Day job, part 6 - money hungry...

Dino at a Jamie Oliver restaurant in London...greedy much? 

I was really uncomfortable most of the time as I absolutely didn't trusted the boss and many of the regular employees there. Within 2 weeks I knew they were being less than honest with public money. And soon the boss knew I knew and the situtation grew really akward as I always refused to be bribed.
You see, after 2 weeks in the job there was what they called a "special sale". A big shop brand regularly gave large amount of non edible items they no longer had use for, like items used for their photo catalogue or discontinued items. Bedsheets, cutlery, plates, napkins, stationery, toys, school supplies and all sorts of decoration trinkets. The sale was taking place in the office building, not the shop and I volunteered to help that day (because my 2 other colleagues had already been there long enough to know they didn't want to do that LOL).
My job was to follow the customers, one at a time (like in the shop by the way, because as the boss stated: we have a special public here, you can't trust them). We were repeatedly told that we couldn't choose anything for ourselves until all the regular customers had gone. Like I wanted anything but that's another story.
My boss was at the till. No tickets. Nothing recorded...only the boss writing things down, very randomly, in a spiral notebook...and making up prices as she went. Let's say that several pages were torn out of that notebook...and as the day went by, the pile of stuff behind my boss just grew and grew as she was getting all sorts of junk for herself and her friends (she kept calling them all day). As the look of dispapproval of my face grew as the day went by, she felt she had to tell me several times that she was paying for that...
As I spent the whole day there and have a pretty good memory,  I had a fairly accurate idea of what was left at the end of the day...

Then there was the cash fund of about 60 euros. We were only supposed to count it at the end of the day after counting the day taking. It was locked in the boss's safe every day. When the boss was not there it was always interesting to find someone to open the safe for us. On several occasion we found no one...and had to use our own money as cash fund :/
When I put the money in the till in the morning, I couldn't help but count it...I mean, I did it without thinking much...one day 10 euros were missing...we didn't dare say anything...and put the money back out of our own pocket. Then it happened again with smaller amounts...I refused to put the money back, so we just said we probably had made mistakes when we gave back change. And one day there was 40 euros extra. On 60 euros, it's hard not to notice a  40 euro excess. Wow, we were just a stupid dishonest bunch, how could we make a 40 euro mistake. Because it had to be our fault, right, that 40 euros appeared in the safe overnight.
Let's say we never had any explanation.
A year goes by, and the special sale event is organized again. I am not volunteering this time...but bad luck, the room where it was usually held is not available...so the special sale would be held at the shop. Damn.
Also this time we knew what would be on sale as we had carried the boxes in the locked cellars ourselves. A single worker (not from the shop) was supposed to do that...but there was just too much for one person so he asked us to help. Our boss was less than happy about that...but had no valid reason to refuse.
A few days before the sale, I was in the boss's office when the side-boss (remember, the chick who hated our guts because she hated our boss?) came in and said, "I have noticed a lot of things have gone missing in the cellars, like every year" and left. Boss pretended nothing happened. And indeed, stuff was missing.
The day before the sale, we had a group meeting and the boss told us we had to make at least 4000 euros (like there was anyhing we could do to make people buy more junk)...on the day of the sale, the boss's boss comes in and tells us we have to make 3000 euros. Boss's face remained perfectly blank.
And yes, the spiral notebook was back...and pages went missing again. And she accused us of not only stealing but putting and hiding stuff for ourselves. The shop was tiny and crammed to the brim with stuff...seriously if we had wanted to hide or steal something it would have been soooo easy. After the first day sale, I was so pissed with her that I took the ugliest blanket there was (and that nobody had wanted because it was shit-ugly) and sort of hid it...you know, where I was sure she would see it...and sure enough, on the next day suddenly the blanket was in the pile of stuff she was "buying".

And that time one of my colleagues saw the boss steal 20 euros from the till. My colleague didn't say anything right away but in the afternoon, when she counted the day taking in the office, she said to the boss"here's the money minus the 20 you took earlier". Boss explained it was to test us. Right.

And there were all those shop papers I knew I had filed, lying around, with the numbers obviously tempered with...and the office supplies that were obviously taken from the "special sale cellars" hidden in the boss's shelves...and the stuff she ordered for herself and told everyone that it was for the shop clients  (we couldn't even put aside a pack of paper napkins for the customers...so sure, she would have special orders for some...) . I am still waiting for the money for some of that stuff, like a Tefal baking tray...and the stuff she took "to give Christmas presents to the old people in the retirement home".

There was an alarm in the shop...as the code has never been changed, pretty much everyone in town knew it...Well, the night after all the special sale items had been brought in, the alarm rang in the middle of the night. Usually the workmen boss would be in charge and would go check what happened. Oddly (or not) it's our boss who was informed and went to check...with the help of the big boss (who happens to be our boss's BF, if you remember). And the next morning, the big boss came in our boss's office when we were all there (I had never seen her there before) and exclaimed "How odd that alarm went off in the middle of the night!"

Read part   part 1 here
                   part 2 here
                   part 3 here
                  part  4 here
                  part 5 here

Day job- Part 3- of money and rules and pointless things

I woke up like that one morning...

As much as I hated the whole "atmosphere" of my job, I still enjoyed getting out of the house and the actual "shop" part of it. And the money of course. It paid really well. Unrealistically well...my love of money made me hang in there.
One of  my 2 colleagues didn't share that money love and one day she just didn't show up for work.  That is really how toxic the place is, if honesty and decency are core values for you. When she dropped by to say hello a year later, she was still  crying over her experience.

Preposterous job and rules...
The boss never explained anything to me, my colleagues did. And it had been that way for many many years...so the actual rules and ways the shop should be run were a looooong way off. You know, like that game you play when the first person comes with a sentence, repeats it in the ear of the next player and so on and at the end the sentence is completely different.
Not that it mattered much as it was just a pretend shop where we were getting to actually sell stuff.

As I pointed out earlier, the shop was located across the parking lot from the main office. Still we didn't have a phone landline. Nor the Internet. And we were not supposed to have our mobiles either. But the boss and other people kept calling us on our mobiles...as there was no landline. We were also supposed to call them in case of problem. As long we were not seen in public using our phone, I imagine...After having been told we were not allowed to use our phone during work hours one time too many, one day we just stopped answering when the boss called. After 20 minutes, a furious banshee burst into the shop...WHY IS NO ONE ANSWERING?
Imagine our fake sheepish answer.

Cleaning rules were also a bit odd . We had weekly sheets with all the tasks. And then there were 2-week sheets, monthly sheets and semester sheets. Only, we always got all the sheets every week. Also, the tasks were pretty redundant as they were poorly thought out. Had we followed the sheets, we would have cleaned the same places 3 times on the same day and some other things would have never been cleaned.
There was a binder with all the cleaning instructions, which product to use for which task.
Do I need to point out that the boss had no idea what product had to be used for the different tasks? Once she had my colleague clean the floor with the toilet product.
We were also supposed to clean the walls and ceilings. Without a ladder. The main shop and entry  had 3 meter+ high walls. Maybe we were training for the circus too?

Oh and that time the boss decided we'd give free frozen meat. Two large antique filthy freezers were brought in. "Clean them!" she said. My young skinny colleague ended up inside the freezers as we were all too short to clean the bottom. We didn't have any actual cleaning brush to scrub so we used the floor broom..yeah, gross...really really gross...oh, and we also used the toilet cleaning product as it was the only one strong enough to remove the antique grime. It is a bit sad to think those 2 dirty freezers were coming from a retirement home, and had been used that filthy until recently.

You can read  part 1 here
                      part 2 here

Day Job Part1

Whiling away the hours...

When I got offered that full time job 5 minutes away from home in late 2016, I seriously couldn't refuse. I needed/wanted the money,and well, in the Belgian job market it was quite unexpected. Of course I knew it would be way below my skills and education but I sincerely didn't mind. I felt a bit guilty  because that position was usually for people without high school education, but as I just said, job market is so bad, even those types of jobs are being taken by people with higher education.
So, there...I was going to work in a "social shop". A shop for people with very low income where food is cheaper and where you can also get free European Union aid.
I, very naively, thought it would be like any small grocery shops. Ha ha ha, right, a shop run by the Belgian administration.
Day one. When I arrived on the first day I was told that my direct boss and 2 colleagues were absent that day...and that  a former worker had been called back and was going to guide me through day one.
OK. Fine. A nice Polish girl with medium knowldedge of French and... 8-month pregnant.
Second surprise, the shop is located in another building...across the parking lot from the main offices...and  we work there unsupervised. OK.
The shop itself was the third surprise. It was an old grand house with stairs everywhere, turned into a shop on the ground floor and flats on the other levels. Though it was clean, the whole place looked kind of decrepit...and not suited to be a shop. To get to the storage room you had to go down 2 high steps and then up 2 higher still steps...so practical when you're carrying boxes...and to get the stuff in that room to start with...well, muscles required as there was no way a truck, nor a car, not even a cart could come near the building.
The main shopping space had super high ceiling, was lit by ancient neon tubes...and had a large fridge dating back to the disco era...and it was barely...staying alive...staying alive. When it turned on, the noise would make everything vibrate and the electric tension would drop in the whole building. New tennants above the shop always came to check what was making that horrendous noise.

Shop was only opened in the morning and  the afternoons were for re-stocking and cleaning.
The morning went by very slowly...the afternoon was even worse as there was nothing left in the storage room and cleaning was not really necessary after our 5 clients.

What I learned on my first day:
(Imagine the Polish accent) :"You never count the till money here, but we always count the till money here" and "we cannot have lunch in this building  but we usually have lunch here".
Fine, I'm flexible  😹 I was now officially a civil servant!

To be continued....