Most every person understands what it feels like to be discontent with a job. It is frustrating, discouraging, and infuriating. Fortunately, there is a remedy. Simply ask yourself, What can I do? Be careful; there are a wrong way and a right way to pose this question. The former is said full of resignation and with emphasis on the word DO. The latter is said full of optimism and with emphasis on the word CAN. What CAN I do?

This question prompts one to think positively instead of negatively, to favor empowerment over disenfranchisement, to concentrate on the possible instead of the impossible. If there is too little fraternity in the office, then generate ideas that can bring people together such as hosting a BBQ, organizing a company sports team, or coordinating happy hour. If you are forced to drink coffee from an old nasty coffee pot that has not been cleaned in over 5 years, then present some arguments – improved sanitary conditions will result in improved employee attendance, lower expenses on coffee, filters, wash soap and sponges – to HR for replacing the drip with an automatic coffee machine. If you are under-challenged and bored with your position, then develop and pitch a customized position that both benefits the company and incorporates your interests and skills set.

By asking myself What CAN I do? I am suddenly liberated from the rat race, my view of the world is broadened, and I am receptive to new possibilities.

I work at a Kmart ten minutes from home and have since my senior year of high school. I started there as a cashier, but was put in the garden shop after 2-3 months without notice or training. Nearing four years later, I have the same job. I am also charged with working in receiving and doing a bit of everything as collateral duties.

Now that my intro is over: I hate my job. Why? Retail horror stories are all true. The job sucks balls because of the terms of employment, customer issues, and management.

The terms that ANY retail worker will be familiar with are low pay, inconsistent scheduling, and general drudgery on the job. Kmart has not offered any raises for over 2 years as part of a “pay freeze.” This means that my wages increased only with the minimum wage, and yes, after almost 4 years I still make minimum wage. After all the experience and know-how I have at Kmart, I make $7.25/hr. Now, some of my coworkers have been smiled upon by management. Loopholes exist and they have had wage increases by “qualifying” in departments I cannot qualify in while doing garden. New employees are also hired at a higher rate of pay than I make now. Shady processes seem to go down behind closed doors because the managers are too shrewd to abstain.

Customers are no escape from the pains of the office and breakroom. I live in a Florida suburb where the shoppers are typically lower middle class whites with strong feelings as to how they should be treated. They’re the type who will fly off the handle over a few dollars or some wasted minutes and come right back the next day. It’s a bit pathetic. Luckily, I am spared the worst and have a few kind regulars in my garden shop. With all the variety, though, it’s easy to find something new to hate about people every day. My job drains my social patience completely.

The largely incompetent management is your standard array of world-weary failed business majors looking for a way out or burnt-out lifers settling down for the long-haul. Silly policies are being implemented as this stagnant and maladaptive company struggles to hold on, but this only serves to frustrate employees who aren’t paid enough to care. The leadership can be rude, crass, kind, funny, and keep you forty minutes late to clean all in the same day. Sometimes I feel bad for our store managers because they are pawns, too, but then I remember that this is their JOB. For life. They ended up where they are, and their example reminds me to keep moving forward.

The positives of my job are few, and they honestly don’t compare to the magnitude of the negatives. However there are some. I have flexible scheduling. As a student, I know I can hand in almost any reasonable hours and be scheduled. It’s very low-pressure. Yeah, it blows, but I really don’t have to do all that much on any given day. And finally, it’s close to home.

I do this because I need the money. I’ve been looking for a new job everywhere since about my fifth or sixth month, but to no avail. I often feel that my job causes a lot of sadness in my life and one of my greatest motivations in life is to find a new job. Kmart sucks.

I work as a cashier in a small, family owned grocery store. The job itself isn’t that bad at all. It’s not hard once you learn how to do WIC checks and remember a few produce codes. All you really have to do is move stuff past a scanner, press a few buttons, and tell the customer to have a good day.

But sometimes I highly regret working here. People in this town aren’t the best people. Actually, they’re some of the worst.

A few weeks after I started working there, I was still trying to figure out some produce codes, and even names of some of the produce (Yucca? What the hell is yucca?) so I could look up the codes if it didn’t have a sticker. I had opened for the first time today, and I was on the express lane early in the morning. An older man comes through my line with a bad of grapes; they weren’t in the normal bags that they were originally put in, they were in a plain produce bag. I go to look up the code, but there was at least five different types of grapes in the system. So I politely ask the man if he remembers what type of grapes they were.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?!” he yells, “Isn’t that your goddamn job?!”

I try to explain to him that I need the code for the grapes, and there are a lot of different grapes in the system. He won’t have it. He continues to yell and carry on as a co-worker goes to the produce section to find out. After he left, my co-worker made a good point; Would you buy something without knowing what they were?

I also tend to get customers who don’t seem to know how to read, or simply don’t want to. Admittedly, the store sometimes has problems with not putting sale tags right below the product on sale, but the sign usually always specifies the product on sale. I get multiple customers coming to me with products they believe to be on sale, when the item on sale was next to it. For instance; a sign will say “Honey Nut Cheerios, 2 for $5!” The price will be larger than the name of the product to advertise the good sale price, but the name of the product is still there. A customer will come up with a box of cereal that was next to the Honey Nut Cheerios, and when it doesn’t ring up on sale, they’ll get pissed at me, as if I was the one who did something wrong. So I tell them what the sign said, the sign that they obviously saw but didn’t completely read, and they decide they don’t want the product. They then continue to complain and say we should label our signs better. I’m sorry, we have the product and the sale price on the sign, what more do you fucking want?

Also there are people who don’t seem to read prices at all and just throw whatever they want into their cart. The most frequent problem I’ve come across is tomatoes. During the winter, they’re expensive. Some tomatoes can be around $3.50 a pound. People will just load up a bag and throw them in their cart, then come to me and ask me to put half of them back because they can’t afford them all. We have easy to read price tags. We have scales. If something says it’s $3.50 a pound, take a few tomatoes, weigh them, and do the fucking math. Oh wait – these people can’t even read signs, why do I think they can do math?

Another big problem is customers on WIC. A lot of them know what they can and cannot get, separate the items by what’s on each check before I ring them up, and make it easy for the both of us. Then I get the customers who get whole milk when the check says 2% or 1%, the wrong size or brand of cheese, and the wrong kind of cereals or bread. WIC takes long enough, I don’t need your ignorant ass getting the wrong items and taking up my, and everyone else’s, time. People not weighing their produce and WIC problems tend to go hand in hand when some people come to me with the fruit & veggie WIC vouchers. They usually only say “up to $6″ or “up to $10″. If they price is above what it says on the voucher, they have to pay the balance. Most of them don’t mind, but others have a bitch fit over the fact that the strawberries made them five cents over, or the shitload of tomatoes they grabbed added up to fifteen bucks. It’s not my problem; it’s your responsibility to follow what it says on the check, not mine.

The customers are only half the reason I’ve put in my two-weeks notice after only a few months of working here. It’s also the scheduling.

When I applied, it was for a half-time job. I figured they’d have me working three or four days out of the week. Instead I’m working five, sometimes six days a week, 4 to 6 hours a day, eight if it’s a one-day sale. It’s not a set schedule, either. I never work the same days or hours a week, and I don’t know my schedule for next week until they put it up on Saturday. This leaves me no time to plan anything with friends or family, and not knowing when I’ll have time to do anything. If we need a day off, we have to give notice two weeks prior, which is understandable. But what if something comes up a week or half a week before it needs to happen, and I can’t get that day off? Well, I’m screwed.

A smaller problem, but a problem that still pisses me off, is when there aren’t customers. When it’s slow and we don’t have a customer, we have to occupy ourselves. Cleaning the conveyor, putting up more bags, taking the baskets out, doing some returns, fronting the displays at the end of aisles, etc. But there are some times when all of that is done and I’m standing there, with nothing to do, just waiting for a customer. One specific supervisor is very strict about us keeping busy, so she’ll send a message on our screen telling us to do something. But what if there IS nothing to do? What if all the baskets are taken out, everything is clean, etc? What the hell does she want us to do then? I know what I do – I pretend to wipe down the registers. As long as we look like we’re busy, she’s happy.

I need a job where I know when I’m going to be working. I need a job where, if things are slow, the supervisor will understand and give me something to do. So I’m done here.

That being said, there are just so many negative factors that outweigh the positives I don’t know where to begin….positions:
you can start off as a driver, a phone person, or a trainee manager (learn how to make pizza and get some management responsiblities) well, they all suck in there own ways…
DRIVER: They make a lot of money some nights but considering you put 100 to 200 miles and upwards sometimes a night because domino’s delivery areas are really ridiculous its not worth it. They pay for each delivery you take an all but depending on the demographic that could be 50 cents or a whopping 1.30…ooooooo
When you’re putting that many miles on your car what about tires, brakes, oil changes…anything else that might happen…also to drive you have to sign a waiver saying you promise to drive in inclement weather and not bitch. so besides risking your life to drop off pizza what else does this entail you might ask??…selling your cars soul and being unappreciated by every lazy inconsiderate fatass who doesn’t feel like picking up his own pizza…who feels like calling your shop in a blizzard for delivery and then calling 40 minutes later bitching your not there yet…DUDE IT’S A FUCKING BLIZZARD OUTSIDE! cut the damn driver some slack…its not like your pizza’s 2 hours late…this stupid kid or pathetic old person is risking there life to drop off your food…but furthermore this leads me to THE STAFFING..
nobody wants to work at domino’s ever and when they do they don’t show up and when they do show up they are annoying and when they aren’t annoying they suck at working and when all of that doesn’t apply they always want 4 days off and 5 working days! WTF you can’t do that!
see at every domino’s there are 2 or 3 good workers that overcompisate for everybody elses lazy ass. ALWAYS UNDERSTAFFED combined with their stupid focus on delivering equals chaos and horror…especially for the drivers and managers. If you dont mind making minimum wage and only getting about 15 hours a week to work the real position to be had is the phone person because they get to do all the fun stuff like top pizza’s and get the oven and stuff with no responsibilties and when a customer complains all they do is get the manager.

THE MANAGER–by far the worst position in the place…terrible..and here’s why..upper management is retarded..im convinced that they are just fucking retarded…there is only 2 smart upper managers that I know and unfortunately there intelligent opinions are washed out by all the other ones banter.
AND THE FUNNIEST THING ABOUT UPPER MANAGEMENT…they take themselves so seriously…its just plain obnoxious really…
THE CUSTOMERS…they’re the worst they’ve driven me to the point of never wanting to speak to anybody or see anybody ever again..
you get them all…from the i ordered a pepperoni (when you know goddamn well that they ordered extra cheese or whatever it may have been)…or the i ordered half an hour ago wheres my pizza dont you guys have that guarentee (no jackass that was like a billion years ago and they’ve seen then stopped that ridiculousness…and by the way JACKASS the reason your food isn’t there is because you live 7 miles from the store, it’s friday rush hour and we only have 2 drivers on tonight because this fucking place never has enough people to work WE’RE FUCKING HIRING IF YOU’D LIKE TO APPLY?)
OR my personal fav.
my wings aren’t crispy enough, the crust is too burnt, i didn’t get enough, my wings are too soggy WAH WAH FUCKING WAh….none of these complaints are ever valid its always the same scammers over and over again trying to get more free chicken or pizza or something for free anything right KEEP GRASPING AT STRAWS…you’ll always get it though if you try hard enough…thing is..do they really feel good about themselves? you shouldnt you should feel like trash because we all make fun of you after we hang up…plus we know your address and number so when you call back we remember you.
on a personal note this place also sucks because you never get an offical break…no 15’s no lunch or dinner…no work structure …true there are times when it’s not busy and you can smoke but ordering or making food for yourself is out of the question…because it seems as soon as you even begin to think about eating (it could be ANYTIME SERIOUSLY) people will begin to call. You could be dead for 2 hours and as soon as you say hey…im hungry i think i’ll eat now..FORGET IT..some other customer will want pizza and you’ll have to make it and then another will call on top of it…wolfing down crappy pizza or whatever else you may be eating gets old after a while and you will start to have digestion problems. and perhaps the more frustrating thing about it…especially if you’re a driver is having to put off eating to serve somebody elses hunger…now that’s cruel…and same goes for potty breaks and so forth and so on
are there any perks to the job?
yeh sure, it’s really routine and easy and if you want experience and a quick promotion it can be had. Plus the pay from a managerial standpoint isn’t so horrible but at what cost (80-90 hours a week??? no i’m not lying it is very possible for a manger there to double 7 days straight)…

just stay away and make sure you treat them nicer next time you call…they’re job might be cake but they sure do pay for it’s “easy-ness”

I was obviously very good. I must have been good. Some woman wrote in and actually thanked me for something I did for her. I found her some chilis…I took them off the top shelf and handed them to her and she thought this was wonderful service so she wrote thanking the manager. I didn’t get a raise though.

I didn’t like it…it was ok, good fun but that was about the limit on it. The people you worked with were good but the actual job was shit. Have you ever tried cleaning shelves where oils are on? It’s impossible. Cleaning oil off shelves is just very difficult, I found that out. I didn’t have any special chemicals or anything…I just had soapy water and its impossible. I just ran around with a bucket of water and things and I was probably really unusual in the shop, squeezing this bucket of water.

It was a shit job…I quit to go back to school. It took up too much time. Didn’t give me time to do much else.

In 5 years, I wanted to be a pilot…

In 30 years, I don’t think about that….it’s impossible, stupid. Maybe a dead pilot.

I was working in England in conjunction with these people and there was a job in Munich which required my skills I asked my boss to go there and he said yes.  And so I came over to Munich.

Before there was shite and now there is quality.

It’s not too bad.  Could be better, but you can’t have everything.  There are
lots of different things that are good about it.  You’re never doing the same old thing every day.  It’s good fun…you work with good people in a good town.  Good socializing and all…that’s part of the job.

The only thing you don’t like about jobs in general is that you can’t generally do what you want to do.  Getting up in the morning?  I don’t do that….I get up when my body tells me to get up, which could be anytime really.

My boss is good cuz he works in England so I don’t see him that much.  We’re
pretty much our own bosses.  Let us get on with our work.

In 5 years, I’ll be working in software.  Probably not in Munich…not in England.tech  Somewhere else…

In 30 years?  You just do not think that far ahead…end of story.