Famous Last Words.

The other night one of my co-workers was unhappy with his job assignment. He was assigned to work in pets. (Hi Caron.) He had been working there for a couple of years and had been requesting to work somewhere else. The previous week they had been moving him around but he was needed in pets that night. He told the manager "I am not working pets. Deal with it." Anybody care to guess how they dealt with it?

He was not one of the most popular people we had, always complaining about everything. It couldn't be proved, but food would disappear from the employees refrigerator on nights he worked. We butted heads one night. I was working in frozen foods and was pulling pallets out of the freezer so I could separate them to make stocking easier. I had two carts sitting outside the freezer to put cases on. While I was busy he came and took one of my carts. I caught up with him before he got very far. I grabbed a hold of the cart and told him that I needed that. His response was you don't need two. Actually I could have used three but was making due with two. I told him I needed it so I didn't have to keep pulling the pallet in and out of the freezer. He told me if I didn't let go he was going to management. I didn't say anything but kept a firm grip on the cart. When he realized I wasn't going to let go he walked away. Common courtesy would have been to ask, but that wasn't his style. I do not like confrontations, but I am not going to back down when I am right. After that he never messed with me again.

My attitude on working is I am there all night and I will go wherever they need me. According to my schedule Thursday, Friday and Saturday I work in dairy, Sunday and Monday in frozen foods. On Saturday night there are two of us scheduled for dairy. If the truck is small, which it usually is, I am put in grocery. Last Saturday I worked aisle 3, which is coffee, tea, and jelly and aisle 11, which is crackers and cookies. I have worked every aisle in grocery so it really doesn't matter where they put me. I have not worked a lot on the general merchandise side but I have worked in automotive, furniture, sporting goods, toys, pharmacy, electronics and infants. There is no difference in stocking general merchandise than there is grocery. You take it out of a box and put it on a shelf. It is not rocket science, simply retail. As long as they give me a check every two weeks, I will work where they need me.

Thursday night I was working with a new guy, but I don't look for him to be around long. We were working in dairy and he put out some yogurt. He put it on the shelf backwards. I asked him how was the customer supposed to know what it was. He told me they could read the shelf label. I told him the store manager would object to that. He gave me a look that told me he was going to it his way no matter what.

I am going to close with my favorite famous last words story. During the Civil War at Spotsylvania Union General John Sedgewick was making fun of his troops as they were ducking from gunfire. He told them the Confederates couldn't hit an elephant at that distance. Unfortunately for him there weren't aiming for elephants. He was killed shortly after saying that.