Snoskred - Life in the Country

In my work life, I’ve had to work for people who weren’t related to me from time to time. Working in family businesses does a couple of things for you.

- You tend to work a lot harder overall, because you’ve got a personal stake in the outcome
- You generally trust the people you’re working with because they are family
- You get out of the habit of watching your back because you feel (right or wrong) that your family has it covered for you.

I started out working for family when I was 13. That continued until I was 20, when the family business was sold. A manager who was not related to me was put in. I soon found he was a smarmy evil person only interested in career advancement. I was sent into the head office for 6 weeks, then sent back to my old store where he was now the manager. My first Saturday working for him, he sent me home to get changed. At head office, the staff were all told to wear jeans and a t-shirt for weekend trading, to make the customers feel more at home. He did not believe in this view. I returned dressed like I was about to take over the Presidency of the USA. And I took my time about it, because he’d made me very angry.

Working for him was not very much fun. He was the biggest ass kisser I ever met to anyone above him but the staff below he treated like dirt. He forgot the rule of do what you’re told.. He was fired soon after I told head office about the Saturday thing - several months later during a training session. I actually was kind of joking about it, but I’d made very good friends with the main boss and he had sent out a memo about this Saturday thing stating the dress code, and he was NOT happy with this manager going against his express wishes.

The second boss I had who wasn’t family didn’t know who I was when he hired me. My Dad had actually given *his* Dad a start in the industry. After sitting down and filling out the paperwork, I thanked him for hiring me even though I was the daughter of… The look on his face was horror. He said “Excuse me” and ran off to call his Dad right away. When he came back he had clearly been told that he couldn’t fire me having just hired me, so he was all nice again. He’d already made the decision to keep me on a couple of weeks then get rid of me. Two weeks later, I was politely shown the door. Two months later, his store figures were terrible, and he was replaced by head office with a new person not related to him in any way. He ended up going back to his Dad’s store with his tail between his legs.

What he didn’t know was, I was always loyal to my employer, just like I was loyal to any family employer. I think that was the major concern - I had several family members working for opposition stores. Whether he thought I was going to “steal” information or something, I don’t know but he misjudged me completely and karma bit him in the ass for acting like an asshole, not just to me but to many other people.

I wasn’t out of work for long. The next place I went to was a mobile phone store. I’d always sold mobile phones and had in fact won many awards from Telstra (our major phone company) for being mystery shopped in the past. The store I went to work for was a Telstra store. There’s about 200 of them in this country, they’re everywhere. This one was owned by a family business but they also had several other Telstra stores around the country, so I was in a store with a manager.

Managers can be excellent, or not. This one seemed to think every day was time for him to take time off without ever telling anyone where he was going. He’d open the store in the morning and then go out for coffee and a cigarette. That generally took an hour, putting him back in the store around 10am, where he would get on the phone and sound intelligent for all of 15 minutes, at which point he would duck out for morning tea coffee and a cigarette. This event usually lasted between 1-2 hours, at which point it was time for lunch. Lunch led into afternoon tea. He’d return to the store about 5pm for closing and general staff chit chat. By the end of the day he would have spent maybe 2 hours in the store, if we were lucky.

I worked pretty hard there, and the deal was you worked for three months full time on probation without being paid your commission. When they ended your probation, you were back paid all the commission. I had racked up a princely sum (especially for mobile phone sales, where you get maybe $5 per phone) which was enough to put a deposit on a house. Over $10,000.

The day came for the ending of the probation, and I was told that things weren’t working out, and they would not be employing me further. I felt like I had been hit with a truck. What was worse, was the guy LIED, saying he’d discussed issues with me. He’d barely discussed the *weather* with me, ever. He was never in the store long enough! I was so angry. He told me I was no good at my job blah blah blah. I left completely shattered.

However I did get a nice new shiny job earning a lot more $$$ working for Telstra who at the time were an excellent employer. He did not fare so well. The family behind the business decided to sell all their stores except the one he was in. They moved their head office into that store. That guy can’t even go to the toilet without it being noted now. No all day long coffee breaks, no long lunches, and he has to actually work!

Some months later a very good friend of mine at Telstra went to work for the same company. I warned him and told him what happened to me, in fact I begged him not to go there. He was a fantastic salesperson and worth much more than they would pay him. After three months, he was also told seeya later, he got in touch with me, we found out this was actually something they did to a LOT of people in order to make more money. My friend reported them, last I heard they were being investigated for several things. I should have sued to get that commission. He did get his, after taking them to court.

I do believe that Karma does come back to bite people in the rear eventually. Sometimes it might not be in this lifetime. I’ve not been a perfect person in my life and I have seen the Karma due to me actually come to me in some of the things I have been through.

I really wish that more of us explained the concept of Karma to our kids, because maybe there would be a little less unpleasantness, a little less bullying, a little less of the things that go on in school. Many of the people who were unpleasant to me in school have seen that Karma come back to them and I am sure if they knew then what they know now.. they would have chosen a different path. I would have chosen differently myself.

Well, it’s Christmas and all. Tonight the ex-workplace had their Christmas function. Seeing as the other half still works there, he went, and of course my parents work there, so they went. I was left at home to contemplate my navel.

While doing so, I realised I’m really not mad anymore at the evil cows. I guess absence makes the heart grow less angry, or something. However, I do feel that I never got to have my say on things, and that maybe an idea might be to send Christmas Cards. Not like being all nasty and in your face and stuff, but more along the lines of “I’ve forgiven you and all, but one day Karma is going to be all over your ass for the way you acted, not just towards me but towards others, too and I hope that when it happens you’re the only one hurt by it and not your friends and family”.

Because I’ll be honest with you all. My Dad was not sent here to sort out this store because everything was all rosy. My Dad was sent here because the store used to turn over approximately 13 million a year, and it was down to about 2 million. That is one hell of a drop. Why it happened has been easy to work out - the former manager was never in the store, he preferred to spend his time at a local coffee shop and restaurant, and he trusted the staff (yes, this was a huge mistake on his part) to take care of things in his absence. He thought they cared - he was wrong. All they cared about was earning 50 grand a year to sit on their ass and chat with each other.

Many of the staff were on guaranteed salaries, they made up their own rosters (which involved working one weekend out of four, they now work three out of four) and they would order in stock for customers without taking any kind of deposit, and customers would just cancel anytime they liked, and the stock would stay out the back unsold. The stores are charged a fee by head office for old stock, and this alone was costing the store a fortune. There were 31 fridges out there which were special orders - as in, the customer asked specifically for the hinge to be on the other side, and that is done before the fridge is shipped to the store. There was a lot of stock that was over 2 years old. The place was a real mess.

While the former manager has to take his share of the blame for this disaster, to be honest a fair amount of the blame has to be given to the staff who were in the store as well. Realistically they screwed him over, and now they’re mad because they’ve got a reward (their Karma) for doing it - a new manager who they don’t like too much. A manager who has turned up and stopped their guaranteed extra $250AUD (yes, I’m not joking) a week. A manager who expects them to actually *earn* their $50,000 a year salaries. A manager who wants them to work when they are at work. Shock horror, how disgraceful! Yeah that new manager is a real asshole, yano?

That’s what is called Karma. That is how things work in the world. And for how those bitches in that workplace treated me, there is to be another karma, which will come to them as a surprise possibly years down the track. For the negative vibe they have put out there in their dealings with me will come back to them - and they will eventually pay the price for how they have acted. Who knows what that Karma is going to be?

I have let it go, I have to. I can’t hold this hurt and anger inside of me anymore. And I sort of feel like a part of doing that, something that might be helpful to me, would be to write them a card. It would be closure on my part, at least, and it might cause them to think about what they have done. So what do you think? I’ll have to find the right way of wording it, of course. Something like -

In science, they say that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In general life, this is known as Karma. I am a firm believer that what you put out there will come back to you eventually. I just hope that in your case, when that happens, it is yourself, and not someone else that you love, ie friends and family, who ends up getting hurt.

There was no need to treat me the way that you did. I still have no idea why you did it. It no longer matters, really. I can’t hold onto the hate, hurt and anger I feel about that, so I have forgiven you. I need to do that for me. I also need to express that my hope is when Karma does deal with you, it is kinder to you than you have been to me.

So what would you think about me sending something like that? Too nasty? My Mother will absolutely hate it, she will be so mad if I do it, but realistically I feel like it is something I need to do..

I have never really truly hated anyone in my life time. Honest, I am serious when I say that. I’ve disliked people before, but I reckon that is entirely different to hating someone. However, I may be on the verge or possibly have even crossed over into hating someone since moving here.
I work for my parents. They own the business. On top of that, my partner works there as well. There are 18 salespeople employed by them. I adore a couple of them, like many of them, I tolerate (barely) two of them, and I cannot stand one of them. She has never been polite or civil to me since I started working there - I think she is jealous. Probably thinks there’s favouritism coming my way, or something. That’s completely not true. But she’s over 40, has 2 or 3 kids (I don’t know, she’s never talked to me about anything at all) and she acts like a little kid most of the time. She was living with a 22 year old guy but he dumped her a few months ago and so now she’s clearly feeling old, and therefore is on a campaign to prove she is NOT old.

The biggest problem I have with her is, she doesn’t do much work during work hours. I have never seen anyone avoid work and customers like she does. Yet, she falls ass backward into sales - read steals them from other salespeople having a day off and someone always is - which makes it look like she’s actually doing work.

The second biggest problem I have is that she has no respect for herself, and then by extension for her employer. She washes her hair ONCE a week. That’s just plain disgusting in my opinion. She goes out to pubs and smoky environments, and some days her hair stinks like you wouldn’t believe. Plus, she doesn’t BRUSH it and it is curly, she just puts it up into a ponytail and all you see is KNOTS and omg it makes me feel sick to think about customers being exposed to that. Like at the very least, PUT IT INTO A BUN so that nobody can notice you are a filthy ho, ok?

So she’s just come back from a week’s holidays, and she went to a country where labor is very cheap, so she got them to plait her hair into those stupid corn-row type things. Her hair is long, it reaches her butt in these plaits. She came back Monday and it is now Friday, and she is still wearing it that way. She hasn’t washed it, you can still smell the incense from the country she went to, as well as a lot of cigarette smoke. It reeks. It is unpleasant to be near her. It is now starting to go like dreadlocks.

If I have to sit here and watch that hair turn into dreadlocks, someone will have to stop me from punching her until she passes out, and then cutting those things off with scissors. EWW! I’d have to wash my hands for like 6 hours afterwards, though.

And she actually said to a customer in front of me that she only washed her hair once a week because it “makes the color last heaps longer” - hello, you are being paid over $50,000 a year. GO AND GET IT DYED AGAIN! It’s not expensive! The local hairdresser does it for $38 - and that’s for long hair!

I have never worked with a skanky ho before. I have worked with bitches. She combines the two into a wonderful package. Is it nasty to wish for unpleasant things to happen to her? Probably it is, and probably it is bad Karma for me to do it, but I must admit I have.

On a positive note, she has the weekend off, and I only have to work tomorrow and then I have three days off.. It’s so nice when she’s not there.