.jpg)
Well, I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time
It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man
'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man
"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson
I had survived, barely, six months of excruciating uncertainty, but it wasn't the only problem, however. Tim, the assistant store director, had applied for an ASD position and was moving to the Super Saver at 48th & O. Right around the holidays. If I remember correctly I was able to keep him for Thanksgiving, but he would be gone by Christmas. I had to hire and train a new ASD. Right around this time Susie's doctor found a tumor in her eye and had to have surgery to remove it. While she was in Iowa City recovering from surgery I had to drive back to Lincoln to conduct interviews. I don't recall who was handling HR duties at the time, but I had that person set up interviews, one after the other, on Saturday. I believe I interviewed eight or nine candidates. Like HR Coordinators, Assistant Store Director openings usually attracted people with little to no qualifications for the job, mainly because no one really knew what they did. Of all the people I interviewed I considered two to be qualified. One was Todd, my Night Manager, but he declined after I offered him the position (why do people do that?). My second choice was Jamie, who had been the assistant grocery manager when I was at Pine Lake.
Jamie was very rough around the edges. There had been several complaints about him from other employees, but Nick, our old store director, and I always tried to see beyond the gruff exterior -- he was a misfit, just like the rest of my crew! But I remembered how Jamie was able to at Pine Lake motivate the grocery clerks, who are typically the laziest bunch of anyone in any store. How I could always count on him to follow through on assignments and come up with out-of-the-box solutions to problems. Since the position would combine that of grocery manager, I thought, given his grocery experience, that he'd be ideal. I sold the idea of promoting Jamie to my supervisor, District Manager Scott Ruth, who was on board, but when I checked with corporate HR about what pay rate he could be offered, they reacted as if I was planning on hiring Satan...or Pete Hegseth. Ah yes...Jamie had the HR target on his back. Around the same time the assistant store director at 66th & O Russ's had quit suddenly -- remember, we're right around the holidays. Tim (not my former ASD, but the Tim who turned down my offer the previous year to be Front End Manager/Human Resources Coordinator) was helping out and somehow impressed Scott Ruth, who recommended to me that we bring him on board as ASD, which we soon did. The problem was that Tim has absolutely no experience in grocery. We sent him out to a few other stores to get trained by experienced grocery managers and ASDs, but he was still pretty green going into Christmas week. Looks like it's time for another Pat Raybould story.
It was probably about a week before Christmas, on a Sunday. I had decided that after working with Tim in the morning I would turn him loose to manage the store solo for the first time that the afternoon. I gave him a to-do list, which included restocking the Christmas candy display. About 30 minutes after I left, Pat showed up. Without checking in with Tim he found a pallet of Christmas candy in the back room and brought it out to the holiday aisle. He then spent some time berating Tim for the display not being full. Then he began the great fruitcake fruit hunt. For those who don't make their own fruitcake, grocery stores stock the dried cherries, pineapple, apricots and citron ( nobody really knows what citron is, but we carried it anyway), but they hardly sell any. You usually can find a stack of it marked down in January. If you sold out you considered yourself lucky and didn't try to procure any more. Pat wandered over to the Christmas baking display and noticed that there was no fruitcake fruit. He started asking employees where the fruitcake fruit was. Of course since none of them, like meat cutters, produce clerks and floral department employees, had anything to do with stocking these items, not to mention the fact that we were out, no one could tell Pat where the fruitcake fruit was. Tim tried to tell him that we were out. Pat couldn't believe that was true and embarked on a quest through the back room to find the fruitcake fruit. Of course he didn't find any, because we were out, and happy about it. The next day he called Scott Ruth and told him to tell me to get more fruitcake fruit in the store. I got some from one of the other stores and didn't sell even one unit and had to mark them all down after Christmas.
At some point during the year Tim was transferred to another store and Bill, an experienced ASD came to my store. I was also given permission to hire a grocery manager. For once I thought that the corporate executives actually wanted the store to succeed. I was wrong. There were a lot of hints that the store was going to close. The barely functioning air conditioning unit that required a sprinkler on the roof to keep it cool, the stinky drain that should have been dug up and repaired, the department managers who were being transferred out one at a time. But it was all confirmed one evening when an email that was only supposed to go to the executive committee went out to all store directors and assistant store directors. It clearly stated that the store was closing soon and a date needed to be set. News travels fast. Scott Ruth came out to our store and met with all the managers and lied to them, that the store wasn't closing. Bill and I kept our mouths shut.
At some point I got another visit that didn't bode well. Tom Schulte, Operations VP, was accompanied by Donna, the corporate HR Director. They had with them a pile of printouts from my Facebook page. I had made a comment that they didn't think was appropriate, and others had made further comments that they didn't like. Someone from B&R had seen these comments and reported me to corporate. A friend had brought up how many customers acted terribly to service sector employees and I responded with something about abusive customers. I was written up again, and had to attend counseling sessions through our employee assistance program. This is when I realized how much of a target I had on my back and how closely my actions were being scrutinized. At my counseling sessions the counselor brought up incidents from years in the past that I thought had been resolved and forgotten. I was on thin ice with B&R.
The incident that I am sure was the one where they decided I would be fired came in the Autumn of the year. Two customers, friends of one of my managers, wanted to getting married in the store. This was something that I always thought would be cool -- the store director officiating a wedding in the grocery store! They ended up buying their flowers and wedding cake at the store, as well as a lunch for them and their witnesses. Melissa, who was in charge of promoting store events on our internal social media site, took photos and posted them. Soon after I received a call from Donna telling me to take down the photos of the wedding. She claimed that she had received complaints from several of my peers and at least one store employee. The complaints were supposedly that I was doing personal business on store time, but in reality they were about the fact that it was two women getting married. This was confirmed for me when Donna mentioned that the internal employee called the wedding an abomination. I took the photos down, but once again, a meeting that involved Donna took place. I was criticized for doing the wedding on my 15-minute break, but Donna maintained that since I still had my nametag on, I was working. I was criticized for leaving 30 minutes early at the end of the day since I did not take a lunch break. Donna maintained that since I was in the Deli area I had taken my lunch break. (Which is it Donna? Was I on the clock or on my lunch?). I was written up again, although for some reason it was worded as an extension of my previous Performance Improvement Plan. I was told that I had a track record of making bad decisions and if another problem arose I would be fired -- no discussion involved.
I believe that the real reason for me being in trouble was the fact of the same-sex wedding, but they didn't want to be on record for firing me for being homophobic. I knew that there was no chance that nothing would ever come up which they could use as a pretext to get rid of me. I was not wrong. Not long after this Bill and I observed a cashier have a long conversation with a customer while a line was forming. I went over to ask what was going on and was yelled at by the customer, who ended up elbowing me in the ribs as he left the store. I followed him outside and took a photo of his license plate, thinking I should maybe call the police (I ended up deciding against it). He called the corporate office to complain. I never found out what he said, but a week later I was fired.
During that week Scott Ruth avoided talking to me and would not return my calls. The day before a scheduled vacation we had what was called a "Holiday Show" at one of the stores. This was a day where we were trained on how the corporate executives wanted us to merchandise our stores for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I went through the whole day, until at the very end Scott said he wanted to talk to me before I left for vacation. Then he and Donna fired me. Even though being unemployed was not something that I looked forward to, it was obvious for a long time that the situation wasn't going to get better. Even if I hadn't been fired, with the store closing I doubt that I would have a job. In similar situations managers had to apply for open positions. I was actually happy that I was fired. The pressure was off, the other shoe had dropped.
I was fired on Thursday October 29, 2015. I took the weeknd off and made job hunting my job.
