Warning to all:
As a member of store Management, I am very concerned for the well-being of my associates on Black Friday. The occupancy has not been lowered. We will be depending on Shoppertrak to count customers as they come in the building (but this is not even been officially mandated yet.)
Unlike our manual count as before, this doesn’t account for the # of associates in the building.
On top of this, there is no mandate to enforce masks. Be careful... change your mask often, wear gloves, step back from customers that want to enter your personal space. If they are offended; that’s just too bad.
5 replies (most recent on top)
"Do they only hire fat store managers? I've never seen a thin one."
All sizes, really. Lazy and Entitled seem to be the keys to getting the job.
My last store manager hated to see people sitting– be it on chairs, tables, leaning on wrap stands.. whatever. We had to have store meetings in odd locations, like the fitting room aisle in Women's Intimate Apparel because it was discovered that, if we met in the center store Shoe Department, Associates plopped down in the shoe fitting chairs!
This coming from a manager who sat in their office all day, with a refrigerator and microwave and private, executive washroom, and often with the door locked tight.
Recipe for Success!!
Do they only hire fat store managers? I've never seen a thin one.
"First, Belk is a four-letter work. And they spell it wrong. It should be "Blek"!"
Way to wreck my opener, auto-correct! Four-letter WORD!
I got a four-letter word for auto-correct, too..
First, Belk is a four-letter work. And they spell it wrong. It should be "Blek"!
The Covid thing is a new and different beast. If you have to go through this Bleak Friday misery, try to relax and take advantage of any situation, and make the time work for YOU! Whatever it takes to get through the night– breaks, snacks, move around, have a laugh at corporate's expense, whatever. Just be sure to keep yourself safe, sanitized and masked, and keep a distance from the unwashed, unmasked masses. Don't be confrontational but don't take any attitude from anyone who threatens your personal safety. It is not worth it! Believe it or not, you CAN walk away from any situation and your life and health is worth more than the job!
Watch what your store manager does and keep tabs, too, just for fun. See what they get away with and use it to your advantage. Like what happened at my old store a few years ago:
Couple of years ago in, shall we say "Mystery Blek" in SC, our new-that-year store manager sat in her office with a few cohorts for the entire Bleak Friday and enjoyed meals and played cards. We know because we saw them doing it. The four STM's who joined in made trips to the break room when the catered meals came in (2 regular meal refreshes and one breakfast) and LOADED up take-out boxes to hoard in the main office. Store manager took no less than 4 grocery bags full (about 9-10 plates) home afterwards.
They had the best time in that office and we rarely saw them, which was fine since many of us took plenty of un-scheduled breaks which were, strangely, not contested (wonder why?! Hmmm...).
Remember, this was circa 2017, when Bleak Friday started to, well, decline in attendance due to lousy sale fatigue from customers resulting in closing overnight.
The BEST part was going outside after dark for fresh air for, well, one of many 50-minute=15-minute breaks, and looking in the open blinds of the manager's window and watching them play cards. They didn't like being "busted" and the behemoth manager waddles up quite pensively to the blinds and twists them closed, slowly, while we had a great laugh and pointed like that kid from The Simpsons (HA-HA!).
For days afterwards, anytime us associates were near those managers we would make comments like, "I wish I could just sit around, playing cards all day!" and, though you could tell the higher-up elites were irritated, NONE of them said a word about it!
Even if you have to suffer Bleak Friday (I won't this year, for the first time in 14 years!) you cannot take it seriously, for your own sanity. Just keep it safe. Maybe one day people will realize that you don't have to "buy" a good feeling for the end-of-year holidays and Bleak Friday will go away completely.
Retail employees (and all other worker bees) are always on the losing end of policies and management decisions. I think enforcing the mask mandate is a bit above the pay grade of anyone that works in retail. You should not be asked to put your life at risk to babysit people that are too darn lazy to wear a mask and feel that nobody can tell them what to do. I don't know what the answer is, but you can be assured that Black Friday will probably turn out to be Black and Blue Friday and hopefully there will be no incidents of violence.