also helps when I hit that publish button up there, rather than leaving this thing to fester in the browser window for almost an entire week.  Been up there four days now.  There's room for improvement, we'll get there.  Eventually.