THE SONIC BOOMER
The struggle is real. Finding good help is nearly impossible.
Let me clarify: ever since the forced incarceration imposed by the pandemic, people have realized how much fun it is to simply sit home, watch TV and eat Doritos. I, myself, enjoy this.
However, I also realize that buying Doritos takes money, and money comes from working. Other people have yet to make this connection and, because of that, I simply cannot find anyone I trust to work in my store. (I loosely define “trust to work” as getting there just before my store opens and staying there until it closes. I also have re-structured my definition of “good help” to be “anyone who can add.”)
The last clerk I hired was almost undefinably bad. The word “disaster” is too kind. Blame my interviewing skills. Blame my stupid willingness to “give her a chance.” Blame my needing someone who could work on Sundays. Whatever.
After five solid days of training by my manager, the first sale this new clerk rang up was for an item priced at $7.50. It was rung into the credit card machine as $750. An honest mistake. I fixed it. Perhaps my presence was making her nervous. I wandered off.
The second sale wasn’t rung in at all. The item cost $15; she took the person’s $20 bill; she handed them $5 out of the register. The customer mentioned that there should probably be some tax on it. Then they (again, the customer) walked her through the way our cash register probably worked. I wandered back. The third sale went well because I hovered over her shoulder like a starving vulture.
Day Two was no better. It began with $16.49 being rung into the credit card machine as $160.49. Half the store’s lights hadn’t been turned on, nor the air conditioning on the south side. She did manage to run the vacuum cleaner, sucking up only one or two paperclips along the way. Reconciling the register at the end of the day was impossible. Nothing had been processed correctly.
I told her I’d figure it out. “You just turn off all the lights except the ones over the counter where I’m working,” I said, pointing out the appropriate switches.
Within two minutes, the lights over my head went dark. I took a deep breath, showed her again which switches not to touch, then went back to my work.
It went dark again.
It is illegal to ask someone (either politely or by screaming in their face), “Have you had a freakin’ stroke?!” Compassion and understanding are the order of the day, whether authentic or expertly feigned in order to avoid a lawsuit.
We opened at 10 a.m. on Day Three. I took over the sales counter and asked her to put out merchandise instead. “The red-tagged items in the top of the cart go in the discount room, and I will take care of the white-tagged items in the bottom of the cart because they are full price items that go elsewhere,” I said.
At 10:45 a.m., the cart came back empty. Evidently everything was on sale now.
At 10:46 a.m., she no longer worked for me. She’s gone, as is my patience, my compassion and the $937.50 it cost me to train her. In addition to being smarter, a lab monkey might have been cheaper.
