So, in a world in which the inevitability of change is the only thing we cannot question, my ever-loving employers have decided to implement some changes. Firstly we are to wear uniforms. can you feel my pestilential scowl level?? i have no objection to dressing smartly; in fact i do so every day. and i would quite happily wear a shirt and tie for the job, provided i get to choose the shirt and tie. Okay its only a black shirt, but i hate black shirts (mostly); it clearly has been designed to please Drusilla the Goth, to match his splendid dreads. the whole fucking "alternative community" dresses in black; which is reason enough to hate it. however i hate having clothes chosen for me. i am not a fricking child. and they've got some sodding fleece, so we can't put a jumper over it. cuntybastards! puerile, and juvenile as it no doubt sounds, i do not want my personality eradicating. i like my personality, it tooks me 20 odd years to develop it and i have no desire to have it whitewashed (or in this case blackwashed), for reasons of identification and commerciality. people know i'm staff, they bloody walk up to me and say "you look like staff, can you help me?" (one day i will say back to one of the gurning unwashed buggers : "and you are clearly a customer. i can tell by your witless ambling"). i have a badge. i do not wear a coat. and i am either carrying books/fittings/POS or standing behind the counter. this i assume would make me a staff member.(i actually had a customer shake his books at me the other day; shaking, people, is the universal sign of "Serve Me, Grunt!").
so, now my large collection of smart, gaily coloured and stylish clotthing is to be lost to the public. no longer shall i flounce hammily about the health section in my red sweater, nor shall i skip merrily in my paisley shirt. bastards. Unsurprisingly, the shirts are the most bland, inoffensive, dehumanising things, as always happens when one wants to please the public, and not offend any staff. boooorrrrring. i'm hardly Pierre Cardin, but i don't want to look like other people. not clothes-wise anyway.
its like being at school. i may have to wear yellow pantaloons to offset this distress; or maybe some seriously wide/skinny trousers. white trousers; stillettoes. though being male (i am, honest) this may provoke more comment than i can handle. i'm camp enough already without turning into Tootsie.one of various reasons the job appealed to me was the freedom of dress; now they've (metaphorically) stripped me of that too.
furthermore, my manager is being sent on a training course, so i gather, for a new selling regime, which she will relay to us individually in one-to-one lessons. i am going to be taught to sell things. which isn't something i've been doing for the past four years, obviously. that helping customers, running things through the till, ordering stuff for them, that was NOT selling. i have a horrible feeling they are going to make us into those hard-selling pricks i hate in shops that cannot leave you alone for a moment. yeah, so effectively, we're being retrained. And i have no doubt this training will be more pushy and more false. we're turning into those US-style shops that are full of thick, inanely grinning idiots overburdened with disingenuous bullshit.You know the ones: the ones that look like the children of some disturbing religious cult, determined to convert you. i don't need this: i was brought up to be helpful, polite and friendly and, until people give me reason to be otherwise, i am. but i will not laugh at their racist jokes, smile at their unfunny remarks, or indulge their truly atrocious purchases.i shall smile, thank them, and and say goodbye. i don't do lying to make tits feel normal. in fact i don't do lying very well at all, which is why i don't, and shan't, do it.
in the time i've worked there, they seem to have chucked out their best ideas, and imbibed all the crap ones. so, quality, depth, range, sensible (and consistent) special offers go out the window; staff book-knowledge, enthusiasm, and intelligence also go out the window. And, surprise, in come silly uniforms, silly policies, offers that last so long (two weeks, a week even) no-one knows where they stand, and in come more staff who don't know a book from bog-roll,Noel Coward from Noel Gallagher, and think the Vietnam war was something to do with Hitler.
thats before i even start on the lunacy of central orders policy!
Please, please, next time you meet someone with an MBA or whatever, please, for all our sakes, kill the fucker. Before we look like the guys at the top.
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