Horrendous and hellacious

One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. That many cashier called off yesterday. Another couple were sent home for coming in on their days off. At one point, we only had 13 of the 23 registers open, plus just two of four up at Customer Service. No one showed up for Layaway. That crashing sound was the walls of Wal-Mart coming down around our ears.

Two supervisors had to come off the floor to work the service desk. I went through $1,500 in cash Sunday, and gave back more than $2,000 in total refunds. I had more than 100 customers. At one point, they tried to throw me on a register and I flat-out refused. I only got a half-hour lunch and had to go right back on the service desk. Basically, I worked 10 hours with just a half-hour lunch. I was so tired at the end of the day that I was barely able to count my money and drive home. I slept from 5:30 p.m. to 4 a.m. and woke up feeling like crap.

I can barely begin to process how awful it was yesterday. The managers started getting grumpy at us because we couldn't open more registers. What can you do? You can't magic bodies up out of thin air! Two supervisors were pinned down at the service desk, just trying to keep it from being a total disaster. Another was running the floor. The fourth one was training a girl in Layaway just so we'd have a warm body back there.

Layaway. Ughh. Five people trained for Layaway and not a single soul was there. I had to go back there twice to sort out problems. I pity that anyone that just gets shoved into that mess. I had to go back into the shelves and search for someone's packages. And the computer system might as well be in Braille for all the good it does to help.

Honestly, if I was a manager, I'd tell those people. If you don't want to show up on Sunday (they don't want to come in, because they know it is going to be busy), then don't bother coming in on Monday or the rest of week either!