I wrote a lil excerpt of my horrible Wednesday in another thread, but I'm going to get it out in the open in a blog entry, because it's not healthy to keep stuff like this bottled inside. Hopefully y'all can take something from my horrible experience, and I don't know, be a better consumer, or maybe understand what goes on behind the scenes of a retail establishment.

On Wednesday morning I opened. In my area I have 6 registers to open, plus a master till, so technically, 7. I was told by my assistant manager that he already opened 3 tills, and I just had to open the remaining ones. I figured I could trust him, right? Nope. After using some of the tills, I began to realize that the ones he had opened, were technically not really opened & sorted correctly, they had the money in there, but not in the right places, and the master till wasn't counted out, & signed like it should have been.

I originally had another person that was going to stay back there with me, but he was pulled for the front registers. So, all by myself. As soon as the doors opened at 10:00am, I was busy. Kept calling for back up because I had a line of people. My limit is 3 people, as soon as there are 3 people waiting in line, I have to call. There was ALWAYS at least 3 people in line.

And I'm a customer service desk associate...so I was dealing with ringing people up, returns, exchanges, looking up merchandise on the website, placing catalogue orders, signing people up to credit applications, looking up their info on the computer, calling a # to find their credit information, answering the phones, trying to make announcements over the loud speaker, talking on the walkie, and a bunch of other *goodies*.

My shift was originally from 9:30 am til 6:30 pm, well, come to find out, the girl who was supposed to work the closing shift, calls in sick. The guy that was helping me out, (but not really helping me out because he wasn't always there), was working on his day off, so he already was doing a lot more than what he's being asked to do....and me were the only ones who could work in our area. He left at 7pm, and I ended up working the closing shift.

I worked 12.12 hours on Wed., took a 2 hour lunch, and 2 fifteen minute breaks (although I think I should've taken additional breaks to pace myself thru-out the day). It was awful. On top of that, I'm not allowed to have any water bottles behind the register, and my throat was sore, hurt, and I had to somehow escape for a break to get a drink of water. And all this is NOT worth the money I'm making an hour.

I need water, at least, to continue to speak w/ the customers, and be friendly, and there, and spend time with each individual person, and be positive, and breathe, I need some kind of refreshment back there. Even when I worked at Walmart, I was allowed water with me at the register, and I'm at a higher quality retailer than that now, you would think we could have water. I'm totally going to bring it up to somebody that I need water back there, especially if I'm by myself I can't leave the counter.

We closed at 10pm, however I didn't leave until quarter to midnight because I had to close down all 7 of my registers. What a night, I'm hoping to NEVER again work a double shift like that, not for a long time anyways.