Horny Creek, like most retail companies, is based almost exclusively around its "bottom line". I can understand this; I might not have a head for business, but I dig the fact that there's no point in entering into a venture without any prospects of making money - presumably, a lot of money. So, even though it pissed me off at the time, I can now look back and see the logic in peddling sub-par merchandise to people stupid enough to buy it, in order to fulfill some kind of image deficiency the media or whoever has convinced them they're suffering from.
What I can't abide to this day is the poor treatment of employees that seem to plague these companies. Granted, it's a well-known fact that anyone who works in all but the highest echelons of retail services is expendable and easily replaceable (I mentioned before that Horny Creek clothes basically sell themselves, so it isn't exactly a skill-driven position), but it's been my experience that if you treat people like people and not like soulless automatons, they're more likely to work harder and thus make more money for your company. You know, treat your employees with just the barest modicum of respect and civility that you'd extend to anyone on the street, pay them a little more than minimum wage to keep them motivated (if they're working hard) and I think you'd see real productivity increase. Seems fairly logical to me.
There is a reason for that preamble. I mentioned before that Horny Creek employees come and go with the tides, and I may have given the impression that this referred only to floor-walking part-timers. Not so. In fact, of all the companies I or anyone I know ever worked for, Horny Creek had the highest upper-management turnover rate any of us have ever heard of. Just guess where this is going.
So the morning after my disastrous first day at the Horny Creek warehouse outlet, I called up Mary the Coked-Out DM to "discuss" a change in my employment status (read: move me to New Money or I'm fucking quitting). I'm not sure what I hoped to gain from yelling at her on the phone, because as I said earlier I too was replaceable, but at the time the only thing on my mind was the white-hot rage that twelve hours of broke-down units, fucked-up tents and unfathomably bad music had stoked within my brain. So I called the New Money location and had my first conversation with the Captain, though neither of us would figure that out until almost a year later:
Cap: Horny Creek New Money, this is the Captain.
Al: Yeah, hi. Is Mary around?
Cap: Mary? Mary who?
I had never gotten her last name, but I frantically shuffled through my paperwork, hoping to find some inkling. Nothing.
Al: Ah, um, fuck…I don't know. She's the District Manager.
Cap: Oh, that Mary. Yeah, she quit.
I was thunderstruck. When I worked at the other Horny Creek location years prior, it wasn't uncommon for managers and assistant managers to be "reassigned" or simply to walk out of the job entirely, but we had a pretty solid upper-management team in place. I had never heard of an area manager or DM simply quitting out of the blue. Later I'd make the connection that the turnover rate of management types increased exponentially the closer they were stationed to Head Office. More on that later. In the meantime I was experiencing a gamut of emotions which included shock, dawning understanding and an overriding, even more searing wrath than what was currently consuming my gray matter.
Al: She…she QUIT?
Cap: Yeah man, she just came in this morning, threw down her keys in the middle of the floor, cursed at me and walked out.
Al: But…but…but she was supposed to transfer me out of that godforsaken warehouse! What in the hell am I supposed to do now?
Cap: Look, I don't know what to tell you, but I have customers that require my attention. Sorry I can't help. *click*
I guess I can't blame the Captain for being abrupt on the phone; if it had been me I would have been just as short. But at the time it did nothing to improve my mood. Over the next ten minutes I engaged in a wide variety of embarrassing activities, including (but not limited to) cursing like a sailor at the top of my lungs, waving my arms around and hitting random pieces of furniture, throwing my phone to the floor with such force that the battery pack popped out and to this day doesn't fit right, cursing some more, hitting a door and scraping my knuckles, cursing about that, and leaping up and down like a madman. It was probably an overreaction, but at the time it felt justified. Thank god I didn't have a roommate at the time, or there would probably be filmed evidence of my little dance of fury.
Once I calmed down a little, I began to go over my options. I was faced with the prospect of an indeterminate amount of time - perhaps even the entire summer's worth - working at the Horny Creek Warehouse, which would quite likely be followed by suicide. I could either suck it up, hope that someone else took notice of my hard work, and have me transferred to New Money, or I could decide to find another job.
Like most people, I detest the job search process. I always feel like such a whore, dressing myself up like a goddamn monkey and going to interviews that are almost always conducted by either a bored temporary staff member or over-amped upper-management type. I hate having to pretend to be "really excited about using the skills I've developed servicing other blowhards in order to continue gobbling corporate penis in this entirely original and challenging position". Most places don't care about my past service record, even though it is pretty good: as long as I have a pulse and not too much drool on my chin, they're basically going to hire me anyway, which isn't nearly as rewarding an experience as my high-school guidance counselor made it out to be.
That, and I'm terminally lazy. Given I might actually have to work at a new position, it became a question of the devil I know versus the devil I don't: and Horny Creek was just a devil I knew intimately. So new job was out. Once more unto the breach, dear friends.
When I arrived at work the following day, it was with renewed hope and vigor for my current position. Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little: at the very least, I didn't cry all the way there or go in drunk or anything. By the time I managed to get in the front door, my lack of a hip-flask started looking like a really bad decision. At the back of the store was a large Filipino man, probably in his mid-twenties and decked out in ghetto gear, repeatedly smashing his foot into one of the change room doors and swearing very loudly. It took me a minute for this image to process correctly, at which point I hauled ass across the warehouse, screaming at him. In the time it took me to get across the warehouse floor, the guy had managed to break the shitty particle-board door completely off its hinges and was in the process of stomping it into pieces.
Al: Hey! HEY! What the fuck, man?
FM: What? Get the hell out of my face!
Al: You're breaking my store! What the fuck do you think you're doing?
FM: Your store? What, are you the new manager?
Al: No, but I do work here, and I'm just as permitted as any manager to kick you the
fuck out for busting up my change room.
FM: You work here? What's your name?
Al: Why, you want to lodge a complaint?
FM: No, I'm "Tony", the assistant manager.
It turns out that, in the scant twelve hours I'd been at home since my last shift, not only had Shawna quit the company with absolutely no notice (starting to notice a pattern folks?), but Tony, the aforementioned assistant manager of Horny Creek Warehouse, had been passed over for her job in favour of outsourcing the position to a public interview process. Tony had been working for the company for several years, scraping his way up from part-time temporary employee to the vaunted Second In Command position, and so was understandably incensed when his years of eating shit failed to pay off in scoring a manager-ship.
Al: Shit man, I'm really sorry to hear about that.
Tony: Yeah, it sucks.
Al: ...sooo. Who's going to fix the door?
Tony: Fix it? We'll tell Head Office that some psychotic customer fucked it up when we told him that we couldn't take the tax off his purchase, even if he offered to pay cash.
I decided I liked Tony.
Over the next couple of weeks, I started to have a better understanding of how Horny Creeks' internal politics functioned. Tony never was offered the management position, but was still required to fulfill the management role until Head Office found a suitable replacement for Shawna. You can file this under "bitch-slapped by the man". As a result, I was granted what basically amounted to a field-commission to the rank of Third Key, which ironically was the job I was promised at the New Money store. I didn't get a pay raise, of course, even though I was for all intents and purposes serving as Assistant Manager to Tony's Manager. Tony and I developed a good working relationship: he was vehemently opposed to many of the practices Shawna had required, including tent set-up, shitty music and generally working.
Until such time as the new manager (a tiny Asian girl named "Lisa") appeared on the scene, the job was actually marginally enjoyable. Once Lisa took over the reins it started to get unbearable again, as she had these silly ideas in her head about "upselling" being a good thing, and "standing around shit-talking the customers" being a bad thing. Ironically it was she who would prompt my first meeting with the MENSA candidates who ran Head Office. It was this bizarre chain of events that eventually lead me to take my new role at New Money, which I'll relate in the next chapter. Keep marching with the Freak Parade.
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