Let me take you on a little journey/story of the last 4 weeks of my life. Beware it’s a long wild ride that I probably should have jumped off of but I didn’t.
I want to preface this I have never been a shift lead or manager in my life. My retail life has always been low man on the pole but I like it there. It’s a slush job, extra money when I need it during low seasons of income.
I was happily a cashier of 3 months with this truck stop. It’s my second job and while I’m getting told I’m doing great, I’m just chilling like a clam at mid-tide. Happy, but not ambitious. Just there.
Well I had a fun experience. I came in for my first overnight shift to “help out”. I get there and ask what register one on and who the manager that gets to teach me overnights is. Instead of answering the GM hands me a manger key card, a set of shift lead keys and a quickly written checklist of duties. She then tells me “end of day has been completed, I’ll teach you that later as Night Shift usually does it. I’ll be awake a few more hours, here’s my cell if you need any advice. You’re overnight shift lead now.” Then she just leaves, looking like she is escaping before I can say no. I’m silently freaking out. I have an anxiety disorder I have hidden very well the last 3 months but it’s in full flare now.
I walk over to the gas side praying its the girl who always works overnights and can practically run the shift alone. Because she can train me and be cashier since I’m apparently shift lead now. I then learn my clerk is the guy who started last week and has never worked an overnight shift before. He also can barely handle himself on a shift with 3 clerks and he is the only clerk with me for the shift.
A few hours pass of just trying to keep the store from burning down while slowly picking through what the hasty checklist says plus common sense (overnights probably does all the deep cleaning right). I’m just trying to maintain because the manager quickly put her phone on silent after she left and is no contact.
Im mopping, trying to stay calm both for my clerk who has zero clue how new I am or that I am NOT a trained shift lead and customers in the store when I notice someone come in with a dolly. Apparently it’s truck night and the driver and unloader are looking at me for direction. BTW I’ve always been off on truck day so I have zero idea where it’s supposed to be unloaded.
I navigate that by asking the driver and unloader to explain how this typically works, and spending a frantic 40 minutes in the cluttered office looking for anything that might have some direction and finding a crumpled page in the back of an old freight binder that kinda explains how to check it in and what paperwork needs done.
After navigating all of that, and completing the “checklist” and counting down the seconds before someone comes to relieve me, who is late BTW, i think it’s time to go home and reevaluate my life right? Nope now my relief wants to know why nothing on this other checklist that I know zip about, was never shown, and no one mentioned was done.
After 4 weeks of floundering on my shift I’ve finally got this figured out by tearing apart the office and finding the training binders and asking everyone I relieve and who relieves me what my duties are and compiling the completely different lists into what is most likely an accurate list. I’m feeling pretty confident and then yesterday I learned I should have had 4 WEEKS OF TRAINING AND A SHADOW WEEK WHERE I RUN SHIFT WITH A SHADOW TO HELP. So in exchange I asked for a couple days to make sure I’m doing this right. The answer? Your doing fine you don’t need any additional training. WHAT TRAINING?!
What did I do in a past life to deserve this? BTW it was a whooping $1 raise. Where do I go from here?